james hong @jhong Twitter profile | Pikagi

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james hong

@jhong

18,807

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Cofounder of HOTorNOT. Angel Investor. Husband and Daddy. Proud troublemaker. When in doubt, always presume I am just joking around. Go Bears! 🐻

https://t.co/cNvDLAqNGT

Joined March 2007

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

Pinned Tweet

@jhong

james hong

4 years

. @jimydotorg and I launched HOTorNOT 20 years ago this October 😮 @Mashable wrote a great retrospective about it. Realistically it is probably the last time anyone will ever want to write about HOTorNOT. I'm happy with this article as its final chapter.

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HOTorNOT: The forgotten website that shaped the internet

How a 20-year-old joke pioneered the social web.

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Last Seen Profiles

@PDamy

@eroticaprincess

@StevieG415

@ash_poyo

@ahmedmona111111

@ajiboyeBolu

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@Ziya_pretty2022

@SeanDuffyWI

@kimmy6192004

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@jermogoon

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@galery_basah10

@pitilleando

@SchotGuppy

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@minako_aroma

@hank_was

@bjaycal

@stw_pdg

@annxsrmfc

@_deamourr

@Dispelda_

@khaleesiFran

@Tephron5050

@WCumum_OFC

@AzariSadeghpour

@SBock247

@AnthonyNdika

@S0ufi4n3

@GroovingJam

@jhong

james hong

1 year

@TrungTPhan When AI takes the jobs, this is what we will all be doing to put food on the table.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

You just don't understand, Silicon Valley is not representative of normal society. No normal persom is ever going to use computers / the internet / touch screen phones / apps / EVs (YOU ARE HERE) / crypto / self driving cars / VR / AR / home robots / brain machine interfaces

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

Bieber killed it on SNL

@sinsofbieber

tara loves lily

4 years

the pain in justin bieber's voice when he was singing lonely...just broke me #BieberOnSNL

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james hong

3 years

Expect more hugely successful startups founded by people in their late 30s, 40s, and even 50s, as WFH enables parent founders to juggle better.

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james hong

5 years

Notable that @ericsyuan was around 40 when he started Zoom. All the VCs must be clamoring to find Asian founders in their 40s to fund now, right? Suddenly I am fundable again! 🤣

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@jhong

james hong

6 years

12 years ago these guys worked out of a dumpy student apartment in Beijing and failed to raise $2 million in seed funding. 2 startups later, many of them just IPO'd their latest company Meituan which closed ~$50 Billion. Success requires persistence/pain tolerance.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

Crypto and particularly NFT land feels a lot like the Internet felt 27 years ago when a few people had visions of it being huge someday, but 99% of it looked like garbage to most people and they thought it was a joke and ultimately useless.. shoulda bought AMZN in '97.

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james hong

3 years

@sama It is so mindbogglingly significant that it ups the chances in my mind we are living in a simulation. Like why am I alive just as this is happening, seems almost too coincidental.

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@jhong

james hong

2 months

I wonder if Elon using X's reach to drive the shareholder vote essentially means buying Twitter was cheaper than free, it made him money.

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@jhong

james hong

7 years

There are three age groups working in tech: La Croix, Diet Coke, and "trying to only drink water nowadays, thanks!"

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

Call me old fashioned but the Palo Alto area is what I still consider Silicon Valley and it is a pretty nice (albeit pricey) place to live. You don't have to move to Miami to escape SF. The boredom down here is actually a feature for startup productivity lol.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@sama @paulg Having kids.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@TurnerNovak In the early days of HOTorNOT, to ensure liquidity in our dating site, Jim and I had to personally take out to dinner every woman with a score above a 9.5. Do things that don't scale.

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@jhong

james hong

5 months

I took an FSD ride today for the first time with my friend Georges. I held off buying the upgrade even when they gave a grace period before raising the price from $3k to $6k because as a rule, I never buy vaporware.. I'd rather pay more once I feel it works. I'm buying today.

@gharik

Georges Harik

5 months

tesla fsd 12.3 is quite good

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@paulg To be fair to this guy, it's possible some Twitter employees were always interested but now feel empowered to actually try and make changes

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

@blader Great to see an update on the quality they are able to decode given processing power today. This research was originally done by Nishimoto out of Jack Gallant's lab at Berkeley.

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Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind - Berkeley News

Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one’s own dream on YouTube. With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, UC Berkeley scientists are bringing these...

news.berkeley.edu

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@jhong

james hong

5 months

@anothercohen Someone once said something funny about this to me he said "May you be rich enough to buy, or even better, rich enough to rent!"

