Hacker News Reader

blankenshipon How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

I’ve never owned a PC. The first computer I ever used was a Macintosh II. The first desktop computer I bought was a Power Mac G3. My first laptop was that adorable little Powerbook G4. And I’ve been using an iPhone since 2007.

I’m not frustrated because of the hardware — I’m frustrated because 50% of the software on my phone is made by Google, who seems to actually still care about making useable, stable software that gets how I use multiple devices. The iOS ecosystem just keeps getting worse and worse, and I keep hiding or deleting their software on their hardware.

blankenshipon Jack Dorsey addresses Twitter's character limit

That makes sense to you (a web user who wants to use multiple platforms, and likely already does) but not to Twitter (a business whose financial interests are best realized the longer you stay within the walled garden of their product.) Twitter doesn’t want you to leave their ecosystem, so they’re considering changing the boundaries of the ecosystem.

blankenshipon To Apple, Love Taylor

There are a lot of economic differences between music and apps

Are there? (At least for independent musicians?) From my experience, it seems like a decent comparison—you can make an app or album for $2000 or $200k.

blankenshipon Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans

Sure, I’m responsible for my debt because it’s in my name. Did I know that as a naive 18 year old trusting my not-financially-savvy parents that this was a wise decision that wouldn’t wreck my ability to produce wealth for the next decade?

Nope.

Sometimes we’re expecting not-yet-adults to make adult decisions and live with the adult consequences. And sometimes they don’t have enough information/support to make those decisions.

blankenshipon At Chipotle, How Many Calories Do People Really Eat?

My wife and I regularly split a burrito bowl, getting extra rice and beans.Chipotle ends up being one of the few “heathy” places we can eat out for ~$5/person.

blankenshipon “'Net Neutrality' Is Obamacare for the Internet.” – Senator Ted Cruz

Hell of a soundbite. It doesn’t even matter that it doesn’t make sense, it’s a death-by-association repeatable nugget for uninformed voters (which most people are).

blankenshipon Why I Don’t Do CrossFit

The Workout Of The Day is one of the main things he takes issue with. The OP can claim “every single” because the primary methodology of Crossfit is ubiquitous—that’s what makes it a Crossfit gym. He doesn’t have to visit every Crossfit gym to know they do a WOD; it wouldn’t be a Crossfit gym without the WOD.

It’s like saying I don’t need to visit every movie theater in America to know that they all show movies at regular intervals.

blankenshipon Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

I’m a systems-minded designer who can code. Left/right-brained signifiers work decently well in theory, but fall apart with real humans. People aren’t that binary.

blankenshipon Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

Git doesn’t handle image files well at all, because it wasn’t designed for it. That said, I think the OP is talking more about designers using Git for code, not images. Designers don’t just make images, etc.

blankenshipon The Unexpected Entrepreneur: Interview with Joe Satriani

The whole interview is great, but the last few paragraphs on advice to young musicians are brilliantly helpful.

“Be voracious when it comes to uncovering the secrets of the music business and how people outside the music business behave as entrepreneurs.”

And I wish more of my fine art friends would embrace this mentality (primarily so they can keep making art):

“[Art and business] seem diametrically opposed, but I don't think you can survive being just an artist or just a businessperson. If you're only business, you will lack the flair that attracts an audience. If you're only flair, you'll be taken advantage of.”

blankenshipon New axe design uses lever action to make splitting wood easier

I’ve always used the bungee trick, too. Easier than getting split wood out of the tire.

blankenshipon New axe design uses lever action to make splitting wood easier

Another vote for the Fiskar X27. I haven’t used anything else for a few seasons now.

blankenshipon Editorially is shutting down

If execution is everything Editorially had a pretty stellar group of folks with proven track records executing, and are still shutting the doors because of a lack of paying customers. Execution is important, but so is the market for a product.

A one-person shop obviously has fewer bills to pay, but also a much shallower pool of talent (no matter how talented the one person is) to pull from for executing.

