guybrushT

I wouldn't shower more praise on this game than folks have already done. Great article. Great HN thread. A happy day.

Signature Monkey Island writing style . Ron Gilbert wrote one of the greatest all time scripts - one can read the entire game here: https://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/562681-the-secret-of-monkey-isla...

Do others also find this article very hard to read? (Esp sentences like the one above)

Their growth has been quite phenomenal -- infact, they are probably the fastest company to reach $1B in revenue ever -- which isn't a small feat. But as size grows, doesn't growth inevitably slow down (for almost every company)?

Also, as another commenter has pointed out, they really are a internet of things company, more than a smartphone company. Seeing them just as a smartphone is missing the big picture.

Edit: typo

Reading these two types of writing side by side (as in this ama), convinced me that 'write as you talk' can seem quite odd.

The advice does work fantastically well with people who feel compelled to use very formal language to make their point. In those instances, Write like you talk could mean: write in a simple way.

[1] https://m.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3pommg/looks_like_im_bi...

Can we discover new active ingredients by studying 'traditional' medicine? Should there be a branch of study dedicated to this?

He was born to make us laugh. I think instead of focussing on his shortcomings and marriages, it is far more important to focus and discuss his craft.

The lookup Hanna speech [1] at the end of the great dictator is must read / listen. One of the best monologues in movie history. Tell me if this speech doesn't move you!

[1] http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechthe... (added link)

Depending on the size of the team, this is a good thing. As long as you have one "alpha", a designated or undesignated person who makes a call when contentious views are blocking progress.

I believe that a flat structure would be best You'd want to be careful of premature optimization here. I know what you are trying to get at (i.e. ensuring that you are setting up titles and roles that people can grow into), but this may not be the right time to do it.

Any structure is good, bad, best depending on the situation you are in, the size of the group, the problem you are trying to solve etc. The point is not to see hierarchy & structure as inhenrently good or bad -- but to work back from what you are trying to accomplish to the structure you need. Lets say you were trying to organize a 6 month expedition to a remote area with a group of people that you just met. How would you or this group go about it? I don't think you'd setup titles or hierarchy -- you'd probably go with "role clarity", and doing things that engender "excellence" in their respective tasks.

In a startup, one expects an organization to be driven by passion, creativity and very little structure. This is an important part of why people are there. Traditional forms of motivation or organization often don't work very well (e.g. hierarchy money, title or fear). Once the group is large, then there are companies that go for military style "command & control" structures. Even military is organized differently during war time and peace time. This comes back to the context of your particular situation & what you are trying to do. Are you in war time or peace time? :)

The most important thing is that you have a process that everybody understands -- you may never codify that process, but everyone on the team should know that it is there. And the process is: "To get things done & make a difference". What is the best way to do this?

You want to give a sense of progression, via money & title etc. These are good things, but there are more levers you can pull. In a small group, it is obvious who is kicking-ass and who isn't. You should let them, create an atmosphere first where they can do this -- and then, when they are. Talk to them about what they want. Do they want to run a team? Do they want more money? Do they want a more senior title? Do they want more free time? Do they want more flexibility? Do they want more responsibility (e.g. looking at 3 workstreams, instead of one)? Your answers will evolve. But don't take your eye off the prize -- and the prize is to create an atmosphere where people can excel.

Judging merit You make this sound hard, but is it? In a small group, isn't it obvious when someone is kicking ass? The problem you are worrying about is that when somoene is kicking-ass, how do I make sure they are rewarded, so that they continue kicking ass. I would say, let people kick-ass first, and understand why they are -- lets say they inherently love 'solving problems', then give them problems to solve that honors & respects their talents.

"This project was fun. It was very exciting to bring it to life step by step, and such a pleasure to see it working after we put so much effort in it. But this is nothing compared to how much we learned thanks to it. What seemed to be pretty easy from the beginning, turned out to be very tricky in details. I could not imagine I would have to learn statistical methods and clustering algorithms, dust off my school notes on electronics (though we only need the basics here), and discover a number of useful tools and services on the way."

These are exactly my feelings after reading through this marvelous blog post.

Bethe describes his meeting with Schwinger: "I entirely forgot that he [Schwinger] was a sophomore 17 years of age. . . His knowledge of quantum electrodynamics is certainly equal to my own, and I can hardly understand how he could acquire that knowledge in less than two years and almost all by himself.” Bethe concludes that “Schwinger will develop into one of the world’s foremost theoretical physicists if properly guided, i.e., if his curriculum is largely left to his own free choice."

"he published his reformulation of quantum electrodynamics in three long papers in Physical Review, Quantum Electrodynamics I (1948), II (1949), and III (1949). They include several of the results for which he, Richard Feynman, and Sin-Itiro Tomanaga were eventually awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics."

A life well led.

They give away their phones for very cheap, because the phone is the Trojan horse - it is the remote control for all the other devices it makes.

Xiaomi is the largest and fastest growing IoT company on the planet, and worth keeping an eye out for.

"Nobody's ever drawn blood from me and nobody ever will." "You run THAT fast?"

