marklabedz

If Amazon made it possible for a customer to pick (and pay for the presumed incremental cost of) alternative carriers, they'd have a gold mine of data on customer WTP and carrier quality at the local level.

Which is why my first response to almost any medical invoice, is "Would you take ["total"]*0.5 to settle the bill?"

You can also get a 1x6 piece of oak (or other hardwood) from your favorite lumber yard or home improvement center. I grabbed an offcut of red oak for about $2 a year ago. Thirty seconds with a jigsaw to form a handle.

I have a Matias Tactile Pro that I'm quite fond of, but its loud. A quick glance at their website and it looks like they now have a "quiet" version. I might have to give that a try...

There's a pretty good one in the New Yorker (paywall, though I've seen scans of the article floating around): http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1995/05/29/1995_05_29_045_T...

Perhaps even more important than strict valuation is that banks (and especially institutional investors) have strict rules on the type of investments they can make. One of the most important issues is the level of risk carried. T-bills have historically been considered a (or the) risk-free asset. Suddenly they are not which potentially leads to a lot of selling (lowering prices) or attempted selling (if markets freeze).

Tonopah Test Range: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_Test_Range

The system is Retail Link and there's quite an ecosystem around it.

Consistency is important. There are multiple styles (Chicago, APA, MLA, AP, etc) - picking one and sticking to it makes your writing more readable. Subconsciously, a reader will come to expect certain constructions or a particular flow (e.g., serial/Oxford comma or not). Think about consistency in areas such as document layout/structure (bullet points or prose), sentence structure, word choice, and punctuation.

Dogs catching frisbees employ a similar methodology: http://digitalunion.osu.edu/r2/summer06/maynor/journal_artic...

Two techniques that I've used: 1. Read good writing. 2. After writing your own work, force yourself to leave it for week. Only after that week, edit. (Blog posts are particularly suited to #2.)

Building custom machines is hardly necessary for the "average" consumer anymore. In Dell's heyday, you could allocate your money toward the components that most-impacted your day-to-day usage. Want a bigger monitor? How about a faster processor? Don't store many pictures? No worry, no need to pay for what you won't use.

Now, for $500 the average consumer can get a computer that meets the vast majority of their needs.

I switched to Badger about a year ago. I think I switched when they "launched" via HN and haven't had any reason to switch. I'm not the heavy user most on HN are, but everything works, its easy, and I don't get annoying sales (spam) emails.

A brief aside into the history of aerodynamic advances in auto racing....Chaparral Cars were some of the first race cars to be designed with a focus on the aerodynamic forces at play. While primarily competing in Can-Am instead of F1, they introduced cars with movable aerodynamic surfaces (Chaparrel 2E) and even a partial vacuum (Chaparrel 2J) to increase downforce.

Anything in particular about Reddit Enhancement Suite you're after? (I'm not overly familiar with RES.) For HN, I use StyleBot and Tom Moor's HackerNew Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...

At a very basic level, convince the credit card company (or hospital, bank, etc), that they will never collect even a penny from you and incur the hit to your credit rating that such activity entails. To actually purchase the debt, you'll likely need to be licensed according to your local jurisdiction.

Worth it? How do you use your laptop? Do any of the features provide additional/incremental value to you? As with the majority of goods, value (and therefore, worth) is highly subjective.

EDIT: For me, the 13" Retina MBP does nothing that I wish I could accomplish with my 2011 13" MBP with 8 gigs of RAM and an SSD. It doesn't make anything that I currently do faster/easier/better. Therefore, not much incremental value to me. When I look to buy my next laptop, the Retina series (if its still a different product line by then) will be at the top of my list. I'd love to buy a laptop with an SSD, RAM and that wonderful screen - they just don't provide enough value to overcome the acquisition cost for me.

I wish I had multiple, legitimate (aka not dial-up, not 4mbit adsl), choices for an ISP.

Very possible. In fact, some aircraft and ship navigation systems (prior to GPS) at a very basic level determine position through triangulation based on direction to known RF emitters. (See Loran, NDB, etc).

Its also a popular sub-activity of HAM radio, in which its called "Foxhunting."

There's also significant market momentum to overcome as screw tops are often associated with cheap wine at the (typical) consumer level.

Glad to hear. It certainly won't replace more comprehensive testing, but its good for a quick-and-dirty look.

Its not just the 787 that uses these engines.

EDIT: ...and not all 787s use these engines.

A little more info on ETOPS and the challenges created by multiple similar failures within a small population...

There are two parts to ETOPS (tongue in cheek "Engines Turn or Or People Swim")..The first is the certification to design standards, including flight testing. The second, and perhaps more crucial element, is the operations/procedures certifications. In the first stage, the entire system (engines, airframe, fuel system and everything else) is evaluated as a comprehensive whole. Essentially, you're looking to eliminate single points of failure.

The second part is arguably more important as it deals with the statistical failure rates. The assumption is that a modern jet (turbofan) engine is highly reliable. As the basis of such procedures, multiple, similar failures are worrisome. An airline must have approved ETOPS operations to fly routes requiring ETOPS (a certified airplane is necessary but not sufficient). Common operational procedures include not replacing both engines at the same time, servicing similar fuel system components together, etc. Basically, avoid the possibility of introducing a single point of failure into otherwise redundant systems.

Is the experience any better when utilizing Siri as an interface? If you ask Siri for directions instead of relying on the built-in search functionality, is it any better or would both Siri and iOS maps query the same database?

Siri --> Address --> iOS nav via street address

Yes, that's a good way to look at it. Its really important to recognize the crux of rscale's point though - you have to render the high barriers to entry condition false. If you can't figure out how to enter, the remaining conditions don't really matter.

At the risk of putting words in rscale's mouth, its not that PE creates these conditions or that PE is even necessary for these conditions. Instead, PE tends to find and play in highly attractive industries (See Porter's 5 Forces for a classic view of "attractiveness"). PE involvement in an industry can be a good signal...

Not to mention the politics behind the DSM.

From the news submission guidelines -- "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

Absolutely agree. Going hard all spring and summer is easy, but peaking for certain events (possibly multiple events) makes the scheduling of a training plan much more difficult.