caidan

This is a fairly silly list really, missing the bulk of what's been good reads for the last quarter century(!). It's heavily biased tothings that have sold well in the past few years. That said, the books on here are quite good. I'd definitely recommend Black Leopard, Red Wolf if you want fantasy from completely different story genetics (non-Tolkien). Priory is more traditional but good fun.

Not on this list that I thought were particularly excellent, [goodreads rating in brackets]:

[4.26] Between Two Fires by Christopher Buhuelman https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13543121-between-two-fir... Horror-Fantasy. Absolutely loved this book, a travelogue through France in the grip of the Black Plague...inflicted upon humanity by Lucifer in the war on Heaven. See the sights as God abandons his children and devils in both man and mythic form ruin His creation. Takes on a hallucinatory, Book of Revelations, William Blake on bad acid feel and builds to a tremendous crescendo while retaining deep heart and complex characters.

Christopher Buhuelman is one of my favorite "new" authors, his new fantasy series The Blacktongue Thief[4.22] and The Daughters War[4.3] are both excellent as well. His horror chops enable him to to make what might be more traditional fantasy stories much more impactful. For example, The Daughters War is about an desperate existential war against goblins that is fucking horrifying, which is impressive for a critter traditionally deployed for comic effect or disposable fodder for the heroes to kick about. Even though you "know" that humans win in the end because of the chronology of the series (this was book takes place before the The Blacktongue Thief which was published first), it doesn't feel like it ever. Which is the magic of good horror writing, and is often missing from fantasy which can feel like there are no real stakes sometimes despite the epic scales presented.

[4.22] Piranesi by Susanna Clark https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50202953-piranesi Labyrinth-Fantasy. Another book I adored, this novel has a sense of place so tangible that I am convinced that it actually exists and Susanna has been there. Piransi lives in what amounts to a pocket dimension, an infinite labyrinthine house containing amongst other things an ocean whose tides rage through the halls, flooding and revealing them in turn.

[4.3] Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim... Alien Encounter-SciFi. Omitting this from any best of list shows the list isn't particularly serious, this novel is exceptional. On a distant exoplanet being terraformed for future humans, a disaster leaves the scientist in charge alone and cut off from humanity, and rather than seeding the new world with monkeys to be uplifted, she uplifts instead a small species of jumping spider. We experience its evolution across millenia and as its society reaches the space faring age, until it's encounter with the last desperate remnants of humanity, fleeing a doomed civilization and descending into barbarism. The narrative techniques to tell a story of this scope work exceptionally well and the whole tale moves quickly and with surprising emotional heft. To bring the audience to understand a world and society entirely unlike ours, and make it relatable and poignant is truly impressive. I really don't like spiders, but by the end of this book I was rooting for them... at humanity's expense.

Because of shifting demographics in the book buying market, readers looking for good yarns outside of the current trend of romantasy and/or cozy scifi/fantasy may feel a little left out, but there are tons of great authors that may be forgotten from these lists for a while. I heartily recommend:

Anything by Jay Kristoff https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4735144.Jay_Kristoff, ex Nevernight[4.22] or Empire of the Vampire[4.35].

Anything by Joel Shepherd https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/215710.Joel_Shepherd, ex Spiral Wars series (scifi space opera with fascinating AI) [4.27-4.56], Cassandra Kressnov series (cyberpunk) [3.88-4.0], A Trial of Blood & Steel series (fantasy) [3.9-4.26].

Pierce Brown's Red Rising sci-fi series is excellent and magnificent in scope and scale.

Anything by Joe Abercrombie for gritty low fantasy with buckets of blood, humor, populated with legendary characters. The Bloody-Nine, Dogman, Black Dow, Caul mfing Shivers anyone? His latest series https://www.goodreads.com/series/211497-the-age-of-madness [4.45-4.6] was fantastic.

And of course the other books mentioned by other commenters, particularly anything by Ian M Banks.

