thesash

The original quartet is epic, Xenocide and Children of the Mind get a little bit off the cuff, but I really like them. Even the first few in the "Shadow" series were ok, but then quality dropped off. Now there are dozens of books set in the universe.

I am going to tirelessly promote this movie because it is one of my favorite books from when I was a kid, but even more so because I really want to see the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, get made into a movie. Speaker for the Dead is a much more mature, thought provoking book, in which a grown up Ender struggles to come to terms with his actions from the first book. Speaker won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and if you havent read it, you should go do so immediately.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812550757/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... (yes, it is an affiliate link)

Fun fact: Orson Scott Card (author) had the idea for Speaker for The Dead before writing Ender's Game, and essentially wrote the first novel simply to set up the complex universe that unfolds in the sequel.

You can turn off notifications when people add you to circles here: https://www.google.com/settings/plus

When you're on the page-- click "add circle" in the middle of the circle at the top of the page, that will allow you to follow all 689 people at once

> "If you handed down the Scientific Method to someone who is not a trained scientist, in theory they should be use it to derive new laws of nature. In practice, though, what would most likely happen is that they would mis-apply this method and come up with all sorts of crackpot theories about perpetual motion machines and life-altering magnetic bracelets"

What!? I pretty clearly remember being able to apply the scientific method properly in grammar school. The conclusions we reached may not have been earth shattering, but they were valid, because we followed the steps.

100% agree that viable is context driven, but I kind of disagree with your example. If you want to compete with an established player, focus on the differentiating factor that you think is game-changing rather than competing on features, otherwise you'll never win. The early adopters that you want to court will be excited by what's different, not by a clone of something that already exists. By the time the product is ready for the prime time it will need those features, but by then the bleeding edge early adopters will have moved on to the next new thing.

However, in cases like healthcare or finance, or certain B2B applications, viable may entail a much more mature product.

+1 on being sick of correcting people who shit on these concepts while defining them as the opposite of what they actually are.

1) MVP != half assed, cheap, shitty product. It is exactly what it says, a minimum viable product, keyword being viable. An MVP for a mission critical application or a cutting edge piece of research isn't going to be cheap or easy, because it needs to be viable.

2) The cycle of expectations that your product needs to be as feature rich as your competition on day one leads to what Eric Ries calls the large batch death spiral where it always seems like a good idea to add that one last feature (I've been there, it's painful, and really difficult to pull out of).

3) RE: fear of ruining your reputation if your MVP isn't shiny enough-- good news: no one knows who you are when you launch, so you have nothing to lose. Don't launch your MVP in the press, court early adopters, listen to your customers, and focus on building value until your product kicks the competition's ass. If you hide from customers out of fear you take the biggest risk of all: building something no one wants. Even if you have the best product idea in the world, the only way to know if the features you add are having a positive impact is to measure the behavior of real, live, human users.

Unfortunately I think what we're seeing is the lean startup backlash where people use the terms but don't really take the time to understand what they mean. The Lean startup movement is a powerful set of lessons that can empower entrepreneurs and save us from wasting our time and effort building the wrong things and chasing the wrong metrics, but maybe some of the lessons just have to be learned painfully through experience.

There are a great many people out there who are intimidated by exactly this type of mindset. While this may be true for solving extremely complicated problems or building massive applications, the reality is that people across a vast number of professions outside of programming could benefit greatly from basic coding knowledge to solve simple problems. You may not be able build a software company on basic coding knowledge, but you also dont need to have some higher order of thinking or skill to be able to benefit from the basics.

It would be fascinating to analyze this in verbal communication. I've thought about this in the past, specifically in how idiomatic expressions, "inside jokes" and the like are disseminated through social groups. It always seems that certain individuals in a group are responsible for setting the tone and style of humor and colloquial expression, while the rest end up mimicing the leaders.

In a more practical sense, simply being able to recognize these signals would be very valuable in meetings, especially sales meetings involving pitching a group when it is unclear who the actual decision makers are.

So cool to see him speak about his values reals rivet early on in his career, knowing that he stuck by them.

The most inspiring thing about the whole story to me is how he was able to generate a massively successful marketing campaign simply by being authentic, and engaging his fans directly. I think this follows a lot of the "Thank You Economy" concepts that Gary Vaynerchuck promotes to a T, and I hope that other artists, companies, and brands take note of how powerful that strategy can be after seeing this success.

Of course direct feedback to congress is a crucial part of fighting the legislation, but choosing where to spend our money is an extremely powerful method of indirect action to enact political change. Companies like GoDaddy pick their sides in fights like this because they believe they have something to gain from supporting it. If enough people ditch their product because of this, they will have no choice but to rethink their position on the issue.

