jamesk_au

Some iOS developers are using in-app purchases to provide support for trial periods.

For example, a fitness app named "Sweat with Kayla"[1] (apparently a renowned female personal trainer) is currently featured prominently at the top of the front page of the Australian App Store.

The app description states:

Sweat with Kayla is free to download. All consumers are welcome to a free 7-day trial period. Should you choose to continue use of the Sweat with Kayla app, we offer a single auto-renewing subscription option:

Just $4.61/week ($19.99/month)

Is that trial period contrary to the App Store Review Guidelines?[2] Clause 2.9 says: "Apps that are "demo", "trial", or "test" versions will be rejected." Strictly speaking, "Sweat with Kayla" might be a "full" version, because you get the whole thing (at least for seven days).

On the other hand, clause 11.9 says: "Apps containing content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected, except for specific approved content (e.g. films, television programs, music, books)." Perhaps Apple takes a broad approach to this clause and Kayla's workouts and food plans were seen to be sufficiently close to the named examples of "specific approved content" to pass muster. It would be surprising if Apple had decided to feature the app without reading its description.

Interestingly, the most favourable feedback left by those who have posted reviews for "Sweat with Kayla" appears to be gratitude for the trial period, which saved reviewers from paying anything before deleting it.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sweat-with-kayla/id104923458...

[2] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Those behind the study appear to be of the view that it can't be done:

"This study could not be designed in a double-blind fashion due to the nature of meditation training and placebo conditioning. Specifically, placebo cream could not be applied to all groups because this manipulation could potentially elicit analgesia even though the subjects were informed that the cream was inert (Kaptchuk et al., 2010). Furthermore, whereas subjects in the placebo-induced analgesia and book-listening control groups were clearly aware of their group assignment, subjects in the mindfulness and sham-mindfulness groups were blinded to their intervention assignment. For the mindfulness and sham-mindfulness groups, responses related to psychosocial influences (i.e., demand characteristics) presumably were minimal given that no significant differences in “perceived meditative effectiveness” were observed (p = 0.88; Table 2)."

You can read the full paper here:

http://jn.sfn.org/press/November-18-2015-Issue/zns0461501530...

Fascinating results.

Significant improvement. Please don't bail.

Amy's post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063

Yes. Capture the nostalgia for old players while revitalising the concept for new players. Sierra just released a new King's Quest game. Anything is possible.

It could be either depending on the person and how they came into possession of the information. Government officials likely have statutory duties prohibiting the disclosure of confidential information learned during the course of their duties (hence possibility of corruption once you start offering money), while others who are not strictly government officials may have signed the equivalent of a binding NDA and be under a relevant contractual obligation.

A person who is neither an official nor a contractor but who nevertheless received the information knowing it was confidential and that it ought to be kept confidential might also be held by a court to be subject to an equitable obligation of confidence, which is different again.

There are many reasons favouring disclosure of this information, but is offering to buy the information really the best approach here?

The public officials who possess the information are likely bound by legal duties not to disclose it to those not entitled to see it. If an official chooses to leak confidential information in the public interest, that may be one thing, but selling confidential information for personal financial gain is corrupt conduct.

To be fair to WikiLeaks, they describe the money as a "reward" for turning over the missing chapters, and do not overtly say they are looking to buy, but it seems to come awfully close to offering a financial inducement to break the law. The only people who have the information are those who are bound not to reveal it or who should never have had it in the first place.

For anyone else interested, here are some examples[1] of the ways in which the experimenter strayed from the script:

"In listening to the original recordings of the experiments, it's clear that Milgram's experimenter John Williams deviated significantly from the script in his interactions with subjects. Williams – with Milgram's approval – improvised in all manner of ways to exert pressure on subjects to keep administering shocks.

He left the lab to 'check' on the learner, returning to reassure the teacher that the learner was OK. Instead of sticking to the standard four verbal commands described in accounts of the experimental protocol, Williams often abandoned the script and commanded some subjects 25 times and more to keep going. Teachers were blocked in their efforts to swap places with the learner or to check on him themselves.

