When you interview a startup and think "they seem likely to succeed," it's hard not to fund them. And yet, financially at least, there is only one kind of success: they're either going to be one of the really big winners or not, and if not it doesn't matter whether you fund them, because even if they succeed the effect on your returns will be insignificant.

What this means is that YC is not looking for sustainable businesses, but homeruns. Which is entirely fair, that's the business they're in.

But you and your startup are in a different business: Your measure of success isn't the same as Ycombinators. If your startup ends up making you a million dollars a year you will probably be very happy and rightfully call yourself a success. But as the post points out that won't be enough for YC since they need to fund a lot of other startups that will inevitably fail out of their minority share. Thus they need a much bigger success.

If you get turned down for YC it might well be that your idea is just a sound business idea that YC doesn't consider just crazy enough that it might make them a billion dollars. But that doesn't mean that it won't make you a million.

Paul, you're sounding like a venture capitalist who is worried about whether he can find investors for his next fund.

I would posit that the people whose opinions you should care about are potential founders; and that their primary concern is themselves, not the performance of a fund (oops, I mean class) as a whole. You're damn right that it would hurt YC's brand if 70% of each class didn't survive past Demo Day -- because for an individual founder, success is pretty much binary, and having a 50% chance of becoming a millionaire is more attractive than having a 5% chance of becoming a billionaire, despite the 100-fold reduction in mean wealth.

You may be in in the business of farming black swans, but if they're all you worry about you'll find that all the swans end up laying their eggs elsewhere.

For those that don't play the game you have allies(who are called blues) and enemies(reds), and neutrals(greys) TEST(reddit) and Goons(SomethingAwful) always would joke about their ability to shoot blues(allies) for fun. But it would always require a trip to Vile Rat to sort it out.

I didn't know the man personally but I have respected him for a long time in a game that I really enjoy and from that I honestly feel personally connected to him. I have a lot of friends in this game who actually are personally connected to him.

Eve is fun, eve is empires with consequences, eve is taking a risk and losing it all. Something I think the traditional HN crowd would enjoy.

RIP Sean

And condolences to your family and your many friends around the world and all the people that have seen your messages, watched your diplomacy and looked up to your lead.

EDIT: for people up voting me for this. I appreciate the thought but I don't feel comfortable collecting virtual points for this. Instead of an up vote please just post a reply.

(12:54:09 PM) vile_rat: assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures

This is Sept 11, 2012.

This (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/20129112108...) article updated at 7:02(GMT?) reports the death. The video in that story was uploaded to youtube by Al Jazzera 9 hours ago which would be midnight Bengazhi time (EET) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcm_Ss0ExZg.

So at some point roughly after 00:00 EET when the Al Jazeera footage was shot, where we see what is described as 1500 protesters and thousands of riot police, and 7:00 EET an American IT worker is shot and killed in a consulate.

I don't see who gains from staging protests on a sensitive day and letting an American get killed. Of all the people who would be at a consulate the IT guy happens to be the unlucky one. I don't think this was a 'normal' protest.

Corresponding Middle East thread (go to last page for coverage of the incident): http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339...

There is an article in Eurogamer about him: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-12-us-official-kil...

Sounds like a man who was good at his job. I feel a lot better about the State Department knowing they hire people like this. The comments say he had a family, I hope they're taken care of. RIP.

Why? Because Libya was stable under Khadaffi (as stable as those kind of places get) and people had it relatively very good. And yet he was portrayed like some Dr. Evil plotting to takeover the world, so that the western masses will cheer when he got toppled and foreign interests get the oil and natural resources.

And the very thing was hailed as a "triumph of democracy" etc (what a democracy, when foreign leaders cheer when an adversary is beaten to a pulp -- gone are the days when even Nazi generals were treated with respect by the western officers when captured).

Well, it didn't last long, now, as predicted, Libya will get to be another unstable, civil-war, dogmatic islam nightmarish country.

I wish DoS had more "continuous" force protection levels; they seem to go from ~nothing (relying on host nation) to absurd overkill, with nothing in between, unlike DoD and others who have multiple levels.

Didn't expect to see this on HN. Interesting the differences in comments between here and /r/eve.

Looking back 6 years later, it's fascinating how we touch each others lives through these communities. While I never knew VR, I can't help but to feel connected to this State Dept official in Libya. RIP.

RIP.

I am not going to link it because nobody should have to see that. Especially not anybody who knew him.

Every picture that could mean someone is identified is usually blurred out before being published, but not today apparently. Seeing the picture made me feel sick and disgusted with how the media operates.

I did not know Sean but as an former EVE player I have heard of him.

My thoughts go out to his family and loved ones, and to those of you that knew him. I am truly sorry for your loss. :(

RIP Sean

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19570254

What can we do to stop things like this from happening again? There's clearly no quick-fix overnight solution, but there should be some set of actions we can take to slowly reduce/eventually eliminate this kind of violence. Any ideas?

https://aboutmybrowser.com/dog_walrus_banana_door

If you figure out a set of 1000 short words that are not too close to each other and easy to pronounce, four of them gives you a trillion possible combinations. If you window it so that the first word is always the same on a given day and keep a record of that list, you can differentiate a billion combinations in a day and have a good check that the information was gathered recently (or else is a thousand or more days old.) http://www.manythings.org/vocabulary/lists/l/ will get you common words, as a start.

"Thanks for reporting the issue. Would you mind following this link so that we can get some information about your web browser? https://aboutmybrowser.com/?to=mysite.com/browserhook

Or better, let me sign up for an account and register a named webhook with you, as in, https://aboutmybrowser.com/mysite, that would automatically forward information from anybody hitting it to the webhook url I'd configured at mysite.com.

That would rock.

Our version is at http://www.browser-details.com. When you sign up you get your own subdomain - or you define a CNAME under your own domain [premium]. You can upload your logo, define a list of recipients, and your clients can send the browser details directly to one of those recipients/departments.

We still need to change the color scheme (I wanted to launch at the end of the week, so it's straight Bootstrap for now) and finish the translation to German. Also: Premium version!

Feel free to be a beta tester! Also: all the best to the OP, great idea! ;-)

[1] http://supportdetails.com/?sender_name=example&sender=em...

Lynx on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1909674851

w3m on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/1942341369

links on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3183933151

elinks on Linux: https://aboutmybrowser.com/3918182904

Also, it works just fine on Firefox with NoScript blocking JavaScript from your site.

Also, why are you using (ugly) unofficial icons for some of the browsers (Opera for example)? :)

For comparison, here's the official Firefox branding page: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/brand/identity/

I have cookies and javascript turned off in Chrome on Android. This apparently is too much to handle as I keep getting the standard rails request failure page.

I switched to the default android browser where I run JavaScript and accept cookies and was told I was running Chrome on Linux.

I then went back to Chrome and hit "request desktop site" which just changes the user agent string and was told I had Chrome on Linux. But also was told that I needed to turn on JavaScript to see the rest of the details. Why? It's just text.

  Screen Width        1440
  Screen Height       900
  Browser Width       2560
  Browser Height      1368

Iceweasel 15 (rebadged Firefox) on Linux.

I mean.. Sure there's probably quite a bit of remnants from the Windows NT codebase here and there, but it's probably not very useful for reporting to support etc.

I'm trying to track down an IE issue and would love for our support team to get customers to use something like this. But we need more info to make it easier to reproduce the problem.

https://aboutmybrowser.com/647576433

The app is primarily for people doing customer support to understand if their users are using supported browsers and right plugins (like flash etc).

Info link - https://aboutmybrowser.com/?nr no-redirect since we want it to be zero click for your users)

There are a number of firefox add ons that do the same, this one has site specific settings which is exactly what I needed and it works great:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/uacontrol/

I'm browsing on a second monitor

http://imgur.com/eYdlo,XjsOH

EDIT: I am on ArchLinux if that helps.

https://aboutmybrowser.com/2691400901

I've often had family and friends ask me why some site or service doesn't work but they don't know if their browsers are up to date. I would love to start by directing them to a site like this and telling them to upgrade if they aren't using the latest version of their browser.

The HN community has always taken pride in being careful, analytical and data-led. If someone were to advocate an unproven cancer therapy based on anecdote, they would rightly be harshly criticised.

The evidence base for SSRIs is extremely poor. The most favourable metastudies indicate only a very mild benefit, similar to that of many non-drug interventions like exercise or conversation with friends. Other metastudies show only a weak effect in the most severely depressed patients. There is known to be a very serious problem of publication bias, with major statistical irregularities indicative of the non-publication of unfavourable trials.

