Hacker News: madamepsychosis

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2021)"

madamepsychosis — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:48:38 +0000

Location: London UK Remote : Yes

Are you building a complicated technical product that is difficult to explain to customers?

Are you reaching the stage where it’s becoming necessary to think more strategically about market and positioning?

Do you want to catch the attention of your industry and build an iconic and reputable brand?

Maybe I can help.

I’m a former programmer, VC analyst and startup founder with an CS degree who now advises startups on product marketing. I combine technical and market expertise with skill in writing and social media. I can help figure out the essentials of what your product is doing and for whom, and figure out how best to get that message out there.

I specialize in: - startups expanding, and needing to redefine who they are - developer marketing and finding influential power-users - writing stand-out copy that succinctly expresses a technical idea - startups just discovering p/m fit and wanting to quickly respond to it

Often I can help solve your problem with less than 2 weeks of consulting and research. I can make a content plan or guidelines or work with an existing team.

Email: saku@asteroid.zone

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sakunthala-panditharatne-ab07111...

Lessons from the iPhone on Building a Developer Platform

madamepsychosis — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 11:37:42 +0000

Article URL: https://www.rationally-exuberant.com/blog-1/how-to-build-a-developer-platform

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23626716

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

High-octane video editing with the A12 Bionic

madamepsychosis — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 21:36:28 +0000

Article URL: https://asteroid.video/iphone.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22313058

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Playing Ms. Pacman Using an AI Agent [Screencast Tutorial]

madamepsychosis — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 12:44:58 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@m0nologuer/playing-ms-pacman-ec279795516f

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14760772

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Machine Learning Screencast Series: Whitepaper to Code

madamepsychosis — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 14:43:50 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1HE9SpZl8A

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14476581

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The GIGAWAR theory of history

madamepsychosis — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 15:52:47 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@m0nologuer/the-gigawar-theory-of-history-a0208b11f0eb

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13365716

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

A compressed cultural history of Silicon Valley

madamepsychosis — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 23:58:38 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/this-is-what-silicon-valley-actually-believes-9d6742f1b518

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643014

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide"

madamepsychosis — Wed, 06 May 2015 22:44:31 +0000

Something I think could help people in these situations but doesn't have much popular support - over-the-counter antidepressants.

It's telling that the author was able to check out a book on suicide, but didn't seek medical help. That would require a) getting past the stigma of suffering from depression b) calling up a doctor or therapist c) suffering through the long mental health wait times that exist in most countries, d) being sent to a CBT therapist, given a self-help book or website e) being referred to a psychiatrist f) finally being prescribed something.

It can be months before a depressed person gets any kind of treatment at all. And they are the last people to have the energy it takes to navigate a byzantine healthcare system, or have a friend or family member help them (many people still believe depression is a character weakness and will punish the patient for speaking out).

Antidepressants aren't all that dangerous, even when compared to other over-the-counter drugs like Plan B. They're not happy pills, they often won't even make a miserable life bearable, but they do give the patient enough energy to deal with his/her problems. Given the number of lives lost to suicide, and the high disease burden of depression, I think the safety tradeoff is absolutely worth it.

I'm aware this comment is going to attract a lot of ill-will and uninformed comments about anti-depressant efficacy/ woo about happy pills etc. so I direct you to read this FAQ first. https://medical.mit.edu/faqs/antidepressants

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Passport Index – How much power does your passport have?"

madamepsychosis — Sun, 03 May 2015 16:02:28 +0000

More interesting would be to rank citizenship by price. For example, you can directly get Maltese citizenship for $150k. Indirectly you can get a green card for $500k. Maybe someone could sort through all these direct and indirect rules to classify citizenships by value.

New comment by madamepsychosis in "On a brother’s suicide: ‘I wish I had never told him to go to counseling’"

madamepsychosis — Fri, 01 May 2015 13:57:05 +0000

I live in Europe and something similar happened to one of my friends. Abuses of power are everywhere.