The slavish obedience to authority we have come to associate with Milgram's experiments comes to sound much more like bullying and coercion when you listen to these recordings."

You can watch one of the examples in this video[2] (at 1:30). Having administered several shocks already, the man playing the role of the teacher asks the experimenter, "Who's going to take responsibility if anything happens to that gentleman?" The experimenter begins his reply by saying, "I'm responsible for anything that happens to him," which was contrary to the script, and the teacher continues with the shocks.

Later studies have attempted to replicate some of the results though,[3][4] so that is not the end of the story.

[1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-shocki...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr5cjyokVUs&t=87

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Replications

[4] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking...

Given the closing line was "You guys are clearly great hackers and we’d be happy to hear from you again in the future," my impression was that YC's answer was not so much 'no' as 'not yet'.

The OP says in his article: "Looking back, I never could have started a company without this [freelancing] experience."

There is actually a whole board game based on autocomplete results[1] which is like a cross between Balderdash and Cards Against Humanity. Players create their own autocomplete results and then try to guess the real one. This review is pretty accurate: One of the best elements of this game is the sociological knowledge you get out of each round. "What, people really search for that?" is a common response.[2]

[1] http://www.querythegame.com

[2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IUVSCSS

At least for fries, this is apparently about to be rolled out across Australia by a company unrelated to McDonald's: "You put your money in and it goes from frozen to the fryer and in your cup within two minutes and 20 seconds," Mr Bendotti said.[1] It's been tried before though.[2]

I imagine it could be very successful around nightclubs where people might want to eat something greasy on their way home without really thinking about it, but I find it disheartening to see an Australian innovator trying to capitalise on something as unhealthy as the consumption of fries by the general population given the national obesity epidemic.[3]

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-28/chip-vending-machine/6...

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-29/sach-hot-chip-vending-...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Australia

I understand the concern, and I agree that real problems arise - relatively often - when people don't take the time to read and understand contracts before they sign them. I don't have any data for the following assertion, but I would hazard a guess that the reason most people don't read contracts is not that they do not have the time to read them, but that they do not want to take the time to read them.

I think building in a cooling off period is not likely to incentivise people to take the time to read and understand their contracts. The experience of reading and trying to understand a contract is too unpleasant. Could the experience be made more pleasant? I don't know, but if you find a way to crack that nut, you might find a unicorn inside.

In Australia, we have some beneficial consumer laws (eg prohibiting misleading conduct in trade or commerce), and I have heard of some people deliberately not reading contracts so that they can rely on favourable oral representations made to them by the other party, which could be a big business representative or (more commonly) a shop assistant or clerk. The idea is that it doesn't matter whether the contract (often handed to you at the same time) says anything different to what you were told by the representative, provided that you don't know what the contract says and are genuinely relying on what you were told (and can later prove what they told you). There are some other caveats too but you get the idea. You do leave yourself open to the risk of agreeing to other nasty clauses in the contract wholly unrelated to what was said to you though.

The proposition that it is impractical to read and understand every contract we enter into does not present a need for a law invalidating or avoiding every contract where insufficient time to read and understand it is not given. I think the only consequence of the proposed law (if that proposition is correct) would be to destroy contractual certainty for a time; the premise denies that anyone would actually use the period of time for its intended purpose.

I also only referred to contracts that are signed. Signatures are important: as a general rule, you are taken to have read and understood the terms of any contract you have signed. If you agree to the terms of a contract without signing (eg many of the examples you mention, or oral acceptance, or clicking a button) there is generally no such assumption. Whether that will afford you any greater measure of relief if you later want to get out of the contract depends on the individual case, but there are circumstances in which it will.

There's no need for such a law.[1] If you haven't read it, or if you don't understand it, don't sign it. Problem solved.

