TodPunk (u/TodPunk) - Readit News

TodPunk commented on Tech CEO applauds an employee selling their dog to accommodate return-to-office gizmodo.com/clearlink-ceo... · Posted by u/unionpivo

lopkeny12ko · 3 years ago

Regardless of the tone and attitude of the rant, is it not concerning that 30 employees, all of whom are remote and not on PTO, have not even opened their laptops in a month? If I were in leadership, I'd be concerned too.

Hell, my company MDM will automatically revoke many permissions if it doesn't get an automated device check-in at least once every two weeks or so.

TodPunk · 3 years ago

I'm local to the area of the company. Peeps in the community here have said they issue ridiculous old or underpowered laptops for many positions and that many if not all of those 30 employees are likely using their personal machines because they're more comfortable to the employee.

TodPunk commented on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2021) · Posted by u/whoishiring

TodPunk · 4 years ago

Unsupervised | Software Engineers | Full-time | US Remote or Boulder, Colorado

Unsupervised is an AI driven data analysis company. We run an unsupervised learning engine we built in-house to do a lot of analysis on customer data. The value (according to customers) is the insights we find that help them take action in their organization to move the needle on their metrics, things that matter to them and their goals.

We're hiring software engineers to work on our core compute engine and web interface. In the web app we use React and Graphql via apollo-server and TypeScript server-side, speaking to GRPC services we write in Go and Rust. In the compute engine, we're largely Python and C++. You don't need to know those coming in as long as you can learn it fast enough. On the compute side, Dask and Ray experience is a plus. You definitely need to know data structures and graphs enough to talk shop about them. We deploy on Kubernetes in a cloud native modern dev workflow, but we'll happily train what you need to know there, we've got decent tooling in place to make it very approachable and iterative.

See open positions and specific descriptions here: https://grnh.se/63f1772d2us

TodPunk commented on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2021) · Posted by u/whoishiring

TodPunk · 4 years ago

Unsupervised | Software Engineers | Full-time | US Remote or Boulder, Colorado

Unsupervised is a Data Capitalization Management company. We help organizations find actionable insights in their data so they can make their data more of a measurable asset (think extreme leverage from data science). We do this by using an unsupervised learning engine we built in-house to do a lot of analysis on their data.

We're hiring software engineers to work on our core compute engine and web interface. In the web app we use React and Graphql via Graphene (Python Graphql server). In the compute engine, we're largely Python and C++, but you don't need to know those coming in as long as you can learn it fast enough. On the compute side, Dask and Ray experience is a plus. You definitely need to know data structures and graphs enough to talk shop about them. We deploy on Kubernetes in a cloud native modern dev workflow, but we'll happily train what you need to know there, we've got decent tooling in place to make it very approachable and iterative.

See open positions and specific descriptions here: https://grnh.se/63f1772d2us

TodPunk commented on Startup Playbook playbook.samaltman.com... · Posted by u/sama

MoOmer · 10 years ago

I should do a blogpost about the small business I took over from my dad, and the impact it had.

TodPunk · 10 years ago

Yes, yes you should.

TodPunk commented on Startup Playbook playbook.samaltman.com... · Posted by u/sama

m_fayer · 10 years ago

I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns.

I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet of a startup. They are often bootstrapped, frequently for lack of other options.

For those of us who don't want to be in the pressure cooker or are turned off by the hype machine, these businesses are a viable alternative route toward independence and possibly achieving a significant impact. The fact that they have become as attainable as they are is I think also something quite remarkable.

TodPunk · 10 years ago

The vast majority of businesses are not going to fit any of this playbook. The problem is this playbook covers a niche. If you don't want to play that niche game, that's totally fine. However, like me, you will have to look elsewhere to decide what game you DO want to play, and what rules you'll have to live by. Sometimes that's customer focus, sometime's that is volume focus, or diversifying, or a 12 month profitability plan (sometimes longer, like maybe a restaurant).

There's no rules in business but the laws of the land. Pretending that there's one definition of success is very limiting to both focus and opportunity for all of us.

TodPunk commented on Reconsider medium.com/@dhh/reconside... · Posted by u/josemrb

mangoman · 10 years ago

I'm so freaking happy that someone finally affirmed my feelings that maybe, just maybe, I don't need to start my own startup with the notion of "Unicorn or Bust". I've just felt wrong since graduating college 3 years ago, unable to motivate myself to hack outside of work, and this finally captures why I've felt so tired. I am tired of feeling like I need a Unicorn idea to justify working on something outside of my job. I want to work for myself, but it just hasn't felt possible without a plan to "Take over the world". I don't want to take over the world. I want to build something that people use and can sustain me. That's it. But for every idea, there are millions of reasons in the back of my head that stop me from doing it, all boiling down to "Well I just won't be able able to grow this as a startup".