We feel confident in making statements about the nature of depression, but in truth we know almost nothing with any degree of confidence. The long-held serotonin hypothesis has proven to be completely baseless and there is no good evidence that depression has a neurochemical etiology. fMRI data is often used to make the case that depression has neurological rather than psychological origin, but this is very poor reasoning; The brain is not merely a passive vessel for the mind and environmental influences can cause substantial structural changes to the brain, as seen in chess players, sportsmen and myriad other groups.

It is entirely possible that the idea of depression is itself a cause of depression, in much the same way that the western presentation anorexia nervosa has been imported into Chinese culture and is slowly replacing the far more common indigenous eating disorder, which presented as idiopathic digestive problems rather than a psychological aversion to food based in body image. It is entirely plausible that the belief that low mood is a medical disorder which cannot be ameliorated by the patient is itself pathological.

I believe that the only statement we can make about depression with any confidence is this: We aren't sure if "clinical depression" describes a phenomena that can be meaningfully thought of and treated as a disease, but we do know that if you do something that you believe will make you feel better, you will feel better.

Years. Call it 6, with bouts every 8 months. One semester of 'A's, one semester of 'F's.

Of course this caused me to fail classes and lost me friends, opportunities and respect. But every time I recovered I thought to myself "Wow, that was awful. Glad I'll never do that again!" I had to lose my fiancée and my funding in grad school before I finally accepted to the fact that this might be a problem. That there might be a cause other than being lazy. Because, you know, laziness makes people curl up in an empty bathtub and cry for 24 hours. That's normal, right?

Thanks to Wil for posting this. It's important to reach out to sufferers as well as their friends and family. It takes a lot to recognize when you or someone you know has a problem, even when in retrospect it's blindingly obvious.

I have experienced this first hand. I have attempted suicide twice in my life and have gotten help for it. Because of my experience, I think I have come out of it with a different view which is this:

Suicide is somebody's choice and theirs only to make. Does it affect others? Yes, of course. But I still believe that it is up to the individual to make that choice. I remember thinking after my attempts and hearing how it is a "selfish way out" that the my family too, was being selfish, for I was suffering and medication and therapy just wasn't doing anything yet they selfishly wanted me in their lives just as I wanted to end my life and stop all of the pain.

A few other things that I just want to throw out there because I'm experience an odd flood of emotion. The assumption that suicide is bad is solely based on the notion that life is better than what lies beyond, which is something we just don't know. Also, people call suicide the cowards way out or giving up. I just don't see that. To me, it is just not delaying the inevitable. We all die. It is a fact.

--

Edits: changed "ALL existing web applications" to "ALL modern web applications," which better reflects what I intended to say; added a bit of context in response to robhawkes's comment below.

This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS

What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues�"and IIUC Gecko has some of those already.

[1]: http://www.slashgear.com/hp-ipad-2-webos-testing-double-touc...

There is a reason MBAs are taught market analysis. Its important to position your product for maximum effect (usually maximum profit, but that may not be the case here)

The arguments for FirefoxOS seem to be

1. It's OSS
2. It's Web-technologies only
3. It's aimed at the "emerging" markets' mobile users
4. It runs on cheaper hardware better than the competition

1 and 2 are great. And no-one but us cares, except in 20 years when no child has even seen a line of code because OSS gets wiped out as all PCs are replaced by mobile devices.

(This is the reason I want this to succeed, and I want laptops to be certified FreeBSD compliant. It matters!)

Anyway this is about market positioning, not OSS. So.

Its a well-known truism that don't be in the middle of any market - you get squeezed from both ends.

The emerging markets have adapted enormously well to only having SMS and no smartphones (see anyone in Mumbai). That is not going to go away, so the true bottom end of the market is SMS capable devices. They will probably just give them away.

If Firefox OS says we are not as good as iOS then thay are squarely putting themselves in the middle of the market.

Aim higher folks. The world is not segmented into feature phones and smartphones. It is segmented into one market "I want to use a networked mobile app to get laid or get cash." You will never be the bottom end - that belongs to sending cash by SMS, or selling your harvest with a text.

So its the top of the market - what the cool kids have.

And so, 1 & 2 might just be our saviours. Apple made a great new product that was catnip to the coolest kids in the West. Firefox OS is geeky cool - it might just appeal to the coolest kids not in the West. And they will want to buy the 'best' phone - aim high folks.

I hope you succeed.

Sell it to them as an alternative to Android. That's all they need to know if they want it or not. If they want more, you can go elsewhere.

So in essence, the case sets your phone back a generation or two.

He is taking this claim seriously. He doesn't necessarily believe it's correct (presumably he's a bit careful in what he says to the press), but he seems to think it has a shot, and is worth paying attention to.

The proof will be well beyond me, but the conjecture itself is pretty accessible, as are many of its connections.

This line from the article was confusing:

> Fifteen and 17 are square free-numbers, but 16 and 18 �" being divisible by 42 and 32, respectively �" are not.

but that's supposed to be 4^2 and 3^2, respectively.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abc_conjecture

Obviously I'm reading this wrong -- because as stated (and assuming that a, b, and c are positive integers) this seems trivially true -- sqp(abc) cannot be zero, r cannot be negative, and c is finite, so therefore sqp(abc)^r/c is greater than zero, QED.

Does Nature mean that the quantity does not approach zero as r tends to infinity (or some such)? Their example sure doesn't seem to indicate such.

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/106560/philosophy-behind-m...

[1] http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/Inter-universal%20...

> Mochizuki entered Princeton University at age 16 and received a Ph.D. under the supervision of Gerd Faltings at age 22. In 2002, he became a professor at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences in the Kyoto University.

Very impressive.

For every ε > 0, are there only finitely many triples of coprime positive integers
a + b = c
such that
c > d (1+ε),
where d denotes the product of the distinct prime factors of abc?

Just the phrase "deep connection between prime numbers" sounds really interesting, so, if this were true would there be any practical application of this in the next (N) years that would not be possible without this proof?

That means that if someone wants to check if the proof is right, he'll first have to learn how to use all these objects.

I'll guess we won't have a tested proof for some years.

[1] [SPA] http://gaussianos.com/posible-demostracion-de-la-veracidad-d...

http://jeffreypaulwheeler.com/Masters%20Thesis.pdf

[edit - linked the wrong discussion]

If you're in the rare situation of using GoDaddy DNS but don't use them as a registrar, then you're in luck. Simply sign up with a new DNS provider. They will give you their DNS servers which you need to set as the DNS servers that are authoritative for your domain. Then sign into your registrar and change the authoritative DNS servers for your domain. There will be a propagation delay but once it's done you're all set.

If you are in the extremely common situation of having registered your domain through GoDaddy and also use their DNS service, then you have a problem because to move to another DNS provider you need to sign into GoDaddy.com to make the change I've described above i.e. change which DNS provider is authoritative for your domain. You can't do this until GoDaddy.com is back online. So what I suggest is that you sign up for a new DNS provider and then keep checking GoDaddy.com. As soon as it comes back online, sign in and make the change to your new provider as quick as you can.

Other data:

Whois requests for godaddy domains are currently failing because whois.godaddy.com is offline due to name resolution failure.

Godaddy's twitter feed is a good source of updates, although they are claiming to be making progress and all my godaddy DNS hosted domains are still offline, so it seems to be more marketing speak than real data: https://twitter.com/godaddy

As mentioned, Anonymous seems to be behind it as three tweets on their twitter account seem to indicate: https://twitter.com/AnonOpsLegion

I don't think the scale of this attack is fully understood yet. According to the CBC, GoDaddy hosts over 5 million websites (not sure if that's DNS, registrar, etc) so expect this to be big news and potentially the next political football.

Edit: And finally, http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ is down for everyone because it's over quota. Via Reddit which is also covering this: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/znvwk/godaddycom...

Also, do backups, use good password practices, and everything else that everyone knows and the lazy will still fail to do.

Oh, 20 seconds in and a downvote. I can take them, I didn't ignore the last 8 problems GoDaddy has been responsible for lately and am not hurting from this outage.

Edit: Page 6 includes confirmation from a (supposed) Blizzard representative that this is for NDA leak tracking: http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/world-of-warcraft/world-of-w...

So your account id and realm is available as a watermark in the screen shots, what nefarious problem does that cause? (I can imagine it helps identify griefers and people who cheat and brag)

If this was nefarious, I doubt they would give you such an easy way to disable it. Though I am curious what the default value of screenshotQuality is.

In any case, steganography remains awesome, as ever:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

So why wouldnt they encrypt it? Not enough space?

