Hacker News Reader

attackon Ask YC: Has anyone switched from OS X to Ubuntu?

From a developer's perspective, what's the appeal of all the glossiness of OSX and default WMs on popular Linux distros?

Is everyone here more design/graphics oriented?

Between firefox tabs, emacs buffers, and GNU screen, I hardly make use of the window manager at all.

attackon One Response to Rejection

If so then what about a blind man? If he does not see or touch other people then he can never be social?

Humans are able to have significant interaction through more than physical means. It is incredible, I know.

attackon Ask YC: Which OS are you using on your app's server(s)?

Gentoo on Xen host.

attackon Tell YC: Summer 08 decisions out

Need not get petty. Share the laughs.

attackon Tell YC: Summer 08 decisions out

http://theburningbiscuit.com/Pictures%20for%20site/Demotivat...

attackon Ask YC: To my fellow YC Summer Applicants who slipped through the cracks, what is your next move?

Probably get back in shape, rebuild social life, find money, reassess the best path.

attackon Getting visas to attend programs like YC

That's a very small list of countries. Large, no!

attackon Ask YC: Did you apply to the Summer YC session?

Yes, music.

If not accepted, will pursue ninja assassin career.

attackon A YC Clone in India

This whole thing must be some kind of joke.

attackon Can The Y Combinator Idea Turn Into A Movement?

If there is not room for a far bigger number of YC clones or angels similarly then this entire method of growing companies is doomed.

attackon Google App Engine Launches: Signup for free at 10pm PST

Too late.

attackon College Board drops AP comp sci & latin for racial diversity reasons

Well finger length correlates with better SAT scores. I propose that finger length measurement replace SAT testing.

http://www.livescience.com/health/070522_finger_sats.html

Although I myself did well on the SAT's, I too am hesitant to support the use of correlations like these in determining what students, or anyone deserves.

With regard to SATs and academic performance, the first google result:

"Findings indicated a very low correlation between SAT math scores and overall college math grades of six graduating classes at one university"

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetai...

attackon Bellkor breaks 9% improvement in the Netflix Challenge (as of 4/1)

What has actually been accomplished? Details please.

(edited, brevity.)

attackon Trying to get to Stanford for Startup School

Beats my plan of using this month's rent money that's due today to buy a plane ticket and then riding my luck from there. Doesn't carry the same sense of adventure. Pro: Does reduce probability of having to resort to cage fighting for food.

attackon How Stereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure)

Giving up is not self-afflicted?

No causality relationship was proven. Much less I have no idea what was actually established given a total lack of numbers. A 1% drop? A 15% drop? Big difference.

attackon Blizzard has learned 11 lessons on innovation that can help almost any business

1-7: eerily familiar... Good though to see them backed up by a company outside the web.

8 is interesting. So instead of just building upon the best aspect of the games, they do a lot to improve the worst. Guess that makes sense though given that games generally have a more restricted flow than apps.

9, Another good datapoint in the ongoing debate over "release early to customers" vs "release high quality." Then again, they do use somewhat of a hybrid as I'm sure they have testers before they do the full scale release. Or do they?

10, There are "new" types of games coming out of the console gaming industry? I'm hardly convinced...

attackon How Stereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure)

> To be selected to participate in Beilock and her colleagues’ first study of mathematical performance, for example, women had to perform baseline tasks with greater than 75 percent accuracy, and they had to agree with the statements “I am good at math” and “It is important to me that I am good at math.” Why do these things matter?

So people give up a little when others tell them that they are bad at what they've worked so hard to do well at, or do a little extra if superiority appears to be within reach. Seems like a whole lot of fluff for such a simple observation.

attackon Slide Caught Posting Fake Positive Reviews For Their Own App

Strictly speaking in terms of effectiveness, your #2 point is most often very wrong. You could be giving out free bars of gold and not have one customer speak positively of your service unless you really prod them.

People are EXTREMELY resistant to becoming advertising tools for corporations.

attackon Slide Caught Posting Fake Positive Reviews For Their Own App

Reviews for startups have always been extremely artificial. In an ideal world, users would be very vocal about what they like and don't like. Surprise, they're usually NOT!

Techcrunch in particular is a traditional publicity channel that gets most of its information through heavily biased sources such as press releases, friends, etc. instead of directly from the users. This is why I find it hilarious that techcrunch should be the ones to call them out on producing biased information.

Then again, Arrington has been working to discover sites as a user through hn for example, so he may be doing a small part to correct this wrong.

attackon Free is Killing Us. Blame The VCs

If you're going to call him out on the probability that any given person can create a startup more successful than a day job then at least be more specific as to what you think that probability is.

Him: It's impossible. You: It's so certain, it's basically guaranteed!

You can be a person who behaves very aggressively with what appears to be extremely risky behavior but at the same time calculate risk very carefully with as much data as possible. This is what I aim to be, a calculated risk taker. Not a foolish man who dives head first without thinking.

Motivation is really great, but I don't see a lot of value in blind optimism.

attackon Free is Killing Us. Blame The VCs

A very large percentage of sites/products start off free and without ads but then start requiring subscriptions, reduce the value of their service and cram it with advertising once they get big. In these numerous cases, "future price" would not equal lower. Certainly, technology drives prices down but technology is not the only factor that affects pricing. Unless you mean very long term? But in very long term, everything is just going to go to zero so that frame of reference is not very useful.

I agree that this elimination of competition is bad for the consumers, bad for innovation, and bad for those more capable companies that didn't get the huge funding. It's just making the rich richer.

attackon Ask YC: Submitting News in Spanish

Is there a lot of tech information only available in Spanish? If so then of course. Although I, personally, will need good translations.

Or are you talking about the same news but in Spanish?

attackon New Languages Considered Harmful: "Learning new languages is a waste of time."

Or less inflammatory: After a certain point, the cost of learning another language can outweigh the benefit.

I don't know many people who learn languages without the intent of ever spending time to do something with them.

attackon New Languages Considered Harmful: "Learning new languages is a waste of time."

People who become total jerks because others show interest in them deserve no pity.

Regardless, the analogy is broken because one case is about what you are and the other is about what someone wants to take from you.

attackon What to Do If the Domain Name You Want Is Taken

I have had some luck in contacting the owners directly via their whois info in a professional manner. This seems to only work well though with broke people who own a domain on an expensive ($100+/year) TLD.

attackon Email Isn't a Natural Fit For Tech-Savvy Chinese

Well that's no fun. With IM or email you can talk to 50 people at once.

Or are you referring to business communications? I'm sure that no one in the US undervalues the effectiveness and persuasiveness of voice communication for critical negotiations.

On second reading, I think you're just referring to the resistance of old people to new technology?

attackon EBay Bans Auctions Of Digital Goods

Where am I going to sell my startup now?!