Another aspect of basic income usually is to pay higher taxes on consumption and lower taxes on work
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something is {a: 1, b: 2}:
called something base
{:a=>1, :b=>2}
something is now nil:
nil
The only way to tell if a compiler will put a backdoor into certain programs is to read the disassembled source.
I read somewhere that credit card companies charge lower rates if the address is provided as well. If that's the case, it seems like Stripe normalizes the price for you.
Most people I know, myself included, have suffered from anxiety or panic attacks at some point in their lives. It's usually possible to overcome this, though. When you realize that you don't interview well, are afraid to speak in public, freeze up on dates, are afraid to speak to clients, panic when your boss disagrees with you, etc., you can either work on it or try to avoid those situations forever. Frankly, I'd rather not hire somebody who convinced themselves that they have to avoid certain situations because they can't handle them.
I do love the contractor idea, though. Perhaps it would be best to hire somebody as a contractor for a small project and then have them present in front of the entire team and ask specific questions or ask for live modifications?
Obviously, as your volume increases, it makes sense to own more steps along the value chain yourself.
IIRC the doors also don't need to open as far up as in most pictures. In fact, they have sensors to prevent them from smashing into garage roofs and the likes and then you can weasel out under them.
The OP claims that the structural analysis and graphics in the proposal are not useful and goes on "This is eyewash for the rubes, the surest sign you’re dealing with a snake oil salesman.".
I don't think that is the most likely reason for including those bits. More likely, this is the work of engineers from different fields taking a stab at something new and making mistakes. If this is the case, I applaud them for their bravery. For each point in the post, Musk can now hire a room full of experts to work on that. I'm sure anyone who has ever picked up work in a related but new field has made similar mistakes.
On a different note, I don't understand why this post is so petty and often crosses into the unconstructive... If "Dr Drang" is reading this, please consider editing your blog post and removing the parts about snake oil, other engineers being able to do these calculations in their sleep etc. You're doing a disservice to your otherwise very insightful post and the work that clearly went into it.
Personally, I think a great way to level the playing field wrt starting businesses for immigrant founders would be to allow all holders of employment visas a grace period during which they can stay in the country after they quit their job. This grace period could depend on the type of visa, your degree, your income (read taxes), the time you spent in the US, whatever. Then you can start a business without first having to secure your own presence, which is very difficult (because you don't yet have a real company) and expensive to do. A similar arrangement exists for study visas and is extremely effective in keeping college and grad school graduates in the country after school.
It's possible and maybe even easier to have truly breakthrough ideas if you're coming from a different field. You can always catch up on all the knowledge required to execute your idea later.
And yes, often you'll find out that your idea wasn't so great. But at least you didn't dismiss it as out of hand because you didn't come across it in your years of experience in the field.
On the other hand, in cases like this, it would seem rude and disproportionate to not even meet these fine fellows from the FBI.
A related question I always had is: How often is law enforcement confronted with people that don't talk to them on general principle? Does that really make you suspicious or is it quite common?
I started out asking for a CC before the trial, but on a small adwords test campaign that converted exactly zero out of a few hundred people. Then again, that may have been because the entire site was a single signup/cc form and had very little information otherwise.
I don't have any data to suggest that larger companies have bigger conference calls, but it may still help the value perception of more expensive plans to limit by number of callers. In fact, most of our $9/month customers aren't Professionals that charge $80-$200 per hour, but people that would otherwise use FreeConferenceCall et al and are already stingy about spending that much. A lot of "randos" signing up from Google or ads are very small companies, non profits, organization committees for various things etc. I like those customers and don't want to lose them, but I agree that I should find a way to separate them from the lawyers that sometimes get the $9/month plan as well.
The reason you'd need multiple lines is if you're multiple people. The premise of HipDial is that each person has their own, dedicated conference line and phone number. E.g. sales teams with a few people will sign up for the Team plan.
The viral mechanics actually work out pretty well like you said. That's the reason we have the free plan, too. On the free plan we used to even send text messages to the participants after the call, asking them to use HipDial as well, but those converted so badly and gave us such a bad rep that we canceled them.
BTW, FreeConferenceCalls know their model is doomed and are expanding as fast as they can into countries with phone systems modeled after the US one, where the loophole still persists. It's pretty clear, though, that their business isn't sustainable. My guess is that somebody will soon gobble up FreeConferenceCall for their customer database.
I'm currently on Twilio's first tier volume discount (I assume there's further volume discounts that aren't on the website), paying .8 cents/min IIRC.
I looked into buying voice minutes and DIDs and running my own freeswitch boxes. Any provider that had listed prices charged upwards of .4 cents/min or had unlimited minutes per DID with a $4 or something fee per channel. A lot of them also limited the number of channels on a DID.
Another reason I have low margins though is because my free plan and free trials also cost me real money. There is no way I can get around that.
While we're at it: Another reason I looked into self-hosting was because I'd like to host conference calls with up to 5000 participants (think earnings calls, public forums, classes etc), most of which are mute. THAT is a high margin business, with companies charging up to 20 cents/minute/caller for those kinds of calls. I read this may be possible with freeswitch on beefy hardware. What do you think? Do you know any way I could get around hosting my own freeswitch servers, load balancer, redundant backups etc?
I'm pretty happy with my own SaaS application, but because I provide a telephone service I have pretty low margins. This is by far the most annoying thing about my business (it affects me more than taxes), especially considering that it would have been just as much work to make a SaaS with negligible marginal costs.
The lesson is, if you have the choice and don't want hypergrowth + venture funding, provide a service that costs you next to nothing to provide. Another disadvantage of providing a service that has high marginal costs is that your bigger competitors will usually be able to outprice you. If all you need is a few servers, you can differentiate based on product alone and charge accordingly.
I don't want to throw my phone high into the air, watch it go to pieces and not even get a high score.
Do you really think the traditional food industry as it is is looking out for you? Most people I know have terribly unhealthy diets and almost anything that anyone put any thought in will be better for them. I'm not saying Soylent is perfect or doesn't cause any long term ill-effects, I'm just saying that it can't be much worse than a lot of "normal" diets.