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noverloopon My list of ideas, if you're looking for inspiration

(28) got me thinking, the technology is ready to get DJ's to telecommute to the parties.

noverloopon Ask HN: What would you do with a newspaper-dot-com's built-in audience?

I would start crowd-sourcing articles and pay the authors a small amount when they get published.

noverloopon Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

Arbitrage in action

noverloopon Design early. Earlier than that.

I've always wondered how ycombinator handles design. Do they have designers on site , do teams hire designers to get it right or do they count on the teams to do it on their own. I'm no good at design and I don't know anybody who's good at it. I just browse Themeforest and buy one if I need one.

noverloopon Founders who can't code

I suppose it depends on the main expenses of the companies, optimizing programmer workflow is a very good idea in a tech-centric environment because its a major part of your operational costs. However, if the quality of the technology is not an important business driver then I suppose you can afford to be average about it.

noverloopon Founders who can't code

just a list of requirements doesn't cut it. There are a lot of ways to fill in requirements, a lot of bad ones and very few good ones. When you ask an author to write a 500 page roman about some dramatic lovestory you have written down in a 5 page requirement document, there are still a lot of things that will be unclear when he is writing it. When the author hits an unknown he can send you an email, make an assumption or call a meeting. 1 and 3 breaks his workflow, 2 doesn't.

now speed this proces up a 100 times faster and you've got a programmer in the 'zone' with a 5 page requirement list for a fairly complex project. It won't end very well unless you have very short communication lines for the entire duration of the project (or the programmer is reading your mind)

noverloopon Wife-beating and slavery were once acceptable: How will the future judge us?

polluters

noverloopon Let's get Salman Khan (khanacademy.org) on the TED stage

I would like to fill in the form to nominate him but I can't find his email address

noverloopon Ask HN: What super projects could unite humanity?

this would make a big difference in the fight against rare diseases, I know someone who has an illness that is not adequately researched because it is too rare.

noverloopon Ever notice Chrome has no "Set image as wallpaper"?

This thread made me realize how disciplined a team must be to resist feature creep.

noverloopon I'm a business guy, and it's about time I learned to code

Building things from scratch can require a lot of skill that may take a long time to acquire, but it is certainly valuable to learn how to code so you can at least maintain code you bought or hotfix things when something goes wrong. also, you'll be able to judge a developer on his factual skill and not on some proxy.

noverloopon Scott Adams: Future Jobs (and Irreplaceable Skill Sets)

any decision that isn't based on hard facts has an element of persuasion in it.

noverloopon [dead]

frustrations have a tendency to ripple trough a society/neighbourhood.

Woman A gets pissed off by someone before she gets ticked off and vents her frustrations on someone else...etc... The buck only stops when someone is laid back (or has enough space in his frustration-venting-buffer).

I've seen this countless times in my family and I'm willing to take the bet that there are patches in society where it's just worse then in other patches. maybe there is some critical mass to turn a patch into an unhappy place, or it depends on the structure of the social graphs.

anyway, I think frustration has wave-like properties and if you encounter it a lot it might be better to move to a place where people in general are happier.

noverloopon Heard of Google Instant? Well, I built YouTube Instant.

I like it, fastest way to find music videos that I have encountered ever.

noverloopon High Resolution Fundraising

http://www.khanacademy.org/#Finance

I understood all of it since I had watched these videos for the past 2 days.

noverloopon Startup ideas are like kittens, I'm giving 'em away

maybe something like quirky.com might work for apps too

noverloopon Ask HN: Should I fire half of my team because their performance is terrible?

I think you are right to focus on company culture instead of hiring/becoming better nudgers.

The teams that I've been in that were self-managing had a few things in common. The first one was that the incentive-structure was performance-based (even better, you should link it to the company goals) Second was that there was a social cohesion, 'the team' would get annoyed when somebody wasn't doing what he should have been doing, it's effective because people are social animals and nobody wants to be excluded (if they can help it). and third would be that they had the autonomy to make design decisions as long as these didn't impact stuff the others are working on.

I think that building a team that you can trust to get things done is well worth the hassle of firing/rehiring and maybe firing some more.

noverloopon Smear campaign against Wikileaks begins

Scenario 2 should be 'The pentagon payed two women to file a credible suit based on their most accurate Intel about his whereabouts.'

noverloopon Is Greece entering a Death Spiral?

European leaders have already set aside a bailout package for their banks in case any pigs-nation defaults. It's hard to imagine the defaulting nation to remain in the Eurozone though.

The penalties of defaulting are probably already negotiated to far outweigh the penalty of stark austerity measures.

noverloopon Why Entrepreneurs Should Reconsider Working From Home

I think you have more accurately described the problem the article was trying to point out. It's counterïntuitive to be physically present but mentally away, so it doesn't make emotional sense to your social circle to not help out when the need arises.

I don't think it's a good idea to disregard the basic fact that we're human for an extended period of time, we haven't adapted (yet) to support this unnatural state called 'work'.

noverloopon Ask HN: What stops you from starting today?

I'm in the middle of an examination period. I do have a product that still needs a few weeks of work until it's launchable but the project is on hold atm.

noverloopon Why Free Plans Don’t Work

I think you should use a free plan if actively using the 'free' plan will eventually force the user to go to a paid plan. e.g. dropbox.

If you just give your core product away for free then users will only switch if they need the extra features of the paid plan. You can still use 'free' for marketing, because total conversion rates with a free plan will probably be higher, just don't expect these 'free' customers to switch if they don't have to.

noverloopon Ask HN: Okay okay, I'll learn to program...now what?

I'd advise java as a first language, this language really forces you to grasp the concept of object-oriented programming. python and ruby make it to easy to ignore objects, while objects are a concept that once grasped is going to make programming in any language a lot easier.

The thing about programming is that it's a creative process where you apply ideas in order to create a solution, the more clearly you understand these ideas the better you will be at programming(which is just writing down a solution so that a compiler can understand it).

noverloopon Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?

I certainly think it is possible, but I wouldn't trust their government at all. I would suggest building a prototype ,demonstrate some traction and then move out of the area to grow the business if that would be possible. You don't really need to incorporate until you have paying customers, so you wouldn't have to deal with any government before that point.

noverloopon Customer Development:6 Things I learned in 2 days with less than 10 users

http://foodporndaily.com/ I like this site and I'm not even a foodie :)

this line "Build the ingredients you hate functionality" got me thinking... I suppose a website about social cooking might work, where you get recipes recommended based on previous recipes you tried and liked.

If a person submits a few recipes he tried and liked you can start recommending recipes to him that other users who liked similar recipes liked.

It might even be possible to 'follow' cooks you like etc... This kind of site would have to be offered for free though, social and market norms don't mix well.

just my 0.02 cents

noverloopon So, What Does "HREF" Stand For, Anyway?

An entire blogpost that can be summarized by google 'define:href'

noverloopon Lawrence Lessig's new TED talk

European countries just banned the most costly part of elections: TV advertising.

noverloopon Ask HN: Best Startup City - Outside the USA?

berlin is the exception because it has had one side of the city living in poverty until the fall of the berlin wall

noverloopon Ask HN: What annoys you?

Politicians

noverloopon Ask HN: Share a gem. Teach me and you.

it might be worth noting why you should stretch.

When muscles aren't used, they contract. When you sit down a lot, some of the muscles that attach to your spine are probably contracted. This leads to lower backaches and worse.