mdesq

It seems that Yelp is turning into something like the BBB, ultimately holding the good name of organizations hostage, whether or not that was the original intent.

And every generation comes along and palms their faces at what abject idiots the previous generation so obviously was. It's a short hop from being with the large, popular group to being inside the gulags of the next mob to come along.

I see she accepts Square. I wonder if she accepts Bitcoin.

The Boston Marathon just issued a statement and used the word "bombs." Not sure if that's just a hasty description, but that is the word they used.

I spend more actual time in Reader than any other Google application including Gmail. This bites.

I'm open to alternatives, but I haven't seen any I could really latch on to.

This slideshow is an advertisement. An advertisement for the book, the authors' personal recognition, and probably LinkedIn and other ventures the authors are involved with. After all, the book has been out for a year, so it's time for a new round of marketing.

It's also a tiring rehash of generic career advice we've all heard a million times if we ever bothered to take a look. I'm weary of the many versions of the old "send me $1 and I'll tell you how I became so successful" shtick floating around. The details change a bit, but only subtly. The tactic still works, primarily because of clever marketing, and the world is full of people who primarily want to read about being successful. This target market is a gold mine.

A fraction of people who read motivational career advice actually execute, but that's of no concern for marketing types who want to sell you the promise of success if you would just read their material. Hopefully you'll pay money for their book, but if not, just the name recognition is payment enough.

The authors imply that you have to be well-known, recognized, networked into the right people to achieve success. I call BS. To do what they do, that may be accurate, but I've been around long enough to personally know people you've never met and will never hear of who are worth millions because they grasped the basics of creating value for others and tenacious, ruthless execution on basic business principles. There are plenty of them here on HN, actually.

Mad props for creating one of the most recognized and discussed fonts.

Yes, it's called rent seeking.

At least it's not a hoodie.

The very nature of the legal system is built on adversary. Each side, in general, works to the maximum overall advantage of their client. There is a bit of discretion available, but in general, expect prosecutors to press for maximum overall enforcement of the laws. This is how it works and how we expect law enforcement to act. The laws were generally put in place by legislators duly elected by their constituents. We expect the executive branch to execute, not legislate. Orin's posts seem to be simply pointing out that this case is business as usual. If we don't like it, this should gravely concern us. This type of prosecution is ho-hum, and not just in matters of technology.

Given that the state always has more resources available than individuals it prosecutes, cases like Aaron's are powerful arguments for a limited government. A real limited government, not the kind that just keeps hands off hackers and turns their arsenal of weapons on another class we care about less. I realize this perspective is completely out of vogue these days, but the fact that governments oppress individuals is an age-old truth that needs to be relearned over and over, it seems.

Asking prosecutors to be "nicer" won't cut it. Nor will firing one and replacing them with another, tasked to enforce the same law. We must remove some of their power, meaning many laws need drastic change or repeal. It's sad that it takes a high profile individual to raise concern when plenty of others have been destroyed before and gone unnoticed.

They didn't address it in the slightest. They mentioned "social good" in a sentence and then demonstrated that they either didn't understand what that meant or decided to completely ignore it by then talking mostly about individual happiness. Society is more affected by your behavior and your drain on its resources than by how happy you feel.

The article misses the entire point of civil marriage in the first place, which is to provide incentives for a structure historically seen as positive for society, not to give individual people what they want. We provide (dis)incentives for all kinds of activities, of which marriage is one. Charitable giving and smoking are a couple other areas we try to nudge behavior with tax policy.

The authors are people in one sphere of society saying they don't like laws that incentivize behavior that is different from their own. But nevertheless, they are making a conscious choice (even with information about the additional economic costs etc.) to remain unmarried, which includes associated costs and everything else that comes with that choice.

In their case, we all win in one sense. Society gets some additional tax revenues to support social services, and the authors get something they prefer instead: singleness.

Not all of our preferred behaviors are given incentives by the government; only the ones considered compelling and in the public interest. Civil marriage primarily exists for the state; not really for you.

