The good: Tonx is awesome. Blue Bottle is great. I can't imagine coffee quality will decline due to a merger.
The bad: Tonx has lost a lot of agility. Will great and potentially risky campaigns like the recent Starbucks campaign [0] still be possible with a retail infrastructure to support and worry about?
The ugly: Tonx brings to the table two amazing single origin roasts every single month. Blue Bottle seems to be focusing on expanding their digital presence with this deal [1] and at least in my experience, that is NOT what makes Tonx so fantastic.
I love how many comments in this thread imply that they would be able to spot a sniper in real life, due to depth perception or whatever other factor.
There's a reason snipers are so feared in warfare. They tend to be very good at what they do, and what they do is kill people while avoiding detection.
These pictures make me respect sniper camouflage even more than I already did... if I can't spot them in a cropped picture, how would I ever spot them in a 360 degree landscape over an area of indeterminate size?
How does it make sense to project that calculation onto another person to begin with? Their time is not yours, and every person values their time differently. It means your statement of them doing a vast number of things wrong must inherently be false, because there is no objective "wrong" there.
The comment is certainly a bit overgeneralized, but it raises some important points.
I've been a "time-peeler" for a large part of my life, and when I stopped being such, I became way more productive. This happened because I started to waste less and less time on things which didn't really matter.
In certain cultures where most of the people watches TV, for hours every day (in average), then you start to see what's wrong with saving 57 seconds.
In addition to that, somebody pointed that the structure is incredibly wasteful. For some reason, there's this widespread vision of sustainability where the responsibility is somebody else's. If this is not accepted in simple things at the bottom, where should it starts from?
In this terms, the comments make sense, although of course, it's not possible to say if it applies to a given person.
With these things in mind, while there are no "objective wrongs", in the big perspective, there are objective foolishnesses, to say the least.
Wealth, on a scale of being in the single digits percentage-wise, often has a lot to do with skill. Some skills, such as empire building, get you there faster than others. See Bill Gates as an example. First he built a tech empire, then a charitable empire. The man is very good at enacting world wide change.
Secondly, 5% producing 99% sounds very reasonable. If you ever have the misfortune of having to work with code written by contracted companies, you would realize a LOT of code is slapped together with no care at all. The average person contributing to open source or participating on hacker news cares. The average person coding is looking for a paycheck, and doesn't give a single damn.
Bill Gates is one anecdote, but what about the heir to a fortune? Did they build that wealth out of skill? Certainly not. Furthermore, so few people actually give half of their wealth like Bill Gates does [1]. Could you really argue that every wealthy person, or even a slim plurality mirrors Gates?
Also -- you'd have to make vast assumptions to claim that such a huge percentage of programmers just don't care, enough to the point where their code isn't "good". It's not at all reasonable. I wouldn't consider myself in the top 5%, surely there are those who are more driven to improve their skill. But I wouldn't at all say that my code is careless or definitely not "good". Also Hacker News commenting doesn't really require caring, it just requires free time -- not sure what you're going for there.
The exact verbiage on Amazon's website is "Buy movie in HD
1-Click® $$$.$$". Its easy to lecture to the hackernews crowd on the evils of DRM, but do you really think the average consumer understands what they are getting into? Even on the "learn more" pages there is no indication that your content can be stripped from you if a license expires. Using your analogy, I just brought home a pack of bologna and wanted to make a sandwich, but my box was empty on Saturday because the pork farmers said their product can only be consumed on weekdays. If that happens I am 100% going to blame Oscar Meyer AND the pork farmers!
A swirl of other high-level staffing switch-ups also occurred, including a handful of layoffs. Two of the people let go were the remaining co-founders: Vadnais, who essentially invented ThinkGeek, and Frazier, who coined the ThinkGeek slogan: “Stuff for smart masses.”
The idea of being a founder doesn't seem to mean much to them, so I think the scales tip towards the "not entirely surprising" side.
ThinkGeek's female co-founder here... It's true, I'm a founder and was let go. We sold the company early on and though I had a lot of input on hires, it wasn't all up to me, especially as we grew. I can't comment on how women were or are treated by management, but I always did my best to create an awesome culture for everybody regardless of sex, background or geek/nerd affiliation.
I very fondly remember ThinkGeek's early days, if you start a new venture, let the HN community know! I'll definitely be in line as a customer and I'm sure many others here would be too.
This doesn't really tell the whole story. Riding bikes is dangerous, but the real danger here is driving a car.
When you're driving a car you are in charge of a multi-thousand pound hunk of metal with more momentum than most people can even comprehend, and the slightest jerk of a wheel can send it careening off in a completely different direction in milliseconds.
On a bike or walking with your own two feet, you're always in danger when the operator of a car isn't performing their due responsibilities.
To Sivers, I'm sorry for your loss. This article is an inspiration, and a remarkably poignant commentary on how to best make use of our fleeting time.
I can't speak for Jack, but I can speak to learning both programming skills and business skills.
When you self teach programming, you usually don't end up shipping a product that you're not sure will work. Most of the time, you can try things and the compiler and some basic QA will tell you if it worked. Unless you don't test your implementation at all, you know how well you did when you push your code.
In business decisions, there is no test bed. Your choices play almost exclusively in time, money, and human capital. You can definitely try to self learn in that environment, and many successfully do, but it's a lot easier to screw up to the point where you can't continue.
Hold on... you live and work in silicon valley and you claim you can get by on 30k a year expenses?
Horseshit. The cheapest rent I've seen around here is 1500 a month, and that's almost 20 grand a year right there. Add standard utilities, food, insurance, and commuting costs and you're already pushing 30k. That's assuming you don't have student loans to worry about.
I totally agree that the power is in our hands, but it is far less simple to make that work then you are letting on. There is a reason salaries in the valley are so high... it's damn expensive to live here. If you're in a position where you may get fired for not putting in 60 hour weeks, more often than not your options are work 60 hour weeks or hope you get another gig before you're forced to move out of the valley.
Roommates or live in the east bay. Or a tiny space on the peninsula. Those are the only financially responsible choices. Personally I own a house in Hayward I bought for $340k and have a roommate. My direct housing costs are about $1100/month, and total expenses around $2500 including all travel, luxuries, etc.
Sure that may not be as fun as renting the $3000/month apartment in SF. You have to make choices. Would you rather achieve financial independence at 35 and live with roommates or in a less desirable neighborhood or be forced to work into your 40s? Not saying either choice is correct for everyone, but I definitely made my mind consciously on that question.
The good: Tonx is awesome. Blue Bottle is great. I can't imagine coffee quality will decline due to a merger.
The bad: Tonx has lost a lot of agility. Will great and potentially risky campaigns like the recent Starbucks campaign [0] still be possible with a retail infrastructure to support and worry about?
The ugly: Tonx brings to the table two amazing single origin roasts every single month. Blue Bottle seems to be focusing on expanding their digital presence with this deal [1] and at least in my experience, that is NOT what makes Tonx so fantastic.
It will be interesting to see where this goes.
[0]: https://tonx.org/better [1]: http://blog.bluebottlecoffee.com/post/82020818086/welcome-ab...