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This jumped out at me, too. Here's how Unroll.me describes their service:

  Clean up your inbox
  Instantly see a list of all your subscription emails. 
  Unsubscribe easily from whatever you don’t want.

It's not clear at all that they are reading people's emails and selling the data.

Meta: it might be worth updating the title to mention this was published in 2011.

A lot of people think Gladwell created the 10,000 hours theory, but he merely popularized it. The original research comes from K. Anders Ericsson. Here's a link to the original paper, which is actually quite accessible, if you're interested: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/D...

Surprised no one's mentioned Bublecam: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bublcam/bublcam-360o-ca....

Instead of six Go Pros, you can just use one Bublecam to capture 360 degree video, and the software to stitch the photos / videos comes with it.

I agree. But as the article goes on to point out, we are not more trusting of complete strangers, but rather strangers who've been vetted by many AirBnb reviews, background checked by Uber, etc. Technology has changed the definition of a 'stranger'.

If the noise levels are too high, why not let the neighbors call it in? It seems like a waste of time to proactively try to find parties when they could just wait around at night for people to call in the noise violations.

The book touches on this. Basically, the human brain is biased towards novelty. It's much more likely to remember something if it's unique or interesting or different -- if it stands out.

The book's title, Moonwalking with Einstein, is one such example. Gordon Ramsey is probably another: there are lots of chefs out there, but if you see a chef screaming at people in his kitchen, it's probably going to stick with you, consciously or otherwise.

Here's a clip from the documentary Objectified where Moggridge talks about designing a laptop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHEA-jbo1aI.

Right. USPS PO Box was just one example. It's my understanding that the other services have the same requirements.

E.g. I checked and UPS offers a service called My Choice:

> The UPS My ChoiceSM enrollment process uses public record information to verify your identity.

http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/sri/ups_my_choice...

> Visa charges Square 1.76% + 6 cents

Last I checked, Square had not published the transaction fee they negotiated with Visa.

I always thought there were laws against running a service like this in the US. For example the rules for registering a USPS P.O. box are very stringent:

> To rent a PO Box, two different forms of identification are required. At least one of them must be a valid photo ID. [1]

This way they can actually track you down if you have something illegal shipped to the box.

A service like this where you can easily sign up without properly verifying your identity is just waiting to be used as a temporary drop-box for people shipping drugs from SilkRoad, people shipping goods they bought with a stolen credit card, etc.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-office_box#United_States

As far as I know, this feature already exists -- pg just needs to add github.com to the list of well-known URLs.

Anyone else wonder how the author made the white outlines on the Yahoo Maps text? Seems super tedious to do this by hand.

The first few minutes sounds like a collaboration between Brian Eno and Deerhunter. Very ambient and atmospheric.

If you search the page for "You mentioned you used Erlang in GitHub." and click the link, it'll fast-forward the video right to where they they talk about what's mentioned in the title.

I think this is probably an excellent example of what can be done with a comprehensive set of automatic regression and performance tests. I'm guessing most bugs are caught immediately after each build, and they can be fairly confident releasing stuff without doing much manual testing.

Yet another Wikipedia article with graphic pictures that I agree should be there, but are not something I want to see while eating my morning bowl of cereal...

Same here. I'm hoping that enough other people are hooked that someone will create a Firefox extension for it.

This is basically of a rip-off of this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=615088.

I always thought it was taboo to use the default samples that came with an app, but she seems to be perfectly fine with it. I thought one of the things DJs prided themselves on was their ability to find unique samples to integrate into their shows. However, I'm guessing at this point the default sample library is pretty extensive...

"So far, Tumblr is growing, but it’s nowhere near MySpace’s 70 million users or Facebook’s 61 million or even Wordpress’ 3 to 4 million [...]"

Ah, how things change...

This is going to happen soon: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/01/business/AP-US-Be....

Some of the photo titles come out wonky due to character encoding issues.

If I click Vote, but am not logged in, why not redirect me to a login page?

The photo sizes are really small. Why not make them bigger? After all, the whole point of the site is to see and vote on them.

I kept clicking on parts of the code hoping it'd automatically select the type of element I had clicked on so I could change its color. Looks like I'm the only one, though, judging from the other comments.

I sat on the homepage for a minute trying to think of something I wanted to buy. You should offer some suggestions.

You're making me choose a category before I see the results? And also confusing me with text about getting spammed? I think some UI to allow people to narrow their search like "Show more items like these" would be better.

Other than that, it's pretty good. I loved seeing pictures of the items when I hovered over them. I'm usually not concerned about where an item is located when I shop on eBay (since I usually just get it shipped), but this provides a sort of craigslist-style take on it.

Successful online poker players have managed to sell their e-books for nearly $1000 (see http://www.balugapoker.com/books.html or http://dailyvariance.com/let-there-be-range.html, for example). I really doubt they're doing the same volume this guy is; however, given the price difference, they only have sell 1/13 as many books to break even with him...

I disagree. Luck may play a role in one's success, but it's not the deciding factor. The problem is that people like to play off their success as just "being lucky". Why? Because this answer is a lot quicker and sexier than explaining to someone how they spent countless hours working their ass off to get where they are.

Have you read Warren Buffett's biography, The Snowball? Sure, Buffett caught some lucky breaks, but the man has essentially spent his entire life completely engrossed in investing. Anyone who claims Buffett is just the luckiest investor alive should really take a closer look at how the man has accomplished what he has.

Recent, similar article with discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1042545.

I didn't read the Gladwell article, but it sounds like he's a victim of hindsight bias [0]. It's easy to think that there was less risk involved when reflecting back on someone's decisions after they succeeded.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias

I found that paper really interesting, but didn't see multi-layered abstractions mentioned at all. It just said people must be able to deal with the "meaninglessness" of the syntax of computer programs.

Anyway, I'd love to read more about this if you have any more links to share.