Nate The Great

Software developer, Tech reporter & correspondence, Unapologetically rant about #sfbayarea, working in #tech, #startup, #investment & #travel.

[Nate The Great @nateserk]

Most #people don’t understand that correlation is not causation.

Just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean it causes the other.

#idiots #internet #x #moron

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

@dqmonn Turns out Spotify fired the guy who made Wrapped special each year and so this year nothing special remained

[Samantha Watkins @_samantha_joy]

But all of this is avoidable! A young child preferring to work alone is NOT a moral flaw.

It's not something we have to worry about or fix.

It's normal and *absolutely necessary* for healthy development.

[Nate The Great @nateserk]

Regardless of social media platforms, including @X ,
It’s more of the same!

Too many #opinions from #wannabe experts!

Opinions are not #facts.

#Internet people seem to think otherwise.

[Austen Allred @Austen]

Am I the only one who remembers the intense pressure to move from using the “master” GitHub branch to calling it “main?”

I feel like sometimes we forget just how much effort and energy went into making life better for absolutely no one.

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

This is the third serious security breach at Okta in ~2 years.

Okta sells security as a service: and yet it cannot secure itself. In the past we know it did not follow security 101. Yet another inexplainable incident.

Who can trust Okta after all this?

[Nate The Great @nateserk]

What a junk post! 🗑️

Masking a problem is not the same as resolving a problem!

I hope this is a joke. Otherwise, it is stupid af.

[Theo - t3.gg @theo]

Let’s play out some scenarios if you get DDOS’d.

Bad dev + VPS = you go down fast
Bad dev + serverless = high bill, but no downtime

Good dev + VPS = you won’t go down as fast
Good dev + serverless = “wait I was ddos’d?”

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

I am surprised there is not more talk about the shameful and unprecendented heist in open source history that Automattic pulled off (technically: WordPress Foundation, confirmed to "belong to" Automattic's CEO):

Like Apple "took ownership" of Spotify.

https://t.co/wGlbLpQskH

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

So this is the future of WordPress. Automattic - the entity controlling Wordpress .org and the WP trademark - can take over *any* plugin that it wants, when they want, and how they want.

Automattic is burning the principles of open source for their own profit.

A sad, new era.

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

Seriously impressive: patent troll blackmails Cloudflare claiming they are infringing on 4 BS patents in 100 use cases. Cloudflare goes to court, and proves they don't infrige on anything from the BS patent, and has ALL the patent troll's patents donated to the public!

[emily freeman @editingemily]

When people show you who they are, believe them.

I don’t know why I keep forgetting that.

[Nate The Great @nateserk]

See both side of arguments.

It starts with hiring not preventing devs from using tools.

If they don’t understand or know fundamental, that’s the red flag.

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

From a CTO:

"I'm not sure if very junior developers should get AI tools; there's a risk that they don't learn to code, don't learn to spot the mistakes, and won't feel comfortable manually refactoring things."

My two cents: we need to stop "over-babying" less experienced devs.

[Nico @nico_jeannen]

❌ The worst you can do to validate a startup idea is to ask “How much would you pay for that”

People will always low-ball you, it’s in their interest to make you think they wouldn’t pay a lot

👉 Instead, tell them they’ll get a 30% discount if they guess the price.

By doing that people have an incentive to not lie and you can immediately see how valuable they perceive your product

[Nate The Great @nateserk]

Can’t wait for #skynet !
#ai
#selfdriving
🍿

[KTVU @KTVU]

This is something you probably didn't consider: self-driving Waymo cars can get pulled over by police. In fact, it happened last month in Phoenix and it was caught on body camera. https://t.co/SIyCFGJsAQ

[Nate The Great @nateserk]

💯
“The stress of having limited runway usually doesn't work for most people at all, having a main job gives you forever runway while building projects on the side…”

[@levelsio @levelsio]

I always recommend people to keep their main job

Start making things on the side and then when that project replaces the money you make with your job for long enough, only then quit your main job

When I started building stuff 10 years ago I was making $1K/mo from my electronic music YouTube channel, enough to live okay in Bali and Thailand

The stress of having limited runway usually doesn't work for most people at all, having a main job gives you forever runway while building projects on the side

There's exceptions though: recently met a guy who was about $1M saved and is young and single, ok fair he can quit right now!

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

What adds security:

- Monitoring login attempts: in an auditable way. Informing of logins from new locations

- 2FA

- Alerting when password might have been leaked in data breach (eg by monitoring have I been pwned)

Instead, I am forced to change my perfectly secure password…

[Nate The Great @nateserk]

🤣

[National Park Service @NatlParkService]

Believe in yourself like visitors who believe they can pet a bison.

[Nate The Great @nateserk]

“Clarify the problem” is the first important key in any crisis management.

[Ethan Evans @EthanEvansVP]

I enjoyed these situations, despite the pressure, because they allowed me to focus on just one thing. I got good at crisis management, which involves:

-Clarifying the problem

-Getting the right people in the room

-Communicating status to leaders while the experts work

[Ethan Evans @EthanEvansVP]

The normal daily work of a leader is developing their team and organizing work to get things done. Since leaders do not do the work themselves, the “daily work” is meeting with others.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

So many VC funded exits you hear about are actually massive failures and nobody made any money

Which is completely fine if they weren't then hailed as massive successes on TechCrunch and by the investors and founders on X

It's flat out lying

And the reason why is so the founders can fatten their resume to then do their own VC fund next

The fake exit helps them raise $10M-$100M for their VC fund

With 2.5% management fees that's instantly $250,000/y to $2.5M/y income essentially FOREVER! Even if the fund never makes any money on its investments!

It doesn't end there. Funds have 20% carry or more usually. Carry means the founder of the fund gets 20% of the entire fund's profits first. So if the fund does for example double, the founder of the fund gets $2M-$20M payout on a $10M-$100M fund

They then become friends with the founders they invest in and tell them to do the same trick

I do believe startup founders generally wish they all had a succesful startup but in case they don't (which is 95% of cases) they have an instant path to $250,000/year in management fees

For that to happen though, they and everyone around them need to lie about what a massive success the startup was eventhough it was a flop. Or they wouldn't be able to raise money later on for a fund. And VC investors, PR agencies and tech media are ever so happy to help with that. Which is the sad part!

Also lots of NDAs in this industry so you won't ever hear about this from anyone but me cause I'm independent and don't have investors

See ya