lloyddobbler (u/lloyddobbler)

lloyddobbler commented on Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups macrumors.com/2025/08/21/... · Posted by u/greenburger

lloyddobbler · 8 days ago

“A 30% revenue share can easily be the difference between a company that can afford to scale, hire new employees, and reinvest in its product, and one that is perpetually struggling to stay afloat.”

This brought up a fun thought exercise for me. Pretty sure that Y Combinator would argue that giving away 7% of one's company for access to intangible (but beneficial) things like funding, advisors, etc, is completely worth it for a company. Pretty sure that they also fund companies that pay salespeople fairly significant commissions on sales.

Interesting to see them argue that asking a company to give up 30% "commission" on revenue for access to a large market stifles competition and innovation.

Is Y Combinator's forcing companies to give up 7% of their companies for access to advisors and funding stifling innovation and competition? (Spoiler: I don't think so. I think both Y Combinator and apple should be able to capitalize on the access they provide.)

lloyddobbler commented on Okta says hackers stole data for all customer support users bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/tysone

t-writescode · 2 years ago

What is a good, alternative, external authentication solution outisde of Okta and their auth0 product, then? I was looking to use their product because I have trusted their ability to manage authentication.

lloyddobbler · 2 years ago

I mentioned it above, but FusionAuth is supposedly good. They offer a paid cloud and free self-hosted version, so you get the benefits of rolling your own without as many risks. (No affiliation with the company on my part, so I can't speak to any specifics - they're just local and I continually hear good things from friends who know and use them.)

lloyddobbler commented on Okta says hackers stole data for all customer support users bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/tysone

hnthrowaway0315 · 2 years ago

Nice. Is it the third time this year that we have good news from Okta? I don't know why we are still using it. What other options are out there?

lloyddobbler · 2 years ago

Have heard good things about FusionAuth. (Not a user, but friends speak highly of it).

lloyddobbler commented on Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages wsj.com/real-estate/jury-... · Posted by u/nerdo

tetromino_ · 2 years ago

When looking for a place in New York, we were straight up ignored by most sellers until we signed a contract with a buyer's agent. Apparently, people without an agent are perceived as window shoppers / tire kickers who are not serious about buying and whose presence wastes everyone's time. A buyer's agent signals that you have serious intentions.

Your area might be different, of course.

lloyddobbler · 2 years ago

Interesting. Yeah, in Los Angeles, Denver, and Atlanta, it’s always worked to my advantage as the buyer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lloyddobbler commented on Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages wsj.com/real-estate/jury-... · Posted by u/nerdo

aeternum · 2 years ago

Yes, this is where the collusion comes in. Many seller agents will simply ignore buyers without a buying agent.

lloyddobbler · 2 years ago

In the U.S., at least, I've never known a seller's agent to do that (having done a good number of real estate transactions). In fact, in my experience I find it to be the exact opposite. Seller's agents are incentivized to not work with buyer's agents, if the situation arises where they're approached directly by a buyer.

If the seller's agent is comfortable acting as the intermediary, and recognizing the limits of conflict of interest, then it's in their best interest to keep all of the 6% commission instead of giving half of it to the buyer's agent.

lloyddobbler commented on WGA and the studios reach tentative deal to end writers' strike latimes.com/entertainment... · Posted by u/voisin

slg · 2 years ago

Specifically for this community, it will be interesting to see what the agreements were regarding AI. That was a major issue in negotiations for both sides. I think the decisions here could go a long way in setting a precedent for how that technology will continue to be developed and how it will be used in the future.

For example, if the writers get what they wanted, it means Hollywood has little motivation to put its political might behind getting AI work recognized as copyrightable. The agreement may also include guidelines regarding when and how a writer's work can be used in training new AI models that would certainly have ramifications outside of Hollywood.

lloyddobbler · 2 years ago

Agreed. I was a professional actor 20 years ago when digital and streaming were first coming into play, and the seeds sown in the agreements from that time were painfully lacking for working actors. The precedents set have continued to this day.

I'm torn on the AI/copyright issue. On the one hand, for actors, having your image and likeness digitally reproduced in perpetuity without compensation goes against the very profession of acting.

On the other hand, the act of writing is a more interesting gray area to me. There's a different between physical property and intellectual property. If a machine can learn better than a human and put out compelling content, I'm conflicted as to how restricting that helps us progress as a society (just like I'm conflicted as to how allowing it helps us progress as a society).

So many gray areas. I'm just glad a tentative agreement has been struck, and hopefully it's equitable and forward-looking for all sides.

lloyddobbler commented on Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max apple.com/newsroom/2023/0... · Posted by u/jnieminen

willseth · 2 years ago

They indicated in the pitch for the Pro that they added logic to the new CPU to drive USB 3 at 10gbps. The non-Pro is using last year's CPU, so while yes I guess that means they did "cheap out", I imagine the cost to include 3.0 on the non-Pro is pretty high and most people don't care.

lloyddobbler · 2 years ago

This. Consider the market. Samsung also doesn't add its newly-engineered, top-of-the-line solutions to its lower-end new models.

Almost all the people on this forum are in the target market for the Pro. The standard iPhone is not built for us, nor will most of its users have a problem with 480Mbps-over-wire transfer speeds.

lloyddobbler commented on More content by people, for people in Search blog.google/products/sear... · Posted by u/gingerlime

s1k3s · 3 years ago

> More helpful product reviews written by experts

This translates to "more YT videos made by our content-creators", right? Searching for "macbook pro m2 reviews" gives me 5 YT videos at the top, all repeating the same stuff over and over again and (no offense) made by people who aren't really experts. Or are they?

lloyddobbler · 3 years ago

It's the internet. Everyone is an expert!

(/s, if it wasn't blatantly obvious.)

lloyddobbler commented on Ask HN: Is TextExpander considered a security liability? · Posted by u/throwme2wolves

lloyddobbler · 4 years ago

Hello - Kipp from TextExpander here. Great question that we get a lot (and rightfully so - security is of paramount importance to both our customers and us).

We wrote up a brief FAQ on the topic of snippet security here: https://textexpander.com/learn/accounts/security/how-textexp...

…and you can see our general security practices info here (including that we have a SOC 2 security certification): https://textexpander.com/security

In the healthcare space, we often see practitioners using fill-in snippets to input patient information or notes into an EHR or other system while keeping a standard format to improve searchability. In the interest of security, personally-identifiable info (PII) entered into a fill-in snippet is ephemeral, and remains on the user's local machine. You can learn more about fill-ins here: https://textexpander.com/learn/using/snippets/advanced-snipp...

Please feel free to drop me a note with any further Q's - happy to help.

lloyddobbler commented on What Irony Is Not (2020) thereader.mitpress.mit.ed... · Posted by u/elliekelly

123pie123 · 4 years ago

a good example of irony is the song: Ironic by Alanis Morissette

whose lyrics aren't ironic (they're examples of unfortunate situations), thus having a song about irony - that isn't actually ironic (in its lyrics)

thus making it the best ironic song ever

lloyddobbler · 4 years ago

With the possible exception of the lyrics "rain on your wedding day," which in some ways seems like a bad thing, but is supposedly good luck.

Aside from that, the entire song is filled with non-ironic scenarios, yep. Agreed: the most unintentionally ironic song ever.