dskhatri

This system could save Apple a lot of money. However, there is a tradeoff: the perceived quality of Apple's customer service will take a hit.

One of the reasons Costco became really popular was their return policy. You were able to return any consumer electronics device without any questions asked. If word spreads that Apple refused to accept faulty devices, they'll end up pissing off their existing customers and scaring away new customers, even if the fault was due to abuse.

Another issue: will they count jailbreaking as "abuse"? What about using an unofficial app store like Cydia? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746198)

I think he/she modeled it after the Minute Maid can (see below). It's a good point though: people outside Minute Maid's end markets may not identify with the logo.

http://www.freshdirect.com/media/images/product/frozen/fro_m...

There are also a couple of YC funded ventures that offer time management tools: 8aweek and RescueTime

That's the problem. A lot of HN readers would look at the top comment to decide whether the article is worth a read. jonknee's comment does not provide much value in this regard. It's somewhat disparaging and reminiscent of comments you'd find from fanboys on Engadget or similar site.

The author makes a point that it's hard to believe an extremely well-regarded company like Apple would fail to disclose the true color depth of their panels or that the millions of colors are generated by dithering rather than the native capability of the monitor. I do agree though that his article was rather long for the point he made. There was some entertainment value in the length but it was not value a typical HN reader would seek

Also see http://swineflu.ushahidi.com/

Ushahidi was designed for this very purpose. From the About Ushahidi page: "Ushahidi, which means 'testimony' in Swahili, is a website that was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008... The new Ushahidi Engine is being created to use the lessons learned from Kenya to create a platform that allows anyone around the world to set up their own way to gather reports by mobile phone, email and the web - and map them. It is being built so that it can grow with the changing environment of the web, and to work with other websites and online tools."

I agree. The author just picked up a reference design kit. It's a whole different matter to design the circuit itself. Picking the right MOSFETs, gate driver IC, feedback system are crucial to great performance. I'm not an audiophile but I know a great Class D engineer/audiophile who's designed a system with a THD+N of 0.003% (The Zetex amplifier the author chose has a THD+N of just 0.1%). It's cool to hear the engineer talk about the "color of sound".

[Addendum] THD+N is a measure of the purity of the output i.e how well the amplified audio signal matches the smaller input audio signal that's fed into the amplifier (from a CD player for example). So the lower the number the better. Typically, the amplifier circuit itself adds some distortions and noise to the actual audio signal. For example, if you fed a pure 1V 1kHz sine signal into the amplifier, your output might be a 20V 1kHz sine wave but with additional signals mixed in. These signals will include inherent noise generated by the amplifier and harmonics generated by the switching nature of the Class-D amplifer (if you look at your audio signal at the output of the MOSFET switches and before the low pass filter, it will look like a square wave or more specifically, a PWM).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_harmonic_distortion

A 45 min. fast charge sounds impressive. I would think that would require much more current than a typical household outlet is able to supply. Does anyone know if the current Tesla roadster come with a charging station? And how is that connected to the household mains?

[update: I found some forums mentioning that charging the current roadster in 3.5 hours requires the installation of a 240V/70A charging station in your garage/home]

[update 2: Here's the High Power Connector: http://shop.teslamotors.com/products/high-power-connector. It's connected directly to the breaker panel in the home]

XBMC is also good and available for Mac, Win and Linux: http://xbmc.org/

Really cool and reminds me of self-modeling robots: http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/research/selfmodels/

Last year it was bees going missing[1]. Has anyone read any explanations about that phenomenon?

[1] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22where+have+all+t...

Stanford/MIT Venture Lab: http://www.vlab.org/article.html?aid=170

Yes, and here's another great example of outsourcing: Vizio, the flat panel TV manufacturer had revenues of $1.9b with only 85 employees. That's $22.4m/employee in revenues. I don't know what their profit margin is though. (http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2008/company-profile.html?id=2008...)

I must say that while I was already impressed by the product, the blog post announcing the public launch was just as impressive. It is very well written and portrays the company as having great professionalism and aptitude. You don't see many startups doing this.

Finally, yay! for being an MIT startup :)

Yeah, I think photosynthesis doesn't come into play anywhere in the process. They're probably misusing the word to describe the generation of oxygen from water using the sunlight. I think this article gives a better summary: http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?article...

A YC startup: http://insoshi.com/

I am pretty damn sure the corrupt leaders in countries like Nigeria and Kenya (where I was born and raised) will not be swayed by an online petition! Rather than use this forum as a petition, you might consider leveraging the intelligence and experience of this group to discuss the issue of the digital divide and possibly offer suggestions as to how we could bridge it.

