Paul Buchheit › Comments

I'm really loving this, it's so much more natural and intuitive than using a keyboard and mouse. - Tom Stocky from Bookmarklet

Somebody did this with Kinect: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovat... - Jemm

"It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water — with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals — steel, copper, aluminium, etc. — because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes." - Gabe from Bookmarklet

Alien Blood! "The ability to surpass the oxidizing ability of oxygen leads to corrosivity against oxide-containing materials often thought as incombustible. In an industrial accident, a spill of 900 kg of chlorine trifluoride burned itself through 30 cm of concrete and 90 cm of gravel beneath." - Private Sanjeev

"Part of knowing a tool is knowing when it's inappropriate. A rewrite in ANY language to "fix" a problem that you don't understand is generally a mistake. Doing things the needlessly complex way doesn't make you a better or manlier programmer. By the way, a lot of these perl and python scripts spend most of their time calling into C libraries anyway, so the performance difference is often negligible." - Paul Buchheit

Cristo, yes that would be optimal. - Jimminy IS Everybody

http://www.salmon-protocol.org/ attempts to provide this, though it suffers the same issues in reaching critical mass as any such effort. - DGentry

Hyper local... like... 5 feet either side of me? - Johnny

Also, it's somehow related to GroupOn. - Paul Buchheit

That's all about the idea. What does the application tell you about the team? - Bruce Lewis

Hi Paul. I'm sorry to bother you but i have serious issue related with friendfeed. Someone is impersonating me at this profile; http://friendfeed.com/alikeri... and he/she is using my real life information, phone number and my own pictures to insult me. Unfortunately, this fake profile already listed in Google search under my name and i'm having a hard time in these days. I already reported this issue with using ff contact form but it's not resolved. Could you help me? - Monad Teodise

'Average' has tighter bounds than 'normal' in common usage. Everyone who is 'average looking' is 'normal looking' but not everyone who looks normal is average. You can be a normal person without being an average person. Being above or below average doesn't make you abnormal. You'd have to be further along the curve than that. - Kevin Fox

"Plastic takes thousands of years to decompose — but 16-year-old science fair contestant Daniel Burd made it happen in just three months. The Waterloo, Ontario high school junior figured that something must make plastic degrade, even if it does take millennia, and that something was probably bacteria. The Record reports that Burd mixed landfill dirt with yeast and tap water, then added ground plastic and let it stew. The plastic indeed decomposed more quickly than it would in nature; after experimenting with different temperatures and configurations, Burd isolated the microbial munchers. One came from the bacterial genus Pseudomonas, and the other from the genus Sphingomonas. Burd says this should be easy on an industrial scale: all that’s needed is a fermenter, a growth medium and plastic, and the bacteria themselves provide most of the energy by producing heat as they eat. The only waste is water and a bit of carbon dioxide." - April Buchheit from Bookmarklet

Pseudomonas is living even on tubes used in surgery. It is a major problem. It simply eats the plastic in a wet environment. - Balint

I didn't realize autism had an auto-immune component. - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

I think this was on Futurama. - Schlacht der Strohpuppen

"Connecticut State Sen. Martin Looney (D-New Haven) has introduced a short bill (PDF) that not only acknowledges the right of citizens to record on-duty police officers, it also provides for a civil action against police officers who violate that right. That second part is important. A right doesn’t mean much if there are no consequences for government officials who ignore it. Witness this case in Florida, where an officer erroneously tries to say federal law prohibits citizen recordings of cops. Even in states where courts have thrown out criminal charges, a cop who doesn’t want to be recorded can still harass, threaten, and even arrest you. You may not be charged. But he won’t be punished, either. This is the first proposed state law I’ve seen on this issue that includes an appropriate enforcement mechanism. It would be great to see Congress take up a similar bill, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

Joe: Your ignorance truly shines through ... recording cops in public can land you hard prison time in Illinois, an overwhelmingly traditional Dem state. - LANjackal

"Khosla Ventures likes social advertising startup MyLikes. The VC firm is leading the startup’s $5.6 million Series A financing. Lightspeed Partners also invested and Metamorphic Ventures, which participated in the all-Googler $600,000 seed round, ponied up again. Additionally, seed investor Paul Buchheit is joining MyLike’s board of directors. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail and founder of FriendFeed, recently left Facebook to become a partner at Y Combinator (although MyLikes is one of his private investments). Alex Kinnier, a partner at Khosla Ventres and formerly a Google advertising product executive, is also taking a board seat." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

This is made doubley rad by you holding a shot gun in your avatar, sir :) - Johnny

