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ayu

494 karma · joined September 22, 2010

everyone must be free to party
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ayu··on Green tea compound may halt molecular cause of often-fatal condition
Consider co-supplementation with quercetin, which increases the bioavailability of green tea catechins.

https://examine.com/supplements/green-tea-catechins/?PageSpe...

ayu··on Moving 12 years of email from GMail to FastMail
I use Protonmail and I like it.

Their web client is open source and MIT licensed. For more security it might be worth running it locally:

https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient

ayu··on The Mt. Gox alleged insolvency document has been posted
Ryan is the guy who originally shared the slide deck. He blogs/tweets under the pseudonym @twobitidiot:

http://www.slideshare.net/selkisr/bitcoin-market-opportunity...

(see slide 2)

original tweet sharing the slide deck:

https://twitter.com/twobitidiot/status/438131088607965184

ayu··on Jamaican bobsleigh team raises $25k in Dogecoin
full disclosure: I own a small amount of dogecoin.

Original spec for Dogecoin: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=361813.0

We're on block 65K. The first halving is scheduled for block 100K or Feb 14.

Dogecoin trade volume is around #2 #3 in cryptocoin markets, so actually it's very liquid. In practical terms, there's been $7M USD in trading volume in the last 24h. Converting 10s of M Doge into BTC into USD would be very easy.

ayu··on Colorado Stores Throw Open Their Doors to Pot Buyers
I get most of my tea from Monterey Bay Spice Company. Nice selection and very fair prices. I recommend their organic black tea (11 USD/lb).

http://www.herbco.com/

ayu··on Soylent Campaign
Rob has been conducting trials with people for a few months now, and reports there's "appropriate evidence that Soylent is safe, effective, healthy, and delicious." He's been pretty careful about bringing this to market, too; for a long time he hasn't suggested anyone try this and hasn't shared the recipe publicly because he doesn't want anyone without a chemistry/biology background to ingest a bunch of chemicals and hurt themselves.
ayu··on JSTOR Statement on Aaron Swartz
PLOS is a journal that's trying to improve the publishing space. Every article they publish is open access.

http://www.plos.org/

ayu··on Multiplayer game League of Legends introduces report cards for banned users
To give some light background, League of Legends is a popular game where two teams of 5 players are matching against each other. DAUs are in the millions, making moderation and banning difficult. Instead, players voluntarily participate in the "Tribunal", which is a jury-like system where players vote on abuse cases.

More details here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/tribunal/

ayu··on Yahoo Front Page, 2000
Remember when 1024x768 was considered a big screen resolution?
ayu··on Zynga shares plummet as Facebook game craze wanes
Last quarter they made a profit, but it was a net loss after adjusting for stock-related expenses. [1]

Also, bookings were up. I think it's important to note that after FB's updated S1 everyone had worried since Zynga comprised less of Facebook's Q1 revenue. What all news outlets failed to note is that FB credit associated purchases didn't go down but actually ad impressions on Facebook's part. It's possible Zynga is trying to drive pageviews of their own network rather than Facebook. (Check the S1) [2]

[1]: http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/26/zynga-beats-q1-earnings-es...

[2]: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/00011931251217567...

ayu··on Tell HN: YC Application Responses Are Out
We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding. Please don't take it personally. The applications we receive get better every funding cycle, and since there's a limit on the number of startups we can interview in person, we had to turn away a lot of genuinely promising groups.

http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html

Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots of mistakes. It's alarming how often the last group to make it over the threshold for interviews ends up being one that we fund. That means there are surely other good groups that fall just below the threshold and that we miss even interviewing.

We're trying to get better at this, but the hard limit on the number of interviews means it's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.

Y Combinator Team

ayu··on New fighter jet camouflage schemes
Except they used it to deter bloodsucking insects. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/120209-zebra-st...
ayu··on Show HN: Tiny.Cat - URL shortener that makes it obvious who created it.
The need for this came about because I've started to distrust bit.ly links on Twitter. What if you could see one and instantly know the original owner, so you wouldn't be afraid of hitting malware? Tiny.cat still lets you shorten anonymously, however the real benefit is after you register your tiny.cat/username.