For example, as hackers and entrepreneurs we could work to develop an open online app that could make it easier to introduce kids in developing countries to CS and provide mentorship in some way. At MIT there was an program called AITI (Africa Internet Technology Initiative) that sent students to Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia over the summer to teach programming to high school kids there. What about a project that would provide some seed money to local African entrepreneurs to setup educational internet cafes in communities there?

It is a huge problem and would be really interesting to discuss the issue further here.

(Posted earlier here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208030 but recommenting since the submission is now getting some traction)

I am pretty damn sure the corrupt leaders in countries like Nigeria and Kenya (where I was born and raised) will not be swayed by an online petition! Rather than use this forum as a petition, you might consider leveraging the intelligence and experience of this group to discuss the issue of the digital divide and possibly offer suggestions as to how we could bridge it.

For example, as hackers and entrepreneurs we could work to develop an open online app that could make it easier to introduce kids in developing countries to CS and provide mentorship in some way. At MIT there was an program called AITI (Africa Internet Technology Initiative) that sent students to Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia over the summer to teach programming to high school kids there. What about a project that would provide some seed money to local African entrepreneurs to setup educational internet cafes in communities there?

It is a huge problem and would be really interesting to discuss the issue further here.

That's brilliant! I didn't know about Firefox keywords until now. Thanks!

Well, yes, they are not a non-profit but actually tried running the organization as a non-profit at one point. Craig Newmark mentioned that it was a bad idea but didn't explicitly give the reasons why. That's what I was alluding to. I should have been clearer, but thanks for your comment.

In Founders at Work, Craig Newmark mentioned there were a lot of downsides in running Craigslist as a non-profit. I haven't done much research on why this is but was wondering if you could elaborate on whether the search for funding is limited by your non-profit status? Would it be easier to run your organization as a for-profit group like Google.org?

On another note, it would be helpful if you described your organization's purpose/ mission. Some friends and I are in the very early stages of starting a social venture that would help non-profits, not with financial funding, but with access to smart people to help out in various tasks at the organizations. You can write to me at dskhatri =shift-2= google's email. Good luck!

Consider attending events about things you're interested in/ where the you have similar interests with the people attending. For example, you could go to more alumni events. Go with the intention of meeting at least 5 new people. You don't have to end up with their business card or contact information. Just practice as someone else mentioned. You'll find yourself gaining more confidence and you can start branching out to other kinds of events. This is what I did and it helped me.

It's a good idea with an intuitive UI! You could offer a simple API/javascript button that event organizers (eg. Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ticketmaster or StartupSchool.org) could place on their websites. A guest clicks on the button and gets the opportunity to add the event to his/her everyday calendar app.

Reminds me of the Plantronics desk phone headsets. I don't know where they get the engineers to design these. Just a few examples of what's wrong:

- the base station has a "configuration dial" that requires a flat object to insert into the slit to turn it

- There are 2, yes 2, pairs of volume buttons on the base itself, AND one on the headset..

- The mute button on the headset has a sharp protrusion that literally pokes you in the finger when you try to push it..

Seth's post and experiences with such systems make me appreciate sites like tumblr and slinkset quite a lot.

PDF user guide: http://www.plantronics.com/media/media_resources/literature/...).

Ditto. Providing the ability to integrate such a link sharing/voting app into an existing website would make slinkset stand out! May I ask why the name slinkset? I don't get the name.

Stanford's Ed Corner has a good recorded talk on negotiation : http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=181...

The rules of negotiation very much depend on the situation so I personally take "n-tips for negotiating" with a grain of salt.

Bear Stearns current losses from the sub-prime investments are $3.2bn but GM's losses were reported as 39bn sometime last year. Why is the Bear Stearns saga so significant?

Edit: I didn't understand the whole problem behind Bear Stearns but this Q&A from BBC details the issue really well (would still appreciate some insight or further reading links though): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7296827.stm

Overall, nice work. It seems to have a lot of potential! It would be cool to be able to use wundrbar in a linux terminal and pipe the results to a Conky (http://conky.sourceforge.net/) window :)

If in doubt about structuring the query, I find its much easier to start by typing in the service name and following up with parameters specified in the feedback box.

Tipjoy seems to be gaining in popularity: It's already being filtered out by some enterprise firewalls (unfairly, in my opinion) being labelled as a Pay-to-surf site!

W3C's Semantic Web FAQ: http://www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ

Used to run http://waziwazi.com, a blog on robotics. I haven't found much time to update it now though.