Hacker News Reader

Mattion Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

It was posted in 2010 and generated the following discussion: http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244

But if you were to receive a personalized, sixteen page sales letter signed by Paul Graham, you'd probably read it multiple times.

"The astonishing startup secrets of Ycombinator's founder

Ryan,

below I'll reveal an amazing startup plan specifically designed for sole founders.

It has a proven 73% success rate.

If you're interested in running a SaaS company and you're willing to relocate to the Bay Area, then this letter might be the most important you'll ever read.

WARNING: You are not allowed to share the information contained in this letter with anyone else. It's for your eyes only.

What you'll read below will at first seem contradictory. It'll fly in the face of everything you currently know about starting and running a business. It'll blow away your current beliefs about product development and customer acquisition. So make sure you sit down, because what I'm about to tell you will possibly change your life forever..."

Mattion Improving a [web] design, step by step

I found this short article to be a decent introduction to using grid systems in CSS:

http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/the-960-grid-system-made-...

Mattion Yahoo is Shutting Down Del.icio.us

I upgraded to a paid Historious account a couple of days ago and I just imported all of my 4000+ bookmarks from Delicious. What drew me to historio.us was the caching: I love the fact that all my bookmarks are cached.(1) Lately I've been trying to cut down on the information I consume so the lack of 'social' features doesn't really bother me -- right now I'm more interested in retaining the stuff that I've already bookmarked than in finding new stuff to read.

(1) It looks like pinboard.in has the same function for about the same yearly price.

Mattion Ask HN: Tips for writing compelling web copy.

Copywriting has nothing to do with general text writing -- it's about salesmanship in print. Paying a one-time fee of $15k and a small percentage of all future sales generated by the copy isn't expensive if you compare that to what it would cost to hire even a half-decent salesman, working full-time, for a year.

In some cases, a good sales letter can be used for years and years. Take a look at this classic two-page direct mail piece that was used -- with small variations -- during 28 years and made the Wall Street Journal ridiculous amounts of money: http://www.copywriting1.com/2007/10/wall-street-journal-lett...

Mattion 13yo "Spider Boy" scales walls using recycled vacuums

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1qoINo2MPM

Mattion Think You're Operating on Free Will? Think Again

Perceptual Control Theorists would argue that you don't understand behavior if you think that we, or other animals, respond to stimuli.

"The illusion of stimulus and response [..] What we see from outside the system is that the crosswind pushes sideways on the car and the front wheels of the car immediately cock into the wind, preventing any important change in the car's path. It looks just as if the car is being stimulated by the wind, and is responding by turning its front wheels into the wind. Of course we know that neither the car nor the driver can sense the crosswind; this appearance of stimulus and response is an illusion. The true explanation is a little more complicated than the stimulus-response explanation would be, but not much more complicated.

But we can see now how the impression that stimuli cause responses could arise, even if the system in question is really a control system that works as just described."

-- William T. Powers, A Brief Introduction to Perceptual Control Theory: http://www.benchpress.com/aboutPCT.htm

Mattion This is what people you know like on the Internet right now

I'm using the Firefox add-on LeechBlock to block access to "www.facebook.com/plugins/". (Facebook still works fine. It wasn't immediately apparent that you could use Leechblock to block access to individual folders.)

http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html

Mattion Ask HN: Is affiliate marketing really legit?

5days2freedom.com redirects to 5daystofreedom.com with the affiliate ID "curt505" appended to the URL. I think the landing page looks pretty decent. Information marketers and copywriters don't care about creating websites that look pretty -- they care about conversions and sales. Note the two upsell attempts that are presented to you when you want to buy the ebook for $5. The guys behind the site know what they are doing and they probably make a fair bit of money.

Mattion No gain from brain training

An investment of fourteen hours of training over five weeks does result in some changes:

Changes in Cortical Dopamine D1 Receptor Binding Associated with Cognitive Training

McNab et al. Science 6 February 2009: 800-802

Working memory is a key function for human cognition, dependent on adequate dopamine neurotransmission. Here we show that the training of working memory, which improves working memory capacity, is associated with changes in the density of cortical dopamine D1 receptors. Fourteen hours of training over 5 weeks was associated with changes in both prefrontal and parietal D1 binding potential. This plasticity of the dopamine D1 receptor system demonstrates a reciprocal interplay between mental activity and brain biochemistry in vivo.

http://www.klingberglab.se/pub/McNab2009.pdf

Mattion Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

"Stanford Professor Robert Sapolsky, posits that depression is the most damaging disease that you can experience. Right now it is the number four cause of disability in the US and it is becoming more common. Sapolsky states that depression is as real of a biological disease as is diabetes."