It starts like this. How far from the day companies do this with the images you take with your mobile, with the videos you stream, etc.? The world will turn into a DRM fest.

1) Automatically attaching image galleries to the Armory* profile of characters based on account id

2) Easy to give credit to players providing screenshots for Blizzard run contests

3) Opens the Armory API a bit more

Obviously, these can all be exploited due to the "openness" of the screenshot format.

*For the WoW illiterate: The Armory is a public database of player's characters, items, achievements, etc...

I don't fault them for not mentioning it in release notes - if I make a change to my apps that the user won't notice, I don't mention it in the release notes.

To the extent that they introduced a security bug, they should admit it and fix it. But that's a technical lapse, not a moral lapse.

While I applaud the tenacity in prospecting and divulging the methods at which Blizzard has employed to create such "tracking" "watermarks," I highly doubt this is to discourage or indict anyone. Quite frequently, screenshots are used during support requests.

As the author states, "we [...] verified that there is no pattern included in high quality screenshots." I find this highly suggestive that Blizzard was rather interested in an easier way to debug their program, and the mode slipped out in production.

There's a work around, please remove your tinfoil hats.

Paranoid stoners is my guess.

2) I hope I never actually see anyone using this on a website, attempting to make things "easier." Between Scribd and Slideshare, and Adobe trying to force its hideous crash-prone plugins into my browser, there are already enough people making a mess out of what is one of the more well-thought-out aspects of OS X. Give me a link to a PDF, which Preview.app handles in wonderful fashion any day.

3) It would make a sweet browser plugin on browser-in-a-box platforms and other platforms that don't have a nice native implementation (which upon further reading seems to be the goal).

1) In Firefox 15, the demo page adds two new options to my right click menu: Rotate clockwise and Rotate Counter-clockwise. Is Firefox recognizing pdf.js (since it appears that they are related) or pdf.js adding menu options? I didn't know JS could do that.

2) Isn't Javascript an embeddable language inside PDFs? I'm pretty sure I read that javascript is used, not necessarily for animations but for run-time dynamic layouts. If that's true, is pdf.js "eval"-ing that javascript?

So alas, I'm still searching for an easy way to convert HTML to PDF server or client side. I haven't looked at the code yet but I do wonder if one could get that functionality out of this if they wrestled with it enough. (I know there are other ways to turn HTML to PDF but a client or server side script to do so really is the best solution for my situation).

This ... is mind blowing.

While I can't imagine myself using it anytime soon, it's clear that web applications are improving at a far faster rate then native applications and, with t large enough, the first derivative means that web will eclipse native.

This seems like an academic exercise at the moment; it's to prove that you can replicate a native experience only.

However, it seems that this could be vastly improved by playing to the strengths of the internet. The only online apps that have beat native ones so far have been because of cloud storage and collaboration. First, use filepicker.io or something so this can open my online files. Second, bake some collaboration into it.

[1] http://jspdf.com/

currentPage is undefined http://mozilla.github.com/pdf.js/web/viewer.js Line 285

1) It's too difficult to remember all the tricks to make it useful, and the cost of memorizing tricks that I saw in the first screencast isn't worth the efficiency it provides.

2) It's too difficult for new users to remember the tricks that are supposedly "better." It's a lot like Python vs. Perl -- Perl is a really smart and clever language, but you can type just a few characters more to write Python and it'll be a lot clearer as to what's going on.

The one exception to all of this is the MySQL stuff I saw. The MySQL prompt has sucked for a long, long time, and building SQL queries is something you do iteratively anyway.

All of the above said, I still think this is pretty neat. But I won't use it.

The “hero unit” at the top should contain a big link to install it (appropriately worded to indicate that it's just sending you to instructions in a README on GitHub). Another big button link to the screencasts would probably help, since most people won't understand what Xiki is without them. Alternatively, have a “features” page with a list of features and large, static screenshot demonstrating each of them.

But aside from that, this looks fantastic, it'd be interesting to see if more text editors could be ported to it (e.g. Sublime Text 2)

The screencast narrator asks a number of intriguing "what if you could XYZ" questions, but it doesn't actually answer them, leaving the listener to come up with useful applications. Well, what if I could do all those things? I would like to have heard more about what higher-level problem(s) these solutions address, and why these are better solutions than what I'm already using. Something motivated the developer(s) to write this, but I can't immediately tell what that motivation was.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4483750

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3506613

As with the last time I tried it, it still doesn't work. Crashes right away trying to read from some tmp file.

I tire of trying out software with new bright ideas not informed by a knowledge of the best of the old bright ideas.

EDIT: added the 4 words in italics.

I've got a hobby project that I work on on and off that's similar (although I'm a vim guy no evil mouse clicks) with a heavy org-mode influence. Some of the features you demo in your screencasts are inspired.

I'll be following Xiki closely and probably stealing some of your ideas for my own project.

Good work, I'm glad to see people experimenting with new ideas in modern keyboard based power user interfaces.

Would it be possible to tap into GUI applications via OSX UI Scripting, and maybe mirroring the app's menus with Wiki menus?

i think if they limit their focus on have one shell to replace anything that have a shell ... yet offer a better shell experience, they will have a winner

i believe they could be going to too many features so far that those comments comparing it to emacs seem to have a point ...

Are we going to see more of a return to Modal editing?

Looks like a neat idea. Not entirely clear what the "cmd-return" is supposed to do. Run a command?

Finally, before I even consider opening my laptop to code their idea, I want some paltry measure of idea validation. Are you selling a product? Good, find someone who will pay you to do the task manually before we program it. Are you looking to give the service away and monetize the user base? Good, get 5000 emails from a landing page describing your idea, or get 1000 followers on Twitter for your idea's account.

If they can do all this in a day or even a week, then they're quality co-founder material. Any longer and it's a judgement call. Most won't get past step one, and you certainly didn't want them as a co-founder.

Usually, I get the sense from these kind of emails that they think the idea is so great, that just by itself, it's more valuable than the time you will spend implementing it (or even comparable).

Some of them then offer money, which can be traded for things that are tasty. They are the ones I usually end up working with.

--------------

Requirements.

1. requisition an Amazon EC2 instance for me.

No other steps.

--------------

then a tech guy on IRC will do it for $5. Next, you want to get someone to do the following. I need a programmer to put a plain rails installation on my amazon ec2 instance.

--------------

Requirements.

1. Install rails on my amazon server.

No other steps, no configuration.

--------------

Then someone from IRC will do it for you, shittily, for $10.

Next, you want to do the hard part. "I need someone to create a page in my rails installation that says Enter your email address in the box below. It doesn't have to work. Like this: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_for...

--------------

Requirements doc:

1. The following code translated into a rails app that doesn't have to do anything:

- http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_for...

There are no other requirements.

--------------

Someone will do it for you for $5. Next you would say:

"I need to get this rails form working." and link to the page showing the non-working form.

--------------

Requirements doc.

1. Whenever a user submits their name and address on the following rails page __________ it should be added to a database connected to rails.

There are no other requirements.

--------------

Someone on IRC will do it for $10.

Next you would requisition a non-working table of other names who have used that field. Next you requisition someone to get the table working.

Next you requisition a change from "name and email address" to the REAL point of your form. Maybe you're building an online trading platform where people can enter information about collectable turds, and you will be monetizing this.

--------------

Requirements doc.

1. Change "name" and "email address" to two different fields I give you, keeping the application working.

No other requirements.

--------------

Someone will do it for you for $10.

In this way you can boil the chicken slowly, and by the time you've blown through $85 you'll have a complete turd-trading platform with built-in recurring billing and a % commission your turd platform takes on every transaction.

Yes, not everyone can pull it off. Your main risk is that you have to kind of screen the fifty-sixty programmers who will be comming in and out of your amazon instance.

But with a little dedication, you can pretty much get unlimited work for free and get to keep 100% of it. The point is to only do one super-simple thing at a time.

I guess you have to have some technical understanding of what's happening behind the scenes to pull this off though. Maybe enroll in a quick seminar :)

Good luck with your turd platform.

Getting on the same page, and staying on the same page is the defining challenge of partnerships.

If reports of how much YC focuses on the co-founder relationship are true, I think it's a big part of the secret.

The healthiest partnership that I enjoy is based on a tough/fair love approach of mincing no words, but having a deep, deep respect and trust for the others abilities and judgement based on one thing: We know what we know, and we know what we don't know, and we don't bs.

We work to get the hell out of each others way and instead support and push each other forward so we keep moving, inward, onward, and upward. I want to make sure in partnership, that 1+1 = 11, not 2. If our collective footprint isn't larger than any two normal people coming together, the leaps we have to take will take that much more work.

