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John Backus Profile
John Backus

@backus

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Dissonant and obsessive try-hard. Founder and CTO @getcognito (acquired by @Plaid )

Miami
Joined August 2012
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
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@backus
John Backus
3 years
In 2014, @alain and I dropped out of Stanford so we could run @getcognito full time. After almost a decade of hard work, I’m extremely excited to share that @Plaid has acquired Cognito for $252 million!
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@backus
John Backus
3 months
POV: Taking off your VR headset and AirPods because the flight attendant asked you if you want a drink
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
... wow. Ben Affleck perfectly predicting Spotify and Netflix in a random 2003 interview Almost exactly right about the unit economics of annual music subscriptions and the timing of online movie streaming. Solid point too on how shareware (Napster) is a necessary predecessor
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@backus
John Backus
1 year
The code interpreter feature on ChatGPT is the most mind blowing thing I've seen yet. All I did was upload a CSV of SF crime data and ask it to visualize trends(!!)
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
“Santa” is very important because it teaches kids that adults are capable of staging large scale, leaderless, and decentralized deceptions just for the hell of it
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Alright, here is the fintech-pill. Take it, internalize it, and the space will finally make sense: Every fintech company is just a disguised strategic growth hack where the real goal is to become a bank. Robinhood, Stripe, Coinbase, Affirm, Acorns. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank.
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Anonymous 4chan poster et al
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
PROTIP: Feeling lonely? Go to your Netflix settings, click "Sign out of all devices," and wait a few hours. Voilà! If you check your phone now, you'll find you have several new texts from friends you haven't spoken to in years.
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
I left my AirPods at my friend’s house so I had to fallback to wired headphones for my run tonight. Can’t believe our ancestors used to live like this.
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
Flat earth society and anti-vaxx exist to give people outgroups to dunk on when they’re just starting to level up their intellectual rigor signaling. Kinda like how the first levels of some video games are actually just there to teach you the controls and provide backstory.
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@backus
John Backus
3 years
Update: I moved to Miami 🙃
@backus
John Backus
4 years
I still love SF and I have no interest in leaving 😊
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
Introducing: Jam! A password-sharing service for friends. Get access to every service your friends pay for, instantly and securely. Get an invite to the beta 👉 Thread 👇
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@backus
John Backus
4 years
Iconic bay area news clipping
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Early tech cos were a lot flimsier than you’d think: • Zuck saw FB as a growth hack for launching WireHog, the real biz • Snapchat’s product was built around an iOS bug, basically • Airbnb grew via unauthorized craigslist crossposts and spam Reassuring reality for founders!
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@backus
John Backus
2 years
Your money is in… Cash: you are 10% poorer by next year Bonds: you are 9.8% poorer and also 100-years-old Crypto: you are 50% richer. I mean poorer. Wait, richer. You make an unbearable Twitter account Index funds: still poorer, but at least no one can call you irresponsible
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@backus
John Backus
7 years
If you are using an in-browser Ethereum wallet (e.g. Metamask, Brave, Parity) then any website can detect if you are an Ethereum user. I wouldn't be surprised if some advertisers are already collecting this information.
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John Backus
6 years
Interested in decentralization today? Learn what worked in the 2000s for p2p file sharing: ⚖️ Decentralization is a legal tactic used alongside activism ⌛ Decentralizing the wrong things is a waste of time ☠️ Decentralizing everything is suicide by bad UX Thread! 👇
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John Backus
6 years
lol = The classic lol Lol = The mobile lol lel = The internet chat box lol lul = The half-hearted / mock lol lolll = The "I actually found that funny" lol lol!!!!!!!!! = The mom/older relative lol lololol = The "I'm annoying you" lol LOL = The "I actually laughed" lol
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John Backus
6 years
Failed early internet businesses seem awfully familiar. > I basically think all the ideas of the 90s that everybody had about how this stuff was going to work, I think they were all right, they were all correct. I think they were just early — @pmarca Thread 👇
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@backus
John Backus
4 years
If your company gets deplatformed from iOS + Android app stores, AWS, and Cloudflare, you're screwed. Modern black markets are filled w/ enough DDoS extortionists to drain all of your money and time. Good luck finding investors as your unusable app's adoption tanks for 12 months
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John Backus
6 years
Make an idea crystal clear and everyone will pick it apart, weakening its power. Obfuscate the idea, requiring it be unraveled, and smart readers will reinterpret in different ways, steelmanning it at scale.