Mattion Rejection massively reduces IQ

"Test-Score-Differences Fallacy 1: Nonfixedness Proves Malleability

This fallacy uses evidence of any fluctuation or growth in the mental functioning of individuals as if it were proof that their rates of growth can be changed intentionally. IQ level is not made malleable by any means yet devised (Brody, 1996), ..."

- Linda Gottfredson, Logical fallacies used to dismiss the evidence on intelligence testing http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009fallacies.... (PDF page 24)

Mattion Rejection massively reduces IQ

The original paper is behind a paywall but I found the 4-page article "Rejected and alone" by Roy Baumeister -- one of the researchers -- to be an interesting read.

http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm/v...

* Rejection affects behavior, but has generally no or little effect on emotion: "Thus, social exclusion does have powerful effects on people, but these effects do not depend on emotional distress. This has been something of a shock to many of us and has even led us to question some widely held assumptions about the purpose of emotion and its relationship to behaviour."

* Social exclusion results in a higher pain threshold and a higher tolerance for pain. "Further studies indicated that the numbness to physical pain can explain the emotional numbness that we had observed over and over."

Mattion "Turn a recycling bottle bank into an arcade game and guess what happens...."

Piano Stairs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

The world's deepest bin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEKAwCoCKw

Mattion Merlin Mann on Becoming an Expert (video)

"Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)" is the original title of the video. Unless you are a big fan of Merlin Mann, in which case you'll be watching the video regardless of what I say, I'd say that this is something you can skip. The 40 min video is about... well, the topics Merlin Mann tends to speak about. The content-to-time-it-takes-to-watch-the-video ratio is pretty low, so if you're a 'casual' Mann fan, just (re-)read these posts:

http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/48588149/better

http://www.43folders.com/2008/12/03/real-advice-hurts

Mattion Ask HN: Startup vs Girlfriend

"Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship. If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe, and cheats his woman of an authentic man who can offer her full, undivided presence.

Admit to yourself that if you had to choose one or the other, the perfect intimate relationship or achieving your highest purpose in life, you would choose to succeed at your purpose. Just this self-knowledge often relieves much pressure a man feels to prioritize his relationship when, in fact, it is not his highest priority.

Your mission is your priority. Unless you know your mission and have aligned your life to it, your core will feel empty. Your presence in the world will be weakened, as will your presence with your intimate partner. The next to you notice yourself "giving in" to your woman, postponing your mission and denying your true purpose in order to spend time with her, stop. Tell your woman that you love her, but cannot deny your heart's purpose. Tell her that you will spend 30 minutes (or some specific time) with her in absolute attention and presence, but then you must return to carry on your mission.

Your woman will be more fulfilled with 30 minutes a day of undivided attention and ravishing love than she will with a few hours of your weak and divided presence when your heart really isn't into it. Time you spend with your woman should be time you really want to be with her more than anything else. If you'd rather be doing something else, she'll feel it. Both of you will be dissatisfied." -- David Deida, The way of the superior man

Mattion Rising Above I.Q.

After reading that column, read "Logical Fallacies used to dismiss the evidence on intelligence testing" by Linda S. Gottfredson. It's available here: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009fallacies....

Now, go back and re-read the New York Times piece.

How many fallacies did you notice?

Mattion [dead]

Go look at yourself in the mirror. Do you see a number stamped on your forehead? Unless an individual has been monitored 24/7 since (s)he hit puberty, there's no way of knowing how many persons that individual has slept with. Women aren't interested in numbers per se, they're interested in meeting confident and socially savvy men.

If you're a guy who's social, cool and fun to hang around with, people will tend to assume that you've slept with more than a few women. If you on the other hand come off as a bitter and angry person, most people will think that your "number" is low or non-existant, because you're displaying some very unattractive traits.