Wow. Congrats you two - Deepak Singh from iPhone

"A photo of Rep. David Wu wearing a tiger costume and other unusual revelations about his mental health are increasing pressure on the seven-term Oregon Democrat to step down." - Clare Dibble from Bookmarklet

Mr. Woods approves. - Alex Kapranoff

Best ever. I wonder what this is based on? - Paul Buchheit

"The new health care reform legislation is not perfect. Nothing that complex could be. But I have no doubt that the system is broken and reform is absolutely essential. If we are not going to have universal coverage but are going to rely on employer plans, then we must offer individuals, self-employed people and small businesses a place to purchase insurance at a reasonable price. If members of Congress feel so strongly about undoing this important legislation, perhaps we should stop providing them with health insurance. Let’s credit their pay for the amount that has been paid by the taxpayers, and let them try to buy health insurance in the individual market. My bet is that they all would be denied. Health insurance reform might suddenly not seem to them like such a bad idea." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

Everyone in my family who's self-employed (including myself, my dad, and my mom, among others) has been denied, multiple times, for individual health insurance. We all want and can afford good health insurance, but we've had to rely on government-mandated high-risk pools to get coverage. I'd love to see congressmen to have to go through the same annoying process. - Mark Trapp

Re: "uninsured patients are billed more than the rates that insurers negotiate with doctors and hospitals, and we wanted to pay those lower rates" -- the real data, as it pertained to Violet's birth, is quite stunning. http://friendfeed.com/tudor... - Tudor Bosman

80s daters gonna date! - Kevin Fox

I WANT it all - CarlC, spelling expert

"Greplin, the service that indexes and lets you search all of your online social stuff (Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), has just opened its doors to everyone. Earlier this week we reported on their new financing round from Sequoia Capital, and over the last couple of days they’ve let in everyone on the waitlist. And as of right now, you can use Greplin, too. Why would you want to use Greplin? Because it lets you search across all of your emails, Facebook data and Twitter stuff with one query. And they haven’t stopped there. You can also authorize Google Apps, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Evernote, Yammer, Salesforce, Box.net, Basecamp, Google Voice, Google Reader, Google Contacts and more. And then find stuff in those apps with a single query." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

Any idea when Friendfeed will show up as a Greplin source? Have badly needed that three times in the last month. Kudos! - Christopher Galtenberg

Sorta like friendfeed minus the conversation. I hope they would add friendfeed.com as one of the services that it indexes - Shakeel Mahate

"Y Combinator alum Crocodoc is launching an HTML5-based version of its online document viewing service today. The software reads in any kind of document and renders it in HTML5 in real time on web sites. Web developers just have to drop an HTML tag for each document uploaded to Crocodoc’s servers into their site’s code to add Crocodoc’s widget to their site. Users can then scroll through the documents as soon as they are rendered. A lot of other companies have tried to kill off the practice of sending around attached documents. It can be a pretty big hassle and everyone has to have the same software to access the document — like Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word. So there’s something to be said about not having to install that expensive software on a lot of devices if users just use it to read documents. The quality is pretty good — it’s hard to tell much of a difference between the original document and a reconstructed version on the site. Crocodoc’s HTML5-based version of one document... more... - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

Wondering how is it different from their earlier venture, WebNotes? - Shakeel Mahate

"1000Memories, a web service that helps digitally honor the memory of a loved one, has announced that it has closed a $2.5 million series A round of funding from Greylock Partners. 1000Memories gives friends and family an online destination to memorialize the recently departed. Its founders started the company after experiencing the impact of a death on Facebook and realizing that it wasn’t a sufficient or effective way to remember loved ones. The company, originally funded by Y Combinator, has attracted a great deal of attention since its graduation from the startup accelerator’s program. Not long after its debut in August 2010, the company raised a $500k angel round from an all-star list of investors including Caterina Fake (Flickr), Paul Buchheit (Gmail, FriendFeed), Ben Ling (Google), Keith Rabois (Square, Slide), Ron Conway, Mike Maples, Chris Sacca and others. Its $2.5 million series A was not long after, a deal that closed in late 2010." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

Will be great for genealogical work. - Josh Haley

I built something similar at Caring.com. Based on my experiences, I can see a clear pathway to success for 1000Memories. - AJ Kohn

That why I'm always careful to include at least one bug. - Paul Buchheit

That's why I don't write code at all. I just tell somebody else what to type in. - Gabe

Anyone here a Bill O'Reilly fan? - Paul Buchheit

I haven't seen much of O'Reilly. I used to see a lot of Colbert; looks like he's still really good. - Bruce Lewis

