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tathagatadgon Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

I can completely relate to you and and I have ended up with step 3. I initially started with a slack for myself - but the free version is very limited for serious notetaking. After some research I settled with Zulip and hosted it on digital ocean.

Slack's UI is probably better, but zulip's UI is nice too. It offers multiple clients - web, ios, command line. I don't use the command line client as I find myself using the web much more.

I keep a tab open and when I am not in front of the computer I use my phone.

Of course, you need to be connected all the time. I write down take a picture and post it whenever I'm back online.

Search works right out of the box - though you wont get OCR for free like OneNote/Evernote. Something that I am looking forward to is writing (i)bots to automate some workflows (like ocr) (ii) integrate with other productivity tool chain - todoist and trello.

P.S. Its written in Python!

tathagatadgon Couple Proves Facebook Listens in on Conversations with Simple Experiment

I saw this on reddit a few days back, and showed to family members who are less technically inclined and hopelessly addicted to facebook. It seemed to hardly bother them, as they continue to use it the way they have been - shaping their life choices based on the chosen moments of others' life. What concerned me was they found the advertisements "very useful", as it reduced the time spent searching for goods they wanted to buy. I haven't been able to put up any argument convincing enough about why this trade off is bad.

Metaphors, I think could have a better result. One that I have thought of is: If this was a job position, and one candidate could buy their chances of getting picked - would it be fair to the other candidates or the company? It only profits the broker.

Any other convincing argument I can put forward to get them thinking about it?

Ultimately, all arguments come to the fact that "keeping in touch" is so much easier with facebook - and I do not have an alternative that I can propose. Note I use the word argument as any discussion I have tried to initiate becomes an argument very quickly.

tathagatadgon Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

I did a very similar thing to check if my H1B was approved. My use case was simpler - I regexp matched a keyword on the webpage and converted the script to an alexa skill deployed locally. Unfortunately, i wasn't home for the week when the approval happened :P. But it was fun asking alexa to check the status!

tathagatadgon Apple's amusingly round reuse figures

I have a off topic question. How have you reused your old phone? I've seen some typical lists on the web - but nothing impressive given how powerful these small computers are.

tathagatadgon Ask HN: How can I stop forgetting “things”?

As people have mentioned already, its definitely about forming habits. 2 things that are helpful in doing that are lists and alarms. My understanding is that we forget things because our attention, at that moment is focused on something else other than what we are supposed to be doing. We have fantastic alarm systems for getting nutrition or getting rid of waste materials from our body - but alas nothing for products of our thoughts. Lists are great tools for refocusing thoughts. So start with lists. Put it contextually, like on the back of door or the place where you keep your shoes if you want to remember what you should leave the house with. Then add alarms to add the space and time awareness. Check some IFTTT recipes or set location based reminder on your phone to go over the checklists. What would be challenging is refocusing from the current context to what you are supposed to when the alarm goes off. Don't be too harsh on yourself - remember its a leaky bucket by design :P

tathagatadgon Ask HN: What can I do to turn things around and make my 30's “good”?

How about volunteering? It is one way to make others happy, and is deeply rewarding. Meeting new people and being a part of the community is essential to sustain happiness. If you have a dark past, it can be difficult to open up to new people. So it might be good if he tries to volunteer in communities which deals with such problems. Helping out organize events, speaking about he overcame his difficult times could be good opportunities to explore. The social connections can lead to positive professional growth as well.

tathagatadgon Autopsy: Lessons from Failed Startups

This is a really great effort. It feels like a nice addendum to Sam Altman's class (http://startupclass.samaltman.com/) - take that knowledge and use it to come up with what would you have done differently.

tathagatadgon Google Font Effects

nostalgia ... It amazes me to think that back then how we all collectively agreed that those spinning, scrolling, blinking geocities type designs were cool - and tried to imitate them. Now a decade later, collectively laugh at them. This seems common in fashion - but is it true for other art forms as well? How then some art survive the through time and are viewed as beautiful by number of generations that follow? I mean, could we point to some web designs done years back that would still appear tasteful and clever today?

tathagatadgon Ask HN: Idea Sunday

"Ask HN: Idea Sunday/{{Idea}}" : "Show HN:/{{Idea}}" mapper.

tathagatadgon Mt Everest in 3D: Everest Avalanche Tragedy

I'm still mesmerized - the technology behind the site and the the beauty of nature. I will never make it there in my life - but being able to appreciate it almost in first person, makes me so happy. The sound of the wind adds another dimension.