When finding a partner, one relationship for me has been forming since high school, through university, and now a friend doing some consulting for me. We have solved complex problems with differing opinions for over 15 years. I have found the bliss of knowing everything that we build will be built at least as good as I would have imagined to do it. (I code or can sell, but not both at the same time very easily). If he's hell bent on doing something a particular way to be kinder to ourselves in the future, great. He's usually hell bent on avoiding premature optimization, though, so again, the balance is there in a way we both agree. Having the chance to work together on in consulting, with one of us

I don't care to argue details that my partner understands better. If there's a scenario I need explained until I get it, I focus on asking for input and teaching on that. Likewise, my partner treats me the same.

Partnerships reveal not just the good, but the bad and ugly. You need to know how your partner will be at your side and have your back in times of challenge, stress, trouble and disagreement. Stress, and disagreement is guaranteed. How you both approach resolving and being in a place of mutual agreement is critical. Really, it's about learning to communicate early, often, and openly. If you can't do that, like any marriage, the relationship suffers from what it could have accomplished. You need to know how to disagree and be able to constantly say "You might be right / I don't know / Let's find out." without fear.

Edit: I do get a reasonable number of cold(ish) recruitment emails, but they mostly seem to be for real jobs. I'm not seriously worried about not receiving lame proposals, although I appreciate the sympathetic thoughts :-)

Although, wanting to have a pet geek to do your bidding is entirely understandable. Heck, I've been guilty of wanting that myself! And, I guess if I had the dough (or the charisma) I could have one. But an idea is an insulting offer - like offering $20 for your house.

There are tons of people with muddy wishful thinking that can not execute even if you put the gun to their heads. This statement covers both commercial and technical side. If these people approach you, say no... unless they can offer money for your efforts.

Only the minority have required knowledge, experience, focus, will and smarts to execute on any kind of idea and build a proper business. It easy to recognise such people [based on hiring 101] - look at their past successes. If these people approach you, say yes... even if you are offered shmequity [but check the legal docs].

I have a feeling that most of such articles are driven by the ego thing, and help people to validate their self-worth. Not sure this the most effective way for self-validation.

My another feeling is the SV people are living in a kind of rosy bubble and are constantly patting each other in back to help their view of the world hold together. Well, may be do something of value?

P.S.: of course the above does have certain generalizations, but smart people shall have not hurt feeling, yes?

First, I think the OP's response was perfectly acceptable. Its important as a technical co-founder to determine quickly what the "suit" can bring to the table although I do think he left out some valuable skills like marketing, user adoption, team building. He did include 'industry experience' which is critical. (edit: I also recall my co-founder then asking me situational questions like how I would market x app, who would use it, pricing, etc to see if I've thought through the process)

Second, one aspect that I see missing often is chemistry. Over the last few years I've attempted multiple projects with several different people and I can't stress how important chemistry is with your co-founder and/or team. I actually really enjoy hanging out with my co-founder and consider him a friend and we regularly hang out (with each other's families) and that kind of trust carries over to our work. Trust is something you can't quantify so for those in search of co-founders, don't just look at credentials but look at the person too.

My last thought is that although you're a 'suit' like I am, you need to make an effort. There is a general curve that says in the idea phase the majority of the workload is done by the technical co-founder. While true, I do my best to try and offset that. It gives me no joy to sit on my ass while my buddy is coding to 3am every night. How would it make you feel if you're busting your ass pitching, getting customers, and doing cust dev while they are at happy hour? So to respond to this I do my best. I've picked up basic design skills (PS/AI/FW), I've gotten his help to install ruby and learn basic HTML/CSS so I can make easy changes. I alternate every few days from doing something design centric, customer oriented (get feedback/lead gen), to thinking about our product direction.

So my take aways are: ask questions, figure out if you can work together, and make sure everyone is willing to put in the work to make it happen.

There was a post like this on HN some time ago (a few months or perhaps a year) which I found well put, not too harsh while shedding light from the author's perspective. Does anyone remember this article?

Edit: I found this[1], it might be the one but I think I remember a better one. This one[2] about NDAs is also good.

[1] http://martingryner.com/no-i-wont-be-your-technical-co-found...

[2] http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-...

Sometimes between reading stuff like HN and working on code all day I feel like I'm a bit too close to everything to really evaluate ideas rationally. Every time I've had I can usually think of 100 reasons to shoot it down and make it seem like more effort than it's worth.

The problem I guess is that most of these ideas aren't really that good because the person thinking of them hasn't really considered the effort and cost involved.

Reminds me of being back in school where a handful of us had learned very basic BASIC programming. Naturally we decided "shit, let's make an awesome game and be rich!". Of course such a project attracted entire legions of hangers on who wanted to be "game designers" or "level designers". Nobody thought that making a few shareware text-adventures or sprite based games would be cool, everybody came with ideas about how to make the next Doom or Sonic except even more ambitious.

It is hard to be an entrepreneur when you can't make things. If you're good at selling, you still need something to sell.

It is always better to have something in your pocket than 50% of nothing.

It is impossible to provide effective braking on a skateboard. The rider has absolutely no means of impeding their forward movement, so even if the board has effective brakes it's just going to throw them off. This is a minor problem if you're rolling around a skatepark, but it's a Big Fucking Deal if you're commuting in traffic.

It might be conceivable to overlook this failing if it weren't for the fact that tiny unsuspended wheels have almost no capacity to absorb bumps and road defects. Anyone who skated as a teenager will remember being thrown to the ground by a small piece of gravel stopping the wheel.

Add 2000w of tractive power and city traffic and you've got a recipe for disaster. Someone is going to die, their family will sue and they will quite rightly win enough money to bankrupt a small company. Boosted Boards are marketing their device as a vehicle and advertising it's suitability as a means of transport, which completely obliterates any defence they might have had. The laws against unlicensed motor vehicles will be enforced and the police will start confiscating them on sight. The electric skateboard returns to it's rightful place in the gimmick section of a sporting goods store, next to the mini-scooters and the moon shoes.

The bicycle has been a safe, practical and sustainable means of transport for over a century. Modern bicycles are lightweight, efficient and have excellent ride quality and braking. Short-range urban transport is a solved problem in all but marketing - Americans remain inexplicably certain that cycling is not for them.

First off, my board has a 600 watt motor and does around 20mph, which is fast in the city. I overtake most bicycles (people's faces are priceless). I cannot fathom what a 2000 watt motor would do, seems kind of life-threatening honestly. I haven't had any accidents, flew over the top a couple of times when I hit a high edge, par for the course when skateboarding, but I wouldn't want to go any faster.

My board does around 10 kilometers per charge, which is enough for a commute in the city. Not sure how well a 2000 watt motor would fare, I definitely could not accept less range. But my board has the older SLA battery, a lithium battery probably evens the score, while being lighter.

How easy is it to drive? You need experience skateboarding or you'll have quite a learning curve. The accelleration needs a good stance to not get dropped off the back, same with breaking vs. flying over the front. Turning is even more cumbersome than with a real skateboard because the board is so heavy, so you need pretty good technique (and space).

About safety: If you fall off, drop the remote etc. the board stops, the IR must be in your hand to activate and has a short range either way, so no chance of the board running away from you. As soon as you stop accellerating the board slows right down, and you can brake with the engine too (big advantage over a real skateboard). The engine is engaged all the time so you can't just roll like on a real board. Hopefully these guys solve this problem, would be useful if you're out of battery.

About sound, it's not annoying but not quiet either, your regular medium-sized electric motor. In the street it's not particularly noticeable.

About legal issues: It's illegal in the street but no one cares. I pass patrol cars all the time and most don't notice that it's not a regular skateboard, or don't care.

I live and work in manhattan and for the summer I've been skating to and from work nearly every day (40ish blocks). According to my research, skateboards are considered "play" devices. Whereas bikes and all motorized vehicles are required to be in the street, skateboarders under 14 must wear a helmet and are not allowed to ride in the street. Older skateboarders have the option, but not the requirement to ride in the street. With the narrow streets, stop and go traffic, out of control cabbies, and people not used to looking for skateboarders, I feel much safer on the sidewalk.

There is a law that prevents the reckless operation of skateboards on sidewalks (http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/ADC/19/1/3/19-176.1), and I always take care to be courteous and provide plenty of space to all pedestrians.

Where there are bike lanes available, I'll take them, as that also seems to be a legal option, but I've had more run ins with pedestrians in bike lanes than on the sidewalk.

I've been stopped by cops twice and told I could not ride on the sidewalk, yelled at by private security and pedestrians, and had pedestrians step out in front of me without looking when I had complete right of way in the bike lane--causing me to have to bail.

