I highly doubt the cone-of-silence as he defines it is possible either.  What's more interesting is the Quirky site/idea itself. Quirky is like <a href="http://www.halfbakery.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.halfbakery.com/</a> in action, so I guess it is fullbakery. I wonder why startups like that don't make it to HN. Do people not know about HN?