Note: Sure, there are good and interesting arguments about the social value of civil marriage, whether or not it should even exist, and if so, in what form. I'm not going there. I'm just pointing out that the authors are making a conscious economic decision and are disappointed that they pay an added price.

I used to work as a professional mechanic and the auto industry used to be split, with American brands using SAE and imports using metric. This was all changing fast in the 90s such that pretty much everything is metric on cars these days. Still, there are a few exceptions here and there.

The ability to have two (or more) accounts per number might be good for separating business/personal uses on one device if they can track it that way. The limitation of (generally) one phone number per device is restrictive.

Yes, I know you can work around this a bit w/Google Voice and such, but I would prefer my phone to act more like an email client where I can send/receive from multiple accounts seamlessly.

Why is this on the front page of HN? If anyone needs evidence that the quality here has suffered, this is exhibit 1.

"On-Topic: ...anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."

I don't consider this some interesting new phenomenon and would be surprised if others, when pressed, would really think this was. This is a "weird news, politics" story.

Take home final exams are everywhere and they can easily be some of the most challenging. I like this story of one of Tyler Cowen's final exams[1]:

"Tyler [Cowen] once walked into class the day of the final exam and said, “Here is the exam. Write your own questions. Write your own answers. Harder questions and better answers get more points.” Then he walked out. The funniest thing was when a student came in late and I had to explain to him what the exam was and he didn’t believe me!"

[1] http://blog.sethroberts.net/2012/08/09/tyler-cowens-unusual-...

Interviews are complex, but I view part of the process as negotiation. One of the principles of being an effective negotiator is knowing what you desire to be the future relationship between the parties. Typically in the technology space, I don't like burning any bridges.

Thus, I start the interview process out by saying that I value and appreciate directness and honesty in all of my dealings. In keeping with that, if at any time I feel I have enough information to know that this will not be a good fit, that I will be honest about that and we can part on good terms and not waste each other's time. I also ask in return that they be up-front and honest with me (don't bring me in for interview after interview just as a charade when they know they're giving the job to Fred anyway).

I've used this tactic a handful of times and it has never failed to get a positive response. On a negotiation level, it may also give me a slight edge because I broached the topic first and raised the possibility of not seeing the process through to the end, something many interviewers forget is a possibility.

Could be. I've seen hacked sites get cleaned up and two years later still be stuck in these databases. Integration with some antivirus programs can make it so that large numbers of people are effectively blocked from visiting the site.

Access to the site is blocked by my employer due to a perceived security threat.

"...this web site ( http://htmlformail.com/ ) has been blocked because it has been determined by Web Reputation Filters to be a security threat to your computer or the corporate network. This web site has been associated with malware/spyware."

Maybe something you want to track down, in case the site somehow became listed in a malware database. Sometimes removing sites takes manual effort.

Google's results were dramatically better, but I'm not sure that was the biggest reason most people were switching. I remember it was also out-of-control blazing fast. No more waits at all. Performing a single query would change the expression on most people's faces.

The user experience changed from "tell us what you want, and we'll go out and see what we can find" to "we have everything right here, just let us know what you are looking for."

I wouldn't recommend competing primarily on price. Start fresh with solving the problem in a way you think would address the needs of the market better. MP3 players existed well before the iPod and cost a lot less.

Find and talk to target customers and try to discern what would meet their needs best. I've been trying to take Jason Cohen's number of 30 to heart...find 30 customers who would buy your product, or tweak your offering until you do. Don't ignore the competition entirely, but don't base what you do just on what is out there.

Backupify uses AWS, if I recall correctly. Services like this will become an absolute must, I expect.

Circles seems like the Google+ equivalent of labels in Gmail or tags in Reader. You can easily tag a thread or user with one or more descriptive labels. I don't find that a lot of work. Facebook, in comparison (last time I checked), makes you go to the group to add/remove people. Major pain to manage groups in FB.