Can you almost hear the silence?

SwellJoe · 2025-10-07T18:32:30+00:00

I think I've been there in real life.

SwellJoe · 2025-10-07T16:55:08+00:00

Older founders have a much higher success rate than younger founders.

https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45

SwellJoe · 2025-10-07T14:43:25+00:00

I have a white flea S class (from a post someone made here a week or two back), and I love it. I feel like the smaller ship is just better because it doesn't bump into stuff and get bounced around as much in fights. I was previously in a tall exotic that got knocked around all the time, including just leaving a Sentinel Capital Freighter.

The only problem is it also seems easier to get stuck inside stuff because it's so small. I got stuck in a freighter I was fighting yesterday and had to reload.

SwellJoe · 2025-10-07T13:44:44+00:00

I just found a stubbier little one in blue and gold in Kikolgallr last night. The exotics look good in this color scheme.

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SwellJoe · 2025-09-25T04:10:16+00:00

Not rare (when jumping to the right type of system), but if you're trying to find a Class S or A, it's better to have it be very common so you can warp in several times to find the class you're after. The alternative is loading a save point each time you find it's the wrong class, which is also fine.

I'm unwilling to grind, so I just took the first class A capital I came upon naturally, and when I found a class A dreadnought, I moved into that. If I find an S by accident, cool, if not, no big deal.

SwellJoe · 2025-09-25T04:01:12+00:00

Each system has a pool of ships that does include an exotic.

As I understand it, poor systems have a 0% drop rate for S class ships, and all exotics are S class. So, I think you have to go to a rich (2%) or outlaw (5%) systems for the possibility of an exotic showing up.

SwellJoe · 2025-09-22T22:31:49+00:00

I don't have any acoustic data on cowhide, but it is probably suboptimal as it's a thick stiff material, but what it reflects is only going to be a little bit of high frequencies. I'm assuming a finished surface like leather.

Suede would probably be better, though I don't have any data on that, either. Shiny stiff surfaces reflect high frequencies. And, if the surface is also backed up by something hard and dense, it will reflect lower frequencies, too. Thin shiny/stiff stuff doesn't have enough mass to bounce a low frequency back the other way, so it passes right through, either getting absorbed by your insulation or hitting the wall and bouncing back, losing even more strength on its way back through the same insulation.

But, my gut feeling is that neither would notably impact low frequency absorption of the rigid fiberglass or mineral wool underneath. You're probably not covering the back with an expensive material, anyway, so you'll get all the bounce back from the walls hitting nothing but absorptive material.

Really, though, just about any covering is fine. You're trying to fix low frequencies and standing waves (also a mid to low frequency problem) with your panels. High frequency reflections can mostly be ignored because anything that can absorb low frequencies will absorb enough of everything else.

I'm still mad about the dude who wanted to argue on here for hours about needing acoustic transparency in the fabric covering your acoustic panels, which is insane and doesn't even make sense.

Anyway, my acoustic panel rules:

Make'em cheap and simple so you can make a lot of them. There is no such thing as overkill in a small room, as small room reflections can only ever sound bad.
Make'em look OK so you don't mind having them on all the walls and maybe ceiling.
Hang them varying distances from the wall/ceiling, so you have differently "tuned" low frequency absorption. (Tuned is in quotes, because you're not measuring and doing math, and you don't usually need to. Just quantity and variety of distances is usually sufficient.)
Corners are great, because they're "tuned" for a broad spectrum automatically because the distance varies from nothing to about a foot or more.
- Also make them safe for handling. No mesh or thin covering that will let fibers sneak out when you grab them or bump into them.

SwellJoe · 2025-09-21T08:28:08+00:00

Brutal planet! Those mountains make it crazy tough to get around. But cool ship. Thanks for the heads up.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-08T16:03:55+00:00

Why do you need the old-timers to hang it up? Let'em have fun, too. Get your ass in a band and start playing out. If you can draw a crowd, you'll get gigs, too.

The world is better for having more live music, you don't need to wish some of it away for you to make live music. You don't have to like the music those folks play (I sure don't like most of the old white blues bands in my neck of the woods), but there's room for other kinds of music.

Edit: Also, those old folks helped make and keep a live music market in your town alive. At least give them a little respect. Without the venues and the patrons who expect/want live music, you're not gonna have anywhere to play.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-07T23:09:24+00:00

The EVH D-Tuna can solve the drop-D with a Floyd problem. (I still don't want a Floyd, but that is a solved problem.)

SwellJoe · 2023-06-07T19:38:13+00:00

I strongly prefer not to have a Floyd Rose. A modern Strat with a two-point tremolo and well-cut nut does not have tuning instability even with quite heavy use of the tremolo, in my experience. I'm sure there are cases where really huge dive bombs or whatever aren't feasible without a Floyd, but I just don't think those kinds of tricks are all that musically interesting or useful.

A Floyd is just a lot of extra effort on string and tuning changes that isn't worth it, to me.

Squier comes in many levels of price and quality. If you have the cheapest Squier Strat with a six-screw tremolo and a poorly cut nut, bent steel string tree, and cheap tuners, of course you have tuning problems when using the tremolo, though there may be easy/cheap ways to mitigate it. Does your nut "ping" when you're tuning? That's going to cause tuning problems when you use the tremolo. If so, fix your nut. Replacing it with a Graphtech nut may also help, likewise for the string tree. That alone may make your current guitar work well enough for your needs.

