Nick Denton's discussions

Yes, you're spot on. Every solution — to material needs or organizational efficiency — is quickly taken for granted. And our restless minds seek out another problem to solve, surface another need to satisfy. Read more

I'm currently with Sunrise. The latest version of the app is an improvement. Read more

Hey, Whitson — this is such a natural step for Lifehacker, one that you've already taken, and one that we can now talk about. Read more

There is a tactic for dealing with a charging elephant: run down the hill. Not up, but down. Elephants descend much more clumsily than they ascend. We didn't test this out, but that's the advice we got from a Laotian mahout last week — in case you're ever in this predicament.

Ah, interesting that your choice is emphatic in the Q&A — but you were so much more judicious in the article. There, Ulysses is just the second in a list, and you don't even describe it that generously. So objective!

The zoom is completely amazing. I've seen the Hubble Deep Field images. We're getting one in our place. But to see the animation of the zoom is something else entirely. Read more

What about iA Writer?The lack of image and video support is an issue: does anybody write without illustration any more? But it's clean; the default fonts are well-chosen; and the focus view is a real innovation.

So what to do if you want to use ScanSnap hardware for bulk and duplex scanning — but like the idea of Doxie integration with Drive or Evernote?

The nebula images seem even more heavily color-enhanced than usual. Those Nasa scientists are shameless!

Come on George, you're missing a perfect opportunity to tie together science and science fiction. In 2010 Odyssey Two, the sequel to Kubrick's classic, Jupiter becomes a second sun, with its own miniature solar system of moons now warmed by the burning gas giant. It's a gift from benign aliens. But they leave clear…

Nested threads alienate people who aren't that web-savvy. But one level of indentation, such as that we use to display replies, might be okay.

I'm not sure whether this will make you more or less angry, but yes, I've been using this system the last few weeks. It produces interesting threads, like this: My Critics Are Nazis. (Sean Parker hates me even more than you do right now.) Read more

Ha. A man after my own heart.

You can take a look at the original release post on the Kinja product blog. We'll put up a fuller how-to once we've worked through the thread organization and the reply flow. Read more

Yeah, we can definitely sort the All replies better. But that means giving up on chronological order, which people like — at least in theory. Read more

Either you're going to have to scroll or you're going to have to click. Some people say the first thread is so long that the second gets buried. But then others complain they have to click in to see what's going on. We think we have a decent compromise, but it will take a few more days to work through.

Hey, Lopniks. (Sorry, I don't like Jalops.) Read more

Annalee, io9 had better be right this time! Robocop will be our Valentine's Day outing. (Yeah, we're a bit dudey like that.) Charlie Jane's generous coverage of Prometheus led us astray. It was only after the movie was released that you admitted that it was one of the worst SF movies of the year. Read more

Of all the characters in Middlemarch, when you first read the book, you identified with Dorothea, the sensitive and romantic woman who respects learning so much that she makes a tragically bad marriage to a dried-out phony and pedant. Read more

The first European settlers of the Americas weren't competent either. They didn't know where they were going. The maps and navigation were primitive. The ships were tiny and unsuited to oceanic voyages. European crops weren't suited to the climate or soil. Early settlements failed. Read more