alanlammiman

this is really cool. some thoughts - a free trial would make a lot of sense for the subscription. Having the AI break things down into more variables than just significance might be helpful. For example - events vs trends. "Trump shot" vs "Shootings up X% YoY". Forward looking statements vs concrete events "Trump lays out agenda" vs "Trump signs executive order". All of those are significant in different ways. Also newness of the information is important. Top article right now is about Gazan families looking to return home post ceasefire. But that doesn't add much to the genuinely significant news yesterday of the ceasefire itself. As is, I don't get news that seems particularly different from browsing the headlines at 2-3 top newspapers.

random websites - hide my real name, mostly to avoid tracking

where I think it's safe and want to present my views transparently and think something positive could come from it, my real name.

That is so far the case here on HN, though I've been reconsidering that, since recently I've been harangued whenever I've mentioned my business/app in comments - having my business called scammy and so forth. Then I go and see who is doing the haranguing and often it's a profile that does not have a real name, and has a zillion karma for some reason even though you go through their comments and a lot of it is a bunch of negativity being spread and that makes me a bit miserable.

I'm curious about this question, because my app relates to games, and on one hand I really like the idea of real names (esp given my personal experience e.g. above), while on the other hand I see a huge % of comments here preferring anonymity, and generally get the feeling that 'real names' is perceived as too serious for gaming - that the expected thing would be pseudonyms/handles/avatars. One direction we've gone in is that if you want to monetize/earn money on our app, then you need a real name (verified with ID). But any suggestions/ideas very welcome.

It's not an NFT-laden product, and it wasn't launched in 2024.

I wonder if these investors have a liquidation preference as they would in normal VC rounds. And if it's a 1x preference (as is normal) or if a higher multiple is built in.

Sticky AI Game Maker | https://getstic.ky | Head of Marketing, Cofounder/COO, others | REMOTE

Sticky is a mobile gaming platform with an AI Game Maker at its center with which non-technical users can create a simple game in <5min with no code, publish to friends/other users, and soon will also be able to monetize. We're aiming to make creating & publishing a game as easy and fun/social as publishing a video on YouTube or TikTok. Check out the app on iOS (web version out in a few days, Android still pending): https://apps.apple.com/pt/app/ai-game-maker-sticky/id1497044...

Founded by successful 2nd time entrepreneurs, we are backed by Canary, a leading Latam VC. We are currently a small team (founder/CEO, 4 devs, 1 designer, 1 analyst), and we're looking for people who are excited by the mission and by the idea of joining an early stage startup. We have multiple positions open. I'm currently based in São Paulo, Brazil for family reasons, but positions are remote.

Top priority:

1. Head of Marketing. Requires strong experience in performance marketing including all the mess that is mobile attribution and/or in more organic content and community driven marketing for B2C digital products such as apps, games. Also looking for analysts/individual contributors in each of these fronts (performance, influencers, etc.).

2. Generalist/Co-founder/COO. Sharing management responsibility with me (CEO) as needed more generally - recruiting, managing.

We are also looking to complement our product and tech capabilities if we find the right person, so:

3. Product Lead. Ideally combines strong design sense with business sense and analytics, with previous experience in B2C mobile (apps or games). Working with our designer who is first-class.

4. Tech lead. Hands on, given the small team. Our current backend is mostly Node.js with TypeScript. Our current devs are good (mix of senior and junior) but all individual contributors.

If you like the product (give it a try) and the mission, would love to hear from you! Please email CV + short note to talent@getstic.ky

Cheers, Alan Lammiman

Sticky - AI Game Maker https://apps.apple.com/app/id1497044357

No, they are publishing rules, citing those rules as published in court hearings regarding antitrust etc., and then covertly disregarding their own rules when it is convenient for them.

This specific issue is a central part of the US DOJ antitrust case against Apple, so there's a team of attorneys-general who think its unlawful.