No disrespect intended, but what is the point of using terminology like “moonshot” coupled with tiny amounts of funding like $3m. If moonshot is taken to be a loose reference to the Apollo program - which I imagine it is otherwise the name is poorly chosen - then the funding amounts are off by several orders of magnitude. In 1960 the US government got its feet wet with a 900 million (in 2020 dollars) spend on the Apollo program and ramped up to a high of 40,000 million a year by 1964. The total spent on the Apollo program between 1960 and 1973 was 283,000 million or almost one hundred thousand times as much as the 3 million investment under the moonshots fund.

Sure the 3 million is a seed round but the US spent 300 times as much on its exploratory “seed” round in 1960.

It is unlikely until he extreme that any real “moonshot” will achieve significant impact without the combined talents of a large percentage of the world greatest talents driven by goals of the highest social priority funded by limitless pockets and organized by the very best managers and leaders that society can produce.

3m will achieve none of that.

Bizarre that there is no interest in this subject at all on HN.

Second day in a row. 120,000 passengers disrupted. Can anyone with domain knowledge chime in on why it is not possible to detect the operators?

Oddly enough I just implemented my own one of these in 34 sloc using flask and weasyprint. I chose to only have it accept html in a post rather than a url so that it could render non-publically accessible urls. You can also pass it a base_url (which it passes on to weasyprint) for resolving relative urls for static assets in the html, which are usually publicly accessible. Runs on heroku for simplicity.

You've got this, these are all problems we've all had before, and there are solutions to them ;) We will all be here to give feedback, commiserate, and help you succeed. You have a great attitude in this response. An ability to take honest (often unpleasant to hear) feedback and use it to improve your product and pitch is the single most important thing you can do for yourself. Keep on crushing problems and I look forward to your next showing!

Unfiltered First impressions:

Your medium article is 50X better than your website. Your website is useless for promoting your product. I don't like the headline font for your site, the lack of screenshots, basically the lack of focus on a product that will live or die on its usability and interface. I'm not a fan of the Z in openloopz. Combined with the comic sansy looking headline font it doesn't feel polished.

The inventing of a new words ("loops") is to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. You are now not only trying to tell a (very) mildly interested reader about your product you need them to learn a new language in order to understand it. This is an unrealistic cognitive burden for a sales pitch for a todo app. I strongly suggest that you use the simplest possible terms in plain language to describe the focus of your product, how it fits into the users life, and what problems it solves for them.

Your post here is more focused on your personal suffering than on your product. We are all eating shit to try to launch our companies, but too much focus on that makes for a downer intro to your product. I'd try to separate your moments of sharing the struggle and the moments of sharing the product. Do you want people to be genuinely excited about it, or pity you? Which emotion do you want to be a stronger first response?

Scanning further over your medium article (It's longer than a casual browser will give it time, ie 5 seconds) I suggest you take whatever the salient feature of your product is, maybe the hashtagging to create inline tasks and put that front and center in a huge picture and font. I'm still not sure what problem you are solving or who you are competing with, is it todo lists, slack, what? Where does this tool fit in my life? I suggest you take a look at the way that slack conveys information https://slack.com/is/team-communication (notice even the url hammers home their function).

I think that honest feedback is very imporant and that your main problem here, which is something that affects us all, is that you are too close to the product. You already understand it, you speak its language (invented words and all), and you are now longer able to communicate it to the passing man in the street. I suggest workshoping your pitch and language with fresh ears constantly until you are able to get someone to understand the basics of what it is and how it helps them in 10 seconds or less. All that said, I'm rooting for you, best of luck!

This does actually look pretty cool, and I too am a fan of local app+1 time payment.

I like Simple and I wish them success. I don't like them because of their fantastic app and website, or excellent human customer service, but because after many years of abuse at the hands of Bank of America I wanted a bank that does not aggressively pursue Non Interest Income (ie fees, usually overdraft) as a major source of revenue.

