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Google Optimize now free for everyone
Businesses often have one big question for us: How can they better understand their website visitors and deliver more relevant, engaging experiences?
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 817 posts.
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OpsGenie is joining Atlassian
We are delighted to announce that Atlassian has entered into an agreement to acquire Opsgenie.
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All Things Sales: Mini-lessons for startup founders
As a former CEO and software engineer (Citrix, XenSource, VERITAS, etc.), board member of GitHub (recently acquired by Microsoft), and lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Busines, a16z general partner Peter Levine is constantly asked “Why sales?” by entrepreneurs and technical founders. He…
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Peak Valley?
The Economist has a cover story this week called Peak Valley. The article suggests that Silicon Valley’s lead as a hub for innovation has peaked and other regions are rising. It ends with the concern that innovation more broadly has peaked. I somewhat agree with “the rise of elsewhere” narrative and disagree that…
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Coherence Penalty for Humans
This is a brief aside from my ongoing series about avoiding entity services. An interesting dinner conversation led to thoughts that I needed to write down. Amdahl's Law In 1967, Gene Amdahl presented a case against multiprocessing computers. He argued that the maximum speed increase for a task would be limited…
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Tesla, software and disruption
Car people often look at Tesla the way Nokia looked at the iPhone. “Nice ideas, but we can easily do all of that, and they don’t understand our industry.” Nokia was wrong - but will the car industry look the same? Maybe not.
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Can Beethoven send takedown requests?
Imagine you are a teacher at a public school, and you want to use a free recording of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in your classroom. As an author of music textbooks and a music theory professor, I am always looking for creative ways to develop teaching materials as Open Educational Resources (oer-musik.de), so that…
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Java is still available at zero-cost
The Java ecosystem has always been built on a high quality $free (zero-cost) JDK available from Oracle, and previously Sun. This is as true...
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F-35 Program Cutting Corners to “Complete” Development
Officials Altering Paperwork Instead of Pursuing Actual Fixes
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LEGO built a life-size, drivable Bugatti from over a million Technic pieces
Find the LEGO Group press releases, latest company news, product announcements and assets at the LEGO® Newsroom.
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Bullshit Jobs
A surprisingly common part of my life: a patient asks me for a doctor’s note for back pain or something. Usually it’s a situation like their work chair hurts their back, and their work …
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We Spent $3.3M Buying Out Investors: Why and How We Did It
Last month, Buffer spent $3.3 million – about half of all the cash we had in the bank – to buy out our main venture capital (VC) investors. Here is the full journey of how we decided on this path for the company, including all the details and numbers involved in carrying out a stock buyback.
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How to Succeed with a Startup [video]
Sam Altman [https://twitter.com/sama], President of Y Combinator, shares his thoughts on how you can succeed with a startup. Learn more at https://www.startupschool.org/
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Financial Modeling for Startups: An Introduction
Founders and executives of new companies, particularly those seeking to raise capital, will inevitably be confronted with the prospect of building a financial model. The goal of this guide is to give you an idea of what a financial model is, why you might want one, and how to go about building one.
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Very Good Security
“Never answer an anonymous letter” —Yogi Berra Did you ever wonder why doctor offices ask for your social security number? They don’t want to keep your SSN, but it’s the primary “key” that identifies you to an insurance company. In computer science/math terms, they need to call a function. Let’s call it: int…
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Building a Treasury Bond Ladder
A US treasury bond ladder is a great alternative to a high-yield savings account or CDs to invest short-term funds that you don't want to put at risk. Treasury bills, notes, and bonds (treasuries) are US government debt securities that may pay interest and return the principal at a specific time. While not FDIC…
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How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap
Multinational organisations are collaborating in the open on OpenStreetMap
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Solve Less General Problems
Two decades ago when I first started working at Avid, one of the tasks I was assigned was porting our product (a consumer video editor - th...
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Magic Leap is a Tragic Heap
The title of this review was carefully chosen, not glibly. I want what is best for VR and all other technologies on the Reality–Virtuality Continuum, Magic Leap included. Unfortunately, their cur…
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Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public
There is room to debate what makes an invention patentable, but one thing should be uncontroversial: patentable inventions should actually be new. That’s what EFF and the R Street Institute told the Supreme Court this week in an amicus brief urging it to grant certiorari and reverse the Federal...
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Don’t Shoot Messenger
Update (September 28, 2018): Reuters reports that the court has denied the government's request to force Facebook to assist with the wiretap.Late last week, Reuters reported that Facebook is being asked to “break the encryption” in its Messenger application to assist the Justice Department in...
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The Approval Economy
Why every purchase is a performance “I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am.” — Thomas Cooley About a month ago, I published what has become my mo…