dreeves

35 ms·

301.
by dreeves 14y ago
You may remember us from such recent Hacker News hits as... (Troy McClure voice) http://weusethat.com -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4357348 http://gmailzero.com -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4107004 Portland Seed F
302.
by dreeves 14y ago
Hey lmm, can you get in touch so I can credit you with this idea in an addendum to the article?
303.
by dreeves 14y ago
You're even righter than I thought. This is definitively faster than the method in the article. And with your method there's no point in rearranging the items. You're no more likely to have to deal with a confusing small item than with the
304.
by dreeves 14y ago
Ooh, I like that! But to clarify, the method in the article is quite a bit better than you think: "On average you’ll only traverse half the bill — and that’s half in terms of dollar value, not number of items. So much less than half the ite
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by dreeves 14y ago
Quite right! But I think the cool thing from a mathematical/nerd perspective is that you can have everyone pay with that probability (splitting the bill stochastically) without figuring out what those probabilities are. Ie, without figuring
306.
by dreeves 14y ago
From the article: http://messymatters.com/expectorant/#EXP "A common complaint about stochastic schemes is that they’re “only fair if you do it repeatedly with the same group of people”. That’s true if you insist on ex post fairness. We’r
307.
by dreeves 14y ago
Yes, but you may need to enlist a third party. (Discl: my startup -- http://beeminder.com -- is such a third party!)
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by dreeves 14y ago
True. The historical reason is that it was (well still is) originally a general biased coin flipper where you could enter any expression that evaluated to a probability. Then we added syntactic sugar for the case of restaurant bill splittin
309.
by dreeves 14y ago
I think the real beauty of this method is that you don't have to figure out what everyone ordered (only a few people usually).
310.
by dreeves 14y ago
Such a debbie downer! Note that in this system one person does pay. Just that you play a little gambling game to determine who it is. Do you think credit card roulette is bad manners? This is basically a fairer version of that.
311.
by dreeves 14y ago
Ha! Touche! Yes, this has never actually saved time. Well, among me and Bethany Soule (coauthor of the Android app described in the article) and Sharad Goel (co-blogger at Messy Matters) I think it's now routine enough that it saves time. B
312.
by dreeves 14y ago
Excerpt that describes the actual mechanism: Start with any item on the bill. The person who ordered that item pays the bill with probability equal to the cost of that item divided by the subtotal. Flip the appropriately biased coin; if tha
313.
Karma: a physical wifi hotspot device (like mifi) that encourages sharing(thenextweb.com)
1 points by dreeves 14y ago|0 comments
314.
by dreeves 14y ago
It's not like that baby, we swear it! No, you're right, it sucks that Google oauth just has an email scope without anything more fine-grained, like just seeing message counts.
315.
by dreeves 14y ago
Ah, not a typo but I can see how that's confusing for people who mark things read vs unread instead of archiving vs leaving in the inbox. GmailZero only works for people who (try to) diligently archive messages. It doesn't count Unread mess
316.
by dreeves 14y ago
I agree that http://followup.cc is better than Boomerang. Though I like my home brewed Google Apps Script solution best of all, based on http://lifehacker.com/5825634/how-to-add-a-snooze-button-to-... By using integers as labels I can s
317.
by dreeves 14y ago
I think GmailZero is perfect for your workflow. You can set your goal as inbox 10 instead of inbox 0. I could also see an argument for inbox 25 or whatever fits on one screen. Or maybe inbox 7 as the number of things you can hold in short-t
318.
by dreeves 14y ago
I was all excited to see this response from someone who totally gets where we're coming from. Then I noticed that my cofounder/spouse wrote it. :) But, yes, here's more on that out of sight out of mind problem: http://messymatters.com/emai
319.
by dreeves 14y ago
Alas, I don't think so. It also doesn't really work if you let your number of Unread messages grow without bound, since it's only looking at how many messages you've read but left sitting in your inbox. I personally don't like the priority
320.
by dreeves 14y ago
You can do that! Choose a "Set a Limit" goal... Here's me beeminding my time on Hacker News: http://beeminder.com/d/hn
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by dreeves 14y ago
The first time, your graph ("yellow brick road") just freezes. You then have to pledge $5 if you want to unfreeze and try it again. If you derail from the yellow brick road again then the $5 is automatically charged. Gory details at http:/
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The Gmail Zero project: commitment device for Inbox Zero(beeminder.com)
35 points by dreeves 14y ago|40 comments
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by dreeves 14y ago
Another article about this from GeekWire: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/meet-9-startups-graduating-toda... @dy: wow, thanks so much for the kind words!
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by dreeves 14y ago
The dream is aliiive! Wait, maybe this is the antithesis of the "dream of the 90s" [in case anyone hasn't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVmq9dq6Nsg ]. But yes, the Portland tech scene is amazing!
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Portland Seed Fund graduates new class of 9 startups(sfgate.com)
40 points by dreeves 14y ago|6 comments
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by dreeves 14y ago
I wouldn't call Seinfeld himself an argument against the Seinfeld hack (aka "don't break the chain"). I think things worked out quite well for him! But I agree that the Seinfeld hack's greatest strength is also its fatal flaw: Once you do b
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by dreeves 14y ago
Ha, totally. Or peer reviewing. I guess the lesson is that deadlines without real penalties are meaningless.
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by dreeves 14y ago
Abstract (I hate "tl;dr"): By using a graduated late penalty function with second-granularity, you achieve several desiderata: (1) Ensure submission within a week of a nominal deadline. (2) Be perfectly even-handed without being draconian.
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How to Set Deadlines for Your Students(messymatters.com)
22 points by dreeves 14y ago|6 comments
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by dreeves 15y ago
Well, it's like having an abstract of a paper. Which is a good point -- ideally the authors themselves would provide the summary. Still, you certainly need summaries! I'd say the only time summaries could be a bad thing is for fiction, wher

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