Simple states very clearly on their faq[0] page that they make money off of interest and interchange fees, not punitive and arguably immoral fees like those imposed by the large mainstreet banks. Head over to this reddit thread[1] from this morning that discusses what it's like to work for these banks: "[the customer who was mistakenly charged the fee] struggles from week to week with finances, and needs every dollar more than the rich customers who treat us like shit yet the managers kiss their asses. It wasn't the customers fault at all yet they have to suffer".

All of the large banks are ruthless predators on the weakest of our societies, gouging their customers with an ever evolving scheme of fees and debt incentives to ensnare, entrap and exsanguinate those who can least afford it.

They are involved in price fixing scandals of the highest order, are beyond the reach of the law no matter the transgression, and seem to hold the sum total of our shared societies in contempt. Apparently there is very little that can be done at this point, the horse as long since bolted, but at the bare minimum I'll be god damned if I give them a dime I don't have to. Simple enables me to bank as usual without continuing to participate in that abusive relationship, and for that, I like them.

[0] https://www.simple.com/faq/ [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/26qpcq/redditors_...

That picture at the top is horrifying. Looks like she is undergoing the Ludovico technique http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjAxODIxMDQwNl5BMl5Ban...

From paragraph 4 of the article:

"Nearly a quarter of these uber-weathy work in the financial industry. And 40% are executives, managers and supervisors, Sadoff says. A vast majority of the 0.1% live in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C. or Houston."

Side note, it is never surprising that the guy with the keys to the pantry is the fattest one of all.

Looks like the PiCloud team is joining dropbox but according to their blog post "The PiCloud Platform will continue as an open source project operated by an independent service, Multyvac (http://www.multyvac.com/)."

Source: http://blog.picloud.com/2013/11/17/picloud-has-joined-dropbo...

Anyone else notice that the acronym for Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers (SOCAN), should actually be SOCAMP? Guess they felt that was inappropriate.

Just to be clear, you are comparing two hip hop artists, two comedians, two actors, and an avante garde pop artist to the CEO of a mobile games company? In fact you are comparing a group of individuals who are all famous or infamous in their own way for being edgy and/or a mess, to a company that makes family friendly games. There is a very large difference between the responsibilities of an entertainer and a CEO. The responsibilities of some of the aforementioned celebrities could arguably include being "offensive". Witness the scorn heaped upon Eddie Murphy when he decided to shed his Raw persona and turn to family movies.

If you are worrying about having to censor your public persona in the future, go into a line of business where being edgy is part of the attraction. However, it is never a good move, whether as a CEO or public figure or basic human being to get up on a soapbox and say bitchy, petty, mean spirited things. The OMGPop CEO is not speaking "brutal honesty", he's just acting like a dick most likely because his ego has swollen out of control by the sale and the success of Draw Something and he can't stand that this "little guy" is pissing on his parade. This is the behaviour of a child, not a leader.

Lastly, this isn't about "holding people to high standards", as if it is some sort of conscious thing we participate in. In societal interactions there is a implicit understanding of the range of acceptable behaviour for a public figure, it is unconscious and breaching those boundaries will have immediate emotional consequences on how people perceive you. If Snoop Dog says fuck or calls himself a pimp nobody will blink, if he punched a child in the face people would immediately react negatively. Likewise if he stopped all of his Snoop persona and started working for the Rick Santorum campaign. If you are the CEO of a company that makes family friendly mainstream games, people expect that you will act like an adult in possession of self-control are good judgement. If you are the CEO of a company that sells coke spoons, maybe less so.

Notch is able to say what he did because he has garnered significant good will, and because it embodies the mass public reaction to the OMGpop tweet. If he tweeted this kind of thing all the time he would lose that good will eventually. As a one off though.. it IS idiotic and insane to publicly belittle former employees as a CEO.

Moral of the story is don't be a dick in public view, unless you are in public view for being a dick ;)

My brother was studying for a degree in Sports Science in London a few years ago and asked me to come in to serve as a guinea pig for a project he was working on. He tells me that all I'll have to do is ride a stationary bicycle in bursts of 30 seconds full out 1 minute rest, repeated three or four times. I do basically no exercise, but this sounded like something I could handle and after all I have a filial responsibility.