I don't really care about growing something as a startup. I don't need to revolutionize anything. I just want to make someone's day better through software. I want to launch a cool product that people find fun, silly, useful, critical to their process, whatever you want, and NOT be beholden to interests of anyone who isn't involved in the daily operations of whatever product that is.

I just want to build something, and make it better every day. Something that I own, that I can change however I want, whenever I want. I shouldn't have felt like I needed a16z to invest in my company to believe that my product is worth something.

TodPunk · 10 years ago

We started our company because I could fund it out of pocket for less than the cost of coffee or lunch for a week, and grow at whatever pace made sense. Even if we only occupy 0.1% of the market ever, we'll be able to pay the salaries of ourselves and our friends and have a lot of room to spare into other projects that we think should be made but probably need more development up front.

This isn't exactly an HN love story, but it's working out well for us so far, and we're learning a lot. I can't say I regret it, and at the moment I know that I would regret if I had gone after funding of some sort. Right now it's just me and the customer, working out who needs what. Third legs need not apply.

TodPunk commented on Lobbyists Win Right to Bombard Student Borrowers with Robocalls theintercept.com/2015/10/... · Posted by u/boh

tlb · 10 years ago

Starting a few months ago, I'm getting a few robocalls a week from "your local google specialist" and such scams. My number is listed in donotcall.gov. It makes me want to not answer unrecognized numbers on my phone.

It's now the case that a database of every phone number (10 billion entries, highly compressible) could be mirrored to every phone, with a reputation score for each number. Or looked up in real time. The phone company won't do it -- it'll have to be independent, like an ad blocker. I'd buy a subscription to that database.

TodPunk · 10 years ago

I do two things for this. One, I have a separate phone line that I largely ignore, and I give this as my main contact line for people or businesses that I have no dire need to talk to. Best Buy, for instance. If it's important, they'll leave a voicemail. This started as a land line, that was expensive but I needed DSL anyway (this was 10 years ago). It moved to a cell phone with basic service.

Fees sucked, so I started (shameless plug) Phone Janitor[1] to give me better filtering. This allows me to check voicemail anywhere, unlike my cell line (unless I sign up for their service) and just transferred it to my own company. Turns out this helps a lot of other folks with similar privacy desires. Control is a wonderful thing.

Ultimately it's really, really crappy, but the Telecoms and the FCC don't want to be too heavy handed in this, and advertisers are finding new ways of skirting the donotcall rules. They ruined SMS in this regard[2] as well, deliberately.

[1] - https://phonejanitor.com/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_spoofing

TodPunk commented on DOS Ain't Done Til Lotus Won't Run? (2005) proudlyserving.com/archiv... · Posted by u/mindcrime

anonbanker · 10 years ago

it's so far out the mainstream, that people have been doing it regularly for 20 years now.

Grub is old enough to attend Junior High. Lilo would be in grad school. they both have windows compatability. Microsoft not reciprocating is evidence of their intent.

TodPunk · 10 years ago

"People" in this instance is a handful of special edge cases compared to the majority of computer users, even if we're only looking at people that build their own computer, or hell, even just looking at only linux users. Dual booting is a minority. Yes, you CAN do it. Linux has made it easy. Great! But not many DO.

Nobody gives hell to every other OS manufacturer that will clobber our current bootloader configs. That means more than OSX, btw.

TodPunk commented on Assange: US Waging 'Lawfare' in Bid to Control the World sputniknews.com/us/201510... · Posted by u/jdimov9

TodPunk · 10 years ago

I don't buy it. The US is bringing their cases to protect their interests and the interests of their economies. It's not about territory control, it's about industry control. I don't agree with how they're going about it, but I'm not going to make up motivations that don't fit just because of my disdain for it.

Of course, this is one reason why I'm not in politics.

TodPunk commented on How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money? thumbtack.com/blog/how-do... · Posted by u/midas

TodPunk · 10 years ago

This opens up my mind to a lot of possibilities. Some poignant conversation starters for your local lunch group:

- What kind of investment returns did the stock of those bankrupted yellow pages make and at what cycles?

- What does it really take to kill an old technology?

- Is there a way to compete with established dying tech companies at their own game, or is it purely by trying to advance their users to your new tech?

- What does this say about transitional companies that possibly offer both the old AND the new techs, like the yellow pages that offer online versions? Are they going to move forward or are they just delaying their deaths a bit?

- What kind of talent is needed to sustain these kinds of businesses? It's going to look very different from the talent that grows new business, but I can't deny that they're both forms of talent.

Lots of food for thought.