Keep HN updated on your progress. It’s an interesting case study of two approaches.

blankenshipon Sriracha founder reveals the 'secret' wholesale price of his sauce

My dad’s extended family was involved in the papermill business in the hills of North Carolina. The running joke was, “Smells like money.”

blankenshipon The E-Cigarette Industry, Waiting to Exhale

But are they harmless? If they’re made with chemicals in an unregulated industrial process, it seems unlikely. Less harmful than ”analog” cigarettes, maybe—but completely harmless seems like an unlikely stretch.

blankenshipon Addo – Online Giving for Churches

“Grow your church community and fund your mission.”

Or something of the sort. People respond to vision, not need.

blankenshipon Google Web Designer

...which is why they should call it Google Ad Designer.

blankenshipon New iPad browser from Opera

That’s one heavy-handed promo video for a web browser.

blankenshipon Why Are Google Employees So Disloyal?

“One. I think one golf ball would fit inside a school bus. Probably more. But I feel confident about one.”

blankenshipon Sneak peek of Macaw – a code-savvy web design tool [video]

I agree there is a need, but I think that need is exaggerated

Speak for yourself. As a code-savvy designer, who splits everyday designing on paper, in Photoshop/Illustrator and in the browser, I don’t think I can overstate how woefully our professional tools for web design have actually kept up with web design.

photoshop doesnt even have rounded borders

Sure it does—vector shapes + Stroke Layer Styles work great. Do you mean something else?

blankenshipon Do Things that Don't Scale

PG’s point about a lot of startup founders having an engineering background is hugely relevant to this, beyond his assertion that “customer service is not part of the training of engineers.“

Systems that don’t scale, or that are reliant on the grunt work of humans, are not part of the training of engineers either. For so many engineers, an unscalable, human-dependant system is a bug, not a feature.

Is it too hyperbolic to say doing things that don’t scale runs counter-intuitive to an engineering mindset? (I’m a left-brained, analytical, systems-minded designer, so I’m definitely not trying to throw stones at my peers.)

blankenshipon Microsoft reorganizes

...by doing what, specifically?

blankenshipon Zynga Shuts Down OMGPOP One Year After Acquiring It For $200M

...but would’ve worked at Zynga for more than a year to get three months of severance.

blankenshipon I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable

“This” was news to me. Newsworthiness is a matter of individual context.

blankenshipon The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

What does cute factor have to do with anything in this thread?

“Ballmer is rotund and intelligent, but what’s his strategy for Microsoft?” sounds just as silly.

blankenshipon [dead]

I know it’s just link bait, but the idea of there being 15 “must-have”s of something I didn’t know I even needed is humorous to me.

blankenshipon Get the perfect Google Voice number, Grep-style

I’ve found it useful for a catch-all incoming number (e.g. my wife has a studio/storefront with a Google Voice number so when anyone calls it rings her cellphone with the Shop name in it). We use it exclusively for business-related things.

blankenshipon How do I cite a tweet?

As a sidenote, I find it humorous that the MLA site can’t be bothered to use real quote marks when quoting something.

blankenshipon Dave Brubeck, Who Helped Put Jazz Back in Vogue, Dies at 91

I’m 33. I "discovered" Brubeck four or five years ago, primarily wearing out Jazz Impressions of New York while looking to detox a bit from a year of Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis.

In April 2011 my wife and I took a train from South Carolina to Washington D.C. to catch one of Dave's four sold out shows at Blues Alley. I paid more money than I had ever paid to see a concert, knowing this would likely be my only chance to ever see him live. He played an amazing set, with minimal onstage banter, giving his players plenty of room to shine during their solos.

He ended the set with a few of his more well-known standards, and then—just before leaving the stage—simply said, “They’ve got me on oxygen. But I made it through the whole set without needing the damn thing.”

Class act.

blankenshipon Ask HN: what would you pay a 50$/m subscription for?

A home automation system with a mobile and desktop view that combined HVAC, security (including door locking/unlocking), utility monitoring and billpay for all those services (assuming they’re different vendors).

e.g. I’d love to defragment all those areas that make up “home”... some kind of Nest + (non-ugly) Lockitron + Mint.com for utilities