ALee

Beyond the question of the audio speaker, we're talking about the ability to conduct ions and that itself has a lot of applications for conductivity. In particular, it means that you could create interesting safety devices and finally have really interesting wearable technology. Honestly, nobody wants wires, but people are okay wearing gels and spandex for their devices.

This list by John Scalzi seems to help us figure out the actual aspects that take away cognitive volume: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1712493

In general, it makes sense, since a lot of behavioral research shows that making too many decisions takes away our power to make other decisions and cognitive power.

It's quite ironic actually if you think about it.

Our government used to hire the brilliant minds who taught us about our security flaws. See here for RTM: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/08/us/living-with-the-compute...

Even Sean Parker of Napster, Facebook, and now Spotify glory was offered a job when he was younger. Somehow something changed in the past 10 years.

Few people are uncompromising in their ideals and have the talent to enact that vision, especially at a young age. I think it's because aaronsw represents something we all respect and for some, greatly admire. For the HN community, it's as if a key political figure died and we were the key community that knew her, knew of her, and knew her work. A good example may be a civil rights leader, dissident, or environmental leader. For me personally, Aaron was fighting the good fight.

I would not bet on the increase in revenue. Music is a loss leader, it's primarily to increase customer acquisition.

The easiest way to figure out one's international expansion strategy is to look at GDP or GDP per capita over the accessible market for your product. Many startups in the attempt to hoodwink growth find that it's AMAZING to get growth in developing countries. They fail to recognize that their predecessors or competitors are not catering to those groups because it just doesn't make economic sense.

I, for one, am a bigger believer in the small dedicated cohort of people strategy, e.g. Facebook, etc.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." This quote is so important. It really captures the careful balance.

A couple guys at my college (Claremont McKenna) were somehow able to copy all of the student web addresses into an e-mail and proceeded to market their on-campus moving company, then later that list was abused to advertise parties and people angry about their name being included on these threads...

I've seen it happen at individual federal agencies, but the culture there keeps people from abusing the lists. I do like how some companies keep spam lists, like Zynga-Spam was like a targeted comedy feed.

The administration is really focusing on improving the immigration process by bringing folks from the private sector to work on the practical issue of immigration and this is one of the steps as we move forward toward passing Startup Visa. Welcome any direct feedback on the website and other things the team could address.

Disclosure: I work with the Obama Administration on ways to make the government cater to startups, not on the USCIS team, but I'm helping collect feedback for them.

I wonder if YC would ever be able to fund a Hyperloop? What would that look like?

I'm one of those loud Americans (ENTJ - for what that's worth). To those who know me, they'll say that I'm one of the most talkative people they know. I'm not always proud of my talkativeness, but let me try to explain why we act the way we do.

For extroverts, social interaction energizes us. I'm almost like a vampire if I'm around introverted people. It may be the difference between tribal vs. modern relationships, but in many big families (generally with less income, but not always the case), you need to say something loudly and constantly to get what you want.

We also tend to feel noise is comfortable. I've lived in urban areas, where if there isn't noise, it is discomforting if not dangerous. You may have felt the same way at a get-together when there isn't any background music or when you meet a stranger for the first time.

For many people in this world, they have the TV on all the time or music blaring 24/7. I'm not saying it's more productive. God knows watching tv while doing anything beyond rote tasks is not a recipe for success, but it makes the task more bearable.

As to why we're loud... sometimes it's opinion, sometimes it's emotional release, while other times it's just social pruning. It doesn't mean that we're not thinkers though, it just means we think out loud. It was a key difference between me and another friend I had an argument with, where I wanted to talk it out and she wanted to run away and breathe for a bit.

For us, noise/discussion is just as important to the Quiet Ones as quiet.

P.S. one caveat, I need quiet when I'm writing, working, reading, or even watching a movie, so I'm not the typical type.

Deep down inside, even though the venture-backed guys get all the glamour. Everyone really has envy for the bootstrapped company that had exponential revenue curves and never took outside investment. It's almost impossible to find those types of companies though.

I'm quite surprised this happened. I recently used their services in NYC for the first time. There was a lot they could have done to increase growth for their service and to optimize for revenue. I would have paid money for the service (and I rarely pay for any services), but alas, I don't think they're able to do that.

It is possible that their price tests just didn't yield a very high margin for them, which is essential in these AirBnB type of companies.

If I were them, they should just get users to use real names and addresses to send e-mail, faxes, and paper mail to the offices of the public utilities commission and to other officials who will pressure them.

