Do you ensure you have enough personas in the desired target area to get enough survey responses? Are there demographics you are not able to simulate at this time?
Readit Newswhymsicalburito commented on Launch HN: Societies.io (YC W25) – AI simulations of your target audience · Posted by u/p-sharpe
whymsicalburito commented on Figma files for proposed IPO figma.com/blog/s1-public/... · Posted by u/kualto
Congratulations to the Figma team! Well earned. It was such an exciting product when it hit the scene. It became the standard so fast, and it was easy to see why. When there were talks of them being bought for $20 billion I thought it was a great deal for Adobe - and that was before seeing these impressive financials.
I will admit I have waned enthusiasm a on Figma over the past couple of years. I find the UI churn confusing. The new features, i.e. dev mode and variables, feel out of place. I find the plugin ecosystem cumbersome. Doing simple things has become complex. I'm putting out real "who moved my cheese?" energy here I know. I suppose I'm wondering if others feel the same.
I'm a little surprised by this comment because both dev mode and variables are the main ways I use Figma. Our design team creates the design and then the Devs use dev mode to implement what they designed. Dev mode has been great for our team!
Is this an uncommon use case?
whymsicalburito commented on When the Homeowners Association Comes for Your Home bloomberg.com/news/featur... · Posted by u/Overtonwindow
The HOA sold a home worth over $500k (almost paid off) for $85k at auction, to recover $6k of fines. Their response is that their "foreclosure rate represents less than 1% of their population". Too bad for those people. Unbelievable.
It's stack ranking for neighborhoods!
whymsicalburito commented on Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing newsroom.spotify.com/2022... · Posted by u/laminarflow
I have the opposite experience with subscriptions. Have you ever tried to cancel a gym membership? Famously, companies make it easy to sign up online, but require a phone call (likely with a wait) to cancel. Many places have passed explicit laws [1].
I was a monthly donator to a public radio show. After few years I wanted to switch credit cards (with no intention of canceling or changing my donation amount). They had redesigned their website and there was no discernible way to cancel or contact them. I blindly emailed them, but never got a response. My only recourse was to cancel the credit card.
Since then I've greatly preferred a third-party to manage subscriptions. For awhile it was Paypal. In the past decade it's been Patreon and Apple.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...
You're right that there are definitely some bad actors for cancelling subscriptions, it's really crappy you've had to deal with that! I once had a recurring charge from rackspace that neither myself nor rackspace's support could tell me which account the charges were associated with! Luckily my credit card company was able to put a block on any charges coming from rackspace rather than have to cancel the entire card.
I still think there are way more good companies than bad ones when it comes to cancelling and I do value building a relationship with the companies I patronize.
It is worrying to give so much power to a 3rd party, in this case google, who is notoriously difficult to deal with when an issue arises.
whymsicalburito commented on Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing newsroom.spotify.com/2022... · Posted by u/laminarflow
As a user, why would I choose this?
I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade.
Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2.
If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do they now have my credit card information, but I have to go through them to cancel. Meaning they can send me through screen after screen trying to convince me to stay (dark pattern) or even worse forcing me to call to cancel.
As a user, if you want to offer this fine. But as long as the ability to subscribe through Google or Apple is not removed I will be fine. But if this starts a trend of more and more apps having their own billing that then uses dark patterns to keep me subscribed... I will just end up spending less money on subscriptions than I currently do, and I have quite a few subscriptions.
When given the choice, I will always subscribe/pay/book directly with the company rather than use a 3rd party. If something goes wrong it's always easier to only need to deal with one company rather than two. Plus I'm choosing to start a relationship with a company that I give money to and thus want them to be able to use all of that money towards making the service and experience the best possible, rather than have them be handicapped by fees coming right off the top.
whymsicalburito commented on A Sober Look at SPACs (2020) dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3... · Posted by u/cinntaile
I invest in SPACs regularly and have made a killing off investing in them. Plain and simple, SPACs are all about hype in terms of how much hype the target company can garner. I only buy pre-LOI SPACs and then consider selling them on the merger announcement or right before the merger completes.
This strategy works because of social media. People go around social media to hype up the company so to a certain extent it is a giant pump and dump scheme but the pumping is done by the collective internet communities on social media.
Typical aspects of the company don't matter. What matters is being able to hype the company. That's why stuff like electric vehicle makers, fintech and clean energy is stuff that everyone focuses on. Right now the average joe strongly believes that electric cars and clean energy are the future so they're more likely to buy into these SPAC companies because they're sold as "the next big thing" even though the reality could be that they're very risky but no one cares about that long-term because we all dump the SPAC shares before the merger completes anyways.
Do you have any tips on good screeners or places to find these SPACs? I've never invested in them yet and don't know too much about them. Are they traded just like regular stocks?
fyi, OSU college has a 1-megawatt research reactor.
https://www.oregon.gov/energy/facilities-safety/facilities/P...
https://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2012/got-nuke-state-of-the...
UC Irvine has one underneath the chemistry building
https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/trigareactor/
And as a state entity they can develop their land without approval from local governments, one of the largest obstacles to new construction. UCSF has used this to great effect in San Francisco.
That's interesting. UC employees aren't classified as state employees, they are employed by the regents. CSU employees are state employees.
I know, slightly off-topic, but I wish instacart didn't mark up the price of each item. It feels like it lacks transparency and is some sort of dark pattern because I don't know how much I'm paying for, say, food and how much I'm paying instacart. I'd much rather see a flat % fee, say 10% or something.
100% this. I made a pretty large costco order with instacart yesterday and expected to pay 15% in fees and tip, but when the order came I saw the store receipt and they overcharged me on almost every single item. The instacart order total was 35% more than what was spent at the store. The total lack of transparency is infuriating and I very much feel cheated.
Personally I really appreciate the photography and visual details of films and find that I feel I have to choose between reading the subtitles and noticing those intricate details in a film.