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John Backus
6 years
Blockchain world can learn a lot from p2p file sharing era 😡 Incentive issues (most shared NOTHING, tons of fake files + viruses) 🤝 Lots of attempted market mechanisms (from game theory to tokens) to fix incentives 💰 Monetization lessons 🍴 Forking vs governance Thread 👇
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John Backus
6 years
Soulja Boy on how he got his name out there using Limewire: > I would look at the billboard charts ... and I would upload [my song] to Limewire and title it "50 Cent - In da club", "Britney Spears", "Eminem", etc
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Me: Check out this serious idea I spent an hour tweeting Twitter: Nice Me: Also here’s some stupid joke Twitter: This is equally good
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
Ouch!! Vimeo in 2008 (paraphrasing): > Video game recordings are our fastest growing genre of video, but we don't think they count as "creative expression", so we're banning them. Imagine if they had embraced eSports! This is 3 years before Twitch launched.
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@backus
John Backus
2 years
the hiring of bureaucrats will continue until morale improves
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John Backus
6 years
Go into crypto and you try to reinvent politics. Go into AI and you try to reinvent philosophy.
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
In SF hackerspace. Guy next to me claims he invented a language proving governments control us. His interlocutor uses epistemology; it's not effective. Behind me, a girl cuts her own bangs using the reflection of a vending machine. I try to focus on gluing LEDs to a paper lantern
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John Backus
6 years
tired: Back in the day, kids wandered outside for hours without parental supervision and millennials were deprived of this. wired: Millennials got that experience too, it was just on the internet.
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John Backus
5 years
I don’t like the idea of an authentic self. Each person I’m with brings out a unique version of me. This reframing is growth-oriented: • New friends unlock new versions of me • Not “clicking” with someone is a growth opportunity. “How can I better connect with Alice?”
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John Backus
5 years
When I was a kid, video games were making kids violent. Now I’m in my 20s and video games are why guys aren’t having sex. Can’t wait until I’m 40 and video games become the scapegoat for divorce or something.
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John Backus
6 years
Shrek, the Gulag of Dreamworks
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win. Then you rewrite history. Then you give advice that leaves out the sketchy stuff you did while they were ignoring you.
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
> You e-mailed asking for my opinion, and I wanted to give a really thorough, well-thought-out, articulate response, so I starred your e-mail, and over time it became a mascot for my illogical but oppressive sense of dread in the face of slightly annoying tasks.
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John Backus
4 years
Noisebridge is being forced out of its home of 10+ years b/c an SF inspector said equipment that "generates heat" isn't allowed w/o $150k worth of sprinkler equipment Noisebridge can't afford $150k, landlord wont split Frustrating to watch for an (IMO) iconic SF institution 😞
@backus
John Backus
5 years
Noisebridge is an anarchist hackerspace in SF. Every day, visitors work on software, hardware, woodworking, 3D printing, music, sewing, and more The consistent mix of creative inspiration, technical ability, and pure chaos has made it one of my favorite places Stories thread 👇
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John Backus
5 years
Thinking about the intersection of these two quotes: > Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. and > Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect. (Teller, from Penn & Teller)
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John Backus
4 years
You, small brain: "Social status is a zero sum game" Me, big brain: Oh yeah then explain this cat video to me
@Noahpinion
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼
4 years
One reason cats and rabbits tend to get along is that for cats, grooming others is a sign of high status, but for rabbits, being groomed is a sign of high status. Thus, each of these cuties is thinking "I'm the boss":
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John Backus
6 years
p2p file sharing history is littered w/ predictions that a new **unstoppable and totally decentralized** protocol will takeover. It never happened. Users always flocked to the least decentralized system possible. Big lesson for today's blockchain and decentralization ecosystems
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John Backus
5 years
I'm reading technical documentation for @1Password 's vault format and wow lol I expected this to be a dry read
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Alright people, here’s how to find weird internet history: • Choose a topic (Skype, digital cash, w/e) • Google it. Restrict results to pre-2005 or w/e • Look for articles • Read em, they’ll mention stuff that died • Lookup dead stuff on @internetarchive That’s it
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John Backus
4 years
a startup officially becomes ""Big Tech"" when they invent a superset of (or transpiler for) the dynamic programming language they originally built the company on
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John Backus
6 years
Does your mental model of human behavior explain the 2000s warez scene? • Competition to leak high profile albums • High risk of prison • Not for profit! • Against rules to share leaks outside The Scene • Not about love for music. They leaked the SpongeBob movie soundtrack
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John Backus
6 years
BitTorrent does a surprising amount of game theory under the hood!