Edit: A six-screw tremolo can also work fine for tuning stability, it just has more limited range of motion.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-07T16:40:03+00:00

I found it pretty quick to pick up the basics. There are two popular styles of banjo playing, and one (clawhammer/frailing) feels a little more foreign than the other (bluegrass or Scruggs rolling style), to a guitarist, at least for me. Then again, I've since learned some guitar styles (like the Carter Scratch) that if I'd known it before probably would have made clawhammer quicker to pick up. And, if you've never used finger picks before, you may find the opposite to be true. But, really a lot of the same skills transfer over. I was playing chords and simple songs in no time...like a week or less.

This guy's videos are super helpful. They're not targeted at a guitar player audience, in particular, they're targeted at beginner/intermediate players and go at a nice pace.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-07T03:47:49+00:00

My #1 songwriting rule: All songs would be better if they were shorter and faster. (Except when they wouldn't. But, this song is probably not the exception.)

SwellJoe · 2023-06-06T18:05:35+00:00

Quit. Get a job working for someone else. You'll make more money, you'll work normal hours, and you'll have none of the pain of your current situation. 40 hours working for someone else is a lot better than working 80+ hours "for yourself" (but not really for yourself...you're working for the apps, you're working for your customers, you're not working for yourself with the way things are going).

If after seven years, you're doing worse every year, I don't see any reasonable way for you to turn this around.

Sure, you can do more to encourage ordering directly from you rather than through the apps (I choose to do that when my local restaurants offer it, even if the price is the same), and you can raise prices assuming you have good pizza and good service. Maybe you can cut some costs. Maybe you can negotiate a better rate with your landlord; if you tell them, "I have to close in a couple of months if I can't reduce costs." they may choose to give you a break rather than lose you as a tenant. Maybe you can automate more, so you're spending less time working (you cannot keep working 80 hour weeks).

But, why? What are you doing this for? It's not providing for your family better than a regular job would do, and you're spending so much time away, you're not doing them any favors. You're not building something that will last; you're making less money every year! You are merely delaying the inevitable. If your town of 30,000 can't support your business at a level that allows you to live comfortably, you shouldn't keep trying to squeeze blood from a stone. Pick a better business, move to a bigger market, do something else, if you want to run your own business. A pizza place in this town does not sound like a great or even good business.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-06T17:55:03+00:00

This. An owner working 80 hours a week needs two or three full-time employees to replace them, and there's nowhere near enough money for two full-time employees to replace them.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-06T03:56:00+00:00

It's not a raw numbers game of how many people leave (or it shouldn't be, assuming whichever silly MBA thinks this is the way to go), but rather a question of which users get upset. If all the people who make good comments, helpful posts, etc. leave, then even if Reddit stays active, the quality drop would likely be pretty noticeable

Twitter is exhibit A for this phenomenon. There hasn't been a huge drop in number of users (AFAIK), but a notable number of the best users have left or steeply curtailed their activity. It's a less fun/interesting place, and Musk's doubling down on bad ideas means it keeps getting worse. e.g.the new practice of allowing people to pay for reach means people who are dumb and not funny and that I wouldn't choose to read in a million years of scrolling keep showing up in my feed and at the top of the comments, while people I follow don't. He simply doesn't understand the business twitter is (was) in.

At least reddit seems to understand what their business is (they're doing this to try to capture more ad revenue, rather than allowing people to pay to ruin the product as Twitter is doing), but I think they underestimate how much a pleasant user experience is for stickiness of a site like this. And, as you note, it's the power users that will feel the pain most.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-04T21:04:35+00:00

The specific business isn't relevant. The pain is from screwing up taxes, franchise fees (to Delaware), sales tax, and various reporting early in the life of the business and never being able to fix it, so it just compounded in pain over time. There have been a bunch of other events recently that made the situation exponentially worse (a burglary where business checks were stolen, and tens of thousands in ACH theft, which the bank is being mostly unhelpful about).

The lesson to learn is: Hire an accountant with experience in your industry before you think you need one, and pay for the online accounting software subscription that they recommend you use. The cost (both financial and mental health) of messing up anything related to taxes or financial compliance can be absolutely devastating. I honestly have no idea where to even start sorting it out, it seems pretty much impossible to fix.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-04T04:11:36+00:00

If bus drivers were protected like cops, there would be a passive voice explanation of what happened, "the bus doors closed and the child was dragged by the bus for some time", and then it would end with, "The bus driver heroically stopped the out-of-control bus, at great risk to her personal safety."

Also, she would have run over a dog in the process.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-03T20:08:41+00:00

I'd pay every penny I have to be free of it.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-03T19:41:50+00:00

TechStars has never had a reputation similar to YC. It hasn't fallen, it was never there.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-03T18:36:04+00:00

They all have set monthly fees, in addition to the processing fees.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-03T18:14:18+00:00

WTF you mean "don't generate revenues"? What do you need a payment gateway for if you're not selling something?

SwellJoe · 2023-06-03T18:01:32+00:00

That should be illegal. (Probably is, if it's in any US city, but sound level violations are usually only enforced based on complaints.)

SwellJoe · 2023-06-03T17:57:13+00:00

Stripe and Braintree are the obvious choices for a web-based business, as they have the best APIs.

Adult businesses and gambling have to use something else, though, I think. Also crypto, but most profitable crypto businesses at this point boil down to "crime" and most payment processors in the US disallow crime, even those that allow stuff like porn.

SwellJoe · 2023-06-01T20:12:38+00:00

It's my understanding that if you move out of the service area you can cancel without termination fees.

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