If you don't have the confidence to ask for time to consider or seek advice about a contract you've been asked to sign, that is a different problem.

[1] In some jurisdictions there is a statutory 'cooling off' period for particular classes of contract (eg five business days for the sale of residential property) during which the purchaser can decide not to proceed, but there is no such need in relation to commercial transactions generally.

The main reason I have (at least some) confidence in my friends' ratings being more useful than those of the general population is that the system approximates what my friends and I currently tend to do, which is go to restaurants recommended to us by our friends.

We've got tastes and opinions in spades, but when it comes to picking a restaurant, we're really not that different - our different opinions are discussed over a dining experience we all want to try and/or enjoy.

If we didn't have a tendency to like the same dining experiences, we probably wouldn't be eating together in the first place. The 'smart/group average' example also seems to be a good way of avoiding or minimising that kind of clash if you don't already know the person.

Most of my friends don't even like the same food as each other.

I'm intrigued by this. I can't think of any particular foods that my friends would say they don't like or don't eat - except perhaps obviously unhealthy options with no redeeming features (eg most fast food). I suppose some people might have a very specific pet hate for something, but usually that results in that person not ordering that thing rather than the whole group going elsewhere.

Australia has quite a multicultural society with a rich variety of cuisines, so that may be part of the explanation. Upon reflection, I'm not confident that our approach would always be accepted by friends not from here.

Maybe this is all just an example of the hyperlocal being more useful to an individual than the general. If Facebook implemented it well, and didn't co-opt each of my ratings into some kind of advertised endorsement, perhaps it could work there too.

But a five star rating system that aggregates the opinions of my friends and colleagues (i.e. people whose tastes tend to be positively correlated with my own) is much more useful to me than a system that aggregates ratings from some general, random or self-selecting population.

If I travel to a city where I don't know anyone, it's true that I initially won't have any ratings (from this particular service), but as I prefer not to dine alone, it's only a matter of time before I make some friends or meet some people and I have ratings again.

My experience of Yelp ratings and reviews is similar to kansface's experience - little correlation with my own tastes except at the far low end. I also don't know many friends or colleagues who rate or review places on Yelp, but I think many of us would start rating places if we knew it would be helpful to our friends, immediately accessible to them, and trivial to do.

Incredible. It even evolves a walker resembling a variant of a kangaroo (at [01:57]). With a target speed of 1.0 m/s, the legs alternate in taking small steps, but at 2.0 m/s, both legs are used to jump.

Could you elaborate on the "summary of my year and what is coming next" please? How do you make it relevant and interesting to clients, eg if your contracts tend to involve disparate kinds of work? Or is this possible because you operate in such a niche area? Thanks. Will follow the referral.

Re the pot bust, it seems the constitutional backdrop may have forced both sides into a tacit understanding that pot is fine so long as it stays at home:

Dave Schofield is the chief of police in Whittier. He is also the only officer who lives in town. Alaska’s laws often reflect the needs of a sparsely populated state, which presents challenges for policing within Begich Towers. For example, the state constitution has written into it a right to privacy; if something is occurring in your own home, you have the right to keep it private. This means that although there is a pervasive smell of marijuana in Begich Towers, the police can do little about it. “The law says you can’t have drugs within 500 feet of a school; there’s not a unit in this building that’s 500 feet from the school, but we have the right-to-privacy issue.”

The pot bust itself appears to have stemmed from this event:

A few years ago, a pot grower on the 10th floor had just finished a harvest and decided to get rid of some of the evidence by flushing it down the toilet. In the process he stopped up the plumbing on the floors below him—a neighbor called city management to complain that someone had flushed large amounts of dog food down the toilets, but it turned out to be pellets of grow medium.

http://reedyoung.com/project/whittier-alaska/r-young-whittie...

It does seem a bit exaggerated:

"In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive 'opt-in' permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.) ... Gimbal-powered apps may collect your current location, the time of day you passed the beacon, and details about your device."

If the beacons are doing anything more, it is not reported in this article.