Fundamentally, these guys just need to increase social capital with regulators and invest in legal infrastructure. The government is just like another giant company with dependencies and old architecture. Trust me, it's just like investing in weird ERP integration to get access to all of those clients. It's not something that is necessary to the evolution of your product, but it's something you just have to do because the market is just shaped that way.

Also, any press is good press, and once these three get large enough, it'll be widely unpopular to not support them.

A hack that we used in my previous startup was to come up with a bunch of names, then send out a survey to friends and potential target customers and asking them how much they like the name. You can also randomize the questions so that people can just choose names that they like, then tell them what the service is about, then have them choose again.

Takes the whole, "I like this name" arguments out of the mix.

The point of the article is to highlight how the nature of press relies more on Twitter these days. The anti Streisand effect advice is interesting.

Because when choosing between consumption or production, I choose production.

"A five-year federal inquiry into voter fraud that ended in 2007 found that it happens so rarely as to be statistically non-existent." This part of the article was interesting in that voter fraud doesn't happen as widely as some people believe. Really, the idea of limiting avenues of participation is probably abused by people who want to limit certain demographic groups.

Tuvalu - not only have they only gotten their money from the .tv domain, but they'll be gone once climate change wreaks its havoc. The dollar goes a long way and it'll be a very unique experience and you'll likely work hard too.

When I worked with the Politico, the Editor-in-Chief who had helped head up the WashingtonPost always would send these follow-up e-mails after our meetings and it was really effective. It would sit in my e-mail and I would get stuff done. More importantly for these folks who live in a world where there network is their bread and butter, the masters of their own CRM always won.

My mother still cannot use the iPad I bought for her. She still uses a laptop, but her typing is atrocious. It's not her fault, she wasn't trained to use a QWERTY keyboard like the rest of us and she's an immigrant.

She can however, speak somewhat understandable English. As we move toward devices that fit into how human beings naturally interact, I think a necessary evolution is going to be voice recognition, but not as we think of it. I don't think it'll be as clunky as it is now, but much more like giving commands and discussion to another human being.

I could be wrong. More kids text message now than ever use their cell phones, so perhaps a keyboard is necessary as the article says.

Isn't this what Google is trying to attempt with Google Voice and using SPAM filtration on those calls? It would seem that a company could greatly benefit by somehow acting as an intermediary and allowing users to rate a call as spam.

The issue is that like SPAM in the e-mail days, the technology isn't the problem, but rather the adoption of a filtration method. Adoption will happen when this problem becomes a big enough issue for consumers to switch to another provider (which is already difficult already).

Whatever happened to the startup Fon? Isn't this idea exactly what they're trying to do, but with a private bent?

I think the best set up is the standing desk + elliptical/treadmill set up. That combines all the best research of a standing desk and the benefits of very low movement to increase brain activity.

It probably tells you more about the VCs who invested rather than the company. The opportunity cost of where to deploy their money is likely higher these days and a VC who is investing in a fairly scam-ridden business is probably looking to capitalize on a quick exit.

In this case, everyone knows the jig may be up quickly, so they're looking to expand quickly and leave before the known end.

RE: Habibreaker, check out Stickk.com . Really interesting work by a behavioral economist and people use it!

Ah, but that's where the best hacks can occur usually where legal or socio-political issues keep the best solution from occuring. Unlike a real marketplace, a co-op is an agreed marketplace, so it won't allow new entrants unless they join. To fix the undeveloped country problem, you just limit to the US first. The perspective should be that individuals who want to contribute their organs to the co-op can, but are also allowed to partake in it later as well.

Here is my list of ideas:

1. Problem: Difficult to implement shipping for any business, website, store, etc. You only have UPS/FedEx

   Solution: Kayak for Shipping - Developer implements shipping API, which enables back end to do a rate shopping engine for shipping, which taps into APIs for FedEx, USPS, UPS, and allows local shippers to qualify for the program, including PostMates and any other Joe Schmo interested in shipping...

2. Problem: I can't play paintball with my friends. Solution: Ender's Game - Computers v. Humans

3. Problem: People die because they can't get organ donations. Solution: Create a co-op where people join a market for organ donations.