Anonymous links: http://tiny.cat/to/anonymous_link

Registered links: http://tiny.cat/ayumi/link_text_here

ayu··on LulzSec indictment published
I found this notable too. Using a hardline is probably harder to monitor and doing so would require ISP cooperation.
ayu··on Show HN: Color.io == an intuitive social marketing / barter platform
The embedable widget/button for publishers goes in this direction, but I think the full download page is important. I want everyone to recognize that Likes and Tweets are really valuable, so valuable that publishers would give out free art and content to receive that social buzz.

In comparison to Facebook pages, Color links are more portable. You can easily include it in a status update also, rather than landing pages (which necessarily include the logic to check for Likes). This is especially relevant if publishers switch to the Timeline, which makes it much harder to do "Like gating". See http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/29/death-of-the-facebook-defau...

ayu··on Show HN: Color.io == an intuitive social marketing / barter platform
Thanks, this is great idea.
ayu··on Show HN: Color.io == an intuitive social marketing / barter platform
Do you think so? I think it's popular and users have embraced it. There's examples on Facebook pages where you have to Like to get so-and-so-dj-mix, and there's also PayWithATweet which came out 2 years ago. There's also the email newsletter, which for a store might include coupons.

My belief is that things like books, music, and other content take time to make and users fully understand that. What Color does, however, is help consumers realize they can reward creators without necessarily spending money, but instead with publicity, arguably even more valuable for new artists/stores/websites.

ayu··on Ask HN: What successful startups started as "Show HN"?
hey, I really appreciate the feedback and I'll see if I can add some more genres :)
ayu··on Ask HN: What successful startups started as "Show HN"?
Nobody cared about my Show HN, so I'd say it's lukewarm.

And I'm pretty proud of my website, too.

http://tuneup.fm/

ayu··on Can we kill the music business too?
I'd encourage you guys to check out artists who made it big without major labels, like Skrillex. He did everything via the internet, playing shows, and word of mouth.
ayu··on Congressman blacks out his official .gov website
Best link I've read all day, what a winner.

This guy needs to be invited to come hang out with us in the Valley.

ayu··on Show HN: TuneUP.fm
The things I am grateful for:

  1. Rails and the wonderful community
  2. APIs
  3. Heroku
also New Relic is SO GOOD you should all use it.

Feedback much much appreciated :]

ayu··on Introducing Firefox 11 Aurora
Turn on SPDY by going to about:config and setting network.http.spdy.enabled to true.
ayu··on Brain Gain: The Underground World of Neuroenhancing Drugs
Unnecessarily long article, but I appreciate it.

I take 20+ something supplements every day, half of which are intended to improve cognition. (You can see most of them at http://supplementwiki.org/Supplement_Wiki:Todo_List ) I attest to their utility, however their cumulative effect is actually really mild. If anyone's taken adderall or other stimulants before, you know it kicks in and wears off really quick. With nootropics you'd actually want to take long term, it's almost as if they don't work. After a few months, however, you notice you learn and observe more quickly and your speech and interactions become a lot easier and articulate.

Also: ImmInst (for Immortality Institute) is now known as Longecity, see http://longecity.org/forum

ayu··on Sergey Brin gives $500,000 to help Wikipedia
One time I applied for a software engineer position at Wikipedia. The first phone interview was with a non technical director of people or whatnot, and after a drawn out conversation of "tell me a time when..." she informed me there would 2 others to speak with.

Feels like a nonprofit.

ayu··on 90% Good parts of jQuery - at only 13% of the size
If you're talking about variables in closures, a coworker of mine has a pretty clever way to do it: "var _this = this". It's just a generally useful part of javascript.
ayu··on Stop using AdBlock
This vaguely reminds me of record labels' arguments against filesharing. The answer to impacted profits isn't to fight trends in technology (easy music copying, easy ad blocking); the answer is to find another way to monetize. People will pay for good stuff. Just look at the dozens of well written OS X apps. You pay for TextMate. You pay for Stay. You pay for Apple products in general. Why? They're good. Good things cost money, and people know that.

I will continue to use AdBlock, and I will continue to entrepreneur.

ayu··on List.js
Good complement to Chosen, which gives you improved <select> elements. http://harvesthq.github.com/chosen/
ayu··on Tell HN: Startup School 2011 emails are out
In. Watch out for the crazy-looking redhead :)
ayu··on 2011 Logo Trends
Absolutely, I thought the variable logos were a really awesome idea and would be very engaging for users to look at it.

Even if they don't understand it at first, think of it as a well-liked art piece or a clever idiom that requires your friend to explain it to you first. Blowing minds with your logo - good idea.

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