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feverishaaron

833 karma · joined March 27, 2008

Product Design at an early-stage, semi-secret enterprise startup in Palo Alto.

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/feverishaaron; my proof: https://keybase.io/feverishaaron/sigs/6-fKby424OTSn1P_h15ApCwa99Lmius1ri8NILKryXE ]

submissionscomments
feverishaaron··on Launch HN: Aqua Voice (YC W24) – Voice-driven text editor
My child is profoundly dyslexic. This kind of tool is a game-changer for him.
feverishaaron··on Google Design’s Best of 2019
UX Designer (at Google) here. I feel your pain. For any design to work, it needs to be grounded in a firm understanding of the user's behavior. I agree that design intuition is limited by one's own view of the world, so it's critical to gather the right data before going further than speculative designs. This can be accomplished through a variety of means, but observation and qualitative interviews prior to "design" are usually effective.

The design should be validated with different users from the same cohort prior to building it. Functional prototypes work well here. Ignoring user feedback here is a huge mistake on the part of the designer. Design is relatively cheap, and it's easy to iterate and check your assumptions with users before anything is set in stone. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this step would have increased trust with your engineering team. Often due to ignorance, some designers don't appreciate how much effort goes into these builds, and how early architectural decisions shape the product in ways that make it difficult to change later.

Acknowledged, that this is a "perfect world" scenario and business pressure might require augmenting the process. An experienced designer would understand how to do this and still get meaningful results.

feverishaaron··on Remove.bg – A service to remove the background of any photo
The magic wand tool (or really any of the "modern" extraction tools in Photoshop) can't handle hair the way they claim to do in those examples. If this is truly done with non-manual work, it's incredibly impressive.
feverishaaron··on Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes
I realize this is a corner case, but I wonder how dyslexics will perform using a font that looks even less like a letterform — when it is already a struggle to combine several into a word.
feverishaaron··on Apple rejects Puffin Browser on iOS
Most likely insisted upon due to the obfuscation of user privacy
feverishaaron··on Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year
Naw, kids from Netflix homes are just watching long-form commercials. Dino Trucks, Nexo Knights and Ninjago all dominate my boys' Christmas wish lists this year.
feverishaaron··on House Republicans propose to scrap $7,500 electric vehicle credit
Those will remain
feverishaaron··on Apple to discontinue iPod Nano and Shuffle
Parents buy iPod Touches for their kids, so they have a cheap wi-fi enabled gaming and entertainment device, with no monthly contracts, that fits in mom's purse.

Companies buy iPod Touches to use as ticket scanners, credit card readers and product catalogs among other things. Same reason – cheap, wi-fi enabled, no contracts.

feverishaaron··on Carnegie Mellon Offers New Master's Degree in Product Management
Not Indian and I find this comment terribly offensive. What does race have to do with wanting to better oneself? Who cares what race the model in the photograph is?!
feverishaaron··on The Tenacity of Tech Recruiters
It's shameful. I had to make my Instagram private, because I had a recruiter texting me and noting I was at Disneyland, suggesting I could get in touch while in line for rides.
feverishaaron··on Ask HN: Who is firing?
This extended back to USWeb/CKS. I might still have a shirt bragging about a $300M quarter (Though if you looked at the financials,we had something like a $50M loss).

It was like the Tres Comma club, but tackier.

feverishaaron··on Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends Report [pdf]
I don't think that's totally accurate. If you consider the popularity of adjacent technologies (games, mobile devices, entertainment), it's logical to predict that a certain technology will also be noteworthy.
feverishaaron··on Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends Report [pdf]
Kind of like the internet in 1992
feverishaaron··on Why most mobile development projects fail
Or just ask your designer to work @1x in a vector app like Sketch, and export PDF vector images for import into the asset catalog (Scale Factor - Vector Asset).

http://useyourloaf.com/blog/creating-scaled-images-with-pdf-...

-- A designer

feverishaaron··on Why the S.E.C. didn't hit Goldman Sachs harder
It's their boss' (aka Congress) job to set a tone where it is not a livelihood risk to "do your duty".

If you're a peon, "doing your duty" is a great way to put a target on your back.

feverishaaron··on Why the S.E.C. didn't hit Goldman Sachs harder
Exactly. If it affects my personal livelihood, it is not logical to pursue.
feverishaaron··on The Rise of Renting in the U.S
Especially when rents are rising 5-10% per year.
feverishaaron··on Also Out at Twitter: Engineering Head Roetter (and More to Come)
I think they have a ton of opportunity with a distribution platform like that. Tweets are already headlines for other products.

A few expansion areas come to mind off hand:

1. Media distribution

2. E-commerce (get the hottest, limited supply thing)

3. Events & ticketing

4. Financial market alerts

5. AMA-style Q & As

6. Chat/AI services and integrations

feverishaaron··on “We are left with no choice but to shut down Flytenow”
I should have clarified by "Landlords" and "Middlemen" I meant the groups that lobby local governments to restrict zoning and growth, so they can retrieve higher profits.

Uber is very much within the "virtuous cycle" – but they may also become rent seekers via monopolization of private transportation.

feverishaaron··on “We are left with no choice but to shut down Flytenow”
Companies that use their property – distribution networks, in this case – to profit from others without providing wealth creation back to society.