This said, for any company looking to use skateboards to revolutionize urban travel, education campaigns at all levels will be necessary.

However, I wonder how strongly this is enforced...

If not, why would I choose this over all the other electric skateboards?

Is it safe to use on the steep downgrades you have in SF? Is it useless to use when going uphill on those same hills?

this is testament to just how bad the app was.

- Javascript

- Javascript

- Javascript

- Fragmentation like no other

- Lack of APIs

- Sandboxed environment

- A bunch of morons writing "frameworks" without a clue of computer science (same thing as many popular Wordpress PHP plugins written by people who have no clue of even how memory allocation is supposed to work)

- A bunch of other morons copying and pasting the work of other morons.

- No real memory management

- No real anything or poor support at anything (no sockets, no primitive types, no threads, cross domain BS)

- Internet Explorer

- Javascript

- Internet Explorer

- Javascript

...

It's just not what the foundation was meant for.

It only took Steve Jobs talking about how bad flash was and closing the endless array of development options that we have outside Objective-C and HTML5 to make the world try to reinvent the wheel in javascript, all the while ignoring the fact we have more powerful desktop computers than ever, all the while putting more money in the pockets of those that run cloud infrastructure.

I hope more guys like Zuck come out on the record and let the world know this is ludacris, that all these decades working on out of this world compiler optimizations and technology that's light years away from the browser can't be forgotten.

Yes, we need to be in the browser, but give me a break, Javascript?

It's just sad seeing the turn of events of our industry going in this direction, I'm glad of this whole "App" revolution and Zuckerberg saying this at his first appearance after the IPO, I hope it sobers up a bunch of decision makers.

I find this part of the quote interesting. Those people who use mobile web, what platform are they using? Are they using iOS or Android based devices, and using the web? Or are they using other lower end phones?

Could this number actually decrease if Facebook linked to the apps in their emails, rather than the mobile site? (I guess this might be hard to pull off, but would be better in the long run)

LocalStorage quotas cannot be made bigger than 5MB[1].

I remember trying this Mozilla-built webapp[2] out in Google Chrome, it just didn't work.

1. http://htmlui.com/blog/2011-08-23-5-obscure-facts-about-html...

2. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/02/an-html5-offline-image-edi...

Now that I am doing a lean startup, the reality is that the first app will be re-written completely. My bet is to focus short-term on one platform and write using native code for speed and lack of bugs (higher moral). For longer-term multi-platform play and if you plan to stay small and lean, I would recommend HTML5 or a hybrid.

These things need to work on an asynchronous basis, more like email, to get status updates, post to walls etc.

The estimated cost projections for the bullet train project keep getting bigger. I've seen estimates as high as $68 billion: and that is for construction alone (not including maintenance, etc). If Elon Musk can come up with a better idea, I hope we can remove enough of the red tape (that incidentally makes endeavors like this so expensive) to at least let him try.

If he would like to get a taste of realistic Martian colonization here on Earth, may I suggest living underground in a windowless tank, surrounded by a partial vacuum, next to a nuclear reactor.

You can do a lot more awesome engineering and science and exploration if you don't die after ~80 years.

I never had a model or a 'hero' in my life, but I find it hard to deny Elon this role. He's kind of imposing himself to me.

For some parts, he pisses me off. He doing it removes me the feeling that my dreams were mine. On the other sides, my pride motivates me to accept his theft as a challenge to try at surpassing him.

Now I'm only 25, so I guess I still have the time required to get on par, if I keep working hard enough.

Yes, he's a great, fascinating man. I enjoy observing this stuff as much as the next guy. But Good God - stop slobbering on yourselves. This is marketing fluff of the highest order.

Putting syntactic sugar aside, while some things are very welcome (list comprehensions, ===, ?), there are two main reasons why I would be wary of using CoffeeScript again:

1. Complete lack of documentation for syntax. Because there are basically no more braces and parentheses, CoffeeScript just tries to guess what you're doing, as far as I can tell, based on a bunch of internal heuristics. Unfortunately, there's no way for me to learn how to write parseable code without constantly pasting into the coffeescript.org site, and seeing if CoffeeScript understands it or not. This is the first language I've ever used where the syntax rules are essentially unknowable, and a lot of time gets wasted trying to discover them through trial and error.

2. Unexpected side effects. For example, functions return the last evaluated value by default. If you're using $.each(), and your function's last line is something that returns false (like a separate function you call), then your $.each() loop will terminate unexpectedly early, since jQuery does that when it receives a false. So CoffeeScript isn't just a wrapper around JavaScript, but it really changes its behavior. Another example: CoffeeScript gets rid of function hoisting. A significant JavaScript feature, completely gone.

I personally am slower to code in CoffeeScript, because I know JavaScript 100% inside and out, but with CoffeeScript that isn't really possible, because so much of its implementation is undocumented. I mean, many times you're forced to end a line with a backslash in order to continue it, and even the existence of that necessary feature isn't mentioned once in the docs.

But a lot of people seem to love the syntax, and that seems to outweigh the negatives for them. I personally don't find JavaScript that ugly, but coding in a language I can't ever fully understand gives me a huge headache.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But seriously, every single problem with javascript they mention is never a problem for javascript developers. You simply learn what's broken, and deal with it. Dealing with it is usually one line of code (or even less), making sure you just use ===, etc. It's really not a problem.

These kinds of posts smell a little like FUD to me, which is what I have a problem with.

In all the startups we've funded I don't think I've seen one whose product was so enthusiastically embraced by YC partners. Three bought one of these boards. One says it "changed his life."

It was a lot more expensive back then: $4,000 for the 1984 Chevy Blazer and $0 dollars for an extension cord we found in the garage, but going going fast on a skateboard, no matter what the method, is dangerous.

The worst part of this idea is "braking". I can assure you the only good way to brake a skate board at speed is a power slide, which you need to be an expert to do.

I've hit sand at speed and, even knowing it was coming, the slight braking power of the sand was enough to throw me. It's difficult to explain, but between knowing how far to lean against the braking force AND managing your balance side to side on the trucks, it ends up being harder to pull off than a good ole power slide.

That said, a roller blade version of this would be cool.

It is astonishing (and more than a little awesome) that you can pack 2kw of motor power and so much range into so small a space now. Oh how I wish parts like this had been available in 1989.

But I'm wondering about the prices. $10 stickers and $40 t-shirts are still advertising, so people are paying to advertise for your company? That doesn't seem right.

In reality, they are really trying to push people to spend $1200 for a board. Even the $1099 pledge is a complete rip-off since you spend $100 less than the pledge that gets you a board, and they only give you a $100 coupon when you buy your first board for full price. That doesn't make sense.

A suggestion: create a small batch (5) of $500 or $700 pledges that provide a board. That kicks everyone into gear to get that pledge as soon as possible and fight over the $500 pledge spot.

I like watching the animation, and it's a cool site. What would be more awesome (IMO) is if they took this information and created a visualization of the path their band took to finally reach me.

So, it showed them on the map, in their garage playing, to the studio, to distributing the track to that one guy, to him posting it to a website, to another guy re-tweeting, to some kids posting to Facebook, and finally reaching me on Hacker News - and do this with a map with photos on it as well.

Over time it would just get longer and more interesting. Especially if they let me link myself to the site somehow with a photo so when others watch their path, they see the people that got them there.

Just a thought. Kind-of like the beginning of that Movie "Lord of War" where they follow the bullet from manufacturing to the hands of the warlords to it being fired.

Unless it's because I refused to share my location. They should explain why they need it beforehand, I would never allow that by default (I only understood the point once I saw the map).

EDIT: Also, it will probably not take the retweets and similar into account, as the URL will remain the same. Overall it's an interesting concept but I doubt it'll provide any worthwhile data.

I kinda like the music though, and the social experiment is nice. I'm assuming the massive spike in sharing that stems from the US is actually this post right here!

It would be nice to have some solid stats, as well as some info on my own share. With the mass of wires it's hard to tell whether someone actually stems from me or not.

Of course it's easy to criticize, so props for the neat idea and decent execution.

If you want to listen to the album with the ability to skip tracks I recommend NPR's first listen: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/03/160323435/first-listen-the-xx-... interestingly the first listen was published Sept 2nd, and Sept 3rd is the first day for the linked data viz)

Regarding the link copy issue: They could've just added an automatic redirect/URI change on page load. Too bad they didn't think of that.

By actively talking about how, if 1 fan can make something viral you have created an external something that can catalyze the spread. The idea of 1 person trying to make something viral is interesting in itself and will help generate the impetus that just might carry it through to 'viral', independent of the music and the action itself.