New comment by madamepsychosis in "When is proof by contradiction necessary?"

madamepsychosis — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 02:32:12 +0000

My intuition – proof by contradiction means we have to use one step that inverts the set of values for which the statement is true – so whether we need a contradiction step depends on the cardinality of this truth set. Perhaps it depends on the relationship between the ‘truth set’ of our premises and our conclusions (e.g. the square root of 2 is one number, but all of the rationals is infinite) Supporting this intuition, getting rid of proof by contradiction leaves us unable to construct uncountable sets. Maybe some proofs need several contradiction steps (i.e., when their truth set cardinality is aleph-2,3, etc.)

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Ask HN: I got rejected from Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft, Quora, What's Wrong?"

madamepsychosis — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 12:33:12 +0000

Remember lots of these things come down to luck. Resume looks more impressive than me, and I did get one of those internships. Just keep trying and don't take it personally.

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Europe’s Plan to Compete with Silicon Valley"

madamepsychosis — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 14:01:52 +0000

Here's a recent anecdote: A company in London had developed a seriously impressive, breakthrough technology. When they went to meet European VCs, they wanted a business plan, revenue graphs, etc., nothing about how the technology worked. They were mostly ex-McKinsey and ex-banking and probably would not have understood the mechanics anyway. They lowballed/ passed on this company, because they were raising > £10 million, which by EU standards is a massive amount, and the financials of this < 5 y/o company were too shaky. Then the founders went out to SF for a month, and pretty soon were practically drowning in termsheets.

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2015)"

madamepsychosis — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 15:18:58 +0000

Rouge Paradise Planet | VR Gaming | London, UK and San Francisco, CA Very early stage. Computer graphics, vision or Unity engineers. sp668@cam.ac.uk

New comment by madamepsychosis in "[dead]"

madamepsychosis — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 15:29:47 +0000

I think the reason NYTimes columnists sound so stupid is this: to become a NYTimes columnist, you need to impress a whole string of gatekeepers, professors, editors etc. The biggest problem in their world caused by gender bias is these gatekeepers not letting women through. Much of the world works in a similar way, but tech does not, and journalists have not seemed to realize this.

So when critiquing the valley, they look for the gatekeepers, which is why they think - "aha! there must be no female founders because VCs aren't letting them in!"

This baffles SV insiders, who can better understand the relative importance of a VC's opinion. Being rejected? Why that happened to Google 63 times! Unfortunately, this is the point where they conclude that gender bias is a nonsense problem invented by poorly informed arts graduates.

The same thing is happening when journalists complain tech firms don't hire enough women. It would be a very serious problem for women in journalism if their employers were institutionally sexist institution (which I'm sure it is not, of course) but for women in tech, less so. We have far greater "exit rights", due to the liquidity of the market and the relative ease of starting our own companies.

This isn't to say gender bias doesn't exist, or that it isn't a problem, merely that it manifests itself in wildly different ways than a journalist may expect.

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Ask HN: Do you take nootropics?"

madamepsychosis — Sat, 21 Mar 2015 12:52:37 +0000

L-theanine has been a miracle drug for me. Took away a lot of my depression/energy issues.

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Why I Left the Thiel Fellowship for Quora"

madamepsychosis — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 19:51:38 +0000

This reads like a parody of what grad students think.

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Scientists are suggesting that depression is a result of inflammation"

madamepsychosis — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 01:19:01 +0000

Anecdata here - as a teen, I had depression. I would take ibuprofen a few times a day when it got really bad, it helped a lot. It would lift my mood from dulled, paralysing rumination to merely sad. I think I started doing it after reading a study like the one in the link. It's a popular theory there are many different diseases that fall under the label 'depression', which is why patients often try multiple antidepressants until one works - perhaps this inflammatory one is just one of them.

Dev boards – embedded Linux by example

madamepsychosis — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 18:39:32 +0000

Article URL: http://dev-boards.blogspot.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8682802

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by madamepsychosis in "Startup depression"

madamepsychosis — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 16:16:20 +0000

I'm curious - why are there constantly posts about depression on HN? Is there something about the programmer/startup lifestyle thats more accepting of depressed people?