HN user

tronium

159 karma

SE | Marketing

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www.youtube.com 11y ago

How to Subtract by Adding

tronium
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

Ask HN: Why Are Nearly All Famous Male Singer Tenors?

tronium
1pts0
plague.io 11y ago

Show HN: Plague – A completely knew way to spread information

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news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

Show HN: From Quartz OS to Quantum OS in 24 Hours?

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1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

Ask HN: What Happened to the iPod Lineup?

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3pts3
windows.microsoft.com 11y ago

Microsoft Is So Eager to Get Away from Windows 8, They Skipped to Windows 10

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: What Is The Best Way To Discover New iPhone Apps?

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1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Is There A Steam-Like Service For Publishing Software?

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1pts1
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Why Had Skype Been Removed From The iOS App Store?

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: How Many Programming Languages Can iOS Apps Be Written In?

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: I Just Got A Used MacBook Pro. What To Install?

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: What Should I Do With One Hour Of Free Time Per Day?

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Which Large Technology Company Has The Best Work Environment?

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1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: How Many People Are On The Internet At Any Given Time?

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1pts0
www.producthunt.com 12y ago

Herenow: A Location-Based Mini Social Network

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1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Will Hacker News Get An Official "Show HN" Section?

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96pts34
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: What Is The Best Free IDE?

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: When Will Unity Web Player Come To Linux?

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: How Soon Will I Get My OS X Yosemite Beta Code?

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1pts1
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Timeline For Creation of Programming Languages

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1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: How Fast Is Swift Compared To Other Languages?

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2pts1
mobile.geek.com 12y ago

A Qubit Has Successfully Been Teleported Using Quantum Physics

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1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Is Objective-C Now Dead?

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Does Mac OS X Yosemite Get Rid of Dashboard?

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: A Way To Watch WWDC 14 Livestream on Linux

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mobile.theverge.com 12y ago

This iOS 8 Concept Reinvents Icons

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1pts1
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Why are commas not allowed in urls?

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8pts7
Marble Blast 1 year ago

Macs released from 2002-2005 shipped with Marble Blast Gold on them. Playing it is one of my earliest memories (I was 5 at the time), especially taking absolutely forever to figure out the two Escher's Maze levels.

Great game :)

I went through the applications folder on my mac and opened every single one up to figure out what they did. That's how I learned to navigate the file system and discovered the Terminal app.

Read a "Linux for Dummies" at the library for a few minutes, that got me some basic commands. I would spend hours using "cd" and "ls" to look at files, and then I would try to run them... 99% of the time nothing would happen. When I made it to /bin, I discovered a lot of things I could run.

You have to put yourself in the shoes of a 13 year old with no social media, no internet, friends he sees for a few hours 1-2x per week, and a fairly limitless amount of homework/chores to do. Whenever people weren't watching, I'd do anything to not be working on homework at the computer. That meant hundreds of hours to mess around.

Telehack changed my life, quite significantly.

I was homeschooled in a heavily locked down home. Internet was effectively not allowed, and when used, only whitelisted sites permitted. Everything was tracked.

Our home work/life was strenuous. Both parents holding advanced degrees and living on a hobby farm led to ~10h a day of homework, and another ~3-4h per day of taking care of the place. Very little room for socializing/free time, and even when there was, it would usually be filled with more homework/chores.

I was around 13 the time (this would be 2010), and I'd discovered the Terminal app on the Macs we used. Toying around with it when nobody was in the room had led to some discoveries. I'd spend hours looking through the file system, when I discovered "man" and started reading the manuals for them.

This led me down the rabbit hole of learning everything I could about the world inside the command prompt, and even opening up telnet ports on other macs throughout the house and connecting to them.

Eventually, (and unfortunately I cannot remember how), I discovered that I could connect to Telehack, a BBS with real other people on it, and our internet tracking software didn't discover it.

Whenever I had any longer than a minute alone, I'd connect and talk with the people there. I learned things about the old internet, got sent places I could FTP to download books (The Cuckoo's Egg being one of them), found friends and joined their "ssh server" (where we set up custom ways of more live-chat), and I learned basic programming in Bash, Python, Ruby, and other languages. I always had to disconnect (Apple+Q) as soon as I heard footsteps.

Now I'm double the age I was then (26) and have worked full-time as a software engineer for 4 years.

Telehack changed how I talked with people, learned, and my entire career path. Thx <3

Is there a reason the magnifying glass is always on the USA to make changes? I'm no climate expert, but last I checked China/India/the rest of SEA and the largest ships generate a large majority of non-natural carbon emissions. Wouldn't it be far more practical to make changes to the couple hundred of large ships running cruises/containers than changing the entire automotive industry?

Plague 12 years ago

I highly recommend this. I've been a heavy user for two weeks, and it's been working fantastic, I don't regret it.

It looks like a great idea, and a well designed app. Even as much as I want it, I'm afraid I can't justify spending $0.99 for a productivity app. Just my opinion, I would much rather have an occasional ad, with an in-app purchase to get rid of ads. Thereby, if I really loved and used the app, I would pay the price. Otherwise, I'm afraid not. Still a good looking app though!

Personally I haven't ever created a startup, but I have been slightly successful in the marketing realm. Here's some tips: #1: Create a Unique Name Now I know this sounds dumb and obvious, but creating a name that sounds to similar to something else in that realm is just not a good idea. #2: Make it either really abstract, or having an element of what you're doing in it. Microsoft has the word "soft" or software in there. Apple, on the other hand, is completely abstract. Both have been successful. #3: Make it short. You probably don't want it to be 2 words or having a hyphen in there. Less than 10 characters is preferable. #4: Make it rememberable. Branding is everything, and generic names like "Beats" and "Apple" have been really successful nowadays. Also, knockoffs of real words are cool too. Think of a bicycle making startup named "Byke".

As for actually coming up with names, I find it actually works best to: #1 Think about it throughout the day, no matter what you're doing. and #2 Sleep on it. #3 Oh, and think about it in the shower too :P

I hope that helped!