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@jhong

james hong

5 years

Great example of emergent behavior

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

Silicon Valley was always south bay/peninsula nerds with a splash of sf counterculturism. It was never pure San Francisco.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

That is 8 days from now. HOTorNOT went from idea to profitable website in eight days. Within another eight days we broke 1 million pageviews per day. We named the company "Eight Days, Inc." to communicate things can be achieved quickly. This is a reasonable demand from @elonmusk

@Techmeme

Techmeme

2 years

Sources: Twitter plans to change Twitter Blue into a $19.99 subscription that verifies users; staff are told they will be fired if they don't build it by Nov. 7 ( @alexeheath / The Verge)

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

I've given out a lot of startup business advice over the years. I've also given out a lot of dating advice. The two are remarkably the same.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@justindross Reminds me of that joke, how many people work at Google? About half.

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@jhong

james hong

9 months

What does this tell us? That whatever @sama did, at least one insider stands by him. Which probably means it is a lot less likely he did anything unethical, and it's probably more a disagreement with the board. My guess is about positioning wrt safety / regulation issues.

@gdb

Greg Brockman

9 months

After learning today’s news, this is the message I sent to the OpenAI team:

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@jhong

james hong

7 years

@AngelList So sorry, I missed your email. Is it still a good time to get together and talk about this? Sounds like a cool idea! xoxo James 😂

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@jhong

james hong

9 months

Satya Nadella is the most founder-like professional CEO I've ever seen. Baller move and done with incredible speed. Very very impressive.

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

Should I be upset or thankful? Lol

@VICE

VICE

1 year

20 years after Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous ‘hot-or-not’ website, developers have learned absolutely nothing.

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

@paulg That's what I use it for too. It's like having a teacher that knows absolutely everything, is great at teaching, and is not annoyed by my 1,000 follow up questions that it might think are stupid.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@sudha_lakshmi @garrytan Because most VCs are actually bad at picking really huge winners at seed stage. The *best companies" that people fight over are rarely the big winners. People thought Google was a crazy deal to do. FB too. YouTube. Airbnb. Twitter. Amazon. People did not fight over these deals.

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james hong

10 months

I don't think people who weren't in tech in the late 90s fully appreciate how amazing the early Google team was and how much their radical-at-the-time ideas are now the norm.

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@jhong

james hong

3 months

I am drunk as fuck!!! I love you all and I love life. I am one lucky ass son of a bitch. Wishing everyone the best!!!

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

Was just chatting with someone about Tony and started to write a sad emoji. Smiling emoji with cowboy hat popped up as a suggestion on my keyboard. Im interpreting that as Tony telling us all to cheer up. 🤠 It just needs a mohawk 😂

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

Still get these.. the gift that keeps on giving!

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

Career advice for young professionals: If your company is not going insanely hard into using AI, find a new job.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@thetzechun Here's Why You Will Never Be Invited To My Home

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

Do people who think Twitter is horrible for having bedrooms for employees also think hospitals are horrible for having on-call rooms for doctors to sleep in?

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@MikeIsaac His answer is the right one, tbh. Admitting you don't know something when you actually don't know is a strength, not a weakness. A lot of entrepreneurs fail at things because they can't do that.

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james hong

1 year

@paulg One thing I love to do is ask it to explain the same thing to me like I am 5, 15, an undergrad, and a PhD. It is particularly good at moderating complexity of answer and it's useful to learn something first in a simple manner.

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@jhong

james hong

8 months

This is the strangest headline. Everyone who goes to Asia knows the street food is where it's at.

@tomshardware

Tom's Hardware

8 months

Nvidia CEO Jensen is worth $42 billion but still eats street food at street markets and visits LAN parties during overseas trips

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

I can't tweet about Tony anymore, it's cathartic but also too painful at the same time. Tony, you were brilliant and just the best human being. You were and will always be loved and remembered by all of us. I will miss you dearly. </tony>

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

Is anyone else watching Pachinko on Apple TV? That show is incredible.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

My math teachers in high school hated me because I was disruptive in class, talking to others and goofing around. It's because I was good at math and bored. If I hadn't been in the accelerated track I would have been even more bored and even more disruptive for sure.