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@backus
John Backus
4 years
iPhone app that connects to UberEATS + MyFitnessPal (reading my calorie, % protein, % fat, and % carb targets). UI is one big button: 𝑰 𝑨𝑴 𝑯𝑼𝑵𝑮𝑹𝒀 A meal is chosen for me, balanced and portioned to help me hit my targets.
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John Backus
5 years
Dang it. I've used "black hole" as a metaphor in conversation like 5 times in the last 2 days. Absolutely because of the new image. Language is a side-channel attack. Every sentence I speak embeds tiny clues about where my mind has been in the past few days/weeks/months.
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John Backus
5 years
Similar to @paulg 's "Do things that don't scale", I'd say "Take the risks you can't at scale": ֻ💰 PayPal: Process the payments that others won't ֻֻ🏴‍☠️ YouTube: Host the pirated videos Google won't ⛏️ Airbnb: Scrape and spam what others won't Underemphasized part of history!
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John Backus
5 years
Yesterday, I read "The Inner Game of Tennis." It's about how the conscious mind impedes peak performance Later that day, I played in an intramural basketball game. When I lined up to shoot free throws, the book immediately came to mind and I bricked both shots Money well spent
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John Backus
6 years
Venezuela: bitcoin black markets and civilians trying to assassinate leaders with exploding drones. The cyberpunk future is already here—It’s just not evenly distributed.
@guyelster
Guy Elster
6 years
#BREAKING #Venezuela information minister confirms there was an attempted attack against President #Maduro with several drones with explosives, but he is sage and works. Seven soldiers wounded
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John Backus
6 years
Walk around any Pokémon gym and trainers just fight you on the spot if you walk past. You gotta view Twitter like that. People just standing around w/ terrible opinions ready to fight anyone. You can walk around some of them. Don't need to battle their level 11 Diglett
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John Backus
5 years
At an Andrew Yang rally with everyone holding up signs that just say “MATH” and then I read on my phone that Beto O’Rourke’s hacker IRC handle was “Psychedelic Warrior.” God, 2020 election is gonna be weird af I love it
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
My friends: > I wake up at 5am to meditate and set my goals for the day. I haven’t watched tv in 3 years Me: > Hey siri, how do I listen to music and an audiobook at the same time?
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@backus
John Backus
1 year
Weekend side project: ai​.sh - the power of Copilot in your terminal. Just type $ ai 'what you want to do' and it will figure out a shell command for you to run. Importantly, it always shows you a preview of the code and lets you interactively choose to run, copy, or discard.
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John Backus
6 years
Anyone know how The Pirate Bay is still alive in 2018? The founders went to jail and sold it. I think it’s a nonprofit now based in Seychelles but not sure if that is up to date I asked around in their IRC recently but everyone just called me a fed and told me to fuck off
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John Backus
5 years
Would it have been cheaper to pay a professional to install LEDs all over my bedroom? Yes, of course. Would it have also saved me lots of time? 100%. But you know what? At the end of the day, I can look at what I built myself and think, "man, I really fucked up the drywall too"
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John Backus
6 years
Fear of file sharing tech in 2000 even sounds like crypto today. "If they think Napster is bad ... there is a lot worse coming. Software that is untraceable" "The soon to come Freenet will offer completely anonymous and untraceable file trading"
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John Backus
3 years
Friends with an open source maintainer? Wondering how they're doing? Let them know you're thinking about them with a nice message like "Any update on this? :)"
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John Backus
6 years
Stare at each icon below for a sec. Imagine it's your phone. How does each make you feel? That feeling says so much about the product. Notification behavior is one of the most important aspects of mobile UX to get right to in the long run. Thread! 👇
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John Backus
4 years
The "Hydroxychloroquine is bad" study being retracted on completely fraudulent data is an absolute scandal and I can't believe I haven't seen more about this on my feed.