This is really interesting. Our app Sticky (https://getstic.ky) has been rejected based on guideline 4.7 too. We are a social media app and included HTML5 games. Apple kept claiming that "offering HTML5 games appears to be the primary purpose of your app" which is not the case (certainly not in the update we are submitting) as we have several other features with equal weight. The changes to guideline 4.7 which allow HTML5 mini-games or mini-apps and which allow emulators were made in late January of this year, shortly before the US DOJ antitrust suit, where these issues are central, was filed (March). I imagine Apple changed the guideline for a legal or PR reason related to that suit, but does not really want to follow its own updated guidelines and so is finding every excuse it possibly can to reject emulators and apps with HTML5 mini-games/mini-apps. In our case, after the appeal, we were called up by someone from Apple who started the call saying they did not consent to it being recorded (how's that for inspiring trust?), who walked-back what they had said about HTML5 (and of course they did not put that in writing in the message they sent afterwards), but then came up with a couple of brand-new reasons for keeping our update off the store: claiming that we had changed the app concept... because our app was different some 4 years ago and hundreds of updates ago when it started! And including mentioning rule 4.7 regarding emulators... which we are not and do not claim to be! So I'm glad that you made this public, because I suspected we were not the only ones who were getting bogus rejections around rule 4.7, and you have confirmed it. If our issue is not resolved by the end of the week intend to publish the entire history of communication with App Review printed-off from App Store Connect so people can have a look and see for themselves.

Forgive the arrogant tone here. But just to speak to a moment to the poor 'non-technical founder' or 'idea person' being pilloried: If you find the article and comments depressing, ignore them. They sound reasonable, but in fact if you have the idea and the guts to go out there and try to get it built, that does have incredible value. It's a different type of value - perhaps less immediately monetizable than top-notch programming skills, but potentially with a bigger payoff long-term, and whether that is fair or not is irrelevant. Yes, maybe you'll have to adjust your strategy as you go along, whether it's looking for cofounders elsewhere, hiring freelancers, learning to do the technical stuff yourself and taking 10x as long, etc. But you have to start somewhere, and starting by asking people who can help you build whatever you want to build is not at all an unreasonable place to start. When I quit my job and was starting my first business (solo, which is another thing you'll hear on this forum you can't/shouldn't do), I was trying to hire employee #1. There was one candidate who literally laughed at me. Imagine how that feels - I had no funding - I was going to pay him out of my limited and hard-earned savings. I fear that some of this stuff here is even more insidious. Because although I felt terrible in the moment, I used that to fuel my drive. He was the image of who I was going to prove wrong. Whereas all this stuff that has a veneer of logic can potentially convince someone not to go out and build. But as I read this, the word 'problem' appears 16x in the comments, 'can't' 13x, 'no' 32x, and on and on - on a forum hosted by a startup incubator of all things! In my experience you don't even need an 'idea' in the sense of a unique insight, you just need openness to the 'idea' that yes you can succeed and opportunities are as abundant as problems.

Sticky | Social Media/Marketing/Community Lead | global, remote |

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zombie-games-more/id1497044357

Sticky is an integrated mobile platform for games, communities, creating & collecting & trading virtual items. We aim to be what facebook might have become if it hadn't killed its dev platform to become a walled-garden cash-cow. Or what web3 might be with more focus on user needs, less on blockchain technicalities, and without get-rich-quick schemes.

For further context - our initial approach to the above was to create the first iOS-native NFT marketplace (i.e. letting users trade NFTs with in-app-purchases). The web3 ecosystem was messy, but we believed it would mature into lots of great projects/games/clubs for our app to connect to. We have been rather disappointed on that front, so now that we are integrating games and communities into the app, we are starting with a roguelike zombie survival game we developed in-house as a proof of concept before any outside games. Our site still focuses on the former, the iOS app linked above already shows the latter. We are a 6 person remote team (4 devs, 1 designer, 1 lead), between Seed and Series A.

We are looking for someone to lead our Social Media, Community and Marketing efforts. Our own experience is in performance marketing for apps - there is a place for a bit of that here, but given what we are doing, marketing that is organic & community & mission-driven is much more important. Requirements: interest in the cause & product + prior experience fostering powerful communities + fluent English as demonstrated in CV + cover letter, portfolio or publications.

We are also interested in a Product Manager (or Designer with strong product skills) who would like to build this with us. Requirement: interest in the cause & product + prior experience creating fun B2C mobile apps or games as demonstrated in portfolio.

Please email talent [at] getstic.ky

Questions and comments very welcome :)

Cheers - Alan Lammiman - founder

castle is not a good choice of name though as castle dot xyz is somewhat of a game engine too

I was going to say... All so serious and grownup and utilitarian. Whatever happened to 'the next big thing will start as a toy'?

I have often thought of this. It may turn out that those inefficiencies are fairly small - the devices themselves small, well insulated, etc. One would have to do the maths. But I imagine that cooling all the air with AC (and letting it leak whenever you open a door or window) and then heating an outdoor pool is huge

Allo ambles in " 'allo guys!"

