thesethings

So this is great news, right?!? I mean, it's not even my business and I'm really excited for you. :D

Gah! I wouldn't put it past the Twitter team to find an interesting way to deliver ads. BUT, this is really not what I wanted them to make money off of. There is SO much I'd pay Twitter for:

* A way to stagger/schedule delivery across time-zones (my tweet gets delivered at 10AM your native time zone)

* Really cool analytics ("more people reply to you when you talk about Ubuntu")

* Behavior recommendations ("I'd send that cute animal YouTube video at 10AM on a Saturday if i were you.")

* Info about my followers: ("74% of your followers have talked about coffee in the past month.")

* more info about my followers: ("these people just send links most of the time.")

i don't even use Twitter for corporate use, and i want that stuff. I bet folks using it for corporate/org use could think of even better stuff to pay for.

I think there are non-advertising corporate services Twitter could offer. I'm not 100% against advertising, i just feel like there are a lot of us scraping and hacking at this data through various tools, when we'd really rather pay Twitter and not turn into accidental Twitter developers.

Also, some of this stuff is not available over the API, and they could totally exploit that in a cool, fair way without being creepy.

Ah well... I'll hear them out on the ad stuff. I'm not gonna be one of those premature haters proven wrong by history.

I will NOT be the Slashdot ipod naysayer :D

Ouch! That's horrible. You made me look it up. http://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php It seems like in section 14, Downloads, they're against malicious downloads. Did they accuse your software of being malware, or did they straight up say NO software?

Is buying ads on Facebook targeting teachers too expensive? I use the FB ad-buying tool to do a lot of market research (it gives numbers of target audience), but have yet to pull the trigger on actually buying the ads.

I'm having trouble with Techcrunch loads as well. I'll click through a link (usually through HN), and the header will load. But most of the rest of the page hangs. (I call it "the spinnies," in honor of the small animated spinner in Chrome). I refresh usually gets it working OK.

(also, thanks for putting this thread together)

Six Apart Media,Technorati,BlogAds,BlogHer Ad Network ( despite name, is not just on "women's" blogs)

I really disagree. Some call it "aggregation," but I'm starting to call this layer "discovery." This very site, Hacker News, is a filter that is mere pointer to content elsewhere. (There are occasional "Ask HN," but most every post posts elsewhere).

Most sites and tools I use every day are filtering tools. Techmeme is another great example.

It is true that a purely automated owl video scraper wouldn't be as good and one that was even cleaned up for five minutes a day, but that wasn't the suggester's point.

In my case, it's probably mostly d). I don't think I hold HN responsible for bringing me links I've never seen before or must like. But I really do come here for great discussion and insights (like yours right here!), in the comments section.

I'm totally willing to see negative comments, but they really have to bring something to the party. The examples you gave are exactly the kind of thing that would bum me out after a visit here.

This post was great.

Equally as valid and interested as the Mixergy review was the dynamic described at play on Hacker News I never picked up on before: How even worthwhile, quality sites that we generally like will experience a backlash here if we feel, even subconsciously, that they are over-exposed on HN.

It may be that we come here specifically for special news or unique insights we don't get on other sites, and we feel disappointed when HN merely reflects "normal" content?

I've never written a backlash or cranky comment, but I do admit I've groaned when I've seen links from certain sites posted, when i've felt they were predictable. I'm trying to figure out why this response gets evoked. Especially when the main reason I come here is for your awesome meta-commentary, not the post itself.

In any case, this post has made commit to being more patient when I see familiar content here.

This is exciting. Congrats, folks. I'm really looking forward to what you cook up. I'm a big fan of Flavors.me.

You bring up a great point, possible differences in expenses. I bet you're right, it's not just a normal gig/set-up.

That said, I don't change my main idea or advice: To remove the compensation as a reason to do this.

It's such a unique job (to put it mildly). And the fact that if one is undergoing extreme conditions either way, one can greatly increase their income with other strategies, I still think this should be a non-financial decision, and purely a lifestyle/values/learning/risk one.

Pretend the salary is the same in both places, and judge the decision just on the experience factor. (I say this because for a variety of reasons, you could make that much money in the States as a reasonably curious, skilled person. You read Hacker News after all :D You know all about salary ranges, entrepreneurship, affiliate programs, Parrot Books, and Adsense. I'm not saying we all make 200K, we just all know about opportunities... :D ).

So... unless it's desperate, debt or any kind of financial incentive is probably a bad reason to pick any job under such unique conditions. That said, if the experience is compelling, then listen to that part of your heart.

Good luck. Let us know what you choose.

Agreed on the rockstar thing. I started to see a lot of people complain about this, so I wrote about it here: http://thesethings.posterous.com/rapping-grandmas-and-ninja-...

You're exactly right with the overuse. It didn't have to be innately bad to say "rockstar," just a couple of things have conspired to make it so...

Thanks for sharing this. I didn't know about this project.

I got the regular size Kindle 2.0. It does suck for unmodified PDF's, but i have yet to try: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1089068

That said, I "bought in" intellectually accepting that I shouldn't expect to straight up enjoy all my PDF's on this thing. I decided e-readers would be something that would be worth it (for me) to take a hit with the early adopter tax.

Disclosure: I'm a volunteer at this event.

Details still getting worked out, but the date has been chosen for the second Open Source Bridge.

For those who didn't attend last year: This is a very reasonably priced event, with lots of space and care given to after-session hacking and talking.

Also a big emphasis on being super friendly.

More info as it happens...

That's so cool to hear. I haven't even had mine that long, and I'm already an admirer. Sound like I'll dig it even more as time passes.

