snarf (u/snarf) - Readit News

snarf commented on Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video] youtube.com/watch?v=4czjS... · Posted by u/jvanderbot

polishdude20 · 5 years ago

But the image of the cables show what looks to actually be a literal cut cable. Not just a connector being disconnected but a clean slice.

snarf · 5 years ago

From today's Reddit AMA with the NASA team, they use pyrotechnics to set off a guillotine like device to cut the cables. Possibly something like https://psemc.com/products/pyrotechnic-cable-cutter/

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lpzbzo/were_scientist...

snarf commented on Consumption of ‘Longevity’ Vitamins Could Prolong Healthy Aging, Scientist Says ucsf.edu/news/2018/10/412... · Posted by u/vimota

jmk343 · 7 years ago

It's more of a hypothesis paper by a retired scientist. Bruce Ames, the author used to do experiments on vitamin and mineral deficiencies in animals 20+ years ago. What he found was things like increased DNA strand breaks. Nothing positive was found in terms of longevity or healthspan when supplementing excess anti-oxidants. It's possible to search Ames B[author] on pubmed to see his old publications.

  "Maybe some these things would extend healthspan if people have a less than optimal diet."

...or that maybe some novel and expensive things might have small health impacts. Not that they do otherwise, or that there is rigorous experiments demonstrating so.

I think some people are eagerly clamoring to supplement based on this list, which is just fueling the 30bn dollar a year supplement industry.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/style/wellness-industrial...

Why not fund basic research into age related disease instead?

i.e. [ https://www.lifespan.io/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/, http://dogagingproject.com, http://sens.org ]

snarf · 7 years ago

Bruce Ames is a renowned scientist, but he also has an anti-aging nutritional supplement company on the side named Juvenon.

snarf commented on Google Maps' Moat justinobeirne.com/google-... · Posted by u/rafaelc

cheeze · 8 years ago

I agree with you but don't think that Google Scholar and Maps are even close to the same magnitude of product.

snarf · 8 years ago

True, one of the X projects like Glass would be a better direct comparison in terms of resources and headcount. Google Scholar was just the first thing that popped into my mind when thinking of a Google product that is a social charity. Which, of course, is not the right way to think about Maps since the location data they collect is probably some of the most valuable data for their ad targeting.

snarf commented on Google Maps' Moat justinobeirne.com/google-... · Posted by u/rafaelc

sytelus · 8 years ago

Many people don't realize why Google maps are so much better than anything out there. I would actually give lot of credit to Marissa Mayer who suddenly became in charge of maps from otherwise more higher position. Thanks to her influence in Google SLT and ability to make impressive arguments, she was able to make a case for maps as core pillar in Google's offering and consequently obtain huge investment and large talent pool to work on it. Creating these level of details world wide requires dazzling amount of investment that even some small governments can't afford. In most companies, you will not get green lighted for this because there is no real revenue coming in and its basically social charity in form of a free app. Now the reality is that you can't do self-driving cars without great maps and the day Google pulls its map app from iOS you can bet Apple is going to have a giant hole in their balance sheet.

snarf · 8 years ago

Google has plenty of low revenue, unprofitable products, some of which are social charities like Google Scholar. I don't think Mayer deserves as much credit as a visionary as you are suggesting. It was more about empire building after a sudden demotion and not paying increasing licensing costs to a third party vendor for turn-by-turn data. But I agree that the end result is a mapping platform that is far ahead of anyone else thanks to Google's significant investment and resources.

I don't expect Google to pull its map app from iOS because it is a very valuable demographic to collect data from and target. Also, Apple already has a large hole on its balance sheet trying to catch up to Google in mapping. It started around the time they very publicly fired Forstall for the whole iOS 6 maps fiasco.

snarf commented on Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board nytimes.com/2017/06/21/te... · Posted by u/101carl

goodriddance · 9 years ago

For all the future founders on HN, the lesson here is to never do business with Bill Gurley. He's one of the reasons AngelList exists. I hope his lesser known reputation finally catches up with him and forces him out of Benchmark and out of the VC industry entirely.

The Ravikant v. Tolia (and Bill Gurley) Lawsuit: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/personal/archives/2005/02/ravika...

snarf · 9 years ago

Exactly this. For those who weren't around in the first dot com bubble, he has a certain reputation which he has managed to bury. Benchmark used to be a much bigger firm back then, and due to poor fund performance, they had to scale back and "reboot" the firm. Along the way, he managed to bury his lesser know reputation. This was critical to getting deal flow in the current investing environment which is much more founder friendly given the increased availability of capital and competition for deals. Tolia also managed to rehab his reputation after lying about completing his Stanford degree and working for McKinsey (and teaming up with Gurley to screw over his other Epinions cofounders). He's now running NextDoor with significant investment from Gurley.

snarf commented on Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse washingtonpost.com/news/t... · Posted by u/ghosh

eric_b · 9 years ago

I've still not seen any AI that really gets me excited. Google Now does some neat things - but if the home automation products from Amazon and Google are representative of the state-of-the-art - we have an awful long way to go before AI is any kind of game changer.

