I'm a relatively experienced lifter - heavy squats 3x per week is brutal for the first week or so and then your body adapts to it.
I've found that I'll actually stick with a ~hourlong workout, 3-5x a week that I believe in and have goals for over anything quick with no discernible aim. And it's amazing how time magically appears to actually show up at the gym when you prioritize it.
A "scientific" 7 minute workout with no discernible goals is an admirable thing but honestly it's a cheap novelty at best - I've never heard of anybody actually sticking to one, "doing the bare minimum" is just not motivating at all. Scientific according to whom? To what end? Why am I doing this?
Exercise science is inherently a little bit voodoo. Motivation and consistency are much more important than the time requirement.
If somebody's had any success with vague goalless 7-minute workouts, or has even stuck with them consistently, I'd love to hear differing opinions.
I agree with most of what you said, except for the part about doing the bare minimum not being motivating. I'm also a pretty experienced lifter (Been lifting for 9 years, can DL 3x my bodyweight, Squat 2.5x bodyweight, BP 1.6x) but I'm always looking for the bare minimum to improve. If that happened to be a 7 minute workout, that's what I would do. I think it's incredibly motivating to use your time really effectively. I spend probably about 1/4 to 1/2 the time in the gym as anyone else there with comparable fitness levels because I've done a lot of research on training methods and have tried tons of different programs and permutations to find the ones that are most effective for me.
I think you're right that the biggest problem with this is that there are "no discernible goals" associated with this "scientific" workout. For noticeable strength and physique improvements, the lowest I've found to be effective are 40 minute workouts 3 times per cycle with a cycle length of 7-10 days depending on the types of workouts done.
As much as I hate Comcast and occasionally say prayers that a cement truck accidentally crashes into Tom Wheeler's house, and I'd love to see a massive scandal here - these emails don't seem incriminating at all.
A high level official got invited to a party, and declined because "the rules folks over here tell me I can't". They know each other (makes sense, they're both working at a high level in the same industry) and they have people watching their backs to make sure they don't do anything that can legally be considered corrupt (again, makes sense, shit's a minefield and an ill-defined one at that. If I were in that position I would have people keeping an eye on that whether I was corrupt or pious as a lamb)
Am I missing something? I clicked on that link salivating for the political blood of Comcast executives and all I got was a polite grownup email version of "sry bro can't come, rules n shyt, sounds bumpin tho"
You're missing that this person is trying to satisfy the letter of the law, instead of the intent.
Basically, if your reaction to such an invitation is to ask legal "how can I go to this rad absolutely not work related party without giving the impression of impropriety?" instead of telling the other person "this is unacceptable and you know it".. you're not out for the publics best interest.
I work in a regulatory environment (much lower level) and have turned down stuff (cheap stuff, like a reception where I might get comped a drink).
Out of sheer politeness, I sometimes respond with a "those stuffed shirts say I can't". It's a handy non-confrontational excuse that can't really be argued against, and doesn't make you sound like a prig.
Did you then continue to casually extend a dinner invitation? I get it, people don't want to seem like cold assholes. But I think we should be very wary of a regulatory environment where high-level executives give heartfelt apologies intermixed with personal stories and backup plans instead of clearly rejecting such obviously inappropiate offers.
If you're a decent regulator, it's your job to be a cold. That's basically the whole point. You don't need to be an asshole, but you should damn well insist on deference and distance.
By way of analogy, can you imagine a judge dispensing with formalities and telling the people facing him in court "Relax! Call me Jim." Obviously not. Because when it comes to the law, conspicuously arms-lengths relationships are essential.
Honestly, a few of those folks were in grad school with me far before they were on the "other side" (actually this is true of "both" other sides). We thrash each other in meetings and can perfectly drop work over dinner.
That's the problem, it's a small world, and blurry lines, when you get to highly technical corners of it.
