Hacker News: togilvie

New comment by togilvie in "We will be retiring Alexa.com"

togilvie — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 20:43:07 +0000

It's an ad tracker. It's loading in ads that people see, but isn't the source website generating the traffic.

New comment by togilvie in "Ethereum Services Are Centralized"

togilvie — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 20:05:09 +0000

This is a really bad take, with a limited understanding of how Ethereum nodes and smart contracts operate. I clicked hoping for more...

New comment by togilvie in "Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland"

togilvie — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 16:29:51 +0000

If you are a market maker / arbitrageur working across multiple exchanges, US dollars can take days to settle and wire/withdrawal capacity is limited. USDT offers instant transfers, so you can rebalance across locations with ease. That's why it's being heavily used by the largest market makers in crypto.

New comment by togilvie in "Ask HN: Did anyone's life ever gotten more comfortable after accepting funding?"

togilvie — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 08:46:37 +0000

I think you've answered your own question. Taking outside money will make life busier, increase pressure, and create investor expectations that may be different from your own.

Bringing in an investor that would be willing to replace you with a new management team is a Bad Idea(tm). It's also a bad idea to try to mislead your investors and replace yourselves.

Outside money can be great if you want to build a really big business and need the capital to win the market. But there are tons of businesses that are better off using revenue as funding.

One of the drawbacks of the tech media is how few people talk publicly about the businesses where the founders would have been much better off if they'd only avoided funding.

New comment by togilvie in "Randomized Control Trial of Pre-K on Children’s Skills Through 3rd Grade [pdf]"

togilvie — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 14:38:01 +0000

It sounds strange, but there are lots of potential explanations:

1) The pre-k program is "teaching to the test", focusing on higher scores but not the core skills that matter by third grade.

2) Parents who opt to send their children to this pre-k program are less engaged than those who keep their children at home.

3) The k-3 curriculum doesn't capitalize on the skills gained in pre-k.

It's interesting because it's such a non-intuitive result. Could be bad data, but worth checking out....

New comment by togilvie in "League of Legends Chat Service Architecture"

togilvie — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 14:06:31 +0000

All this fancy architecture doesn't change the fact that....I CALLED TOP FIRST!

Death to the minimum viable product

togilvie — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 19:05:53 +0000

Article URL: https://validately.com/leancustomerresearch/death-minimal-viable-product/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8961812

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by togilvie in "11:57 – A short virtual reality horror film made for Oculus Rift"

togilvie — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 22:32:15 +0000

This was cool - very scary!

One suggestion: On my first view, I ended up looking "backwards" for ~75% of the movie. I might have hit something at the beginning, but my forward-facing orientation couldn't see any of the action and there weren't any visual cues to tell me that if I turned around there were things happening until late in the movie. May be one of those weird things that VR needs to handle differently.

Excited to see more!

PS - I have a mac and DK2 but it's brand new, so could have been user error.

New comment by togilvie in "Winning at Candy Crush"

togilvie — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 15:45:16 +0000

Cool - will check out the series.

You could be right, but I think the seed is a lot more interesting. If you simply wanted to generate the level, you could use a random number generator on the device and wouldn't care about logging it.

As you showed by varying colors, the candy distribution determines how likely the player is to win, whether they fall just short of clearing the level, etc. This will have a significant impact on whether they pay to continue, buy boosts, etc.

New comment by togilvie in "Winning at Candy Crush"

togilvie — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 14:52:29 +0000

Awesome breakdown. I wrote a blog post in late September - based on some industry rumors - that speculated on whether Candy Crush was "cheating" by varying the random seed to generate monetization or retention events:

http://blog.thinkgaming.com/is-candy-crush-cheating-will-it-...

Based on the "seed" going back and forth at the start/end of games, I'd have to assume that they are doing something with it. Anyway to see if that's happening?

New comment by togilvie in "The Equity Equation"

togilvie — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:14:07 +0000

This is a nice analysis and good thinking, though it's worth noting that liquidation preference makes the VC equation less favorable. I'm not sure how Y Combinator works, but preference plays a shockingly large role when you run these types of calculations against your hypothetical VC deal.