Comments like this reflect more on their author than the startups and management teams they're about. Have you ever been inside a startup, and seen how one one-thousandth of the relevant information ends up in the press, and even then it's distorted? We don't even have more than rumor that this deal exists -- that should hint to you the quality of your information. These players aren't stupid. You have no idea how much you don't know here.

Mail me? Thanks!

When you upvote a comment, if you have authored any parent comment in the the thread, your nick should be listed in the comment metadata ("Upvoted by commenters: tqbf, RiderOfGiraffes").

Upvotes/downvotes send conversational signals that incite responses, whether those responses have intrinsic value or not. So do critiques. Seeing the name of someone who just critiqued your comment in a list of your upvoters might neutralize some pointless flame wars.

To an extent, we already have this feature informally, because "I upvoted you, but..." has become an idiom on HN. I think it'd work better if it was automatic though, and it might incentivize "feel-good" upvotes.

This was particularly interesting:

"Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

Definitely a shortage. To be specific, there is a massive shortage of engineers with extensive qualifications in very specific sets of frameworks used by a given company and expertise in their specialized domain, who are willing to work for less than market rate and/or relocate to some backwoods town at their own expense.

There is also a shortage of new 2010 Porsche 911 Speedsters in chartreuse with candy apple red leather interiors available for the reasonable and normal new car price of $15,000.

There is also a massive shortage of qualified licensed plumbers who will come out to my house for less than $150.

I am also terribly unhappy about the shortage of reasonably priced fresh strawberries in winter.

No, I am not the unreasonable one. The government must supply me with the engineers, plumbers, cars and strawberries of any quality I wish at whatever price I name. Help me gubmint, help me with the shortage.

Particularly timely in the wake of PayPal's decision to suspend payments to Wikileaks ...

EDIT: I was surprised to see this comment voted down. PayPal suspending payments to WikiLeaks is a clear signal to any startup hosting potentially-controversial comment needs to be concerned about it happening to them. The article, written earlier, doesn't mention that, so my comment adds value to the conversation. What was the reasoning behind downvoting it?

This is an amazing rewrite from the Flash version - well worth the time they put into this one. They have some really dedicated staff members and some great talent on the team.

Pretty cool. Originally published in Feb 1996 for those who are curious (like I was).

Gotta give props to wikileaks for opening the eyes of many to the type of country they live in.

Hey, I know you must be on an emotional rollercoaster right now, but just one question: why use a throwaway account?

You're just looking for work. There's no shame in being in this position, at least in this economy. And if you're going to refer to your reputation, why conceal your identity (which is probably already pseudonymous anyway)?

As Pardo says, "There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." - Piaw Na

the original story was split out into 8 pages and is bombarded with ads, i guess i can see why the print version was linked instead

Hey mate,

I don't have any work for you, but I feel for you. I was working on a project with a guy a couple years who lost his job. He'd previously bought a house, and rented it out when he moved to another state - then the family renting from him stopped paying the rent without moving out, meaning he had to try to cover a mortgage with no money. Absolute hell on Earth for him, things got all screwed up, but he's back on track now. It can mean a shit few months or year, but if you keep going you'll find a way, and come out on top.

Practical advice - cut your expenses to bare bones NOW.

The biggest mistake I see in people under a serious cash crunch is to say, "Well, I'm $2000 short on my bills... fuck it, what difference does another $5 make?"

Make a list of healthy, cheap foods, and go stock up. Lipton black teabags, instant coffee, oatmeal, rice, beans, tuna, maybe wheat bread if there's decent bread where you live. Stock up, and stop eating out. If you've got to eat out, get only a couple $1 sandwiches off the super discount menu from Taco Bell or another fast food place.

Cancel your cable TV. Think of cutting back your phone plan. Try to negotiate down or downgrade any insurance plans you have. Think about downgrading your phone minutes, and potentially canceling 3G internet if you don't really need it for testing what you do.

Look for recurring charges to cancel - magazine subscriptions? Do you have any bank fees? Call them up and have them cancel or change the account.

This is surprisingly unintuitive to people who are in a crunch, because, "Screw it, what difference does the $20 make?" But you might be able to carve $500 per month out of your budget in just little nick-knacks and expenses, which will add up. By all means, keep seeking work, but it's time to audit all your expenses. I know, it sucks, it seems like it won't make a difference, but do it. You can always scale the expenses back up once you're on more solid ground.

Good luck and godspeed. I don't have any work for you, but if you have questions or I can be of assistance in some kind of marketing yourself, pitching, proposals, something like that, go ahead and email me. Info in profile, confidentiality assured.

Godspeed, you'll get through. You'll shake your head at this period of your life later and laugh, you can count on that.

For some genres, procedurally-defined levels are fine, but when handcrafted levels are done properly there's a pretty substantial difference. I'm reminded of an interview[1] with Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata discussing the first level of Super Mario Brothers:

  "But if you avoid the first Goomba and then jump and hit a block above
  you, a mushroom will spring out and you'll get a shock. But then you'll
  see that it's going to the right so you'll think: 'I'm safe! Something
  strange appeared but I'm okay!' But of course when it goes against a pipe
  up ahead, the mushroom will come back.

  At that point, even if you panic and try to jump out of the way, you'll
  hit the block above you. Then just at the instant where you accept that
  you're done for, Mario will suddenly shake and grow bigger! You might not
  really know what's just happened, but at the very least, you'll realize
  that you haven't lost the turn."

[1] http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page4.jsp

I once tried to convince a medium-sized employer, someone who got significant traffic, to support Opera. They looked up the numbers and had 7 visitors who'd used Opera in the preceding month. They just couldn't justify the expense for such an insignificant percentage of traffic. I think that's going to be your problem everywhere.

The only reason to support Opera is personal good feelings toward Opera. The userbase is insignificant, Opera doesn't further any given political goal as they aren't open-source and they are several more-popular open-source browsers in the market that are tested against. So what's the point of supporting Opera other than just liking Opera and wanting it to be usable with your site? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but rarely is it a cost-efficient procedure.

I don't afford a Porsche. But if I could afford to buy one, I would still not buy it unless I could afford to park it anywhere. That is, there is a difference between affording to just buy a Porsche (perhaps as a status symbol), and affording to buy a Porsche and use it without care. I don't think that it takes a lunatic to park his DB9 on the street, just someone who bought the car just because he likes it and can do it. The feeling I get is that you are implying that a Porsche is a status symbol, whereas the owner thinks it's just his car, and does not care what any of "us proles" think.

The original title, "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," is more compelling. Also, note that this is from 1996.