I love some of the descriptions from the Apogee catalog:

Crystal Caves - "Stunning cinematic sequences"

Spear of Destiny - "Breathtaking soundtrack ... for AdLib, Sound Blaster or compatible"

Commander Keen 6 - "Over 2.5 megabytes of graphics created especially for this episode"

The fact that Apple could in the future modify their system to permit them to read iMessages (e.g. by interposing themselves between sender and receiver using fake public keys) is not really a fair basis for alleging that Tim Cook or anyone else is telling "half-truths" in respect of what Apple is currently doing. He has said they are not reading them and that, at present, they cannot read them. I'm not aware of any basis for impugning his credibility in that respect.

But it remains the case that anyone seriously concerned about security should continue to guard against that possibility in the future.

The members of a company are generally its owners or shareholders, and the company exists to carry out its objects - if the objects of the company are commercial, that usually means providing a return to shareholders.

But the point made by Thiel was not meant to be some existential musing on the purpose of companies generally. The proposition that "companies exist to make money, not lose it" is "elementary" because he is there referring only to companies with commercial objects. In other words, 'for profit' companies exist to make money, and at least for those companies it is a mistake to focus on other metrics to the exclusion of profit.

As for the historical relationship between the development of company law and commerce, a good place to start would be the history of limited liability companies and corporations (in the UK, US and elsewhere) and the effect of limiting liability on entrepreneurship.

(I'm also in NSW)-- The list of "support requests" on the customers page suggests that the tools are used only in accordance with duly-issued warrants. Access would need to be removed once the purpose of the warrant had been fulfilled, but we may never know whether they get that right in practice. Ben Grubb has collated some background information on the operation of those laws.[1]

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/nsw-police-use-ha...

The notion of "walling off" information apparently also extends to court testimony and the prosecution brief:

"However, when the mention of Hemisphere data in official documentation or court testimony is unavoidable ... Hemisphere analysts might advise the investigator on issues such as report writing, presentation to the prosecutor, and the trial phase." (p14)

Just extraordinary.

An essential part of the real life bargaining experience is that you're stuck with the attempts you make and, short of finding a new vendor, you can't try again with a clean slate.

How do you propose to deal with users who (eg) open multiple incognito windows in Chrome? Or will users need accounts and need to be logged in even to have a go? It seems like users will naturally want to game the system.

I felt the experience was cheapened by the fact that the 'bargain' button made it obvious that the starting price was very inflated. That is not always apparent to customers browsing in a store, and perception counts.

> In Bitcoin, though the system itself is "trustless", participants trust that they are all treated equally according to the protocol & open source code.

But Bitcoin participants do not have to act on "trust" because they can inspect the protocol and open source code to verify equal treatment. In Naval's system, if the premise for participation (eg equal treatment) is equally verifiable by inspection of the protocol and open source code, is there any material difference between the two? It is true that there is nothing to "stop the network from invalidating the pre-mined amount at will", but participants will only participate in the network if it is easily verifiable that the network gives effect to the premise for participation.

> I just don't see how you can add a founder-controlled, for-profit startup to the other players in a crypto currency ecosystem (the miners, the non-profit developer foundation and the coin owners) and get something that works.

I think I agree with that statement, but only because of the words "founder-controlled". If a network like this is to succeed, the founders must forfeit control to the network. Given that it is the founders who write the protocol, they should be happy to do that, and then set it free. I don't think it would work if the founders made some attempt in the protocol to reserve to themselves a power to intervene in the operation of the network.

Can I offer another interesting hypothetical:

Is it possible for a network to incorporate some kind of mechanism for democratically amending its own protocol according to some objective characteristic (or subjective vote) of the participants? If participants are mining 'shares' in the 'company', should they have the power to act as 'shareholders' and to exercise control accordingly?

(Assume that some aspect of the protocol means that the controlling majority is always held by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, which I think is meant to be the case with Bitcoin.)