I find this article troubling for two reasons: it fails to back up with evidence some of its boldest claims, and it suffers from the same problems presented by it's own argument.

Claims like this one:

> "First, all of the easy causes have been found, which means that scientists are now forced to search for ever-subtler correlations, mining that mountain of facts for the tiniest of associations."

May be true, but the author presents no evidence to support them, with relevant studies, articles, etc..

The second, much more troubling problem however, is that the argument suffers fromt the very problem it presents! The author's conclusion that the returns on scientific research are diminishing due to an inherent flaw in conclusions being drawn from correlations-- is itself a correlation. He's correlating the increasing cost of research to the increasing difficulty of finding new correlations in the data.

There are other, simpler, less circular and philosophical explanations for why the returns on pharmaceutical research have decreased, such as increasingly strict regulations and fear of risk on the part of regulatory organizations. See this TED talk, where Juan Enriquez talks about these issues: http://www.tedmed.com/videos-info?name=Juan_Enriquez_at_TEDM...

This one's awesome: teehan+lax recreated their logo by painting the partners blue

http://www.teehanlax.com/holiday2011/

I think it's a good point that

The bottom line is: manage hype, and don't buy into your own. One of the most interesting takeaways I got from hearing Eric Ries speak a few weeks ago, is how toxic hype can be to startups not just in the press, but also among investors, friends, family, etc. As entrepreneurs we face myriad challenges and problems to be overcome between vision and product execution, and these massive expectations that we build up can be a huge barrier when it comes time to make tough decisions and revisit product strategy, especially when (not if) things don't go as well as we would like the first time we deliver products into customers' hands.

The key differentiator addressed by both Steve Blank and Eric Ries in their definitions, is that a startup is innovating. A company taking an existing, proven business model and attempting to build a business based on it (whether in the tech space or elsewhere), does not qualify as a startup, even if it is aiming for hyper growth.

This video about what motivates people is really interesting for this topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Design is not a pretty facade to a product, and designers aren't just responsible for aesthetics. Design is as much about how the product works as how it looks, and a designer worth their stock options understands that they aren't drawing pretty pictures of websites, they're designing with a purpose: to create an enjoyable experience and ultimately a functional, beautiful product that adds value to users lives.

Spoiler alert: the #1 most overused word of 2011 is... Pivot! Half of these are not pivots at all, at least not according to the definition Eric Ries originally coined: "A change in strategy without a change in vision."

SkillSlate: looks like a change in vision to me (totally different product) Fondu: not a pivot, its a totally new company Hipmunk: not a pivot, it's a new (complementary) product Turntable.fm: Brand new startup Fab: Brand new startup

All of these look like startups we should be commending for making building good products and making strategic decisions this year, let's just stop calling everything startups do "Pivoting" just because its a buzzword.

Being able to find the opinions of so many like minded individuals is both a blessing and a curse-- it's great to be able to skim the responses to major news items, but often I find myself just nodding along to every comment, even though the most thought provoking discussions are the ones where I end up disagreeing with the prevailing opinion.

I think dropbox had a similar change and also found that it dramatically increased referrals once both the referrer and the new user both got extra space.

Apparently not a lot of office space fans on HN...

One key point to keep in mind is that this article is specifically speaking about startups, not mature organizations, so obviously some of the modifications to the original test and added points won't be universally applicable.

I think the best point Eric Reis adds to the original test is the last point in the article: "Do your programmers understand the product they are building and how it relates to your company's strategy?" Such a crucial point in startups, especially when they start to grow quickly.

This is exactly the problem that makes the Lean Startup so interesting and radical. Everything we think we know about business has ingrained in us a sense of change equating to failure. We build up inflated expectations for our non-existant products and business models to employees, to investors, to friends and family, all the while ignoring the fact that all the assumptions on which we've based our businesses are just that, guesses. Then, when one or more of the assumptions is invalidated, we're so embarrassed about being wrong that we try to persevere even when we know we're on the wrong track, and then run full speed into the wall instead of changing course.

Eric Ries has some really insightful ideas about how to turn these problems around, and if you haven't already read The Lean startup I highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-...

Changing the product is not necessarily changing the vision. Read the article you referenced... IMVU changed the direction of their product drastically from IM to social networking while still adhering to the vision of avatar mediated communication.

It's not hard to recognize when you have a good product when it's feature complete and selling like hotcakes. Recognizing that you have the core of a good product with potential to be great if you slog it out and stick to your vision is hard. Really hard.

This is an excellent response to absurdity like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3244616

This rap is purely about wanting money, with absolutely no mention of the product or what it does. Are they entrepreneurs, or panhandlers?