Hacker News Reader

rationalbeaveron macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

"Hold Control and Option while clicking on a window to switch focus to that window without raising it."

TIL. Amazing little hack.

rationalbeaveron Secret’s founder returns with anti-loneliness app Ikaria

"Ikaria...named after the Greek island where a close-knit community helps extend people’s lifespans."

"Bader met Dadashi through an offline men’s group for discussing life, love and everything in the wake of Secret’s collapse and a rough romantic breakup. After just a few weeks of these meetups, they say they felt closer to each other than to most of their friends."

"Basically, since 2004, technology has created this monumental shift in the human social experience. We’re more connected than ever technically but all the studies show we’re lonelier than ever,” Bader explains. “It’s like eating McDonald’s to get healthy."

And the conclusion is to take VC money to make a slightly different McDonald's. I just can't even.

rationalbeaveron Show HN: CalmJobs.io – Work with companies who values work-life balance

Great concept! Bookmarked for future reference.

Nitpicky copy edits: In the headline, it should be "value" not "values". Also, I'd update the job buttons to just say "Apply". "Apply Job" sounds awkward.

rationalbeaveron Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

You're on the right track with that, although I'd say it's centered around order, rather than entropy.

It's hard to do it justice here, but the book builds off of existing information theory to offer an explanation of why there are pockets of order in the universe (like our solar system) instead of uniform chaos.

From there it explains how natural systems can increase in complexity over time, and then moves eventually into human systems like cities and economies.

He basically uses physics and thermodynamics to explain economics, which I found fascinating.

This book made me realize just how valuable dense cities are for economic progress and innovation (and why that is - one reason being that it's relatively difficult to transfer knowledge and know-how from one human to another). It also provides an interesting sort of grand purpose for humanity - to be caretakers of this little region of ordered information we find ourselves in.

rationalbeaveron Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?

Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies - César Hidalgo (2015)

Fantastic read that gave me a new way to understand the world.

rationalbeaveron Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

When facial recognition is ubiquitous we will all wear masks.

rationalbeaveron Should we be suspicious of the idea of the Anthropocene?

We should be suspicious of all ideas.

rationalbeaveron Aaron Swartz commits suicide

rationalbeaveron Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

"Stay the hell out of my kitchen" comes to mind. :)

rationalbeaveron Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps

I'm not sure why I would care to defend him, but it seems that his claim that the data is not real time can be verified by the first image in the parent comment's list. In that shot there's a column listing the 'Upload Reason'. The reasons include "Scheduled" and "Archive full", which seems to indicate that the software reports back at set times unless the user was particularly active and the data file hit some size limit.

There's also a third upload reason in that image which has it's own disturbing implications: "SMS_PullRequest_CS".

rationalbeaveron Groupon To Sell 30M Shares At $16-$18 A Pop

I'm not going to buy it until it goes on sale for 90% off.

rationalbeaveron Introducing Google Analytics Premium

It's because he's spending a lot.

rationalbeaveron In-Car Algorithm Could Rapidly Dissolve Traffic Jams

Seems like it would be a pretty good business model for utility companies.

rationalbeaveron JP Morgan May Take Over Bank Of America

One bank to rule them all?

rationalbeaveron Motivation: Freedom

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?rlz=1C1CHMR_enU...

Google is your friend.

rationalbeaveron Ask HN: who launched something in July?

I launched http://practicalinterviews.com, where I'm posting my interviews with entrepreneurs, business owners and creative folks of all sorts. I'm still working on my recording setup, to say nothing of my interviewing techniques, but at least it's out there. :)

P.S. I'm looking for interviewees, so if any of you would like to discuss your newly launched apps, let me know.

rationalbeaveron Graph: How long it took Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to reach 10 million users

Replace Facebook with Google Search and Twitter with Gmail, then add in Orkut for good measure. That would be an interesting graph.

rationalbeaveron How do you get your startup noticed?

Yes, just like all the other hackers...

rationalbeaveron Jonathan Coulton On how he made 500K as a DIY musician

I don't mean to be a jerk, but this post was lifted wholesale from Jonathan's actual blog: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2011/05/23/on-snuggies-and-bu...

