

Congratulations, Paul & Jessica; Welcome to the world, George - brlewis
http://friendfeed.com/e/903ca674-71cf-4bfa-1858-0612a0d5364d/Congratulations-Paul-Jessica-Welcome-to-the-world/

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tom
Three tips from a young dad: 1\. Take photos and videos - lots. watch your
white balance ... Seeing how much our boy has changed in his 8 months is
amazing. 2\. Work less. This is a hard one, but working a 4 day work week (or
6 ...) and devoting an entire day to just George time is the incredible. My
Fridays with my boy are worth more than money / success / code. 3\. Help out
with those late night feedings - diaper, rocking, etc. It's amazing how good
you'll get at changing diapers when totally asleep - oh, and um, yeah, make
sure he's aiming down when you diaper him. Trust me on that one.

~~~
danmatern
James Penrice "A New Dad's Guide to Playing God".

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fauigerzigerk
World to George:
System.out.println(GreetingsFactory.newInstance().createGreeting("Hello,
George!"));

George to World: (prn "Hello, World!")

~~~
andrewljohnson
Java :(

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Eliezer
Well, it's too late now, but if there are any other parents out there, for
God's sake give your kid a globally unique name. It's all one big namespace
now. There are other Eliezer Yudkowskys out there, the poor bastards, and
they'll spend the rest of their lives under my ugly Google shadow.

~~~
glymor
That's very funny but as someone with an unusual name it's less funny.

More seriously your should use a middle name to provide uniqueness. People are
basically unable to recognise words they haven't heard before. Complexity in
the part of the name used normally is a hassle.

~~~
Eliezer
I could wish my name was easier to pronounce, but I would still want
first+last to be unique. The thought of people meeting me, typing my name into
Google, and getting back a soccer player, frankly does not fill me with joy.
Middle name isn't good enough, most people won't type that.

Oh, well. I'm sure George Graham will want to change his name anyway at age 21
in order to outrun all the hideously embarrassing Internet posts he made at
age 12, should the present world last so long.

Maybe you want to give your kid a highly anonymous first+last name, and a
unique second+last name, so they can switch to using second+last once they
grow up.

PS: I know a poor guy who happens to be named David Duke. (I suggested he go
by Dave Duke.)

~~~
glymor
He's badly off for more than that reason:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke>

~~~
Eliezer
Well, yes, that's the point.

Again, think of it as a single global namespace. When this particular fellow
was named, the _other_ David Duke hadn't hit the news yet - but when the name
"David Duke" did become famous and recognizable, there was a namespace
collision. That can happen to anyone, especially if your last name is common.

Google makes names easier to "recognize", and the Internet's vastness
increases the total amount of "fame". So in the age of the Internet, you want
to pick a name for your child that is likely to be and _stay_ unique.

If you have a common last name, a first name that is very rare but not unique,
doesn't look strange, and is easy to spell and pronounce, would be ideal.

~~~
glymor
Sorry that's obvious in retrospect.

My problem with your argument is that words are "easy to spell and pronounce"
because they are common and people have experienced them before.

When I said people are unable to recognise names they haven't heard before I
mean that literally. They try to coerce it into one they've heard before and
either succeed and call you something random or require you to repeat it 3
times before they are convinced they're not just miss-hearing it.

The only way to get something easy to spell and pronounce that is rare would
be to compound common forms. Frankly this is exactly what the middle name
does.

That said JoHadRon is globally unique (at least according to google) and has
useful short forms. I may change my name.

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brlewis
Born at 04:44 on Saturday, 1/24. 8lbs. 10oz, according to April.

~~~
JMiao
i was 8lbs 10 oz.

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tdavis
Is it George Graham (GG==Good Game) or George Livingston (GL==Good Luck)? I
hope he enjoys our gift... take pictures! ;)

~~~
pg
GG. I never thought what his initials would be, but those seem good ones.

~~~
ivankirigin
We definitely thought of it for Luka Damian Kirigin. LDK sounds like an
electro krew or a fancy airport.

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andreyf
Congrats!

I'm also a new father - PG (and everyone else) could you share any general
parenting advice, or give pointers to sources from which you seek advice on
parenting?