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
IMO, amazing cypherpunk visions are gated by mainstream browser vendor indifference to built-in support for IPFS/Dat, Tor, and native crypto primitives. It’s good @brave is evolving. Prepping exit in parallel to voice. I want techy lobbyists working to influence Chrome’s vision
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John Backus
5 years
MILLENNIAL TWITTER USER: People can express different "identities" online. Have you heard of "alts?" My friend has one. Crazy… EVERY GEN Z KID: *Effortlessly triages their entire identity across Snapchat and 3 Instagram accounts, each with different close friend filters*
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John Backus
6 years
To takedown The Pirate Bay and seize their servers, you have to legally raid cloud providers in 4 different countries in 8 hours. You don't know what 3 of those countries are until after the 1st raid. Genius!
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John Backus
6 years
⭐→❤ = 📈 Airbnb changed the "add property to my wish list" icon from a star to a heart and engagement went up by 30%! Airbnb's explanation: ⭐ = too utilitarian. "Airbnb is for booking rentals" ❤ = we're like Pinterest! Fantasize about vacation spots. Share your wish list.
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Be a part of many different subcultures, it might make you happier.
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@backus
John Backus
4 years
keys are CANCELLED
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@backus
John Backus
3 years
There is no way that OnlyFans banning sexually explicit images with 2 weeks notice doesn't have a juicy story behind it. I need to hear everyone's wild speculation.
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Throwback to when @dhh owned Reddit. • DHH added a bunch of helper methods • Reddit complained • DHH adds another useless helper just to make a point
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@backus
John Backus
3 years
@WillManidis this is so cursed
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
The Grin team is *literally* creating money and yet doesn’t have enough to pay one guy to work full time. That’s bizarre. Some kinda masochistic tragedy only possible in an ecosystem that has become so paranoid that the only way to prove you’re not greedy is to starve yourself.
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John Backus
4 years
I... still can't believe that this is real. @krakenfx just donated $150k to Noisebridge. That's insane. Incredibly generous. I can't believe it. Thank you @jespow !!
@backus
John Backus
4 years
Noisebridge is being forced out of its home of 10+ years b/c an SF inspector said equipment that "generates heat" isn't allowed w/o $150k worth of sprinkler equipment Noisebridge can't afford $150k, landlord wont split Frustrating to watch for an (IMO) iconic SF institution 😞
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
Why don’t more people use Tor? Bitcoin? PGP? BitTorrent? You have to download & configure new apps to use ‘em! Every DAO, crypto fund, and exchange should be throwing cash at increasing @brave ’s market share! They want to make this stuff built-in! Chrome will NEVER lead this.
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John Backus
6 years
Very Internet of Things experience this morning: > Listening to podcast on train. iPhone says storage is full. > Smart lock app crashes on open. Not enough swap? Can't unlock office door > Co-workers can't hear me knock > Stand outside deleting podcasts til I can unlock the door
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Ethereum dApps will probably move to users signing blobs of data using private keys that don't actually hold any funds. dApp operators will submit txs including these signatures, proving the end user gave the 👍. Lets business pay for gas, deal with nonces, retry TXs, etc.
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Likewise, if all you have is a blockchain, every market seems like it is full of consumers secretly yearning for transparency, privacy, and self-sovereignty.
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John Backus
5 years
> People seem to think they should lock-pick or kick their way through solid doors rather than just take a ten-dollar drywall knife and carve whole new hallways into the world. 🔥🏴‍☠️
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John Backus
1 year
lmao I love the meta aspect of this tweet getting attention. Here is what I asked ChatGPT before doing these visualizations.
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@backus
John Backus
4 years
Living the dream
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
The future of social networks is creating a group chat for every possible combination of your close friends. Welcome to combinatorial chat purgatory
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Want: Browser extension for Twitter which hides likes, retweets, and how many followers someone has until after I interact with the content. Nudge me to appreciate the tweet/account first before learning what others think.
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John Backus
6 years
Can't get this quote out of my head. Person quoted was sharing office space w/ Facebook in 2005/06: > They would come in late in the morning. They’d have a catered lunch. Then they leave usually by mid-afternoon. … Really nice people but never going to go anywhere.
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John Backus
6 years
20-somethings play a valuable ecological role in Twitter communities IMO: Discovering ideas/content for the first time, which older members will view as "classics", and enthusiastically sharing. Used to mess w/ my head ("others probably know this") but now I see it as a positive
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John Backus
6 years
Dissatisfaction as the necessary mental state for producing future satisfaction. Satisfaction as the mental state that eventually lands you in a rut. A satisfaction sine wave, centered at your hedonic set point. A boom and bust cycle of personal growth.