(Note to those on the fence. I'll give you some background info about myself: I'm NOT a big book reader. Pre-Kindle, less than 5 a year. NOT a big gadget person. Software and virtual servers w/too many providers? Yes. But gadgets no (i hate "stuff." Have no printer, a bad, simple cell phone, no dvr, cable box...). I just really like studying and reading, and the Kindle helps a lot with that. I'm not saying, "get a Kindle!!" I'm just saying if you're trying to map your needs + interests to people who have one, those are some things about me...)

I maybe didn't use the most descriptive title for this. It's basically about how the terms "rockstar" and "ninja" are overused in job descriptions.

Aw. I can't believe he didn't explicitly mention the e-ink used by the Kindle. It really, really makes a difference. There are a million annoying, awkward things about the Kindle. But they're all worth it just due to how dang readable it is. I can use an LCD all day long (and do). But for reading documents/books of some length, linearly, for long periods of time, e-ink is really nice.

(I'm sure i'll eventually have an iPad, or something like it, i just don't compare it to a Kindle.)

Wish there was an "eventually" option. I will likely get one in 18-24 months, 2nd generation used.

This is a great point that I hope people listen to. You REALLY have to tune your follow list. There's no one size fits all. Put time into thinking about what's useful to you. News? Commercial announcements? Personal friend updates?

And here's something it took me a long time to learn and adapt to:

Just because somebody is really cool/smart/one of your favorite thinkers, doesn't mean you should follow them.

When I first got to Twitter, I followed a lot of the writers/programmers/thinkers I admired. And while I still admire their work and think they're inspirational people, I had to unfollow many of them for the following reasons:

* They never tweeted about the things that otherwise made them interesting to me (they have every right to do this, just not a good fit for me on Twitter.)

* They used Twitter as their venting medium. (Well-known people tend to fly a lot, go to hotels a lot, and have many opportunities to be let down by "incompetence." Twitter has been their preferred medium to talk about such.) Again, I think this is fine. It's actually really healthy to vent. But it's not so great to hear it all the time.

* They were stressed a LOT. And it made me stressed. It makes sense. Productive smart people that are interesting to me are probably busy and have meetings and deadlines etc. But I felt their pain too acutely.

Anyway... I think Twitter is great. And everything I mentioned above is fine in moderation. (And it's even fine in abundance, just not for me.)

Really put some time curating your Twitter follower list, and it can be great.

I dunno. I visited the Doc knowing it was in Googlelandia, and before I edited anything, I knew it was logged. I feel privacy data is most dangerous when triangulated from multiples services/tools.

It's good to be concerned, but if anything, entering your data here is a far more open book than submitting to any other site that asks these questions.

If anybody wants to do things to this doc (install Pivot Tables gadget, rearrange columns, do crazy sorts), but is worried about messing up doc for others, remember you can copy it out for yourself with File -> Make a Copy.

(Yes it will be slightly out of date eventually, but you can then copy it out again.)

Yay you. This whole thread I've been thinking of that, feeling alone. And then I saw your comment. :D

As we've done with other nascent start-ups, I'm sure we'll all do a pretty bad job at foreseeing how it ultimately gets used, including me, but I want to throw this thought out there because I'm seeing a lot of criticism that's very high-level:

"Discovery" is something all these social sites, at the bare-minimum, do pretty well, and people use. No matter if the social object is music (last.fm), a link (Facebook/Google Reader/Twitter), (books) Goodreads, etc, it's a pretty well-trodden path: surface stuff passively (last.fm) or actively (Goodreads) to help your friends discover.

At the very least, saving money aside, Blippy is showing us what we are likely be interested in (because they are friends or people we otherwise respect + follow) are buying. And we're probably gonna wanna click over and see what it is, even if we don't end up buying/eating/driving/reading it.

To deny Blippy this utility, is to deny all social software of the discovery utility.

Since SO much human activity has commerce underneath it, the potential of Blippy to do all the same stuff the rest of the Internet is good at "How this person fixed their bookcase," "Who that person uses for bike repair," the potential is pretty clear, if a little low-level.

I question not the potential of how sharing consumer activity could be useful, only individual executions of it.

Yeah. I can't believe anybody would really use the "f" word in a forum like this (or ideally anywhere, but especially in an otherwise civil, focused forum like this). Probably (hopefully?) a fake account.

Whoa. You must blew my mind. I really want this to be true :D

To anybody questioning what the next level of DNS could be, think of this way: infrastructure services like EC2 or Slicehost enable us to move/copy/build out images quite easily. But if this flexibility is not matched by API-driven networking surrounding our servers, there will always be a ceiling of flexibility that our servers cannot realize.

I don't quite know what dnsworks has in mind, but anything that aims to make DNS as flexible as other stuff is becoming, will be quite useful.

Related reading (not by me): http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/12/19/NetworkingTheLas... http://www.bretpiatt.com/blog/2009/12/20/public-clouds-and-t... http://www.rationalsurvivability.com/blog/?p=1603

Hmmm. I didn't interpret the article as stereotyping, but rather a writing style I think of as "Making room for skepticism." Basically sympathizing with the (stereotype) profile/skepticism/opposition the writer anticipates before putting a forth an idea.

I read this style all the time, and take it for what it is: a construct that makes things easier to digest, even when neither the argument, nor counterargument, apply to me.

Again, I usually find it helpful/intellectual lubricant, and did in this case.

That said, I can't deny your experience. If you felt friction, there must be something to reconsider in this style of presentation. Thanks potatolicious for taking the time to describe how it make you feel. I will consider your ideas the next time I have to present slightly counter-intuitive things to folks. (I often present really technical things to business people who are handicapped not by their lack of technical skill, but extremely conservative approach to risk.)

And thanks as well to ahoyhere, who posted the article. Good stuff.