It matters if that 1 fan is a highly connected node or only 1 or even 2 from a highly connected node with each having a high reshare probability.

Good idea. Used up now I think.

There is a difference. Dead ends are possible and entirely likely.

Also, poor China... They don't get to play.

Edit: Duh :(

I am probably the only one put off by the northern hemisphere in what looks like Mercator, so won't moan about that ;-)

No thanks for the automatic play on page load.

Doesn't even have a good fail back on IE 8 which still has a good percentage of the market.

Concurrency support is possible in Python, without gevent-style monkey patching (or callback madness). Have a look at concurrent.futures and http://www.dabeaz.com/coroutines/index.html. It really needs a lot more work before it's part of the language's DNA, though. Also, pypy needs much wider adoption as quickly as possible, to address the speed problems (and its STM branch holds huge potential).

For me, Go's major shortcoming is its community's lack of focus on readability as compared to Python.

This made me laugh, thank you.

Source code changes could be saved as log-structured patch files, which could then be thrown away or applied to the source tree as desired. One could also steal some ideas from the Smalltalk Change Log tool by adding similar editing, search, and filtering commands.

With tools like this, one could recompile for "interpreted debug mode," have complete visibility and control of runtime state to debug a problem, then take the resulting patch file and apply it to the source tree. It would be a best of both worlds scenario -- all the enhanced debugging of an interpreted runtime with the type safety and speed of compiled code.

        package main;

        import (
                "fmt"
                "net"
        )

        func main() {
                hosts := []string { "www.google.com", "www.example.com", "www.python.org" }
                c := make(chan string)
                for _, h := range(hosts) {
                        go get_ip(h, c)
                }
                for i := 0; i < 3; i++ {
                        fmt.Println(<-c)
                }
        }

        func get_ip(host string, c chan string) {
                addrs, err := net.LookupHost(host)
                if err != nil {
                        fmt.Println("Host not found:", host)
                        c <- host + ": <error>"
                        return
                }
                c <- host + ": " + addrs[0]
        }

    var cluster = require('cluster')
      , http    = require('http')
      , os      = require('os')

    if (cluster.isMaster) {
        os.cpus().forEach(cluster.fork)
    } else {
        http.createServer(function(req, res){
            res.writeHead(200)
            res.end('Hello world')
        }).listen(8000)
    }

Who needs CouchDB or Node.js when you can just say CREATE EXTENSION 'couchnodegres.js'

- Allow libpq connection strings to have the format of a URI

- Add a JSON data type

- Allow the planner to generate custom plans for specific parameter values even when using prepared statements

- Add the SP-GiST (Space-Partitioned GiST) index access method

- Add support for range data types

- Cancel queries if clients get disconnected

- Add CONCURRENTLY option to DROP INDEX

- Add a tcn (triggered change notification) module to generate NOTIFY events on table changes

- Allow pg_stat_statements to aggregate similar queries via SQL

- text normalization. Users with applications that use non-parameterized SQL will now be able to monitor query performance without detailed log analysis.

* having written more than my share of press releases in my time

The first is SECURITY BARRIER and LEAKPROOF which gives us an ability to rethink how to multi-tenant applications. This is a game changer and will get even better in future versions I am sure.

The second is NO INHERIT constraints, which I will certainly be making good use of. It is also a complete game changer when it comes to table inheritance and partitioning, and my main use will be things like CHECK (false) NOINHERIT to ensure that a table in fact never has rows of its own.

There is an amazing amount of good stuff going on around Postgres right now. Postgres-XC was recently released, and more. It is an amazing data modelling platform and ORDBMS.

User-extensible spacial index types. This makes Postgres perfect for online machine learning.

I am a huge fan of Postgres, it's never let me down. But data exploration, ad hoc querying and such is a pain in psql. These tools are badly needed.

Personally, I'm excited about the range types and I can see immediate usefulness for them. My own applications aside, anything that helps developers create schemas that are better able to handle temporal data is a good thing.

Of the small fixes in 9.1 my personal favorite is probably the cleanup of pg_stat_activity. There are also many other nice small fixes like improved tab completion for some commands and the ability to set environment variables in psql.

- There's no reason to have the scroll bar of the thread list on the left. Hiding it unless you hover directly over it is also not a good idea. It should appear when the mouse hovers anywhere over the entire thread list.

- I strongly hate non-browser-native scrolling (scroll by javascript in an effort to style the scroll bar using css and javascript). It never feels right, or fluid. There IS a way to hide the scrollbars until the mouse hovers over the element that requires scrolling. Example: http://www.repcmods.com (abandoned prototype) (hover over the horizontal galleries) It's all done using css :hover and no javascript. The element with the scrollbar is set to overflow:hidden and on :hover it's set to overflow-y:auto; It may or may not work for you. Fix everything else first before coming back to this one.

- It's missing some white space toward the bottom making it feel really cluttered down there. Give the #left_panel and #mid_panel elements a padding-top:12px; and give .xpadbox a margin of margin:0 24px 5px;

- Also give the element #mid a padding-top:9px; so its lined up correctly. You'll have to also move up the links on in the top right of the mid panel to match as well.

- When posting a reply, the "preview" and "post" links should really be buttons not just text and they should be on the left and the text "sign up to bump, Online: 1002 users, etc..." should be on the right.

- When I open up the setting tab in the threads list it needs to stay red so the user knows they need to click it again to close the settings.

- Get rid of the dashed border bottom between threads and posts. It's too visually intrusive. Change it from dashed to dotted, instead.

- Hiding controls under the whole "to top/toggle functions" bar is completely unnecessary. As a young designer I used to hide a lot of elements thinking it would look nice and minimal and clean. Later on I find out it's one of the worst things you can do to your users. Your design is already minimal, it's already clean, don't over do it. Just keep the elements there, don't hide them.

There's a lot of confusing UI here but that's the end of my free consultation.

(I wonder how I could get it to interface with a Rails app? Would there be problems just connecting it to the app's database, to get/store user accounts and stats, for example?)

Here's the github repo containing the open-source fork of it: https://github.com/cheshirecats/CuriousWall

Thanks cheshirecat, you've done a great thing here.

Here's some suggestions, keep in mind these are essentially my personal opinions:

-Try putting some thought into making the functionality a little more intuitive, by this I mean to try and not necessitate having to hover too much to discover functionality. As a designer I know how difficult this is to do without spoiling aesthetics, so good luck (but I think you need to do this).

-Host this as a SaaS and make money, I image businesses would love to use this as a way to gather user feedback and talk to users.

-Categories would be nice. Right now it's just one "board" (in the traditional "online forum" sense where the set hierarchy is forum>board>thread>post). I'd find it cool if I could say visit a "sports" category, or a "Tech" category, and especially a "Hacker news" one. Think subreddits.

-The "navigation" is a little unintuitive, on the left column where it says "Threads", "Lists", "Users". When in threads mode, the other modes are listed underneath it, suggesting that they form a child relationship to Threads, whereas they're really siblings.

-I'd dispense with the little arrows under "Home" on the left column, and move the refresh button onto the same line as the Create and Home links/buttons. It doesn't really add anything. Up and down could be implemented using infinite scrolling and would be more intuitive. Left and right could be replaced by making aggregating all the different views ("My threads", "Users", "Replies", etc.) into a flyout or dropdown list, accessible by hovering the currently active mode title. This would also mean you could dispense with the 3 bottons on the bottom left next to the settings button.

-Speaking of that settings button, it doesn't have much to do with searching, instead I'd move it closer to the "user button", which you don't really have but will definitely need. Opening the user pane on the right, and then clicking the username to reveal "log out", etc. isn't easy to find.

-You probably don't need all the corner hovers, they don't really do anything useful IMHO.

-Fluid layout so it works well on mobile devices

-The reading mode is cool but you probably don't need it everywhere.

Good luck, I love the idea. Hope this goes somewhere.

Here's a screenshot: https://plus.google.com/100419497458726670190/posts

Though I like Ivory's goal and aspirations.

Technical and design accolades aside, IMHO I would not call this an improvement on existing discussion forums. In Part 4 of his post "Building a Better Online Community", he implies that a major problem is the signal to noise ratio. This web app has not solved that problem.

The extremely low barrier to participation, while inline with privacy ethics and democratic ethics, unfortunately removes important incentives to creating quality content. It is however, successful at enhancing anonymity and removing the (burdensome?) requirement of identifying oneself.

Let's take a step back and re-assess what we're looking at. It's not an improved discussion forum, it's an improved chatroom app, plain and simple. And for that, I credit it with certain innovation.

