haploid

Seconded. The claim that height is some sort of social, sexual, or financial advantage is absurd.

"When I'm done with college, wal-mart customers are going to get a piece of my mind since I won't be worrying about getting fired."

Right, because having a college diploma is equivalent to guaranteed employment.

I don't think it would be possible to disagree more. Connections are not at all necessarily required for startup success.

I am speaking here merely from an anecdotal and firsthand perspective, but all it takes is one data point to refute the claim that condition A is necessary for outcome B.

I am not particularly impressed with people who, by virtue of being born into money, spend years of their lives engaged in various unproductive pursuits.

I do find it interesting that someone named johngalt would be impressed by someone living the benefits of unearned wealth. Perhaps you should have adopted a more appropriate username. Were philiprearden and jamestaggart taken?

As long as auctions maintain a BTC ratio over 1.0 with short tails, the appetite is effectively insatiable, especially at the enormous rate of issuance over the last few years.

Right. That explains the infinite, insatiable lust for our Treasury bills, notes, and bonds.

Until I see the world protest US actions in the only way that matters( e.g. refusing to finance our government's activities ), I will continue to laugh off the "world hates the US" babble.

Stop buying our toilet paper and I'll take it seriously.

Well, if your home gets foreclosed on, you find a rental. The only difference in lifestyle is now you have to get permission from your landlord to change the carpet.

All in all, I'd suggest that foreclosure is not a big deal.

Also, if you are taking on personal financial risk with a startup, you're already doing it wrong. Limited liability entities exist for a reason.

The author appears to have wandered into the playground of the idle rich and is somehow shocked to find that the idle rich treat their toys like toys.

I don't really understand the indignation.

It doesn't have to be either-or.

Another option is to not get married or have children in the first place, and open yourself up to an entire lifespan of such opportunity.

Am I the only one who doesn't understand this at all?

As far as I can tell, Mahalo.com is a video site. Why on earth would google going after content farms affect a video site in any way?

To me, this headline makes about as much sense as "Microsoft changes Windows 7 pricing, pork belly futures skyrocket." Am I missing something?

"To be honest, I'm not sure there's any degree where the mere act of receiving it would be more impressive than the above feat."

Because being in the presence of popular people is a major accomplishment, right? Far greater an accomplishment than the defense of any original PhD thesis, right?

I can drive to the Viceroy hotel bar right now and be in the presence of a random A-list celebrity if I so choose. By your logic, that act alone sets me worlds apart from the entire body of original research being done by PhD candidates all over the world.

I will never understand the nature of being starstruck. If I want to shut down my rational faculty, I have a bottle of Glenkinchie at the ready.

A few kegs of beer on tap and a decent single malt scotch collection.

Thanks for pointing this out. I've removed the spam claim.

I still stand by the research that makes it evident human beings can't maintain relationships with more than a couple hundred people at a time, and I doubt very much that Feld( or any other human being )is capable of even remembering a small fraction of the people on that list.

The traditional process of "sales" doesn't provide nearly as much value as it once did. We now have google and more efficient social networking available as a means of locating solutions to various business problems one may have.

I remember the halcyon days of the dot com era when hot redheaded sales reps from Exodus would take you on datacenter tours and treat you to dinner to secure a lucrative two-rack deal.

I remember pushy but friendly Oracle salespeople selling you on a $250k six-processor O7 license predicated on "well ebay's using it".

Nowadays I refuse to take vendor phone calls. If I need a solution, I google it or ask around my circle of tech friends.

The claim that sales is "valuable" is lost on me at this point.

This. The guy is obviously trying to run a spam newsletter on the cheap, using the trusted status of google's MTAs to ensure deliverable spam.

Nobody can or will maintain relationships with anywhere near 10k contacts. Dunbar indicated that humans are only capable of maintaining relationships with roughly 150 people at any given point in time. This guy is overstating his requirements by nearly two orders of magnitude.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

I'm not even sure if I believe this.

10k works out to be 40 new contacts per business day( 5 days per week, 52 weeks minus 2 for vacation ) for a year. Let's assume this guy has been "at it" for 4 years. That's still 10 new contacts every day.

Nobody who has actual work to do is going to contact, establish rapport, communicate enough to know the contact would be valuable, and then most importantly, maintain the relationship with 10 NEW people every single working day for 4 years straight.

Good point. Sparkly vampire movies produced and marketed with the express intent of playing on the hormones of teenage girls tend to be extremely complex and nuanced.

I can give you one perspective. Moral hazard and fairness.

The vast majority of costs borne by and in the US healthcare system are the results of overeating, oversmoking, and underexercising. Period. Heart disease, many forms of cancer, diabetes, most forms of pancreatic, gallbladder, and adrenal conditions, are largely the result of personal choice.

Setting aside for a moment the fact that congenital defects, hereditary disorders, infections, and accidents are no fault of the victim/patient, it should be important to note that a system that REQUIRES those who take care of their health by eating and exercising properly to subsidize the consequences of the choices of those who do not, is taken by many Americans to be fundamentally unfair.

If legislative initiative were taken to find a way to exclude universal coverage of lifestyle diseases, while still permitting universal coverage of non-lifestyle conditions, many people would not have such a viscerally negative reaction to the notion of universal health care.

I believe he expected that it wouldn't make it to HN, given the assumed, and sometimes enforced, focus of the site.

This sounds like an excellent use of one's time. I wonder if the health benefits of "meditation" are as significant as those of "hatha yoga", "chiropractic", or any other such Eastern mystic pseudoscientific charlatanism.

Why spend 30 minutes a day volunteering, working, or doing something else to benefit humanity, when you can spend it sitting on a pillow, indulging yourself in an act of inducing the all-powerful placebo effect to convince yourself that all the "stress" of an upper middle class American lifestyle can be magically washed away by breathing and thinking of fat bronze statues and waterfalls?

Hope these amazing changes to your life continue.

Stress reduction? I have a novel idea for stress reduction: Stop stressing. Are you going to die tomorrow? No? Then settle down and stop worrying.

I tell this to everyone I know who "suffers" from stress, and I get some variation on the same response, "it's not that easy for me".

Actually, it is easy. It's 2011. Predators aren't chasing you across the savannah. You're not more than 3 days away from a source of potable water. You're not more than 7 days away from safe, nutritious, calorie dense food. You aren't in immediate danger of being washed away in a flood or dying of heatstroke in the desert or freezing to death.

Realize that your "stress" is so far removed from its genetic origins as to be laughable, realize how good you really have it, and enjoy life.

Do you think there are a lot of bricks-and-mortar entrepreneurs who bitch endlessly about the lack of alternative planets on which to snap up cheap real estate or unique business name trademarks?

If the name you want is already owned, make contact and negotiate a price. You know, like everybody else in meatspace does with land, trademarks, etc.

Everybody thinks they have "depression". Stop feeling sorry for yourself and learn some time management skills. Master some of the key concepts in the GTD literature.

Chances are you have a lot more time than you think you do.

Failing that, cut back on semester hours, the work hours, or both.

"It's different this time."

We will see. If I were a betting man, I would wager that Helicopter Ben will announce QE3 before June.

huh? random letters in candidates' names?

Is this a joke?

Don't knock the power of ideas.

I have this awesome idea for a teleportation ray that will instantly transport me from one city to another. I even have a 15 page powerpoint presentation and I have 4 of my country club buddies who committed to putting up some cash after I got enough long island iced teas in them.

Now all I need is someone to build it for me.

I think HN is being trolled.

There is the possibility that this is a real post, given how insane and bubbleicious the whole mobile/social space has gotten, but I highly doubt it.

The account is 3 days old.