I felt like we needed a bootstrapped watercooler. So, I took it upon myself to create this one. It’s probably the one thing I miss from an actual workplace.
Used to refer to the type of informal conversation or socializing among office workers that takes place in the communal area where a water dispenser is located.
What happens at the watercooler, stays at the watercooler!
Lots of construction going on next door. It’s causing my two pups to vocalize their concerns quite often.
Perhaps we should create an off topic category?
100% certainty it will go political and within a month they’ll be more threads about how awesome the Constitution is than how to market your product.
I’m not sure it warrants its own category. This way it is kept to a single thread and doesn’t distract from the meat of the forum. It also feels more temporary this way, which is what interaction at a watercooler is really about.
Perhaps another good reason to keep it contained in a single thread. It’s kind of like a social experiment at this point.
True. Experiment away then 
Some of us from HN and other places hang out on #startups, on Freenode. I’m davidw there. It’s fairly informal, at times rude, but mostly ok, although there’s not a lot of awesome, brilliant insights or anything. It’s a bit like a watercooler, I guess…
Good to know. Thanks David.
Hitler. Here, it is complete now.
Amazing! My comment was going to be “Hitler gets a mention in 3… 2… 1…” but already I’m too late.
I wonder if Hitler has actually come up at a real watercooler…
The easiest way to know that answer is to go to a watercooler and bring him up. That way you know the answer is yes.
No one else visit my watercooler in the house so I just call it a water bubbler.
I had lunch today with a friend who sold his SaaS company, and he let me drive his Tesla. I’m feeling pretty motivated.
I can’t drive around much these days without seeing a Tesla or two. Makes me want to go home and get to work every time. That’s awesome that you have such successful friends to meet up with!
I’m no high roller – he’s the only one I know well, and he was an early customer of my web development firm (early 2007) so I’ve gotten to watch his app’s entire lifecycle. The other nice motivator today was remembering that it really does take a LONG time to get traction. He did a lot of things right in a market that was primed for his product, and his first 18 months were still very, painfully, slow.
I haven’t seen a Tesla in the Uk yet.
The only Tesla dealership is in London. That wouldn’t be such an issue if the car could drive itself into London to get serviced. ;0)
Boats motivate me more than cars but Tesla is really cool. I’m really surprised that they were the first to bring what would be considered “features” to the auto market. For instance, I’m not aware of any other cars that handle everything through a single touchscreen interface.
Having used a touchscreen interface in a car before, I’d say it is a stupid (not safe) idea.
I want all my car controls operable with my eyes closed, and being different on touch (shape, feel), so I could do it while watching the road.
I don’t recommend driving with your eyes closed.
My perspective is slightly skewed, in regard to the touchscreen and controls. I’m physically disabled. I find touchscreens make things more accessible for my particular disability (although completely unhelpful for someone who is blind). I’ve seen some neat technology that adds texture to touchscreens. I imagine we’ll see it in phones first, since that is where the example I saw came from.
One man’s stupid is another man’s ingenuity.