@SteveMillerOC

Steve Miller

3 years

In the name of “equity”, California DOE’s 2021 Mathematics Framework attacks the idea of gifted students and eliminates opportunities for accelerated math. - no grouping students by ability - no Algebra for 8th graders - no Calculus for high schoolers

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@jhong

james hong

6 years

@arampell @Suhail Most western exercise routines are optimized for strength/speed/endurance, not for longevity. The societies that live the longest don't actually weight train or run marathons, they mostly just walk a lot. And eat healthy foods (but not too much of it)

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@garrytan Correction: "every record has been adjusted..". Destroy implies violence which is not ok. You should know this, didn't you learn anything at the Farm? ;)

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

I had no idea Tony won the ACM International programming contest world finals back in 1993 when he was a sophomore, along with Craig Silverstein of Google fame. I mean I knew he was super smart, but come on. ht @jenny8lee

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@garrytan Hey in your video you say 300k->2.4bn, that's 8000x. Was this a test to see who pays attention? Did I win a prize? Lol

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@Purswell14 @wesyang There is no mathematically correct answer to this question, this question is about risk preference. Expected value presumes the utility of all dollars is the same, but for many it is not, $1,000 is worth a lot more to someone with $0 than to someone with $999,000

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@jhong

james hong

5 years

@justinkan I pretty much did the same a long time ago, for similar reasons. The most bizarre thing is you will find a few people not happy about it that will try to get you to drink with them... I think because your quitting means they have to face their own alcoholism. It's weird.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

Fuck. Need that edit button. We all agree on that I guess?

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@sudha_lakshmi @garrytan History is very different when you weren't there. Yes people generally thought all these deals were nuts. Google was the 20th search engine, Sean spotted fb not Peter and both are good pickers with zero venture cred at the time, and accel round seen as crazy price by everyone

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@jhong

james hong

5 months

These are the funnest type of kids to invest in. Don't give me the there's no such thing as a 10x engineer bullshit. This is where they come from

@jfbrly

Jack Burlinson

5 months

In case you were wondering just how cracked the team @cognition_labs is... This was the CEO ( @ScottWu46 ) 14 years ago.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@heychriscurtis @DavidSacks Definitely true, if we count the time she looked through the swag, went to the cafeteria for vegan panna cotta, and weny to the place to do a face mask as "working time" lol

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@jhong

james hong

5 years

@paulg @Aazarshad I don't think Paul is saying hire nobody. Just do it as smartly/efficiently as possible. Be cheap is just another way of saying don't waste money. Spend the money like it's your own. Don't spend it just because you have it.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@sama Valuable lesson in life: you don't get credit for stuff you don't productize and ship. As a famous movie once said, "if you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook"

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@jhong

james hong

28 days

Believe it or not kids, there was a time in the earliest days of the Internet and BBS's when people were all by default genuinely nice to each other.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

Despite experienced folks screaming armageddon from the rooftops, it feels like some people are in denial about being true. If you weren't in tech in the dotcom era, try to imagine the absolute worst scenario environment you can, and then trust us.. it can be 10x worse.

@DavidSacks

David Sacks

2 years

Startups with high growth & moderate burn will get funded through the downturn. Startups with moderate growth & high burn will not get funded through the downturn.

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

Friend saw this on an email list. Can someone put this on an actual Tshirt site? I want to buy one to remember this insane week.

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@jhong

james hong

5 years

I wonder if people expecting an existing car company to create a Tesla killer are also still waiting for Nokia to come out with their iOS killer too.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@Chad_Hurley Is this some kind of an attack on me??!?!!? Fuck. You.

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james hong

2 years

@TurnerNovak @paulg

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@pmarca No idea but did you see this?

@nextdoorsv

Next door in Silicon Valley

2 years

The cycle of life

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

@Dennis_Hart @dieworkwear Oftentimes, class does not equal class either.

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

@Carnage4Life This list needs to include BBS and CompuServe!

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

The maximum possible loss on a long position is 100%. The maximum possible loss on a short position is infinity.

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@jhong

james hong

5 months

Never prouder to be a Taiwanese-American.

@DrJimFan

Jim Fan

5 months

Jensen Huang is the new Taylor Swift

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@jhong

james hong

4 months

I've been driving with FSD a lot lately in fact this past week I took it down the 17 to Santa Cruz and back. Let's say I personally drive with an error-free rate of 95% and FSD drives at 80%. You could let it drive and not pay attention, and yes it would be an 80% drive. But I

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

At least 50% of the business advice I give to people ends up with me making an analogy to sex and dating. Not sure if that is because it's true or because it's just more fun. The analogies are accurate though and it's definitely more fun.

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@jhong

james hong

2 months

@devahaz @Duderichy Different people have different goals especially as a function of age. I benched 305 as a teen but now I just workout to maintain a much lower level of core strength and I don't seek to progress upwards in weight. Going hard at my age is just begging for injury.