So I think no problem, head down to his lab, and the first sign that something is going to be rough is that his friends are there (other students/guinea pigs) joking about how likely they are to throw up this time. Apparently it's fairly common to throw up after doing the trial properly, but it just doesn't seem plausible. After all, you are only cycling for a couple minutes. Even for a lazy bastard like me, that seemed doable.

I sit there with growing concern as the guy before me finishes his run and staggers over to one of the tables and crawls upon it. He lays there alternately going bright red and white and trembling like a fish too long out of water. He doesn't speak, and doesn't respond when spoken to.

My turn comes and my brother, laughing, takes me over to the stationary cycle where he tells me it has been set to an incline calibrated against my weight/height to cause maximum stress during the all out segments.

I start peddling slowly until he shouts NOW in my ear and then I grab the handle bars and peddle for all I'm worth, elbows and knees flying everywhere. Meanwhile my brother is shouting at me like a drill sergeant and through a combination of naivety and adrenaline I make it through my first 30 second sprint without too much difficulty. At this point my legs are burning quite a bit and I'm bright red with exertion, but otherwise ok. I coast for another 60 seconds and then the yelling starts again. RIDE YOU BASTARD, RIDE!!! I give it my best, but it's a bit harder this time, my legs haven't recuperated from the previous sprint and I am even more ungainly if possible. Twice more we go through the cycle and by the last time my legs don't even seem to be responding to my brain, they feel hard liked they have been pumped full of oh I don't know, blood and acid, and have barely any power to them. My final sprint is so uncoordinated that my brother has to lean on the cycle to stop it from flopping over. Lance Armstrong's testicle was undoubtedly spinning in its grave. A group of my brothers friends cheer me on, however the guy who went before me is still absent.

Finally, I make the end of the sprint, and stagger off the bike. My legs don't work, I feel like one of those floppy inflatable plastic guys they attach to a fan and use to promote used car lots, alternately staggering around stiff and floppy legged. I don't feel too bad yet, and some sort of manic euphoria has hold of me. You see, I tell my brother, some of us are just built out of tougher stuff. He laughs in my face and tells me to go sit down in a corner. I start to repeat my claims of being fine, but suddenly I feel like the earth has dropped away and I am in free fall. He looks at me again and his smile fades and a look of concern comes into his eyes. Seriously, go sit down. Apparently, I have turned an unholy shade of green. I stagger over to a corner, now feeling like I have reached terminal velocity and sort of flump to the floor. Apparently my body is so full of lactic acid or what have you, that it is overwhelmed, and starts wondering if perhaps a good upchuck would help. At this point my vision narrows to about the size of a penny, filled with dancing patterns and lights. I don't throw up but I assume it's only because my body just can't get it together to do that. I am vaguely aware of people standing over me, concerned, calling my name, but responding to them seems like an Everest of a task so I lay there in my flump, thinking to myself: You see? I was right, exercise is a terrible terrible thing. Even 2 minutes is too much. Never ever again. I begin to vibrate softly as every muscle in my body twitches.

My brother leans down and puts his hand on my head and says: "You'll be ok. If you need to throw up, please use the bucket in the corner. Sometimes people just throw up on themselves and it makes a mess. And hey, at least now you know what it's like so it won't be so bad when you come back next week".

I suppose he must have spotted the sort of mad murderous gleam that popped into my eye, because I doubt my mangled bleat of "whaaabastardfuhnextweekafuhcrazy" through nerveless lips was all that intelligible. He laughed and said, "yeah, I have to get two sample points, a week apart! So you have to come back, didn't I mention that?"

I did go back in the end, but I sure as shit didn't pedal all out. So I'm not sure if the body got better aerobics or insulin whatevers, but the brain, the brain learned its lesson.