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Re:Ask HN: Share Your Pain on Wednesday July 04, 2012 @08:05PM (#4201225)
That's easy enough already if you're willing to pay for it.
Re:Hiring experiment: hiring experts in 20 minute chunks on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @07:07AM (#3975969)
Sooner or later, all freelance coder sites drift towards cloning Facebook for $250 or less.
Well, the pirates are 'disrupting' it rather effectively.

But through more official channels, there's not much which can be done until rights-holders wise up. They have been and remain the core bottleneck.

Google's failure to respect the several dozen times I've tried to turn off Instant slows me down more. It's like that Sesame Street skit where they ask for directions, but run off partway through the answer.
Re:Dating Site for Married Couples on Saturday March 10, 2012 @10:40PM (#3689469)
A big part of why I consider HN worthwhile to read and post to: we only have time to even attempt executing on so many ideas, but maybe someone else is working on it. Like a big "take an idea, leave an idea" jar.
3D printer, custom pieces with inset shapes, give containers a tab and mark the tabs with shapes as well.

Or just use a Sharpie, or tag problem colors with nail polish. Many ways to hack it.

Re:Dating Site for Married Couples on Saturday March 10, 2012 @06:03PM (#3688976)
The babysitter is the hard bit.

Since couples tend to collect a small number of sitters and stick with those - frequently friend-of-friend's older children within social groups (church, suburban neighborhood, etc.) - the most tractable approach is more likely to be a calendaring and booking system for sitters vs. a "vetted employee" paradigm.

Re:Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas on Saturday March 10, 2012 @02:25AM (#3687333)
And yet, Star Trek falls firmly into the social SF camp. The tech is incidental, left abstract or waved away with babble so that the personal interactions can proceed. Obsessing over the latest gadget incarnation wrapped in shiny branding is just the opposite, consumerism rather than tech which quietly enables.
Re:I’m an Engineer, Not a Compiler on Wednesday March 07, 2012 @02:45PM (#3676788)
You can't remember everything. The real test is how well you can function once you hit "here be dragons" - can you figure it out reasonably quickly and then be back on your way?
Re:Newspaper Ad Revenues Fall to 50-Year Low in 2011 on Monday February 27, 2012 @02:45PM (#3640335)
I know a few companies with rather successfully sell "Made in USA, from USA-sourced fibers" blankets in the $200 to $2000 range. The outlook is considerably more favorable if you go after the market segment with usefully high margins vs. raw market share (see also: Apple).
Making a business can be pretty good advertising for a consultant.
Re:The Copycats at Hacker News on Monday February 27, 2012 @02:29PM (#3640260)
It's all about the zeros.

Simple fact: there are orders of magnitude more people in the world struggling to use the most basic functions of Microsoft Word than there are people who can write Hello World. Anything which makes tasks easier for people in group A is valuable, even if it's already trivial for people in group B.