The problem with trying to satisfy the intent of the law is that you may run afoul of the letter of the law. And since high-powered corporate and government officials don't often get a pass for obeying the intent of the law if they break the letter of the law, they're essentially forced to worry primarily about the letter.
As an individual you have no obligation to even attempt to satisfy the intent of a law (and it's foolish to do so), both for the reason you state and for a more basic reason. Laws don't have intent. People have intent. For a bill to become law 539 people have to sign on to it, and they all have different understandings and agendas.
What you have quoted above is a proper response for someone without any business experience.
Otherwise politely turning down an offer by quoting the layers vs trying to accuse a potential business lead of impropriety is how it happens in the real world.
Um, we're talking about regulators (i.e. law enforcement) and the people they regulate. If the former sees the latter as "a potential business lead" thing have already gotten way, way off track.
That's EXACTLY the problem. If there's one set of people on planet Earth who Comcast should absolutely, positively NEVER be allowed to hire it's the people who are currently overseeing them.
Frankly, it should go without saying that anyone making this jump has been bribed. Accepting a job from a former subject of regulation should result in jail time for both the hire, and the people responsible for hiring them.
Consider Meredith Attwell Baker, the former FCC commissioner who approved the NBC / Comcast a few months before taking a high-level (and insanely well paid) job as a lobbyist for the combined company she (legally) helped create.
Again, she should be in jail for that, and so should the people with the nerve to hire her. Instead, they're all making millions while trust in our government is rightfully hitting rock bottom.
I strongly dislike language as crass and degrading as "corporate whore". At the same time, I struggle to find a more apt description of what happened here. It's indefensibly despicable and anyone who says otherwise is simply flagging themselves as a part of the problem.
I'm not missing that at all. The fact that we expect corporations to further their own interests over those of the public (and that people who are cunning enough to get into powerful government positions often come from industry) is exactly why the law is lettered that way in the first place.
If you think you get to a position anywhere close to where these guys are by being a jeopardizing valuable relationships in the name of doing-things-in-the-spirit-of-selfless-public-service, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'm looking to sell. Good price, too, shoot me a PM.
What's the point of a comment like this? It just undermines the value/integrity of your earlier one.
You're also missing that the executives personal interest dont per-se align with those of their parent. So its quite possible for an individual to undermine both the public and his employer with a single go.
Various rogue executives illustrate this point without much recourse to google. But say nick leeson at baring kind of jumps out, and then the scale of what was seen in the past 5-7 years makes that look like childs play.
You might also find this "of intellectual interest"
So what if Comcast's CEO Katryn Zachem really believes the merger is not just in hers, but also in the public's interest and tries to skirt the letter of the law in order to make things better for everybody?
Well, the obvious answer being that she's a fool and needs to actually listen to people other than the people in her current network.
I don't think the intent of the law is to prohibit all personal relationships between people in those roles. I think the CEO could reasonably believe that attending the party is fine under the intent of the law, but is concerned whether it violates the letter of the law.
I'm still baffled at how everyone considers these startups to be "underachieving". In terms of becoming the next facebook or twitter? Well, no shit. That's a borderline impossible standard.
Compared to 95% of their peers (which are, at least statistically, true underachievers in that they never made it into the mainstream or at least the tech-mainstream, or didn't survive long enough that we would recognize them today), they're waaaay on the right side of the bell curve.
95% of their peers dont get the funding these startup got.That's the problem.
If Quora was where it is without VC funding the article would have been quite different.
It would be considered a success.But when one is valued at close to 1 Billion yes it is an underachievement.
Remember 99% of VC fundings are about getting the startup bought at one point or an IPO with a big price tag so early investors can cash in,therefore => GROWTH is a major indicator of achievement. Venture capital is not free money.
Quora is essentially a bunch of guys asked their rich mates for funding; they got it and produced some semblance of an interesting project. But it has zero business potential.
Most analysis has put the dedicated Quora community at around 700k with a further 1-2 million fleeting users of less than 1 log in a month.
It's a question that crops up on Quora constantly. Pick any popular question and you see 90% of the answer come
From the same <5% of the community.