Brazil. Sale of ecigs is not permitted, cigarettes have the usual restrictions (but not taxed as heavily as some other places). Still - I have to give it to them. I get the feeling it was the right call. No vaping ads and vape shops everywhere like I see in Europe

I realize it may just have been a placeholder. But LOL at the implication that 5 USD is dishonest for a cup of mostly warm water in most places of the universe

Perhaps less so in the UK and other places than in the US? It's TV so who knows, but I loved the episode in The Crown where Princess Margaret says to a middle-class Margaret Thatcher something like "Just say 'What?'. Never beg for anything, much less for pardon".

I find the work week is often short to get bigger multi-person things done, and when doing them over 2 weeks the weekend in the middle really breaks the rhythm. A lot of the discussion centers on individual productivity - but so little of what companies do is individual! My dream scenario in terms of getting stuff done would be something like a 10 day work week, 10h per day (nice round 100h block) - and then something like a 5 day weekend

Well, if belonging to apocalyptic organized religions with tithing and well-documented cases of abuse is an issue, you've got a lot of people to fire...

As long as the wine wasn't overpriced and they weren't personally abusing anyone, not much to see here.

Tldr - Effective leaders do x, y and z. Ok, how do you know they do those things? We ask people. How do you know they're effective leaders? We ask (presumably the same) people. What's the sample? Startups that people have selected to be in our accelerator (presumably based on, among other things, whether the leaders were deemed to be effective by our people). So many issues with the analysis that its hard to tease out anything of value. This from a company that hires a gazillion phds. Sigh.

Sticky | https://getstic.ky | Cayman Islands | Full time remote (Worldwide) & Hybrid (São Paulo, Brazil)

- Mobile-native NFT Marketplace, 2nd time founders, launched early '22, VC backed, profitable, growing team from 6 to 30+. Please email talent[at]getstic.ky and mention "HN" and the role in the subject.

Technology (multiple openings for each role): - Head of Blockchain Technology (co-CTO) - Blockchain (Proprietary Ledger, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana) - Back-end (Node, Python, SQL and noSQL) - iOS (Swift) - Android (Kotlin) - Hybrid mobile (React Native, Flutter) - Front-end web (plain HTML/CSS/JS or React)

Product (multiple openings for each role): Product Manager, UI Designer, Analytics, Testing

Marketing: Head of Marketing (CMO), Growth Marketer (generalist), Performance Marketer (app install ads on the usual platforms), Community Managers (multiple), Influencer Marketing, Copywriter (English), Graphic Designer

Management: VP/General Manager (#2 to CEO), CFO/COO, Recruiter, Entrepreneur in Residence (for entrepreneurial generalists), Startup Trainee (entrepreneurial recent grads)

I'm Alan Lammiman, founder & CEO. Happy to answer questions.

This is actually brilliant. Quizzes are ideally used to get people putting in the effort: studying during the semester and nudge them away from procrastinating/crunching at the end (thus are low stakes). But even with low stakes they nudge people to cheat. It was technically hard previously to verify the effort directly, so a quiz result is a noisy proxy. But with current tech you could just record the effort itself. If you are going to do problem sets, no extra effort in recording it.

This is the second article that I've seen on the front page of HN. Both had comment counts in the high hundreds. I have to say, for all Netflix's foibles, that certainly shows a lot of interest in the product. In a sense having a product where people write multi-paragraph comments on everything they dislike about your design is a compliment.

Indeed - I'm all for common sense and rules. So, whether you/the OP like it or not, the present 'formal and informal rules' of intellectual street-fighting do allow for the baseball bat of cancellation, rather than mere 'pushing-back', to be used against the 'push' of perceived prejudice. So if that is the 'push' one wants to make, better find an intellectual dojo that only allows pushing, not complain that your opponent didn't behave as you wanted them to.

800+ comments on an article about cancel culture and this is the one that gets negative points. Well, ok boomers! LOL :)

That is very far from 'the worst' I can imagine in someone. Further, it is hardly 'automatic' - it is a response to a hypothetical situation the author posited, for which multiple people considered that as the most prominent concrete example. If the author did not intend that, he did a poor job of making his argument clear.

Thank you - I was familiar with 'a broken clock is right twice a day', but hadn't considered the analogy with prejudiced statements before. Useful

I am a 35 year old straight married white male homeowner and businessowner who identifies as reasonably right-wing and I endorse this comment.

Well, it doesn't help that Wikipedia doesn't actually have a single canonical version that is translated, but rather versions that are independently managed by separate communities and therefore diverge significantly