And this is the actual link to the post named in the submission: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/05/how-jonathan-coulton-...

rationalbeaveron Stop Giving it Away For Free and Start Creating Brand Value

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/23/groupon-u-s-revenues/

rationalbeaveron Getting Users For Your New Startup

I think there's good advice here for almost anyone, you just have to adapt it to your situation. Not all of these work for everyone, but many will work for most. Let's take your site CompVersions.com (which looks very nice, BTW) for example:

Controversy - Okay, tough one there. Get back to me on that.

Viral tricks - Allow new users to extend their free trials by another 14 days if they send an email about the service to 5 people. Or, give new paying users some amount of credit for doing something similar. Give away a free {thing designers want} - To enter the contest you must tweet about the service. Tons of options here.

Affiliate Program - People pay for the service, so this is doable. The affiliates you want are people/companies who operate popular design sites/blogs/forums/newsletters/services. If they have ads then they could be an affiliate (actually, even if they don't). Cut special deals for really good partners. Consider offering small payouts for trial sign ups and bigger payouts for paid customers.

SEO - Goes without saying. You need to be thinking about this.

Press - You probably aren't going for CNN here, but there are lots of design oriented publications both online and off. Think of some story ideas and start pitching. Are more people going freelance because of the economy? You could play off that angle. Clients who can't make up their minds about anything is a classic designer story. If you can put together a success story of someone who used your product to get an indecisive client to make a choice- that's a story people want to hear.

Celebrity Endorsement - Offer your product to a highly visible designer for free. If they like it, ask for an endorsement. Maybe a tweet or two? Maybe a mention on their blog?

Biz Dev - There are lots of design agencies out there. Maybe this is something that some of them would be interested in using. Maybe you could do a co-branded promotion with a company that offers another kind of design tool, like wire framing or something. Perhaps you could work with Appsumo to put together a "Designers" package, of which CompVersions would be a part.

Offline Events - Probably not super useful for this. But live design demos in front of an audience could be fun.

So yeah, I think there's some good material to go on here.

rationalbeaveron How to hack yourself a standing desk - an illustrated guide

There's actually a current model at Ikea that works awesomely as a stand up desk: The Fredrik. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00115992

I own one and enjoy it greatly.

rationalbeaveron The Very Rich Indie Writer

There's a bit more info in one of the articles he linked to. Specifically, in the HufPo piece (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestsell...) she's quoted as saying:

"AH: As of Tuesday, January 04, 2011 at 9 PM, I've sold over 185,000 books since April 15, 2010."

rationalbeaveron Hotmail launches accounts you can throw away

I was under the impression that Hotmail is accounts you can throw away.

rationalbeaveron Should Tumblr care? David Karp tells users who complain to "go away"

"One very important point that William fails to mention about his email to us - he spent the time to track down every Tumblr employees email and sent it to the entire team. It was way over-the-top, and yes, discouraging to the team."

Assuming that is true, your comment deserves more attention. It changes the situation significantly.

rationalbeaveron Goodbye Facebook

We should chalk it up to Facebook being blocked in China.

rationalbeaveron You don't really want a million dollars

It's the vacation you take shortly before the baby arrives. The wife and I took one (though I refuse to call it that). For the record, we probably spent about $250 on the whole trip (including fuel, lodging, food, etc).

rationalbeaveron Is science fiction dying?

While I basically agree with you, the literary nazi in me must say that SF is a genre, not a writing style. The Baroque cycle crosses the historical fiction and SF genres into a lovely mutant child that could be called Historical Science Fiction. The Time Traveller's Wife also crosses genres, with a heavier focus on the Romance than the SF.

rationalbeaveron Is science fiction dying?

Likely more for trademark and brand protection than Google (although it doesn't hurt there either).

rationalbeaveron Ask HN: I need SEO advice

Good reference on link building: http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

It's a little older, but still valuable. In fact, someone submitted it here, rather recently.