"If something is immune to the laws of supply and demand, it's usually because someone deliberately set it up to circumvent those rules. Supply and demand should have caused these lower tier schools to lower their costs to entice students away from the better but more expensive schools. But they don't need to, because all law schools are free. Read it again. All law schools are free. Not after you graduate, of course, but right now. Law schools can charge anything they want because everyone has enough money to pay for it- today. As long as there are guaranteed government loans available for this, there is no economic incentive to lower the costs. And as long as the price is zero, demand will always be infinity. If it was true supply and demand, #1 ranked Harvard and #100 ranked Hofstra wouldn't have the same tuition. But they do, the same as stupid Washington University, which is so stupid it's in Missouri. "It's underrated." Bite me. Are we saying that Hofstra's worth the same money... more... - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

Maybe not as many as there used to be? All I know is what my sister tells me. - Victor Ganata from iPhone

Where are the walls? Where will the firewood hang the plasma TV? How are they going to entertain themselves? - April Buchheit

Finally! A Bay Area house I can afford! - Spidra Webster

"It’s the most entrepreneur friendly investment that I can think of, short of just handing people money as a gift. Each startup can choose to take the investment or not. If all 40 of the startups accept the loan then a total of $6 million will have been invested. And Milner/SV Angel say they intend to offer this for each Y Combinator startup in the future, too. That means Y Combinator entrepreneurs will not only get the $15k – $20k from Y Combinator during the first few months of their project, but they can look forward to another $150,000 a few months later. That’s usually enough to complete development and launch a product." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

This looks like a very sane investment strategy, having pg and paul vet seed-stage startups. I wonder if paul's recent blog post detailing his investment track record was part of the decision-making process. - Bruce Lewis

It's been a long time. I got this running in DOSbox and was reminded of all the detail I put into this game. - Amit Patel

Woah, I didn't realize you wrote this game! I played so much BRE and SRE back in the day. - Benjamin Lee

But which ranks higher for [fish]? - Paul Buchheit

I don't understand how people can be both fat and hungry. - Gabe

I eat more when I'm hungry. - Paul Buchheit

Wow. Just, wow. This kind of thing should be required reading for any peer reviewer. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's dumb. Study it until you understand it, so you can make an educated judgement. - Kevin Fox

Awesome. - Paul Buchheit

In case it wasn't clear, these are all fictional rejection letters. - Simon

"One of the most respected, senior and widely published professors of psychology, Daryl Bem of Cornell, has just published an article that suggests that people — ordinary people — can be altered by experiences they haven't had yet. Time, he suggests, is leaking. The Future has slipped, unannounced, into the Present. And he thinks he can prove it." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

I liked this before this was shared. - Jemm

Hugh is no where near as consistently good as Scott Adams, but sometimes his take on stuff seems spot on. Like "not everybody’s cut out for 'normal'." - Clare Dibble from Bookmarklet

What Jennifer said: phrases like, "Let's have a _conversation_ around that." usually means something bad is coming. - Clare Dibble

"David Silverman, president of the American Atheist Group, went on Tuesday's "O'Reilly Factor" to defend the billboard ads his group has put up around the country calling religion a scam." "O'REILLY: I'll tell you why [religion's] not a scam, in my opinion: tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that. / SILVERMAN: Tide goes in, tide goes out? / O'REILLY: See, the water, the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman. It always comes in, and always goes out. You can't explain that." - Tudor Bosman from Bookmarklet

Could he be anymore condescending? I actually thought he was doing a good job of attacking the guy until the tide thing. Then he just showed that he is, in fact , stupid. - Kenton

"Bill Zeller was a talented programmer whose work we've featured on Lifehacker. He took his own life on Sunday and left an explanation that I think it's important you read. Zeller was a victim of sexual and psychological abuse. It's clear from his writing that the abuse left him unable to interface with the world in any way that didn't leave him feeling he was too sullied to have the same experiences that he thought others had. He had a self-described "darkness", which despite his prostration it's clear he handled more ably than perhaps he ever realized. Programming was a solace, but only temporarily. Zeller never felt he could escape the things that had happened to him because he carried his torment with him everywhere." - Tudor Bosman from Bookmarklet

Oh my god. - Paul Buchheit

"The 52-year-old longtime diabetic's blood sugar levels had dipped to a dangerously low level causing him to weave into another lane. A Hamilton County sheriff's deputy spotted him on Clough Pike and suspected drunken driving. Deputies broke the window of Harmon's SUV, shocked him seven times with a Taser, cut him out of his seatbelt and wrestled him to the ground, severely dislocating his elbow, and causing trauma to his shoulder and thumb. Even after learning the incident was a medical emergency, deputies charged Harmon with resisting arrest and failing to comply with a police officer's order." - Simon from Bookmarklet

On the other hand, maybe he'll get rich from suing the sheriff's office. - Gabe