AKA Landlords, Realtors®, Middlemen, Licensures etc.

feverishaaron··on The 99% (of startups)
I don't disagree.

I used Stampy Cat to make the market point, because there were hints that the "alright, let's play this game" spectator video was going to be a big thing, even before Twitch was Twitch.

This guy has been operating since Minecraft was in it's infancy, and he had a large following before Twitch was a big thing.

feverishaaron··on The 99% (of startups)
These investors aren't paying enough attention to their children / their colleague's children.

I would think that this guy's fame would have made this market opportunity super-obvious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Garrett

With his own personalized collection of Minecraft toys and all:

http://amzn.to/1O4VQNi

feverishaaron··on Leave Work Unassigned and See Who Steps Forward
There are some, who in ambition to lead (or work on highly visible projects), will step up and take on new things – meanwhile skimping on their core responsibilities and deliverables.

Are these the people we want to promote into leadership roles?

feverishaaron··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2015)
mPath - http://mpath.com - Palo Alto and San Francisco

mPath is a new type of mobile productivity platform for businesses. Most people don't need all of their business data on their phone – just the pieces that matter to them. With mPath, business folks (non-developers) can modify the app for their needs (without coding). All of this takes between a few minutes and a few hours.

We launched recently, and we're getting quite a bit of traction inside businesses. We need help building out our suite of productivity apps and extending the platform.

Our stack is

- React/Sinatra web app

- Swift 2 using MVVM on iOS

- Java/Dropwizard and Phoenix/HBase on the back end

- Java on Android

Right now, we have a small but very talented team, and we'd like to add more curious, intelligent people who are interested in solving challenging problems. interested [at] mpath dotcom

We have several roles open, but these two are stand-outs:

1. Senior Backend Engineer - Java and Phoenix/HBase

2. Android engineer

Check out http://www.mpath.com/about#positions

feverishaaron··on Free resources made by designers at Facebook
I see this as a recruiting tool. Designers want to work for a company that "gets" designers' needs.
feverishaaron··on Free resources made by designers at Facebook
They are giving these assets out for free, and they most likely use Macs internally.

If you want them for Linux, feel free to provide your own to the community.

feverishaaron··on Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset'
If anyone is interested, she's speaking tonight (10/4) in Palo Alto at the Oshman Jewish Community Center.

http://patch.com/california/paloalto/carol-dweck-speak-palo-...

feverishaaron··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2015)
mPath - http://mpath.com - Palo Alto and San Francisco

mPath is a new type of mobile productivity platform for businesses. Most people don't need all of their business data on their phone – just the pieces that matter to them. With mPath, business folks (non-developers) can modify the app for their needs (without coding). All of this takes between a few minutes and a few hours.

We launched recently, and we're getting quite a bit of traction inside businesses. We need help building out our suite of productivity apps and extending the platform.

Our stack is

- React/Sinatra web app

- Swift 2 using MVVM on iOS

- Java/Dropwizard and Phoenix/HBase on the back end

- Java on Android

Right now, we have a small but very talented team, and we'd like to add more curious, intelligent people who are interested in solving challenging problems. interested [at] mpath dotcom

The two high-priority roles are:

1. Senior Backend Engineer - Java and Phoenix/HBase

2. Android engineer

Check out http://www.mpath.com/about#positions

feverishaaron··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2015)
mPath | Palo Alto | Full Stack Engineer | Android Engineer | prefer on-site, but REMOTE will be considered

mPath is a new type of mobile productivity platform for businesses. Most people don't need all of their business data on their phone – just the pieces that matter to them. With mPath, business folks (non-developers) can modify the app for their needs (without coding). All of this takes between a few minutes and a few hours. We connect to existing data sources like Salesforce and Box.

We launched recently, and we're getting quite a bit of traction inside businesses.

Our stack is

- React/Sinatra web app

- Swift 2 using MVVM on iOS

- Java/Dropwizard and Phoenix/HBase on the back end.

Right now, we have a small but very talented team, and we'd like to add more curious, intelligent people who are interested in solving challenging problems. interested [at] mpath dotcom

The two high-priority roles are:

1. Full stack engineer - mainly Java and HBase

2. Android engineer

Check out http://www.mpath.com/about#positions

feverishaaron··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2015)
mPath is a new type of productivity app for businesses. Most people don't need all of their business data on their phone – just the pieces that matter to them. With mPath, business folks (non-developers) can modify the app for their needs (without coding). All of this takes between a few minutes and a few hours. We connect to existing data sources like Salesforce and Box.

We just launched our product last week, and have had a huge response from interested companies. Our sales team is going to be busy!

Our stack is

- React/Sinatra web app

- Swift with MVVM on iOS

- Java/Dropwizard and Phoenix/Hbase on the back end.

Right now, we have a small but very talented team, and we'd like to add more curious, intelligent people who are interested in solving challenging problems.

interested [at] mpath dotcom

1. iOS Engineer - Swift/Objective C

2. QA Automation Lead - build a testing program

3. Senior Web Services Engineer - DropWizard, Docker, AWS

4. Web Services Engineer - Dropwizard, Phoenix

http://www.mpath.com/team#positions

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