4. Problem: Scheduling things with friends is really hard, there is too much back and forth over SMS and email Solution: Set up a centralized service through your phone that schedules for you, but is totally automated, no human beings, just machines, so that virtual assistants don't have to waste time scheduling

5. Problem: There are no parking spots in the city Solution: Price out illegal parking zones by multiplying the probability of ticket * ticket cost. Using a mobile app, a user pays for parking insurance at differing rates, but allows them to find a parking spot where there previously wasn't one

6. Problem: why is it that you can only bookmark pages or urls Solution: delicious 2.0 - be able to micro-bookmark. i should be able to save things at the sub page level and consume that content later: a post in a block, a newsfeed post on facebook, a photo in a webpage, a section of an article. etc

7. Problem: Sending direct mail is hard - you need good lists, need to process with mailhouses, and you don't know whether the mail you send is reaching the right audience Solution: Create a digital application to send mail as easily as email, complete with analytics of the funnel, and the ability to unsubscribe from the mail you're sent. Make mail, like e-mail.

8. Problem: Animated GIFs are the new LolCat, where can I find the best animated GIFs? Solution: Use animated gifs as a medium for snipping video that you can easily see over your mobile phone

9. Problem: What happens to all my digital stuff when I die? Or when I want something killed... Solution: future me, death switch - go through with my credentials and find usernames and passwords and have ways to kill the accounts.

10. Problem: I can't listen to radio broadcasts, etc. with my friends Solution: Social listening with friends. Suggestions from friends of articles or things to listen to with their commentary in their words.

11. Problem: Mobile data sucks sucks sucks. I want to watch something on demand or download a movie. Solution: BitTorrent for mobile. Allow the sharing of mobile data amongst subscribers, but you have leech and seed at the same time...

12. Problem: Keeping in touch with people is REALLY hard. Solution: Create retention method of keeping in touch with people that uses a computer to help you keep in touch with people who matter.

13. Problem: Buying billboard ads sucks Solution: Create billboard ad marketplace

13. Problem: Retail locations have captive audiences and it's hard enough to monetize the location. Why doesn't everything turn into a Times Square? Solution: Give them a TV, stream over the internet, and do ads. You can break up with television advertising model by guaranteeing the location and zip code.

14. Problem: Shipping takes time. Solution: Establish network of 3D printers to print things on demand for same-day shipping.

15. Problem: People get stabbed in the Mission Solution: 1) Crowd-sourcing police cameras, we pay people to stream live their local areas and videotape people walking around. Instead of just letting police see it, everyone sees what's going on, but the difference is that the owner and we hold the rights to the content. Assumption that more cameras means less stabbings. 2) You could even SMS a number and it would follow your location on your way home so that you are recorded every step of the way. Kind of like a virtual sentry and you could have an individual nearby to escort you if need be for a digital amount. 3) Text Message app where if a crime has been committed. It texts me that one has happened near me. Uses increasingly open government data apis and police blotters.

16. Problem: Where are all the hot people? How can we take the local tracking phenomenon to an even deeper degree... Solution: Hot or Not of Local. People take pics of other folks and they can rate those people relatively around them.

17. Problem: I can't have dinner with my family in Colorado, HK, etc. Solution: Hack the Kinect to create the Farenheit 451 wall. We can actually have real conversations with people. I somehow feel MSFT will do this with Skype and Kinect, but whatevz.

18. Problem: Receipts suck. Yet, we still need them. Solution: Make it easy to create a hardware or software solution that takes receipts and mails them in a way that is easy for Quickbooks, quicken, or whoever needs to keep track of expenses. I hate Oracle.

19. Problem: I want to watch movies with friends. Solution: Have a way to watch a movie with a friend and have them put commentary on the movie and for me to also enjoy watching the movie. Annotations and real social. Spotify meets Netflix.

20. Problem: Water is expensive for large utilities. Solution: Smart grid for water utilities: OPower, but for water utilities. The issue here is that water is cheap, but a very large industry, so where could I make the delivery of water much more efficient.

21. Problem: I hate buying new computer equipment Solution: Lease electronic equipment - Apple products are uniquely suited to this. New ones are released every 12 months, old ones have a high resale value, iCloud syncs all your documents for when you buy a new device, and there's a large population of people who always want to own the latest one. You could charge a flat monthly rate to people who always want to have the newest iPad, then send them a new one every 12 months with a prepaid box to return their old one. There's even a 3rd party warranty company that covers drops and spills for a reasonable rate -- http://www.squaretrade.com.

22. Problem: Payroll is DOMINATED by two guys - ADP and PayChex, they suck Solution: Kill them. Do better with a product that values people as people.

23. Problem: [w] why can't you buy something online and pick it up in a store (this currently is verticalized) Solution: make product search -> purchase and pickup in store easy. build the amazon for local pickup

24. Problem: AirTime sucked because it didn't let you Hot or Not people Solution: It would be awesome if you could... AirTime with HotOrNot... social and virtual currency. Allowing pretty people to make money from their beauty.