Scrolling is broken (and slow) on an iPad, it's apparently using some javascript scrolling lib that could be replaced with -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;

[1] http://blog.oak.io/

I've written a progressive enhanced forum (for mobile) and think there's a lot of room for some re-thought ways how forums could work.

But!

I did find navigating around PIvory a little hard work. I definitely had to think and discover. A lot of menu options aren't visible until you click in certain areas. That's great from a clean-design point of view, but frustrating for a new user.

I love the grey scheme, with the only colour being when you hover over icons. That said, hi-lighting your posts (and leaving your image always in colour) would be nice.

It really is an awesome effort. I'm inspired.

* Markdown.

* Remove "guest" from the Users list.

* Reading mode should have much larger text. Remember what sites like Instapaper, Readility, ReadItLater have given people.

* Some way of voting up insightful comments. I don't think the shit storm that you're currently experiencing in spam is currently solved...

* Tiny icons hiding lots of features and the awkward way of getting to the 'reply' links is poor usability.

Any tactics for blocking repeat trouble makers? You mentioned blocking by IP in your docs.

I've run a forum (1,100 posts/month) for about eight years which also allows anonymous posting as well as accounts/avatars/etc. Users blocked by IP usually reconnect with their ISP to get a new IP and run amok anew. I also have blacklisted words and phrases which can stop some problems, but not all. I end up blocking IP classes from anonymous posting to eliminate troublesome regions.

Any plans/thoughts beyond that?

(Found your forum concept initially confusing, but I greatly admire your effort and the thought that's gone into it. I think you've created something intriguing!)

The design is great though, and the formatting on posts is excellent

Other than that, this site seems pretty neat!

This a testament as to how the tool does not really matter in good hands.

This must be running on the custom-tailored C++ HTTP server, Ivory: https://github.com/cheshirecats/Ivory

Why did you feel the popular options don't cut it for your needs?

I like the idea, though. Looks great on bigger devices.

What's the revenue model here? How's it going to make money?

I like the expand button on the top right. Its nice for longer posts. Definitely keep the good work.

This is what I get when I try to visit the page:

Your browser does not have window.WebSocket object :-(

Try the lastest version of Chrome or Firefox or Safari.

I know that I have to update, but realize that not everyone has the latest/greatest stuff out there. Also, if I visit your page without JS it doesnt show anything (at all).

The title sounds inflated but you win me, :)

The founder himself stayed at my place using airbnb this summer. I'm a YC alum. He has one of the most interesting founding stories I've ever heard. He is a Siberian-Kazakhstani hacking competition winner who knows Judo and runs a series of small businesses in Russia. Bars that partake in sportsbetting-all Legal. He designed the software as a way to manage his businesses with his founders and grew it into something more.

But design wise, it's simple and clean, I like it :)

I don't know why texture is such a bad thing. Of course you can overdo it like anything, but personally I prefer Reeder with a light paper-pulp backing texture instead of a plain light peach background.

For example, what is so bad about this?

http://skeu.it/image/24908403424

It almost feels like people are calling it skeuomorphic so that's how they expect the developer to feel about it. I don't think regular people look at these as real world metaphors, expecting them to function as they do in real life. That feels to me like a theoretical user posed by developers that doesn't actually exist.

In reality, people see it for what it is. Design flair. Whether or not it's unnecessary or helps the user with the app is missing the point entirely. Design that's pleasing to the eye shouldn't get in the way and cause problems, but it doesn't have to accelerate your use of the service to be positive overall.

Aero Glass is a great example. It gets mixed opinions, but I think we can all agree that it's far better than Luna and IE actually looks pretty great with it. There is no skeuomorphic benefit to having glass everywhere. It's simply design flair. With that in mind, I still prefer it.

Thanks for the support!

I'm enjoying the debate here and won't get too much into it. For those arguing what is and isn't skeuomorphism, you're missing the point of the showcase.

Skeu.it, as specified on the masthead, celebrates arbitrary and gratuitous user interface decisions. Specifically, this means the misappropriation of visual artifacts designed for evoking familiarity in both form and function.

So yes, in my joyfully entitled opinion, using a big piece of frosted glass, with paper hanging from a rope, with magic buttons that somehow exist on lined paper, is a foolish design choice. Really, I wouldn't even call it a design choice, I'd say it's more just a collection of photoshop tutorials masquerading as an interface. Unnecessary skeu is the 2012+ version of the House Industries' "Crackhouse" typeface (http://www.houseind.com/fonts/crackhouse) appearing on every website and flyer 10 years ago. It's a classic, recognizable typeface...but stare at that for a moment, think back to how it didn't really make sense to announce free puppies or a car wash in deconstructed type, and let the understanding wash over you. Mmm, delicious understanding.

I have no hate towards skeu ("skeuomorphism must die" is silly) at all. In fact, I defend it:

http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-of-skeuomorphic... (from last year, a bit outdated)

Thanks again, and please send any good candidates my way (@303, @skeuit) for skeu.it!

Edit: Proper capitalization, the official end of my majuscular laziness.

In all seriousness, this is the perfect tool for showing people how skeumorphism can be taken too far. I actually like many of these designs, but the point is that the metaphors don't actually help, and sometimes only add to the confusion. (Denim weather app? Pea coat button loops for on/off switches?)

Obviously the only correct interface is a simple vertical list where hovering over invisible areas of the screen reads you out loud an option and then clicks it. Actually why read it out loud at all, a skeumorphism from interacting with a person.

The only correct interface is a blank screen representing state with groups of pixels that turn off and on without any skeumorphism, but simply representing the state the program is in. Like the LED light showing whether your monitor is off or on, but 1280x1024 of them.

anything other than that is just art monkey fluff, designers butting into electronics where they don't belong.

a good rule of thumb is: if you recognize what's going on instead of having to decode it, you are dealing with bullshit overpriced overdesigned fluff.

This is one of the reasons I like Ableton Live ( http://www.ableton.com/suite-8 ): it has a simple, consistent user interface elements and the entire user interface happens to be vector based. Not only is it easy to navigate and understand, but the fact that it is vector based allows it to have a resolution-independent interface that can be zoomed in/out. Which addresses another problem with music production software: they tend to use tiny fonts and other UI elements which makes it hard to read when used with a high-PPI monitor and/or when the monitor is far enough away from the user (which seems to often be case in many studio setups). And once you've done a highly graphical skeuomorphic interface that uses lots of bitmaps, scaling doesn't always happen smoothly.

On the other hand, many people like skeuomorphic interfaces when they've had past experience with actual audio hardware. Reason ( http://www.propellerheads.se/products/reason/ ) is one such example where the interface is so skeuomorphic that is often considered a hardware simulator. People who have past experience with such hardware often love Reason because they are able to draw upon past experience to understand the interface. I suppose in this case, this is a very appropriate use of skeuomorphism.

People like me who don't have experience with such hardware aren't necessarily going to appreciate this, though some people will enjoy it even without past experience with hardware because some people simply enjoy visually appealing graphical interfaces. So it's a tough call which group of people is in the majority and who you want to cater to. Personally I like music/audio software to focus on it's core task of being a music creation tool, and less on being graphically impressive; but that's just me.

http://skeu.it/post/29492973628/in-space-no-one-can-see-you-...

A well-done skeuomorphic interface, I submit, can be a busy box for grownups. What's wrong with having a few things in your life that partake of both "toy" and "tool"?

The author asserts that Microsoft's Metro design moves away from it, but his screenshot of Metro shows several instances:

- a paper shopping bag icon
- MSFT stock symbol
- icon of analog alarm clock with bells
- gear icon for control panel
- manilla folder icon for windows explorer

And does anyone else cringe at the HTML slipping through on AT&T?

The simple fact is that building on previous experience is useful. Anachronistic visual remnants of previous technology can lend familiarity to a new interface, reducing learning curve and increasing acceptance (e.g., rivets on denim jeans).

Sometimes designers go even further and purposely introduce even more skeumorphic elements, going for a "retro" feel.

Some people like it, some people don't. It isn't always done well, and it isn't always done badly.

EDIT: I'm talking about visuals now. How it affects usability is part of "well executed".

Also, skeu.it is really about textures and fail skeu, not actual skeumorphism, which is about retaining obsolete details from a previous form, not just pleasing textured imagery.

> It is painful to use the Web, so we need to reward users: give them something new and better that they didn't get before.

[1] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980308.html

http://skeu.it/post/28492549355/crysonic

I used to keep a larger, more generic "spark file" but I found it got to be too big to navigate. So I throw away more ideas now, and only write down ones that have serious merit, placing them in specific files instead of a "kitchen sink" catchall file.

