HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

wardrox

93 karma · joined September 25, 2010

submissionscomments
wardrox··on Sony Finally Fully Unveils Its Android Tabs, The Sony S and P
Are there any alternatives? I can't think of any companies off hand who aren't morally bankrupt in at least one regard.
wardrox··on Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Network Indefinitely
Where's the word "Indefinitely" from? It doesn't mean "as short a time as possible", or am I missing some context?
wardrox··on Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it
What a very clever way to test their theory. I'm very curious to see how Microsoft explain this one.

Also, why do I now want to buy things with "hiybbprqag" printed on them?

wardrox··on Viral Video: IBM Turns 100
One of the strongest memories I have regarding IBM is from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I visited it on a school trip to Washington years ago, I took with me quite a few very strong memories, and one, was of a machine used by the Germans to help produce the Jewish Registry. It was sat behind some glass, with the easy to recognise IBM logo stamped proudly in the corner.

As I say it was a fair few years ago and I was quite young, but it made me start to realise that business has basically no morals. It's probably shaped the way I view business today. Not super dramatically, don't get me wrong, but this video reminded me of that.

You can Google for IBMs involvement with the holocaust, it's quite interesting.

wardrox··on Sukey - A tool for non-violent demonstrations
Am I an idiot for not have a clue what this actually does after both watching the video and reading the FAQ?

As far as I can tell it's hyper-local news app tailored to specific protests. People send them messages and they send updates out? Which I guess is useful?

wardrox··on [dead]
I'm more a fan of simply walking away if I can't afford/don't want to pay the asking price.
wardrox··on Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick
I was 7. I probably built something with Lego that was way cooler than a website.
wardrox··on For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
Maybe when something comes along to replace "save"?

With the steadily increasing amount of software that auto-saves without you noticing, maybe soon we just wont need to "save" anything. It'll just happen.

wardrox··on FeedBurner Finally Doesn’t Suck
When did it suck?
wardrox··on Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
Sidetrack: "ramen profitable" finally, a reachable goal for my start-up.
wardrox··on Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
But, that could just mean Digg spotted somebody else was gaming their system and they stopped it.
wardrox··on Idea to ($0.07) profit in 7 hours
I'm keeping track of my hours worked, so I have a rough idea of when it'll actually have properly paid for itself. I'm not kidding myself, don't worry :)
wardrox··on Idea to ($0.07) profit in 7 hours
I disagree that it offers no value at all.

If it did, nobody would pay the $1. Though that's a rubbish answer, and probably accidentally passive-aggressive. So here's a longer one:

People in the tech world love joining clubs that give no real reward. People started joining Facebook because it was cool to be in the Facebook Club, same with Twitter, the iPhone, new communities etc. I'm over-simplifying it, but that's because The Club I built is exactly that; a crude over-simplification of an already existing and replicated system.

The value comes from the psychology. Paying to be in something early and fun, even though there is no intrinsic reason, is nice. It's similar to how trophies and rewards work on other sites and in games. There's no reason why you want it, but it feels nice.

But I agree that it's also certainly not an impressive feat of technology, that's for sure :)

wardrox··on Idea to ($0.07) profit in 7 hours
I decided that to be rude rather than offensive, and it's turned into quite the talking point.
wardrox··on Idea to ($0.07) profit in 7 hours
I toyed with the idea you can only pay to get somebody else into the Club, and you can't pay if you're already in the club. Mostly just because I thought that would generate some funny dynamics.

I think the invitations idea is a good one, though I want to keep it so every member has paid $1 to get in. maybe adding some incentive to getting your friends to join. Like your name appears in a slightly larger font if all three of your invites were used.

Right now it's just a static HTML page that I'm manually updating, but there are a lot of ideas, like this one, I'm hoping to play with.

wardrox··on Idea to ($0.07) profit in 7 hours
Cheap, tiny, poorly made, a quick buck and lacking scope? I agree. I think "horrid" is a bit much though, but then I would.

It was sort of an experiment for me and if it ever turns any real money I will be using it to build on existing plans for a proper start-up. The Club isn't the pinnacle of what I want to make, rather it's a side-note.

Though, unless I covered it above, why do you say it's horrid? Simply the vapid and useless nature of the product?

wardrox··on Idea to ($0.07) profit in 7 hours
I agree, $0.07 isn't stunning (it's only going to get me a half billionth of my jet), but to break even in such a short space of time I found interesting.

Though could it not be considered profit in some form, as I'm working for free on the project? It's the site's profit, rather than my own?

wardrox··on Ask HN: Code for America
As a Brit without a US Visa, probably not. But it's a fantastic idea.
wardrox··on The True Size of Africa
Until I started dating an American girl, I can't say I was ever in a situation where I needed to know how big America was. The US just isn't very significant to the average European.
wardrox··on The True Size of Africa
It's smaller, yes, but not by much. The USA is 9.8 million km^2 and Europe is 10.2 million km^2. Though that does include Alaska.

I think the thing that took me the longest to "get" was simply the distances between things. If you'd asked me a few years ago how far one coast of the USA is from the other, I'd probably guess at around a thousand miles. Top to bottom maybe 500.

Mind you I also didn't realise Washington wasn't in Washington state.

wardrox··on The True Size of Africa
I'm a Brit and had a similar moment of realisation when I discovered America wasn't about the size of Spain + France. I think it was the facial expression my (American) girlfriend gave me when I suggested we drive for a weekend away in Florida (we were in New Jersey at the time) that tipped me off.

America is basically the size of Europe, which really surprised me. But then, it's not knowledge you ever really need to know.

wardrox··on Reddit hacking for votes and profit
As a Reddit Mod, this doesn't seem to counter one of the best defences against people spamming their own content: training the spam filter to hate a specific URL.

This system would only seem to work if the URL got through the spam filter, so isn't much use to the kind of voting rings you tend to find already operating on Reddit.

Though it's still a very valuable proof of concept.

wardrox··on Tell HN: Your social widgets are losing you visitors right now
I built some fairly clumsy code to fix this on one of the blogs I run. It loaded the buttons in the footer of the page (so you can be reading the article before all the nonsense has loaded) then moves them to the correct places (the foot of the article) once ready. By the time you came to retweet or what have you, it was loaded.

It's not that dignified, but did what I needed it to do.