Essentially? That's really not what Quora is essentially. That's just how you've spun it.
Say what you will of the product, but the people originally behind Quora (and the people currently running Quora) did really great work at Facebook and had a reputation in SV for their brilliance. And they got their wealth because of the things they achieved at Facebook. So it's not surprising they were able to raise lots of money. VCs love investing in people who have track records of doing great things.
I don't doubt the team are great engineers. That does not make Quora a great business, a viable business or even anything of value.
If you can pitch HN on why Quora matters then do it. Otherwise it is what I said - a bunch of people, well connected with SV who blagged a ton of cash with no way of making good on the promise.
You are speaking with hindsight. At the time, if you truly put yourself objectively in the shoes of VCs, investing in the people behind Quora was a no-brainer.
If we pick apart your (more recent) characterization:
Yes, they're a bunch of people. Sure, they were well-connected in SV and they got a lot of cash. But you seem to imply their connections were undeserved (implication is in the tone: "rich mates", "a bunch of people"). Their connections were based on the previous engineering projects they had led successfully, their previous track record.
You only know that they had "no way of making good on the promise" in hindsight. And hindsight is 20/20. VCs aren't in the business of betting on sure things. But VCs love betting on people with track records of accomplishment. Nobody has a sure fire way of making good on any potentially-high-growth business idea.
if you raise $160 million and only have 30 million in revenue with a tiny or even negative growth rate with no profit, you are not only underachieving, but likely to fall out of existence and lose a lot of money for your investors in the near future. Foursquare has the potential to lose more of its investors money than any startup in recent memory.
> I'm still baffled at how everyone considers these startups to be "underachieving"
Explaining that was the entire point of the article. Given that startups by definition need fast growth ('definition' being pg's definition, as explained in the article) and given that the growth of these startups has slowed dramatically, these startups are underachieving.
Maybe 'underperforming' would be a better word to use, since we're all familiar with that term as it relates to companies large and small.
So, if they don't become the next Facebook or Twitter, what are they to become? I don't think any one mentioned company is currently profitable, they might not even have any revenue.
If they are not going to have that explosive growth, they are no different from your neighborhood car shop. But that one will still be around next year since it is actually running a profitable business.
1. I consider companies to be achieving when they turn a profit. So do investors.
2. The companies here are not under-achievers; they are non- achievers.
3. It's a shame that FourSquare is still labelled as a gamified check in service. Especially contrasted with Yelp and their fake review scandals. 10 years later and Yelp are still in the red. Never turned a profit and no possibility of doing so.
" I consider companies to be achieving when they turn a profit. So do investors."
During bubble times (now), there's the alternative of be small enough to sell something new to a big corp. More or less a very complicated high risk for all involved outsourcing of big company R+D. So... what happens when you're medium sized aka too expensive to sell, and also old news rather than being something new?
If you're a million dollar company with the brand new idea of selling dog food over the internet, a perfectly valid exit strategy is during a bubble, sell for ten million to Amazon because thats they cheapest fastest way for them to get into the lucrative dog food delivery market. If you're a $120M company with the tired (internet) generations old idea of selling dog food on the internet, pivot (if you can) or shut down.
Completely agree. Underachieving according to what criteria? The criteria of modern capitalism of high velocity ever increasing profit for their investors and shareholders. Not about popularity, sustainability or user base, but money.
I think they are interpreting pivots as a sign that the founders and/or investors wanted to change direction, because the previous direction wasn't succeeding.
I'm all for small, sustainable sites which provide a service and don't try to monetise too desperately. But when you take $50 million in VC funding, surely the founders know they're boarding the ten-times-return-or-bust train?
(2) Having limited legal knowledge, I'm curious what he means with "a lottery ticket to a lawsuit". Is he indicating that patenting something would make a company more likely to get sued? My basic understanding is the opposite, that patents yield protection from lawsuits rather than create exposure to them. Is this flawed?
