white_devil

How will you prevent them from stealing your stuff?

That "watchdog" doesn't seem to be doing its job all that well.

Well yes, both are bad, of course.

The ad industry's efforts have led to online privacy being all but non-existent, but Wall Street has turned our economies into shit and saddled the world with massive amounts of debt that will never be repaid.

But you can consider the ad industry far more "innocent" than Wall Street. The latter has known exactly what it's doing and causing all along.

Sure, it may well be. I just clarified why I was talking about FBI and Hollywood together. But really, Hollywood has actually changed the Western world towards police states. That's bad, regardless of what agencies or "channels" they've done it through.

The GP talked about FBI and Hollywood. But to be more specific, the FBI represents the US government, and there are plenty of reasons to hate it.

This is such utter bullshit. Markets are being programmatically gamed, and seriously bright young minds are still flocking to the Vampire Squid's embrace, hoping for a chance to help them do that in exchange for a slice of that phat, fraudulent loot.

The implication was that the FBI has better things to do than to assist Hollywood in turning the world into a police state because they don't want to adjust their business models to fit 2013.

There are lots and lots of people in the US, for example, who should be prosecuted for their financial crimes, but are not, and will not be because that's how the world works these days.

Sure, but in that case, you're a consumer for the printer, and the more useful it is, the more it will cost.

Why would a venture capitalist invest in a non-profit? Does YC not want a return on their investment?

> I have a natural aversion to cults of personality and all that goes with them and 2. the Apple vision of the world is about consumer products. I think this is exactly the wrong direction for all of society (producer products are the future)

But producers produce products for consumers to consume. You can't just eliminate the consumer side of the equation. Without one there isn't the other.

Whoever acquires them is not likely to throw away all the money Paymill's existing customers bring in. It's not like your typical Google acquisition where the original product just dies.

Have you ever downloaded copyrighted material with BitTorrent?

The problem with this line of thinking is that "protecting our freedoms" would pretty much require an immediate full-on revolution, everywhere.

Before I address anything you said, I'm curious.. Are you a woman? Or are you a Nice Guy?

In case you haven't noticed, between ages 15 - 25 or so, even a somewhat above-average-looking woman wields sickening power over men. They're approached anywhere, any time, and they only have to.. exist.

Eventually this power wanes and she'll get approached less and less. This is the time when she might actually have to do something to find a man, and this is the phenomenon we're talking about.

> Anecdotally it seems women 28-35 are much more willing to try different methods of dating than younger ones (or are even looking to actually date in general).

This is hardly surprising, because by that time, they're well on their way to becoming "invisible" to men.

Well, we can't all be math gurus :p

But it really does work that you figure out a group of people with a need, and then fulfill that need the way they want. BingoCardCreator is a good example of this. There are countless opportunities if you just find them, and even having competitors in the space is not an obstacle - everyone does sales anyway.

> What's even more rare is someone successfully stealing an idea. Usually anyone mediocre enough to want to lift someone else's idea isn't up to execution.

That applies when the idea is something genuinely challenging.

But what if it's just a specific need felt by a specific group of people that can be fulfilled with a CRUD app. That's a viable business, but the product can be implemented by just about any developer.

> That sends a clear message without you having to say anything.

It mostly just reveals that you're in the US.

> A lifestyle business is one that you build to improve peoples' lifestyles (including your own) rather than to make billions.

Nope, you're mostly just concerned with your own lifestyle. That's fine, of course. But there's no need to try and make it sound any more noble than it actually is.

Yeah, it's not like he might have been making a point. Let's just latch on to one word's literal meaning and use that to dismiss the whole article.

Disgusting, but par for the course in today's world.

Reliability problems with Hetzner? I was under the impression they're a very good host.

Thank you for making Mako. It's totally lovely, and the somewhat JSP-like flexibility makes it just flat out better than Jinja2.

> You can keep fleeing to the next non-sucky country, but in theory, you're going to run out of countries at some point. Maybe not in your lifetime, so your solution is practical, but if it becomes widely adopted, I think we're going to get a problem.

Eventually, some countries are likely to decide they want to suck less, or get changed by revolutions etc, and then you can switch to one of those.

It's complicated, of course. The smaller the ruling elite, the less prosperous the whole country will be, but the ruling elite itself is just fine with that.

I bet we've only seen a small fraction of all the cases. As long as they can keep doing it without "too many" people knowing, they're fine.

Sure, common sense suggests that they do need some real people in customer support, but haven't you read the horror stories of their algorithms banning people?

People had their accounts closed with messages like: "Your account is now closed permanently. We won't tell you why. Don't try contacting us, we will not respond. Fuck You."

They have some real people working with customers, but they're meant for big, rich customers-they-want-to-keep. You get the algorithm treatment, and you're not supposed to even reach the real people there.

> "taxpayer money" instead of public funds

Exactly how is "taxpayer money" inaccurate there?

> This is what you expect from a crappy companies with outsourced customer support , not google.

I'd expect you to expect algorithmic customer support from Google.

> You assume it is YOUR labor they are taking away from, when in reality, usually capital gains is interest and dividends, which -- is exactly the opposite of YOUR labor.

You seem to be missing the part about being an enterpreneur? Imagine you've got your own one-man LLC/whatever. This would be a business entity that basically just amounts to you yourself, and relies on only your personal skills to make any money.

I assume we don't need to take this any further.. ?