Disqus - Latest Comments for waxpancake

Re: Streeter Seidell

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

Looks like the opening scene from Ishtar.

Re: Kickstarter and the 1,000 True Fans

dbarefoot — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:49:15 -0000

Thanks for the reply. I follow what you're saying. I guess my essential message was that it's early days, and that alone may be biasing the results significantly.

Re: Kickstarter and the 1,000 True Fans

waxpancake — 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: Kickstarter and the 1,000 True Fans

waxpancake — 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: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

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

jark — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:39:23 -0000

Wow! Andy, thanks for stopping by and grabbing a bowl of our special Miso Soup! Very cool to see you around our part of the internets.

I probably should have added a line or two in the write-up about software like what your Step-Dad is using. Oddly enough, my Step-Mom is in the same boat because she works for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and telecommutes to work daily. It is for this exact reason that she has yet to transition to Mac while my Dad is a huge Mac consumer.

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

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

waxpancake — 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: 5 Reasons Why URL Shorteners Are Useful

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

waxpancake — 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: 2009 — My Grand Experiment

Carlo — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:00:27 -0000

Hey, cool, thanks for the offer! I'll take you up on it, oh yes. :)

Re: 2009 — My Grand Experiment

waxpancake — 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: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

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

Also: Marble Madness speedrun.

Re: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

waxpancake — 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: Bustr: sciencevsromance: The Faces of Mechanical Turk -...

waxpancake — 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: Who’s inside that Mechanical Turk?

mathewi — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:38:44 -0000

Thanks, Andy. I thought it might have something to do with records. Great research on the Girl Talk stuff, by the way. If I had any pull at my newspaper I would hire you to just do projects like that all day long.

Re: Who’s inside that Mechanical Turk?

waxpancake — 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: Streeter Seidell

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

The full lyrics are here. Go, team Internet!

Re: Streeter Seidell

waxpancake — 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: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

waxpancake — 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

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

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

Re: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

JeffRubinJeffRubin — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:18:45 -0000

Wow, I haven't looked at EDonkey in years.

Whenever anyone asks why I have a blog, I'll point them at this at the Family Matters post. Thanks, Andy!

Re: JeffRubinJeffRubin.com

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

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