I also have "possible programmers" and "possible designers" files, which I've kept since 2007. These are just lists of great people that I've found over the years, and may wish to hire at some time. I've initiated relationships with some of these people, knowing that one day I might want to bring them in to one of my ventures.

Finally, I have a "rules to live by" file. I've kept this since November 2011, so it is much younger than the rest. So far, it's about 560 succinct adages. I work on it for 30m-1h ever day. I study life and draw conclusions, abstracting the particular instances I experienced into broader maxims.

I review this file before any major decision is made. It's sort of like a file on disk that I can load into my memory; it puts my mind in an optimal state before making a decision. It's like putting everything I've learned into my brain's electro-chemical RAM banks. The quality of personal and business decisions has increased 10000x since starting this particular file.

So, for those of you wondering how you can even start building a "sparkfile", I'll give you my secret: whenever I'm annoyed with something I'm doing, I'll analyze why I am annoyed, and out of that usually comes an idea. A few months ago, I was annoyed that Hacker News was the first place I learned about password leaks, sometimes weeks before the companies emailed me -- leaving me insecure for quite a while. If only a computer could scan headlines across different tech websites looking for the latest companies to have password leaks, and would email you the second it saw anything.

48 hours later, I built leaknotifier.com to do just that.

For me, I crave simplicity. Whenever something that I think should be simple to do takes much longer than necessary, I start brainstorming how I would simplify it. If I ever feel like I'm on autopilot because I'm doing the same thing over and over, I figure out ways to automate it. If you ever feel frustrated and start to think "if only they just _____", start actually figuring out why they don't just do X, and if there is no good reason, start developing it.

It's full of random ideas like fear inoculation, legoization, animated qr code, and some half completed essay like self quantification, synthetic blood vessel, and why choose prosthesis. I am constantly rewriting them as well as adding ideas and citations. I also reread it everyday.

One thing that differentiates this particular implementation is the consistent (but not constant) review of ideas, as well as the consolidation of ideas that seem to go well together. The creation of "full" ideas vs. "half baked" ideas is a really interesting concept, and I feel that I learned a lot about idea formation, even from just a four minute video.

While ByWord seems great for offline editing (and I'm certainly going to give it a shot), I've had a really great experience using Trello for my "spark file." The separate "cards" that Trello supports allow me to have different categories of ideas that I can then individually consolidate. For example, I currently have cards for:

- Startup (ideas for ventures I'm considering.)

- Posts (blog posts I'd like to write; either expanded versions of HN comments, or stories in and of themselves. This comment will likely go right in there as well!)

- Research (security & appsec research I'd like to conduct, as well as particular technologies I'm interested in. My to-learn queue.)

- Software (non-startup related software I'm building or would like to build.)

In the end, I can't help but agree and evangelize Alex's post -- the human brain can only keep track of so much on its own, but with help and organization, we can be much more productive!

log(){ date >> ~/log/$* ; cat >> ~/log/$* ; }

I try to keep it simple but I keep several files.
There is one for general ideas which is called "projects", another one to log new words I've learnt called "voc.en" (English is a second language for me)
and so on.

For example:

log projects <enter>

write something cool...
<enter>
<ctrl+c>

--------------------

cat log/projects

Mo 10. Sep 07:16:02 CEST 2012

write something cool...

My initial system is similar to his, but I found transcribing everything into computer better, mainly because of easier searching, and because it made sharing information that applied to multiple projects easier.

While this is certainly an important habit, I wouldn't call it defragmenting. Sometimes I do refine or rewrite my notes, but occasionally delete them entirely, and sometimes find myself more confused, having tied together too many concepts. One thing I have learned is that my thinking changes so much over time that conveying information, even to myself, is surprisingly difficult.

My own implementation is a journal, each day in its own plain text file. I track the major milestones in my day and prefix ideas with "Idea: " so that I could easily grep all ideas into one list if needed. (However, I haven't done that yet. I tend to let them sit and incubate rather than act immediately.)

I'm curious about 3 things:

(1) What motivated the start of such behavior for others?

(2) How do you react to your idea log with respect to balancing focus between current projects / work, and speculative projects?

(3) How do others account for visuals such as sketches or interface ideas which are often easier to create with analog tools?

The contents are encrypted through a TrueCrypt virtual volume and the volume is saved into Dropbox.

I've found this to be a great setup - the searchability and keyboard centric navigation of NV provides a friction free environment to quickly record content.

Some have an idea and think "it would be cool if someone did that", others do it.

The problem most doers have when they get a new idea is they are already working on a cool idea.

These new ideas will distract the driven, unless they write them down in a trusted system.

I always wrote ideas down in notebooks, but I don't like paper's distributed, non-indexed characteristics as a persistent storage medium. Also, being in my 20s I like to move to a new city every couple years by plane and staying completely digital makes this lifestyle easy.

I wrote an app called IdeaList to solve this problem for myself, I was almost finished with it and about to ship when a consulting project with an urgent deadline came by that was too good to refuse.

I've been using it myself and its increased my peace of mind considerably to know all my Awesome Ideas are there.

This post reminded me that IdeaList is something worth releasing because its a slick solution to a critical problem.

I'm going to charge a very small amount to keep the service viable, but anyone from hacker news that might be interested gets a free lifetime subscription if they email me today at will@willholloway.net

At some point I either archive the card out, or I setup a new board/list/card elsewhere to actually pursue the idea.

Edit: one advantage of the paper process over the various software / cloud solutions is that I can still read those ancient notes. Love the cloud for business, but it is tough to beat ink and bound paper for personal records that you want to keep for a long time. An added bonus is that you can occasionally entertain visions of holding a bonfire of your old notes and starting fresh.

Trying to take the subway to unfamiliar parts of the city forces me to use google maps in the browser. Addresses seem to be hit or miss -- I've often spent time searching for an establishment or address just to give up and use google maps in the browser.

I've basically had to revert to how I got around the city prior to having a smartphone -- use my computer and remember how I need to get there before I leave.

Apple Maps is potentially a huge fail for anyone living in a major city.

-- iOS devices blowing their asset layout and 'Othering' out is a Real Problem that used to happen far too often. The only fix beyond a backup+restore is to remove and re-add photos and music. If that doesn't work? Time to restore up to 60GB over USB2! Whee. Good luck explaining this to mom.

-- The built in Mac applications and frameworks are frightfully poor - it's unacceptable from a company that prides itself on quality. SyncServices is still a flaming travesty, Mail.app spontaneously corrupts messages and passwords, Spotlight can die in twenty different ways, iCal is a UI disaster, Address Book has completely broken sync options... the list goes on and on and on. Of all of these, I think Mail is the absolute worst. Three total rewrites and it's still neurotic on a good day.

-- iPhoto is goddamn slow. No matter what, no matter where, no matter when.

iOS is an order of magnitude more usable for two orders of magnitude more people with an order of magnitude fewer issues and two orders of magnitude fewer things to go wrong that makes an order of magnitude more money for them. So I think that's where he Lion's share (haha) of Apple's QA is spent. Sadly, I fear OS X will never receive that same level of care.

I found that most of OS X worked pretty well and the UI looked good, but when it came down to actually being consistent and productive, it fell over pretty quickly. There were a lot of nuances and rather basic problems which got in the way of literally everything I did from my iPod not playing certain mp3s (very frustrating!) to import and export problems in iWork, automator deadlocking, iCal losing data, Mail sending emtpy messages.

I had some hardware problems as well (not charging and cable fraying after about a month) and while they dealt with them instantly, they shouldn't have occured.

Not a great experience. I've switched to Lenovo and Windows and everything pretty much just works.

The interesting thing is, many of this persons problems come from Apple trying to support multiple platforms, instead of locking the person into a single unified environment.

Others (like iPhoto starting to suck after 10,000 pictures) were an issue in the first couple releases - but it's not uncommon for people to have north of 100,000 photos, and get reasonable performance in recent releases.

The difficulty hitting the search magnifying glass was interesting - I wasn't even aware that magnifying glass existed. You normally just scroll to the top - now I can do it faster. But - it makes sense - what's just one above the letter "A" - the search icon.

All in all - I'm believing it's an article whose genesis was a user who got hit by an edgecase/bug on their iPhone, and then turned it into a generic rant about all things Apple.

But the problems this person are having do seem to make it clear to me why, if anything, the OS X platform / iPhone are too flexible. There are lots (lots!) of users out there who would trade some of that flexibility for more predictable performance/ease of use.

And thus, Sandboxing.