"People fall at my feet when they see me coming!" Even BEFORE they smell your breath?

"I'm not going to take your insolence sitting down!" "Your hemorrhoids are flaring up again eh?"

What a great game, and what a great era for gaming.

[1] http://monkeyisland.wikia.com/wiki/Insult_Sword_Fighting

A good piece of writing - quite critical about the country, but also comes from a place of affection for the country.

http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word?languag...

As one of the other commenters pointed out - it is like a tree (words/concepts) branching out from one another. I would be fascinated by seeing if this research can be continued into adulthood, where the individual "concepts" aren't as important as the interplay between them.

This is software eating the world in 1977 and it hasn't stopped till date :)

Edit: in a sense the journey from 1995-2001 was covered in the startup school video (linked in another comment), but that was mostly about the "company". He didn't cover the "How-to" of specifically how they did prototyping, manufacturing and development in the early days. 'how to start' this stuff is what I am interesting in.

[1] http://www.ogilvydo.com/topics/mobile/the-secrets-of-the-fas...

[2] http://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/1628622/...

Personally, my pain is just p2p sharing with a person sitting in front (or next to me) - I want the app to understand (say, when both users press a button - its like scanning for a nearby bluetooth connection) to add a person on my whatsapp, allow me send stuff (pics), share a contact, or share a meeting invite - stuff like that. WhatsApp would be great to do this. Proximity-based p2p connections should be quite easy, and apps could make it "feel" more automatic/magical.

It felt that the insights were coming from Google's unique vantage point - i.e. their domination over search. I believe that there are many areas in which a company like Google can add great insights to the world (e.g. how to build a great company from scratch) and that when they share them, it ought to feel like "only Google could have come up with this".

If I read a book from someone senior at say Apple about best practices for managing a global supply-chain - then I'd be very curious to understand their unique point of view.

So my first comment about this being "disappointing" is coming more from that angle - Are these insights only Google can give? I am not sure (although it doesn't invalidate the insights themselves). Now, my second comment that I found them shallow, could be because like you say "I already get it" (although frankly, I don't think so - I feel that I don't get this stuff :) I am just always super curious to learn stuff from Google et al).

I couldn't agree more with you. I was expecting some fact-based, data-driven insights/perspectives from Google - so, for me I'd say the "insights" seem disappointingly shallow because they are just "opinions".

I keep hearing that one of the big way in which "how google works" is different is that their "people operations" (HR) runs very differently from other companies. I would have loved to understand - how?

"What's different now?" is such a, I am sorry to say, stupid question. Depending on anyone's opinion, their world view, whether they think macro or micro - the answer can range from "nothing at all" to "everything is different". Lets take communication as an example - "what's different now?" - depending on who you talk to, they can argue that the fundamental needs are just the same (just forms have evolved) or someone can argue that things are radically different now because of X (where X could be snapchat or any new-age medium etc.). The same is true for entertainment - I have had discussions where I was convinced that the "fundamental need to be entertained" is just the same, but I also see so many new media around (so of course, its different now).

It would have been great if they had given more insights on how a successful internet age company truly works from the inside - a bit more than "its best to work in small teams, keep them crowded, and foster serendipitous connections". I thought Eric/Google could contribute a new perspective to this discussion, given their vantage point. Otherwise its just another tautological business/self-help book.

I am a bit disappointed because Google's vantage point in this world is so unique (they see so many things in the world, that others don't - given their reach & size) - that they could have really added something very positive and new to "What's different now".

The whole point about "Smart Creatives" also seems so shallow - for hundreds of years and maybe before, "Smart Creatives" as they have defined it, are having tremendous impact! Where is the "So what?" I understand that this is just a teaser to encourage people to read the book. If so, its just bereft of any fact-based, data-driven, truly unique perspectives or insights that I, personally just won't bother.

"We’re indexing the top apps with deep link tags and building a knowledge graph that organizes apps by their content and by the actions they allow users to take." - whats the advantage for a developer to allow their app to be indexed?

I am super intrigued by the tech. But just want to understand by what it can do for an app.

Looks like there are others who want domains from this company as well - https://www.google.com/?q=JNOM+Online+Marketing+LLC.#q=JNOM+... :)

Why a pure messaging app (like Whatsapp) wants to do voice, and why a pure voice app (like Viber) started doing messaging. Perhaps, both are needed within the same app to make it all work - but then why don't they do email? Why not have an app that calls, messages and mails? :)

Well smartphones are probably that app - they are a great communication tool just because they enable SMS, email and voice call together (all in the same seamless package).

Would love to get some thoughts about where you think this app sits in the communication app spectrum - what need it fulfills (I can't see using it, because it does nothing for me). But generally speaking, I'd love to discuss communication apps! :)

I could expand this sentiment to every teacher or lecturer who has chosen to put their video online, especially the great ones. They have done a great service to the world (probably beyond what they may themselves realize).

I recently met an undergrad student in India who considered Steve Huffman to be his guru (he was a fan of his Udacity course, and so am I, btw) and swears by everything Steve taught him. And, Steve probably does not even know that he has a fan following in a small town in India :)