Looking at software patents, I read (2) as saying that a patent is a lottery ticket, in which winning tickets are the patents someone accidentally infringed, thus opening a way for you to sue them out of their money.
That's decently accurate. We're all doing what's in our best interest, in the role that we play in that time.
In general - I want to give people who don't know me personally (and especially people trying to sell me anything) less power to catch my attention and pull at my impulses, not more.
There's a ton of evidence we aren't doing what's in our best interest at minimum a significant minority of the time. In any event, the claim of economics isn't that people act in their best interest, but that they try to maximize happiness* -- whatever that is (it's rather recursively defined -- happiness is produced by voluntary transactions, which in turn are voluntary because both parties believe that the exchange will make them happier).
* or whatever it is makes transactions pareto optimal.
Meanwhile, behavioral economists have shown humans aren't even great at pursuing happiness; perhaps they have reached their high water mark, but they're certainly not completely wrong.
Yeah, but Watterson clearly doesn't like working with technology. He's very much a pen-paper-human kind of guy, and I don't see him all of a sudden deciding to step into the internet.
I'll be darned if he couldn't find someone to work with who could handle getting his work online though. It's mere wishful thinking, but he could draw and communicate (or not) in whichever way he wants, and some trusted friend and gatekeeper handles all of the scanning and online stuff, which could be kept very simple and noncommercial. No ads, twitter, comments section or any of the usual "social media branding" stuff, literally just a page with a comic on it.
Am I the only one who thinks that this could hugely backfire from a PR perspective?
The message is
"The Verizon Network is Crowded Right Now."
not
"Verizon is Deliberately Slowing This Right Now." (or some less loaded version of that)
It's bad PR for the ISPs, but combined with the fact that most people can hardly spell ISP, and that Comcast and their FCC homies keep describing the new toll booth as a fast lane, if I were a nontechnical consumer my first response would be, "What the hell are they waiting for? Put in the fast lane! I wanna watch my damn movies!"
Which is why it's so important they used the ISP's name there. Instead of saying "congestion", they say "(ISP)'s congestion".
Considering that customer satisfaction with the average telecom company is somewhere between that of the DMV and a crooked tax collector, it plays into the confirmation bias people have that they don't love their ISP, they tolerate their stupidity because its the only way to get online.
> "What the hell are they waiting for? Put in the fast lane! I wanna watch my damn movies!"
Telling a customer they're not getting what they paid for from their service provider is about as plain English as you can get. I daresay we need this sort of rhetoric, and I doubt their response will be levied toward Netflix unless they start getting letters from their ISPs saying "We're throttling you because you're watching Netflix and they won't pay up."
That doesn't address the net neutrality aspect of this. Above at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858919 we see quoted from a Verizon press release that "Verizon had a total of 5.8 million FiOS Internet and 5.0 million FiOS Video connections at the end of the [2nd] quarter [of 2013]"
Verizon doesn't want more "cord cutters" of a sort to drop their FiOS video accounts in favor of a la carte offerings from Netflix et. al. AT&T's U-verse isn't as big a thing for them, but they use vicious caps to protect it, and of course all the cable companies are by definition video service providers.
I'm a relatively experienced lifter - heavy squats 3x per week is brutal for the first week or so and then your body adapts to it.
I've found that I'll actually stick with a ~hourlong workout, 3-5x a week that I believe in and have goals for over anything quick with no discernible aim. And it's amazing how time magically appears to actually show up at the gym when you prioritize it.
A "scientific" 7 minute workout with no discernible goals is an admirable thing but honestly it's a cheap novelty at best - I've never heard of anybody actually sticking to one, "doing the bare minimum" is just not motivating at all. Scientific according to whom? To what end? Why am I doing this?
Exercise science is inherently a little bit voodoo. Motivation and consistency are much more important than the time requirement.
If somebody's had any success with vague goalless 7-minute workouts, or has even stuck with them consistently, I'd love to hear differing opinions.