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xoxon How I took my web-app to market in 3 days thanks to common services in the cloud

Maybe with a longer development time you could have built something that would incur lower overhead over the long term. Heroku and Chargify become quite expensive if your business grows to any significant degree. Instead, building directly on top of the Paypal API and deploying to a hosting provider that will not bankrupt you as you scale would be a more optimal approach -- you won't get your site up in 3 days but with higher margins you will likely have fewer regrets down the road.

xoxon Spam Suspect Uses Google Docs; FBI Happy

Note to self: starting developing online collaborative planning tool for criminal activity that can be guaranteed secure from search warrants. High monetization potential.

xoxon Tech sector in hiring drive

What I find remarkable about the chart is the volume of tech jobs in D.C. relative to the population:

D.C. has a population of about 600 thousand versus about 8 million in NYC and yet tech hiring seems to be roughly on a par in these two cities.

That's mind blowing (to me at least).

If that's correct, it must be virtually impossible to be an unemployed programmer in D.C.

xoxon Flask: a micro web framework for Python

Will it work on Google App Engine?

xoxon Ask HN: Which EU countries are least unfavorable for entrepreneurs?

Awesome link! Thanks!

xoxon Ask HN: Which EU countries are least unfavorable for entrepreneurs?

Good info. Thanks. Didn't know you could register anywhere in the EU.

xoxon Ask HN: Which EU countries are least unfavorable for entrepreneurs?

Yes, it's just a general question. I don't really know what issues I might face although I have heard for example that the EU is more restrictive than the US in general. But, again, I'm not even sure what that means in practical terms.

xoxon Addressing Concerns about Padrino

I was disappointed they didn't address some of the security concerns that were raised on HN last time about using Padrino in the context of an ecommerce app. Is Padrino/Sinatra secure enough to handle ecommerce? Rails, for example, has a nice security guide:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html

It would be useful to see some of these issues addressed in the context of Sinatra/Padrino.

xoxon Price Anchoring, Or Why a $499 iPad Seems Inexpensive

it seems like showing a deal is always more effective that just starting at a lower price.

If you were to believe the article's unambiguous take on this, then your interpretation would be correct. However, I believe this is a naive view or one that is only true in limited situations and often not true in the reality of the marketplace where an unreasonably high price can simply turn someone away without leaving the possibility for any further negotiation.

xoxon Price Anchoring, Or Why a $499 iPad Seems Inexpensive

If you’re selling something, ask for much more than you think you’re going to get.

Very often that can be simply offputting and can turn away would-be buyers. There's a difference between being susceptible to an effect and being completely controllable by it.

xoxon Ask HN: What's a good topic for a technical presentation?

Your thoughts on some language or technology that you are interested in but that is not used at your office.

xoxon Actions That Made Me Happier

When I have gone drinking with my covorkers, everyone has restrained their drinking very strategically. No one has ever gotten drunk.

xoxon Actions That Made Me Happier

Not talking about politics but bound by politics (office politics).

xoxon Actions That Made Me Happier

I understand the logic about the strategic importance of drinking with coworkers but I have always felt it imposed some kind of obligation that I was somewhat uncomfortable about while I was single but much more so since I got married. The burden of the obligation for me is such that it outweighs any benefits I feel it could have in relation to my happiness. Those times when I have gone out with coworkers it has produced rigid conversations bound by convention and politics - not much different from what happens in the office. So I would say that piece of advice should be examined on a case-by-case basis.