Hacker News Reader

sstradlingon Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem

I think that good, unconditional friendships and stable communities teach and model self-compassion - seeing others look at us with "that's cool, I've made mistakes too" opens the way for us to say that about our own weaknesses.

sstradlingon Russian FOSS activist arrested in Russia for his Tor exit-node

What's concerning to me here is "Now the investigation is examining all his seized devices". It's possible, although perhaps slightly paranoid, that the message posting was intended to create pretext for seizure.

This may be a little far-fetched - there's likely easier ways to generate pretext - but it might be something for owners of Tor exit nodes to be aware of.

sstradlingon Ask HN: What prototyping tool do you suggest for non-technical users?

Or Google Slides - it has most of the benefits of PP or KN, but it's visible in realtime to anyone with a Google account (ok, everyone) while giving you notes and revision history.

sstradlingon Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

Exactly. I used phaxio with a group-ordering side project I built a while back, there really was no better option for getting/confirming orders to restaurants reliably. Love that Twilio is doing this (even though I'm out of the food-delivery business!).

sstradlingon Ask HN: One website that isn't popular but is your favourite?

http://textsfromsuperheroes.com

Un-informative and distracting. Probably doesn't make me a better founder. So funny.

sstradlingon Stupid hacks from stupidhackathon.se

Så morsomt! Thanks for posting - this was a wonderful bit of distraction.

I love Everything is Calm - probably because I'm a bad person. :-D

sstradlingon Show HN: ConvoBox – Get useful anonymous feedback from your team in Slack

We've been looking for a better way to give and get feedback on our teams (I've been yelled at once too often for giving a candid "I'm not sure that's a good idea" to a manager).

We built this so that teams can have real input and feel safe, while managers can get early warning on problems. What do you all think?

sstradlingon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2015)

Location: Santa Fe, NM

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: Yes, please (prefer Phoenix, AZ area)

Tech: JavaScript/Node.js (also Java, but that's ancient history)

Resume/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethstradling (full resume on request)

email:seth<at>simplelunch.co

I'm a research analyst (some competitive/market intelligence background) with experience with stats and software. It's not quite reflected in my profile/resume, but I'm the guy my teams depend on to learn new stuff and actually make things work (technical or not).

sstradlingon YC S15 Interview Invites Today

Me too. Just need to keep building. :-)

sstradlingon YC S15 Interview Invites Today

No problem - you gave me a heart attack, though :-)

sstradlingon YC S15 Interview Invites Today

This. It was my YC application that helped my wife be comfortable with me pushing forward on my startup even if we never make YC.

sstradlingon YC S15 Interview Invites Today

No indication of this on the YC page, twitter, or FB. Likely trolling, but we'll know for sure tonight.

EDIT: Definitely trolling. See katm's (I'm guessing Kat Manalac's) post above.

sstradlingon Show HN: We made T Combinator, in case YC reject us today

I like this (even if no-one else will comment).

You'll need a way to require re-tweets within 15 seconds, though, as with iPaulGraham...

sstradlingon YC S15 Interview Invites Today

I'm in the same boat. :-) I keep having to assign myself bite-sized tasks to get done before I can check my email again (Or this thread).

Good luck!

sstradlingon IBM Watson via Entrepreneur.com: What Your Writing Says About Your Personality

I just submitted three very different pieces of writing - a business letter, a short story I wrote last year, and a portion of my YC application. The results were freakishly consistent.

Click through to the IBM live demo, and let me know if you think they're on to something, or if IBM just knows me too well.

sstradlingon Ask HN: How do I get dedicated beta users pre-launch?

That's an interesting question - how do the users interact? Can you have two of the same type of people interacting (a chat/message/game site) or are you offering different value to different users (a marketplace/scheduling/discovery site)?

If you're looking for one general type of user, go find a meetup group, class, online community, or other spot where they'll congregate, and just talk to them. Bring a laptop (or send a link) for them to test out, and maybe provide some sort of incentive or game to get them interested in giving it a shot.

If you're looking for two (or more) classes of users, do the same general thing for each separately, but either 1) try and line things up so that each group is interacting with the system at the same time (perhaps by only opening up the beta for a couple of hours) or 2) pretend to be a member of the other group during testing so that you can get feedback on at least half of your product.

sstradlingon Pigeon.ly, a Startup Focused on Serving the U.S. Prison Population, Joins YC

True, but Central America is a good place to start.

sstradlingon Ask HN: Does your boss know about your side project?

