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Visa, Plaid, networks, and jobs
The history of credit cards helps explain why Plaid is valuable to Visa, and how Visa can make it significantly better.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,099 posts.
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Nobody Cares (2011)
All the mental energy you waste complaining would be far better used trying to find the one, seemingly impossible way out of your current mess.
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How to Invest in Startups
There is a lot of advice about how to be a good startup founder. But there isn’t very much about how to be a good startup investor. Before going any further, I should point out that this is a...
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The “No Code” Delusion
Increasingly popular in the last couple of years, I think 2020 is going to be the year of “no code”: the movement that say you can write business logic and even entire applications without having the training of a software developer. I empathise with people doing this, and I think some of the “no code” tools are…
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Being a Solo Founder: Pros, Cons, Tips and Tricks (2017)
Founding a company is hard. You’ve got an infinite number of decisions to make while simultaneously trying to catch lightning in a bottle with creating something out of nothing. It’s even harder when you’re doing it alone. Being a solo founder, in many ways, stacks the deck against you. You’re left shouldering the…
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Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay
We should look at individuals—not national averages—as the unit of analysis, and ask: Are wages adequate for full-time workers?
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I almost sold Baremetrics for $5M
tl;dr In the past 6 months I turned down multiple $3-5m offers and failed to close a $5m sale. In the past six years of Baremetrics' existence, I've
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Facebook's PR feels broken
Facebook’s communications operation has begun to feel like its completely broken down over the past few days.
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I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left
_The company’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” Things have changed._ 
Most of the times, startup don't work. At some point it may make sense to either (1) give up on your original product and to sell the company, (2) shut down what you are doing and return money to investors, or (3) to pivot. You can read more on making the decision to give up in a future article. This post focuses on…
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Open Source, SaaS and Monetization
My thoughts on monetizing open source SaaS businesses from my experience at Sentry.
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A Big Little Idea Called Legibility (2010)
James C. Scott's fascinating and seminal book, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Imp rove the Human Condition Have Failed , examines how, across…
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A Sick Giant
Available today
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Contractors use shell games to hide owners, cheat taxpayers
We dig into the law, the Constitution, and public policy to give decision-makers in government the data and policy solutions they need enact reforms that ensure our government answers to the people.
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Want to make good business decisions? Learn causality
In some organizations, earnest efforts to be “data-driven” devolve into a culture of false certainty in which the influence of metrics is dictated not by the...
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Firefox 72 – our first song of 2020
2020 is upon us, folks. We'd like to wish everyone reading this a happy new year, wherever you are. As you take your first steps of the new year, figuring out what your next move is, you may find it comforting to know that there's a new Firefox release to try out! Version 72 to be exact.
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The End of the Beginning
The beginning of technology was about the shift from batched computing in one place to continuous computing everywhere. That era of paradigm changes may be over, which means the real changes are on…
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Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020
We’re kicking off this year’s CES with some big news. Millions of users and thousands of companies across the world already use Arduino as an innovation
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Google files opening Supreme Court brief in Oracle v. Google copyright lawsuit
We’re asking the Supreme Court to reaffirm the importance of the software interoperability that has allowed developers to write millions of applications for billions of …
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Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop
Laptop makers have long shortchanged AMD-based offerings. Read on to find out how they can avoid common mistakes that limit the potential of their products.
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A Hidden Cost of Ransomware: Wholesale Password Theft
Organizations in the throes of cleaning up after a ransomware outbreak typically will change passwords for all user accounts that have access to any email systems, servers and desktop workstations within their network. But all too often, ransomware victims fail to grasp that the crooks behind these attacks can and…
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Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view
Ouster's next step: 128-channel lidar sensors with long range and an ultra-wide field of view, built on its digital lidar architecture.
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Hopefully fair performance reviews for software developers
Note: if you're just looking for performance review templates and examples, head to the templates page [https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/templates-as-inspiration-for-software-engineers/] to download them. I've had about a dozen performance reviews during my decade-long software engineering career. Some of them were…
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Products I Wish Existed
Below is a list of products or startups that I am keeping an eye out for. I skipped listing things I wish existed that can *not* be implemented with today's technology in strong form - for example, the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer - although weak forms of this may be possible today.