Hacker News: pete_nic

New comment by pete_nic in "YouTube Transcript – read YouTube videos"

pete_nic — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 00:36:04 +0000

Can it calculate words per minute too? That would be helpful.

New comment by pete_nic in "Secret talks that could have prevented the Apple vs. Facebook war"

pete_nic — Sun, 21 Aug 2022 16:26:16 +0000

> Imagine building an entire business that ceases to be profitable as soon as you can't spy on users.

>I wish we could do the same thing to Google.

You’re assuming Google’s core business would not exist without spying on users and I disagree. You can run a search business and still protect privacy, this is DuckDuckGo’s whole model. This is a fundamental difference between a search product and a social product.

New comment by pete_nic in "Excel is pretty dang cool"

pete_nic — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 17:40:37 +0000

VisiCalc was conceived in 1978, before the internet and all the data that comes with it. Excel has had to catch up with these developments and is finally doing a good job with it.

New comment by pete_nic in "Micro-SaaS Alternatives to BigTech/VC"

pete_nic — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 00:54:17 +0000

This is a great idea but the list seems incomplete. For example, where are the email marketing tools? Mailchimp / Intuit, Convetkit, SendFox, and so many more. There are many other markets / verticals not covered here.

New comment by pete_nic in "Excel never dies (2021)"

pete_nic — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 01:09:11 +0000

In this context I’m interpreting DSL to mean “domain-specific language”

New comment by pete_nic in "Excel never dies (2021)"

pete_nic — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 01:05:39 +0000

> Excel may be the most influential software ever built.

I believe this to be true in business. Other tech may be more widely used eg “email” but the software is created by a variety of different companies (Google, Microsoft).

New comment by pete_nic in "Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)"

pete_nic — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 01:06:05 +0000

I signed up for a Codeblog! The Captcha making me pick photos of traffic lights and cross walks to verify my humanity feels like the antithesis of what this article and product is trying to do.

New comment by pete_nic in "How To Know Everything"

pete_nic — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 18:23:03 +0000

One use case where this does not work: when attempting to learn if someone understood you properly. I find myself asking short, direct questions, often in a managerial capacity, to confirm that other people have the correct understanding. Making a statement and then asking an individual “do you understand?” does not suffice to confirm if someone has the correct understanding.

New comment by pete_nic in "Write documentation first, then build"

pete_nic — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 12:35:53 +0000

I feel like a more appropriate name would be “write first, then build”. “Documentation” reminds the product managers and engineers of corporate-y documents like release notes. The “documentation” described is more of a fluid collection of ideas than what we would consider “documentation”. I have found this to be true - “Writing is a way of finding out”.

New comment by pete_nic in "Mark Cuban is tackling out-of-control drug prices"

pete_nic — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 16:20:13 +0000

>Opening in 2022, our state-of-the-art Texas manufacturing site will manufacture products to address drug shortages and price gouging

[1] Their website says they will start manufacturing drugs this year

[1] https://www.markcubancostplusdrugcompany.com/

New comment by pete_nic in "In Defense of OpenStreetMap's Data Model"

pete_nic — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 00:01:22 +0000

>If you won’t or can’t talk to customers then at least make the thing simple. The simpler something is, the more people will use it.

Great advice

New comment by pete_nic in "Yep: Google alternative that shares revenue with creators – by Ahrefs"

pete_nic — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 00:26:37 +0000

Good point, I’m sure more exist today and will be created in the future.

New comment by pete_nic in "Yep: Google alternative that shares revenue with creators – by Ahrefs"

pete_nic — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 00:01:19 +0000

Google is a large, horizontal platform. My intuition is the next Google killers will be specific to verticals, health comes up on HN a lot. All that to say, if I were yep I would focus on search that avoids big, corporate, SEO stuff and connects users with thoughtful, small creators. I would not focus on commerce eg film, as it’s a crowded vertical full of Google, Shopify, Etsy, and other large e-commerce players.

New comment by pete_nic in "Proton is trying to become Google without your data"

pete_nic — Thu, 26 May 2022 21:20:53 +0000

> We believe the best way to protect user data is to not have it in the first place

I like the exchange of value that comes from paying money for a service. With free products from companies like Google you do not pay for the service and there is no exchange of value. This results in the myriad of HN threads discussing how Google Docs did them wrong (locked out, privacy violation, etc.)

New comment by pete_nic in "Excel Unusual – Science, Engineering, Games in Excel and VBA"

pete_nic — Mon, 23 May 2022 23:20:07 +0000

> Excel is cheap and and you can find it everywhere.

New comment by pete_nic in "Open Source Calendly Alternative"

pete_nic — Tue, 17 May 2022 00:36:42 +0000

Thank you, very helpful answer. I was not trying to be antagonistic, I had never heard a critique of calendly and wanted to understand how an open source project would improve the situation. I agree, very important to understand how your data is used.

New comment by pete_nic in "Open Source Calendly Alternative"

pete_nic — Sun, 15 May 2022 15:19:29 +0000

Why does this problem warrant an open source alternative? What are the downfalls with Calendly being “closed” that this aims to solve?

New comment by pete_nic in "Show HN: 1,900 remote company profiles with tech stacks and employee benefits"

pete_nic — Wed, 11 May 2022 14:55:03 +0000

What is your methodology to collect the tech stack data? Some things seem easy to identify, eg Google Analytics, and others much harder, eg back office like Microsoft Excel.

New comment by pete_nic in "Spreadsheets are dreams (2015)"

pete_nic — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 15:51:56 +0000

Spreadsheets are one of the most ubiquitous business tools in the world. Similar to email, another ubiquitous business tool, there are good uses and bad uses of the tool. Users need to know when to use them, when to not use them, and when to move onto something more robust.

> So they’re at their best when you have a foundation to build on — a decent number of fixed assumptions atop which you want to see the effect over time or scale of a limited number of variables. See the myriad permutations proliferate from a small number of questions.

New comment by pete_nic in "Issue #47: Consensus Mechanisms in Traditional Finance and Decentralized Finance"

pete_nic — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 16:36:55 +0000

In reading this article on finance my mind drifts to the refrain on HN that search (Google) is broken and ready to be disrupted. Can consensus mechanisms on distributed systems help create a less spammy, more equitable search engine?

> a consensus mechanism can be considered as a shared system of standards and steps that allows a distributed system (a group of individuals or computers) to accurately, precisely, and reliably coordinate on shared problems.

> Consensus mechanisms (also known as consensus protocols or consensus algorithms) allow distributed systems (networks of computers) to work together and stay secure.