More likely AI/ML is another trip down buzzword lane. It can hang out with IoT, VR, Big Data, and hell, even containers and microservices.

It feels like everyone is casting about for that next revolutionary technological innovation, but maybe we just need to be at a plateau for awhile.

snarf · 9 years ago

I, too, don't get the hype about voice assistants. There are a few uses cases where they may be genuinely useful like if you are driving and don't want to take your hands off the wheel, but for nearly everything else, it is usually faster, more accurate, and more reliable to use a GUI with touch or a keyboard.

snarf commented on Google starts tracking what people buy in physical stores latimes.com/business/tech... · Posted by u/Jerry2

adjkant · 9 years ago

Okay, this is a small rant that is not directly aimed at you, so nothing personal. This is aimed generally more at people in the privacy at all costs camp and the like. If there's some viewpoint I'm missing here I'd also love to hear it, so it's not really a mean-spirited rant either.

Google owns the internet at this point. For general use purposes, they ARE the internet. So avoiding them should really have at least SOME effect before it's even seriously considered.

What does getting off Google do?

It doesn't hurt them, as there's no way a significant number of people will take action, at least in the near future.

So, then it must be done for you. By not being in these services and having all this data collected on you, what do you actually gain? Likely, nothing at all. You won't be able to be tracked down as easily if Google turns evil, sure. If their data is breached in a meaningful way, sure again. But, for both of these, emphasis on "as easily". At this point, if you're looking to maliciously track down just about anyone, it's not hard at all. You'd have to go fully off the grid to get this. And in that scenario, what do you gain again? We follow down the same road of "I only gain something in very unlikely scenarios" again.

So to me, the only way this type of perspective makes sense is if you believe those very unlikely scenarios (from my view) are much more likely. And if they are, we're all fucked already, and being one of the few to be off the grid probably won't matter in the end.

Basically, at this point, you've already given yourself to Google. Rather than decide whether or not to trust them, I think putting more effort into trying to influence them towards "not being evil", as they say, is much more of a realistic move for someone with concerns over data, privacy, power/security of all this, etc.

Am I missing something?

PS: I understand Facebook - for some, there are no significant benefits you give up. For most, you're going to give up a lot more with Google.

snarf · 9 years ago

It's also a matter of principle. You can always argue that if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear in support of more surveillance. But that's a slippery slope.

snarf commented on Hanging up my spurs lowercasecapital.com/2017... · Posted by u/gfitz

wand3r · 9 years ago

I have seen almost every interview he's done. Admire a lot about him. Not discrediting him at all, just saying Uber might be too close to call.

The one thing I would say is that he is pretty flashy and a bit of a braggard which many are; but going on SharkTank was a bit much. Guy has been super successful objectively my point was just that (to me, subjectively) it sort of feels like he's an entertainer more than an investor and values the fame and spotlight more than tech. Obviously his motivation doesn't matter vs. The track record but if I am critical of him it's just that it feels off vs. people like Steve Jurvetson or Horowitz who value innovation, technology and are happy to promote that above themselves

snarf · 9 years ago

He is naturally a bit puffed up and that was a common critique of him from back in the Google days. I think this personality type is somewhat common among successful seed investors where being a "tech personality" helps with getting deal flow. Name brand institutional investors like Jurvetson and Horowitz don't need to rely on such tricks for deal flow.

snarf commented on Hanging up my spurs lowercasecapital.com/2017... · Posted by u/gfitz

s73ver · 9 years ago

Well, Russ Hanneman is already in the Three Comma club, so he doesn't need to that much.

snarf · 9 years ago

If Forbes is accurate, then so is Sacca, although I imagine some non-trivial amount of that is in Uber, which is facing downward pressure on its private market valuation.

snarf commented on Hanging up my spurs lowercasecapital.com/2017... · Posted by u/gfitz

tommynicholas · 9 years ago

Chris won the Twitter lottery.... and the Uber lottery.... and the Instagram lottery..... and a bunch of other lotteries. Had arguably the best run of seed investing in history.

snarf · 9 years ago

Once you have a one big win under your belt, it becomes easier to hit other big wins because you have greater access to capital to diversify your bets as well as much better deal flow. He did have an incredible run, which I would attribute to equal parts hard work, skill, and luck.