It depends. I trust my immediate supervisor (from experience), so I told her about my startup side project a month ago. I don't want to leave her short-handed, so I wanted her to have time to think of a succession plan.

OTOH, I officially let my chain of command know about my project last week (per company policy). I put it off as long as ethically possible because I do not have the same level of trust in them (also from experience). I do not know if there will be any repercussions.

If you trust (really trust) your supervisor, let them know. They'll appreciate it, and your team will thank you. If you don't, then don't. If you have IP agreements or other legal entanglements that they could use to destroy you, find someone with experience in those areas to advise you on a best path forward.

sstradlingon Pigeon.ly, a Startup Focused on Serving the U.S. Prison Population, Joins YC

I like this. I would love to see it expanded to work for migrant families (maybe also a less extortionate method for sending remittances back home) too.

sstradlingon Hacking Y Combinator

But you didn't start a discussion on your post! :-)

sstradlingon SpaceX’s only competitor needs Russia’s help to survive

Interesting article. One question that it missed is how Russia might use this leverage if they are planning on losing the American market for the RD-180? I can see them assuming that there is no long-term gain from keeping ULA and the US gov happy given current US-Russia relations and SpaceX's development schedule.

sstradlingon Sir Terry Pratchett has died

I've never been able to remember where I read that. Thank you.

One more reason to regret him passing.

sstradlingon The Moment I Knew Twitter Had to Buy Periscope

For all the hate Shane's getting in the article comments, he did a good job of illustrating exactly why Periscope is a cool service (and now I have to go look up Meerkat).

sstradlingon Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

The question I'd ask him is how he's felt about the lifetime of command and control? If he's always been the guy who kept trying to change things, adjusting to a startup is going to be a matter of helping him understand how to best have an impact (and get used to the fact that people will actually appreciate and support his efforts). If he's the guy who followed the handbook, he's in for a much bigger shock.

For me, I've been bouncing off the walls for 12 years in a large bureaucracy. Reading Eric Ries's Lean Startup and finding Paul's blog was like drinking water for the first time. I hope he has the same experience.

sstradlingon “Just remove the duck” (2013)

I've been in some pretty bad ones (USG software dev) - I agree that sometimes you might need an emergency duck, but that's when you need to start looking somewhere else. If they're crazy or dysfunctional enough for more than an occasional ED, odds are that they'll break you or fire you eventually.

sstradlingon “Just remove the duck” (2013)

This brings up the other problem I have with adding ducks (yes, I'm anti-duck). Humans tend to fixate on the obvious - the more obvious problems you have, the more we'll fixate on them. That's great if people are just meddling, and you want to keep them occupied, but it's horrible if there might actually be flaws of consequence in your work. Given that we often tend to think we're more competent than we actually are, trying to game the review process may keep real, serious problems from being fixed.

With my work, a lot of reviewers do love to hear themselves talk, but every so often they'll come back at you with really good, insightful stuff that I totally missed. I don't dare game them because I don't want to be putting out garbage.

Except for CH. We totally owe her a duck.

sstradlingon “Just remove the duck” (2013)

Agreed (although there are few things funnier than a well-placed duck)

sstradlingon “Just remove the duck” (2013)

Even if you specifically aren't the idiot (though I often am), never spend your time working around the idiot. Any time you work around an idiot, you've done more work and the idiot will still be there...

sstradlingon “Just remove the duck” (2013)

I'm reminded of a blog post by an old govvie that hated this approach. His argument was that every time we work around a problem in our process, whether it was a bad system or an incompetent co-worker or manager, we became the problem. Every time we added a duck or built a workaround we were building frameworks that would hold a bad policy in place for longer than if we just stopped and said "that's stupid". Adding the duck binds your co-workers and successors to a life of misery.

There's a real risk (of course) to killing the duck. Your client or your boss may hate you, and that's never healthy in the short run, but they also may come out of the interaction a wiser and better person. Or you may find yourself not working for an idiot, and be happier in the long run anyways. Keeping the duck alive is a bigger long-term risk for everyone.

Kill the duck.

sstradlingon Side projects

Not at all :-) What helps me is having enough variety in what needs to be done - coding, marketing, management, planning - that there's always something I'm not totally burned out on.