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
In 18 months… • Napster: 0 → 13M monthly active users • Snapchat: 0 → 22M MAU Napster launched in June 1999. Snapchat in Sept 2011. Global internet usage ~4.5x'd 1999 → 2011. America, 1.5x Basically what I'm saying is Napster's growth was even crazier than Snapchat's
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John Backus
5 years
"The web is still an infant technology … if you *can* do things using more traditional methods, you probably *should* do them using traditional methods" 🤔
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
The main Twitter account, the alt your friends know about, the alt no one knows about. Production, staging, and development. Continuous deployment for identity and aesthetic.
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John Backus
4 years
Big Tech regulation that would actually help: 1. App Stores (phones, browser extensions, desktop, etc) need full featured competitors. 2. Social networks with 500M+ MAU must provide full-featured public APIs, enabling 3rd party frontends + ability to mirror content to alt sites
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John Backus
6 years
Asking “how did Uber come up w/ their medallion legal strategy?” may be wrong. Travis did P2P file sharing startups for a decade where business-as-usual was: deploy, resist lawsuits, use PR to establish self as underdog fighting special interests. Dude was born in the darkness.
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John Backus
6 years
Petty laws I’d pass if I could: • Buying an $18 audiobook gives me a right to the ebook • If I can create a gym membership online then that gym must let me cancel online too • If you send a trick cold email w/ “re: “ in the subject, you’re banned from the internet for a week
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John Backus
6 years
If BitTorrent had a token economy, I think we'd see 🌰 Strategic "seed pools" (think mining pools) 🗄️ Long term seeding 🏇 Bounty markets for content ("100k tokens for HD Star Wars leak!") 📈 Inter-tracker arbitraging (upload everywhere → easy tokens)
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John Backus
5 years
Yesterday I showed up to pickup basketball and realized I had a 10" height advantage over every other player. I played for 2.5 hours, won every game, and felt zero shame. Spent the entire time thinking about every VC that's ever talked to me about exploiting "unfair advantages."
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John Backus
6 years
Common modern web experience: > Page loads > Try to click on content I want > Something else finishes loading, causing layout to shift > Misclick 😡 This seems like is a UX anti-pattern. I wish it was more widely discussed and tabooed as sloppy work. Soundcloud example 👇
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John Backus
5 years
"Damn" used to offend. "Literally" means "figuratively." Positive praise words (eg "awesome") all converge on lukewarm. Your lexical life savings are being inflated away! Get out there and spend! New slang is being minted daily. Room to grow, get in on ground floor! Yeet!
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John Backus
3 years
Some chefs use the "egg test" to judge other chef's skill level. Idea being that basically anyone can *make* eggs, so there is a lot of signal in seeing how easily and "perfectly" someone can do the task. Great anecdote from a chef on Reddit:
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John Backus
6 years
Decentralized discipline: 🏃 For 3 months, I’ll run 4x a week for at least 30min 💰 Deposit 1 ETH 🔑 Smart contract gives your friend sole authority to say if you hit goal 🔥 Contract gives ETH to friend if you miss goal 🚪 No turning back! Will prob build w/ @devonzuegel soon
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John Backus
6 years
There were lots of attempts to build digital currencies before Bitcoin: DigiCash ('89), Beenz (98), Flooz (99), e-gold (98), 1mdc (01), e-Bullion (01). Some even tried to anonymously create underground (Tor only) currencies like eCache (2007).
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John Backus
6 years
Decentralized systems are WAY harder to build and this seems to always affect UX. If easier to use centralized systems exist, users always prefer them. Decentralization is like regulatory compliance: it isn't a feature that attracts users, you just do it to stay alive.
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John Backus
5 years
God bless the old OkCupid blog lol. Every time something from it resurfaces I get so nostalgic
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
A defining quality of SF socializing: extremely analytical conversations about nothing in particular
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
🥛 Glass half empty: Twitter is an echo chamber 🥛 Glass half full: An echo chamber filled with smart people is spaced repetition disguised as fun
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@backus
John Backus
5 years
I continue to be amazed as FB squeezes every last drop of engagement out of it's notification system. Reframing the notifications it gave me in the last 3 hours:
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@backus
John Backus
6 years
Life cycle of new ideas 1. Flash of insight 2. Simple explanation of essence 3. Formalization: departure from intuition 4. Professionalization: detail, citations 5. Mainstreamification: metaphors, summary Learning often feels like starting at #5 , searching for a path back to #1
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