Would have been so cool if I could send this to my Geography teacher in my school 15 years back. She is probably still drawing bergschrund, crevasses, gorges in a blackboard with chalk.

tathagatadgon Show HN: StumbleUpon for books

And can you add keyboard navigation too?That'd be supper addictive

tathagatadgon Yelp Hipster Finder

true that :) ... wicker park is awesome too!

tathagatadgon Yelp Hipster Finder

some days back i posted a question on quora asking which is the most hipster neighborhood of chicago. i must admit the map concurs with the humans:

http://www.quora.com/Chicago-1/Which-are-the-most-hipster-ne...

tathagatadgon Word Processor's Auto-Save Feature Foiled UK Terror Plot

So they sit next to each other and just type on the same computer - like pair programming? Sounds boring ... given that mr. god never wrote a compiler to build your logic on top of his specs!

tathagatadgon News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

I used to read HN all day and felt good, elevated, enlightened ... pretty soon I was trying to learn every new language, trying every new framework, trying a new todo regime - needless to say I was getting no where. Soon I was very unhappy ... everybody was doing something cool other than me! Every Show HN: makes me feel I'm wasting my life in school ... and should dropout and start building what I've started sometime back ...

But then someone told me, "Believe what you are doing is cool, inundating yourself with what others are doing won't get you anywhere other than giving you the false sense of wisdom!"

Now I spend a lot less time on HN. And since it has the best content of the net .. I don't need to look anywhere else.

tathagatadgon Boston Police use fake social media accounts to phish indie rock show info

I'm not being able to find any reference to understand why this is considered illegal. (DIY + music) sounds very cool!

Drugs? Too loud?

tathagatadgon Show HN: sachet – handcraft your Vim environment online

I was on Windows while I saw this ... and took a few googling to find out what goes where to get it working in gVim (which I hardly use).

- "autoload" and "bundles" from "vim" folder in the downloaded archive should go inside "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\vimfiles"

- rename the _vimrc in in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim" as _vimrc.old

- copy the vimrc from the downloaded archive as _vimrc into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim"

tathagatadgon Facebook sued over 'like' button

What should a 2-3 person startup do if they find themselves in such a situation (i.e. get sued by a patent troll)?

tathagatadgon Howdoi – Instant Coding Answers via the Command Line

Cool! ... that solves it! One less unfinished side project

tathagatadgon Howdoi – Instant Coding Answers via the Command Line

Whoa! I was just doing the same thing but with stackoverflow's api and in vim ... instead of making the query from the command line i.e. leave your editor, I'm thinking of writing the query like a comment and highlight it so that I can see the returned search results in a separate buffer. Haven't made much progress due to unfamiliarity with programming vim

tathagatadgon Google Flights

Have you tried https://www.google.com/experimental/gmailfieldtrial

was pleasantly surprised seeing "my flights", "my hotel reservations" etc ..

tathagatadgon Hacking my Vagina

secure communication of Vstorker(see qdot76367 comments) + this hack with video == Sex over IP.

Target customers: long distance couples, virtual sex business. Taking it further: build a Airtime like social network around it.

Revenue stream: from selling the hardware, membership.

tathagatadgon Parrot in captivity manufactures tools, something not seen in the wild

Before it was only the chimps and other apes, and now dolphins, then the parrots ... we have to step up our game people! Next thing you know they are submitting pull requests ...

tathagatadgon BootMetro: Metro style web framework

Interesting. Just curious, can this can ignite the patent trolls? Say I use a more polished version this to build the next viral site - what are the chances to be dragged to court?

tathagatadgon Marc Andreessen’s Productivity Trick to Feeling Marvelously Efficient

Started doing something similar on a private twitter account which follows no one, and no one follows it. Once I do something, I tweet. Benefits: Using twitter as a platform, keep description in 140 chars, search, timestamp etc.

However, I violated the first rule of using the organization tool i.e. Trust your tool. Yet another post on hackernews and I got distracted into trying Trello, and what not for a promise of increased productivity.

tathagatadgon Mozilla blogger bought 1 million Facebook entries (full name, e-mail) for $5

Just curious, is this illegal? What happens if the seller didn't disclose the method in which he aggregated the data or says I just stood in a shopping mall and asked people to voluntarily disclose these details? (Sure he'll have a hard time proving that) ....

tathagatadgon How I Simplified My Life

I really need to read a woman's reaction to this article (will share with a few friends right away). If you can achieve this beyond a bachelor pad, the weed that you are smoking is indeed of very high quality.

tathagatadgon Saturday morning cartoons and hackathon (Chicago, Nov. 3)

It's not "Hey I have a great idea and maybe a nerd will build it for me."

If you're a "just pontificating about stuff" bizdev, this isn't for you.

Kudos for saying this aloud!

tathagatadgon How I Learned to Defrag My Brain

And if you have the log folder on dropbox, it is accessible everywhere.

tathagatadgon Do Plants Think?

I particularly enjoyed the memory part - where they mention a venus fly trap remembers the contact with one leg of the insect then confirms that another leg has touched, and then the trap closes. Then 15-20 mins later it'd open again. This eliminates false positives, conserves energy!

while(1): if (get_count_contact()!=2) continue; else close_trap(); sleep(15); set_count_contact(0);

If nature wrote this kinda code, Evolution is like debugging! But this is really really oversimplified ...