Hacker News Reader

andrewparkeron Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test "The PG bias"

Even if you implement this experiment, I bet there will still be an inherent bias for PG-related material, most notably his essays.

I really don't have a problem with it... that's what this community is all about. Hacker News is PGs world, and if you don't like it, then go somewhere else.

andrewparkeron Palestinian girls, dating, and the mobile phone

danah boyd says, "In short, they document how culturally specific gendered practices (not technological features) frame the meaning and value of technology."

This rings so true for me... it's like the Clay Shirky quote: "the social characteristics of the web only become interesting once the technology is boring." (paraphrased).

That's why the usage and behavior on a site like craigslist is more interesting than any web service in the last year.

andrewparkeron Twitter Testing Advertising In Twitter Streams

This post is junk. No evidence besides hearsay (without quoting the source, no less).

andrewparkeron Poll: Ban Valleywag?

I think banning them is playing into Valleywag's game. They want to be banned. That just increases their "brand equity" a controversial gossip rag. Perhaps they'll receive less traffic in the long run, but I'm sure they love the publicity of this meme.

andrewparkeron Google clones 37sig: "Borrowing ideas is fair game, but copying an entire app is wrong."

Yes, there's no defensibility in functionality.

andrewparkeron Ask YC: How long to stay secret?

While you're in "stealth mode" you're losing valuable opportunities to get feedback on the execution of your idea. Since execution is so much more important than an idea alone, I don't see value in being stealthy at any stage.

andrewparkeron What learning Lisp taught me about other languages

I don't get all the love for lisp. In my lisp experience I remember being in debugging hell trying to count out between 18 and 19 close-parentheses to add some parameter I'd forgotten. Bad memories.

andrewparkeron How Are We Going To Make Money?

I think it's much harder to gain traction than it is to find an appropriate business model, and thus it's far more important to focus on traction first and then nail down the business model once you know you have a product that people find engaging.

Think about it this way: you can have the smartest business model in the world that maximizes the value of your users, but if no one uses your service then you'll make zero money and be totally irrelevant. By contrast, if you have a a service that people love and becomes a part of their daily usage, but you don't have a business model yet, this is a much easier problem to solve.

Attention is most important currency.

andrewparkeron Loopt Embraced by Verizon; Starts to Spread Its Mobile Wings

Painful metaphor in the title, but great news! Congrats to the Loopt team. I'm sure working with the carriers has been a tough battle.

andrewparkeron The Death of the Relational Database

If we give up relational databases in favor of a graph model, I'm sure we'll have piles of blog posts complaining about the sacrifices made in that switch. That said, the relational database is ancient technology that was built for an entirely different purpose than for what it's used today, so I eagerly anticipate a revision.

andrewparkeron Resources for your Business Plan and Presentation

Ignore this. The best thing you can do to attract VCs and raise capital is launch a service and begin engaging your users in the marketplace. There is no substitute for real traction.

andrewparkeron Ask YC: Whats your Twitter handle?

Sure, the big moments of serendipity for me are the ones tied to geographic proximity. When a friend says they're hitting the Shake Shack ( http://shakeshack.com ) in 15 minutes, I can show up and join them, or vice versa. I don't want to email or IM all my friends everytime I'm going somewhere, but if I Twitter the message, I know I'm spreading the word without spamming people.

andrewparkeron XO Laptop: Towards a World Wide Mesh?

Two issues: 1. Browsing the internet deep within a mesh network is painfully slow. In other words, no streaming video in remote Pakistani villages anytime soon.

2. XO represents a trivially small % of worldwide laptop production. This will only take off if a manufacturer can sell mesh software OEM to Dell, HP, etc...

andrewparkeron URLs Are Totally Out In Japan

Arguing whether or not domain names in Japan are actually "totally out" feels short-sighted. Domain names are a scarce resource and will eventually hit a limit. The DNS system is fundamentally flawed in that respect, and I'm eager to see what will come next.

This article's proposal that search boxes are the next step sounds likely, but again, doesn't scale well, and has substantial search-engine risk. If Google drops your pagerank then not only is it harder to find you in a search engine, but all your marketing is useless because your call-to-action is broken.

andrewparkeron Ask YC: Whats your Twitter handle?

The hook is the serendipity the service creates in your life.

andrewparkeron Ask YC: Whats your Twitter handle?

http://twitter.com/andrewparker

It's generally just random musings, but some VC tidbits and tech news mixed in.

andrewparkeron Skydeck: unlocking the valuable information hidden in your cell phone bill

I particularly appreciate their approach to data storage and security: http://skydeck.com/security/ ... no need to store this server-side where it's out of the users' control.