mpbm

Joined 10 years ago

Karma
110
Submissions
165
Member since
Feb 9
I enjoy "How It's Made" a little bit more than porn.

I'm founding a startup called howstr.com which will walk you through how to do anything.

github.howstr.com www.atthatmatt.com

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Recent submissions

Comment · 10 years ago
It's fun to be reminded of controversy that happened outside of modern memory.
Comment · 10 years ago
Let's say a law like this did get passed. How could it even be worded?

For example, if it merely says "you have to give the cops your password when a judge tells you to" then using a password manager should technically protect you, because you don't know the password and have no way of retrieving it.

They could add "or the password for your password manager" but then the judge would have to say "give up all of your passwords", not just the one(s) relevant to the investigation.

Either way, the law would also have to say "and don't change your password(s) until the investigation is over" or "and give the cops a copy of your password whenever it changes".

Even then, you'd only be getting the people with 1) nothing to really hide or 2) so stupid they would have gotten caught some other way anyway because all a criminal would have to do is set their data to permanently lock, or self destruct, when the cops enter the fake password the criminal turned over.

The only way this could work is if the cops could just straight up compel you to assist in your own investigation. They can already do that by tricking you, so I don't think this would add much.

Comment · 10 years ago
Maybe it's much more of a social decision than a business decision.

Early stage investors are gambling even more than late stage investors. The best they can hope for is to find 50 reasonable deals and let the math work itself out.

So the better part of their decision could easily be based much more on what their peer early stage investors think of them. Founders with pedigree are easy to justify and obviously more socially valuable than founders without pedigree (like buying IBM). So being the angel who keeps getting those founders means other investors will look up to you.

And, if things go wrong, nobody can blame an investor for getting into bed with pedigreed founders. It's an obvious decision, so it won't invite ridicule. Since it's obvious, there will be more competition, and that's something the angel doesn't have to rely on luck to win.

Comment · 10 years ago
Yeah, that was a TIL moment for me when I found out the body can make glucose without carbohydrate. There were others, like how mitochondria burn fat more efficiently than glucose.
Comment · 10 years ago
I think with business acumen you can hire all the "more" you need.
Comment · 10 years ago
LOL, you see "a staggering amount of waste" in commercial entities and thing the way to find efficiency is to look to the government? Like government-sponsored research is going to be more efficient? That's a good one.
Comment · 10 years ago
"Dark time" strongly implies a subjective experience. Maybe Mark meant that was an event he personally experienced as intensely dark.

That's more or less the same situation that the TV show Silicon Valley used to stress out their founder. He's got something with potential and an offer to buy it for more money than he's ever thought about before. What do you do? Maybe go throw up in the bushes? How would it feel when you make your decision and then most of your team leaves? What if they're right and you ruined everything?

That scenario is dramatic enough when you get to watch it happen to someone else. Living through it could easily be "dark."

Comment · 10 years ago
It's disingenuous to claim that because a new feature isn't making your life better means he's failing at making the whole world better.

Maybe you're one of those 10-100K experiments where some engineer pushed something out to see if it worked. Maybe a new feature boosts revenue so they can build solar-powered internet planes that bring entire cities a connection. Maybe it's just noise and isn't actually relevant.

Comment · 10 years ago
Why would their body language have anything to do with the content you were hoping for?

Yeah, the title is a bit more grandiose than just "Sam interviews Mark." I thought it was good. It's a huge topic that has hundreds of thought leaders so it's not like you should be expecting something mind blowing.

For me, it was valuable because the whole "building the future" thing is still very much rooted in existing institutions. Outside of Silicon Valley, everybody "knows" that if you want to do something really big you need a government or corporation to do it. Everybody believes it's impossible for one person or a small team to create an impact. It's good to remind people that Facebook is changing the world, but it started in a way that lots of people could start.

Comment · 10 years ago
concise, not precise
Comment · 10 years ago
Benevolence is over rated. Competitive self-interest is at least verifiably productive.
Comment · 10 years ago
Since a solid five minutes of the interview are devoted to Mark explaining how he never expected to start a company, let alone do anything as big as "connect the world", I don't think this is much of a rebuttal of anything. What makes you think Steve Jobs belongs in a "better" bucket than Mark? Even at his grandest vision he just made phones. They were good phones, sure, but he never tried to do anything bigger.
Comment · 10 years ago
I think he means if it's important to you it's still worth trying and if you fail at least you were trying. Whereas if it's just a business, "nothing personal," then failing means you've got nothing, not even the feeling of working on something important to you.
Comment · 10 years ago
LOL yeah, I just spoke to a dietician the other day who swore that glucose is the only thing your brain can use for fuel.

It's easy to be ignorant about a situation you never experience. Every single person they deal with is going to be in a carb-adapted state and never miss a meal, so their body will run entirely off of glucose.

Comment · 10 years ago

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