Disqus - Friends of ecAr

Re: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

Andy Baio — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:02:27 -0000

I found it in Italian on ED2k. I'm guessing that won't cut it, though.

Re: Streeter Seidell

Andy Baio — Mon, 19 May 2008 02:41:48 -0000

That's not valid XML! Run your jokes through a validator next time.

Re: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

Andy Baio — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:09:52 -0000

You can use either Adblock+ for Firefox (which you definitely should), add this to your blacklist: *.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js. That'll remove that obnoxious "feature" entirely.

Re: Streeter Seidell

Andy Baio — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:12:35 -0000

The missus and I thought it was great, but we like almost everything Samberg does, going back to the Lonely Island. I'm really disappointed nobody's posted the lyrics online yet.

Re: Streeter Seidell

Andy Baio — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 01:14:51 -0000

The full lyrics are here. Go, team Internet!

Re: Who’s inside that Mechanical Turk?

Andy Baio — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:50:18 -0000

Thanks for the link! Here's the origin story of Waxy.org, documented on my user page at Metafilter.

Re: Bustr: sciencevsromance: The Faces of Mechanical Turk -...

Andy Baio — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:13:01 -0000

Yeah, it's strange... I think it's a combination of people unwilling to give up their anonymity and the technological skill it takes to take a photo and upload it. I suspect most turkers don't have a webcam, which makes it a much longer process.

Re: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

Andy Baio — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:27:47 -0000

I can't read that PDF without the music from the first level running through my head. I've always been a sucker for arcade games with trackballs. (Missile Command, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Quantum, etc.)

Re: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

Andy Baio — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:00:14 -0000

Also: Marble Madness speedrun.

Re: 2009 — My Grand Experiment

Andy Baio — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 03:55:18 -0000

Kick ass. Be sure to drop me a line when you get close to launch, or if you want feedback.

Re: Why it's time to break out of Twitter (Scripting News)

Andy Baio — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:16:06 -0000

Dave, didn't you do exactly the same thing with Radio Userland back in the day? The list of default feeds in Radio served the same purpose as Twitter's suggested users does today: to help new users of a service get off the ground. And as Rogers points out, you secretly took money for placing feeds in the default list. Twitter's suggested users may be based on their arbitrary whims, but at least it's not payola.

Re: 5 Reasons Why URL Shorteners Are Useful

Andy Baio — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:46:46 -0000

"In an article this week, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter made some very compelling arguments for how cigarettes might kill you or your loved ones. However, I want to make some points for the opposite argument: that cigarettes are really awesome. Cigarettes feel good to smoke, relieve stress, and make you look cool to girls."

Re: Internet, meet Christopher! Hi there! I’m... | Tumblr Staff

Andy Baio — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:02:03 -0000

That's just about the most perfect hire I've ever seen at a startup. Nicely done.

Re: First Time Mac Users: You Do Not Need to Install Windows

Andy Baio — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:42:59 -0000

I just transitioned my stepdad onto a Mac, and amazingly, he has to have Windows for work. Obnoxious, proprietary medical software that only runs on Windows.

But he's a rarity, the first I've ever helped that required Windows.

Re: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

Andy Baio — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:45:33 -0000

Also, what's with the drop shadows on the flagpole and lens flares on the P block and coins?

Re: Kickstarter and the 1,000 True Fans

Andy Baio — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:33:55 -0000

This is a chart of all completed projects, so the percentage is where they ended. In other words, virtually no projects end in the 40-99% range. They either fail at 25% of their goal or less, or they succeed.

Re: Kickstarter and the 1,000 True Fans

Andy Baio — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:58:06 -0000

Note that the 94% figure isn't the overall success rate for all Kickstarter projects, which will almost certainly change once we open publicly. It's the percentage of projects that succeed after hitting the 25% fundraising mark, which likely won't change dramatically once we let virtually any project in. Even if we were hand-picking every project (which we're not), I don't think it would significantly affect the range where projects fail... Projects are either big successes or big failures -- there's no in-between, with projects dying at 50%, and I don't think that'll change. Here's why:

Projects with enough support to get to the 50% mark have enough momentum that their creators, and the fans supporting it, become highly motivated to work to reach the goal or risk losing everything. They start hustling to get to the other side. (This is also why the largest spike of dollars pledged happens in the last 10% of a project's lifetime.)

Once the dataset's larger, we should be able to calculate odds of success at any given point in a project's timeline. Should be fun.

Re: Streeter Seidell

Andy Baio — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:47:13 -0000

Looks like the opening scene from Ishtar.

Re: Zombie-free Mac Children’s Games

Andy Baio — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:59:06 -0000

Man, I wish there were more. My five-year-old son *loves* Plants vs. Zombies, and we had all the same tricky conversations. My wife wasn't happy when he started asking to eat her brains.

I'd highly recommend World of Goo, Peggle, Bookworm Adventures (when she starts learning to read), Windosill (lovely, fun for kids to explore), and Machinarium (a little dark in places). Braid is fantastic, but awfully hard.

Aside from that, I'd just keep an eye on Jay Is Games for age-appropriate Flash games and the occasional Mac download.

Re: Open Thread: What Projects Are You Backing?

Andy Baio — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:05:34 -0000

I tend to back gaming-related projects the most, including Flywrench, Kill Screen, Liferaft (canceled, sadly) and Freeq. On the arts front, I've backed a couple books (Robin Sloan and One Night Stand) and some art projects (Emoji Dick and A Dictionary Story). Amazingly, almost everything I've backed has been successful.

I'm currently backing two projects that haven't ended yet, both that will need some help to get over the line. Ryan & Trevor Oakes' fascinating concave popup cards and Chuck Lasker's Time Travel Survival Guide. Give 'em some love!

Re: The Mysterious Letters Aftermath

Andy Baio — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:41:04 -0000

Anything abnormal is potentially scary to someone. Reminds me of Paul F. Tompkins' recent criticism of Improv Anywhere, and the public art projects that freaked people out in Boston and Ohio.

Re: Kickstarter Podcast #2: Ted Rall Goes Back to Afghanistan

Andy Baio — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:35:38 -0000

It was linked in the first paragraph, but I made it more obvious and added a second link. You can visit the project here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/...

Re: Kickstarter: Crowdsourced Funding for Ideas that Matter

Andy Baio — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:50:28 -0000

I'd love to take credit, but Kickstarter was actually started by CEO Perry Chen, along with cofounders Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler. I joined the board about eight months before launch, and later came on board as CTO.

Re: The Startup Visa Bill Debate

Andy Baio — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:20:31 -0000

The Business Week URL shows what was likely the original headline: "Why the Startup Visa Is Actually A Really Bad Idea."

Re: The Startup Visa Bill Debate

Andy Baio — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:41:31 -0000

And likely the same people fighting it tooth-and-nail along the way.