One I've found invaluable is Alfie Kohn - his ideas gave me insight into
general psychology as well as child raising that I'd feel completely lost
without.

~~~
Alex3917
Read both of these, and soon, since they describe things which become fixed
after age three or so:

Meaningful Differences In The Everyday Experiences Of Young American Children

Emotional Intelligence

There are other books you can read once the kid gets to school age, but I
think these two are the most important for the cognitive and emotional
development of the infant.

edit: Kohn is also one of my all time favorite authors.

~~~
andreyf
Slightly related startup idea - if it were easier for you to embed Amazon
affiliate links, you would have gotten ~$10 commission for that
recommendation. If YC got a cut of $5, that would add up... The way things
work now Google got it (because I copy-pasted your recommendations into my
search box).

In general, how easy could one make it for people to recommend products to
each other, and split the commission between publisher, recommender, and
facilitator?

~~~
Alex3917
"In general, how easy could one make it for people to recommend products to
each other, and split the commission between publisher, recommender, and
facilitator?"

That's exactly what Squidoo is designed for. It's especially designed for
short pages that combine advice and information with product recommendations.

~~~
andreyf
_short pages [...] with product recommendations_

Not a separate page, but right here, in news.YC, on reddit, on twitter, on
mailing threads, wherever.

~~~
Alex3917
If the recommender already has the ability to earn affiliate money without the
platform taking a cut, why would the recommender want to give the platform a
cut? With Squidoo it makes sense because they get more traffic than they would
otherwise, but if I could just set up an Amazon affiliate account and use that
to post a link onto news.yc, what do I stand to gain by giving YC a cut?

~~~
andreyf
_why would the recommender want to give the platform a cut?_

Because setting up affiliate accounts and links is a pain in the ass. You gave
Google a cut by not making it a direct link - a 100% cut... if there were an
easy way of inserting a link straight to Amazon, you probably would have done
it.

Also, platforms would be interested in providing more prominent placement for
recommendations than they would other content. In other words, ads
configurable by the website's users. Kind of like what Adpinion is doing, but
instead of just voting on ads, you actually recommend relevant ads for the
content.

I'm usually really cynical about my own ideas, but this one seems pretty
solid... am I missing something?

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staunch
Congratulations. Time to reset 'gg' and set the account aside:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gg>

~~~
ggruschow
He should use a different name until he's old enough to understand what
posting on the net means. Besides, gg is taken quickly on practically every
site that it's allowed on. It's been that way since around 2000. The most
annoying part is they're not all me anymore.

The good news is that he has a whole TLD that's still pretty open
<http://nic.gg>

The bad news is there's a generation of people that often think of G.G. Allin
when they hear "GG".

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dhouston
congrats pg and jessica! start teaching him python :)

~~~
vaksel
how about starting with English?

~~~
jey
They should teach him Lojban first!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis>

~~~
eyudkowsky
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis not taken all that seriously any more

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robg
Any chance we can ooh and aah at a pic of the new family?

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DocSavage
Congratulations on bringing into the world yet another of your collective
creations :)

This calls for Dancing Baby: <http://dancing-baby.net/Baby/BabyMus1.htm>
(Since when did he get sunglasses?)

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JabavuAdams
Isn't it a bit gauche to post this kind of personal info to a news aggregator?
I mean, I guess there's a YC community, but this site extends far beyond that.

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hs
i, for one, welcome our new li^H^H arc overlord

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xenophanes
Parenting advice:

<http://curi.us/archives/list_category/61>

<http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/>

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speek
That's really exciting!

Congratulations Paul and Jessica.

Take some time off :-D

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amix
Congratulations! I hope he grows up and becomes a great hacker (like his dad
;-)).

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fizx
Off topic, but every time I see an ampersand and a semi-colon on the same
line, I think mis-escaped HTML entity. Jessica?!?! That's not even close to an
entity! Oh.... I see. Anyhow, congrats!

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grosales
All the best to you Paul, your wife, and your beautiful new baby!

show "Congratulations!"

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sgrove
For what it's worth, congratulations to the new parents. A joyous, if somewhat
scary step.

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sachin
congrats pg and x! So exciting :)

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alexS
i'm really happy for you guys, this is great news!

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ivankirigin
Yay!

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lst
Is it really _that_ natural to receive congrats from 99% of really unknown
people?

[Internets, where are you taking us to? (And do we really want this?)]