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@jhong

james hong

5 years

@naval You need to meet more people, dude.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@dtrinh Or even better, how about we treat people well today regardless of potential scenarios tomorrow.. that seems better.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

One of the things I have come to terms with over the last 20 years is the understanding that almost every huge missed opportunity I've had is my own fault. It's easy to blame circumstances/others, but ultimately the blame boils down to me. But also, it's ok to make mistakes.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@Basti @paulg @elonmusk For a lot of people, it ends up basically being that 10 min window or never! Their email boxes are basically like twitter feeds, neverending and continuously fed new content

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@davidu It looks like a celebrity fridge from MTV cribs where the fridge is kept fully stocked by an employee

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

Pachinko is such a fantastic show, and the cover of The Cure's "In Between Days" in the latest episode is great. This production is masterful.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@elonmusk @Tesmanian_com I don't get the overreaction to the bankruptcy comment. "If we don't pull shit off then we might go bankrupt". That's literally every startup in the world taking meaningful risks. Sending a reminder to employees that they are still a startup is not a signal of anything new.

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

@nikitabier It exists, using USPS you can send this weird thing called a letter. Slow and more effort, but it can reach any address in the world!

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@Jason @POTUS @BrianDeeseNEC @Tesla I'll take "Why people hate politicians" for $200

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

I'm not sure I am a believer it can happen, but just want to point out that if it is true tech entrepreneurship can expand outside the bay area at the level of success found in silicon valley, that is a fantastic thing to happen for the health of our nation. I'm rooting for it.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

For people who don't get NFTs, ask yourself why some people pay $1000 for a $100 bottle of alcohol at a club, or why you might spend $300 on jeans instead of buying a pair from Costco made in the same factory just with a different label. Signaling is the product.

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@jhong

james hong

5 years

Piece of advice I just gave someone that I learned 20 years ago.. if you really want your immigrant parents to be proud of you, get press in their native country where their friends will see it. There's no higher parental currency than the friend brag that comes to them.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

Downturns are the best time to start something if you can live on savings. Eat ramen and drive towards profits as hard you can. Less noise/competition, recruiting easier, costs way lower. You won't be told to scale in unnatural ways that create bloat. Now is the time.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@paulg Hasn't this always been a privilege of FU money? :)

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@alexandr_wang Playing video games is the norm now though.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@harjanbrand Name something that got popular and sustained in silicon valley first that did not carry over to the general public. The point is not that all things get big, it's that silicon valley is not as weird as people think, it is just earlier adopter.

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

@chia_project Congrats @bramcohen ! We're old(er) now but still causing trouble :)

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@Duinhiron @wapodavenport They are talking about how far they flew relative to earth while on the ISS over the 160+ days..

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@PrimeVideo Tell me you weren't alive in the 90s without telling me you weren't alive in the 90s.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@nikitabier If you invite 30 girls to a party, 9 will show up.. and then 50 guys will show up.

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

@immad Ice cream glove.

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

@blader "I'll see you at the hackathon this weekend!" - not investor. "I'm in Fiji until end of August. Set up a meeting with my admin." -investor

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

This practice isn't only useful to help engineering understand what problems their users (the drivers) have, it's useful to root out the people who think they are above understanding their users. They should pair this policy with Tony Hsieh's idea of bribing people to quit.

@SFGate

SFGATE

3 years

DoorDash, the food delivery app based out of San Francisco, is requiring all its nondelivery employees, including CEO Tony Xu, to do a “dash” once a month — and some employees are seemingly furious.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@sama fear of death

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@Jason On #2 we might also want to ask ourselves why a college education is so expensive to begin with

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@jhong

james hong

1 year

@tunguz Isn't this basically same as distribution of people in the US?

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@jhong

james hong

4 years

I have some really old embarrassing pics of @mlevchin that I've saved for occasions such as these, but I'm going to hold back. Today seems like a good day to put his pic up on though (those who know, know!). Really proud of you Max.

Homepage | Athelas

Thousands of healthcare orgs use Athelas software to run intelligent medical billing, launch telehealth programs, and provide better patient care.

www.athelas.com

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@xtinacomputes Just do what you want to do with your time. Provided you will be able to afford a roof over your head and have food on the table no matter what path you pick, choosing how you spend your finite time is the only decision that matters.

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

@psyto I think people underestimate Bram's motivation to just want to help build the future. Most people in crypto just want to pump their own positions, but I think bram is genuinely more motivated to contribute tech that he thinks helps move the world forward

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@jhong

james hong

3 years

Society totally undervalues the benefits of proper ventilation indoors. Not just for covid but also for general alertness and cognitive function. Companies and schools should be piping in fresh air, it's probably the cheapest way to get a healthy boost in productivity.

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@jhong

james hong

2 years

@Trader2020Money @WholeMarsBlog Only time will tell if Lucid makes it past Chapter 7!

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