197 karma · joined May 19, 2013
FTP with curlftpfs and SVN/CVS isn't "trivial" to 99.9% of the population!
It's the same reason that sites like SlashDot were filled with all sorts of reasons why the iPad would never work. Why would you use that?!? You could do the same thing with ______.
Yes, you could. But you won't.
Before then I had never thought about the biggest game changer of the self-driving car: The car driving around with NO ONE in it!!
That is huge and once the technology is good enough to be safer than our current state of affairs with human drivers, it is a complete and utter game changer. You would no longer need drivers for 18-wheelers and would not have issues with tired drivers pushing their limits to drive 12, 14, 16 hours...instead a truck could drive all day and all night at 55mph or whatever speeds were safe, only stopping for refueling or maintenance issues.
You could also have driverless taxis, school buses (maybe repurpose the drivers into chaperones who actually pay attention to what is going on in the bus?!), Greyhound-type bus lines, etc, etc.
Plus, as you pointed out, lots and lots of families would only need one car. Or several people could share a car together. Or services such as Zipcar could really take off because you don't have to go to where the car is — you could just find the nearest one and request that it come to you!
On top of all that, a huge benefit is that you can do other things while getting to your destination. Let the car drive while you read a book, catch up on email, text your friends, watch a movie — whatever.
I don't think the biggest impediments will be technological—they will be governmental and legal. Who is at fault in an accident of two driver-less cars? Do you still need a "license" to operate? What happens if they get hacked? Etc.
Totally agree with you that it is interesting and amazing to think about!
Also, I suck at completing timed trials. I sign up for a service, play with it for a bit, and might not come back for a few weeks - usually when the trial has expired. Having to enter credit card information is exactly one of the roadblocks that causes me to abandon ship and put it in the "This is a pain and taking more time than I thought, so I will just do this later." category.
So, while I don't think you are losing any customers that already know they need your service, you may be losing some who might need your service, but aren't sure yet.
The best onboarding process gets me signed up as quickly as possible (you are clearly doing that) - and takes me through an interactive tutorial (i.e. "Enter your project name here") where you are actually entering information into the system, not just completing some demo that isn't useful.
Show users how to do something useful with your service as quickly as possible and you will have their attention. The CC info will be secondary - they will happily enter it when the time comes!
What's the difference between $340 million and over $1 billion? Bigger boat. Bigger plane. Other than that, nothing.
He simply stated the truth: "Steve didn't ever code."
It's not a judgement. He didn't say it made him inferior in any way. In fact, he praised him in the very next sentence saying "he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs".
I'm not sure any of this is a big revelation anyway...didn't we all pretty much know that Woz was the tech/programming guy and Jobs was the marketing/sales/business deal guy? They were amazingly successful together and it is doubtful that either one of them would have attained the same success if they had gone about it independently.
To me, the biggest value of sites like HN is always the comments. Here we have some of the brightest, smartest, most driven people around the world gathered together. I think it's interesting to see what others think about things like this. I don't want a political discussion every day, but reading comments on important subjects like civil forfeiture from really, really smart people is interesting and informative.
It's likely that many on HN today will have a big impact in shaping our lives in many ways over the next decade and beyond — not just from a technology standpoint.
I for one, don't mind the occasional off-topic post that provokes interesting and thoughtful discussion.
(And BTW — this is my 2nd account, which I created in order to use my real name — my original account is 4 years old)
Why would any kid ever want a "plain old" coloring book without the 3D augmented reality?
Very cool—my kids are going to love for sure!
The concept of collecting and storing all sorts of data and information on everyone just in case someone bad does something is a flawed one.
The government is collecting all phone call information, numbers, location, duration, along with SMS, email, and who knows what else on everybody in order to have that data "just in case" a terrorist attack happens, so they can (possibly) track down the perpetrators.
Now we have police collecting license plate data, along with GPS coordinates, video and still cameras mounted all over cities that can easily allow for facial recognition, combined with the tracking of your phone as mentioned above. It's not a stretch to assume that if the government (NSA/CIA/FBI) wants to know where you are at any given moment, they know.
All this "just in case" one of the infinitesimally unlikely events such as a terrorist attack or kidnapping occurs. For the children. And because terrorism.
The potential for abuse is huge and the cost/benefit is not even close to worth it—unless the stated purpose for collecting the data is not the real one.
Well done.
When people feel they have been treated fairly they will come back over and over. Not being taken advantage of as a consumer is such a unique experience that it will stick out in their mind!
When visiting a URL and they detect that you are on mobile, they send you over to the mobile URL. Why not do the opposite when they detect you aren't?
In fact, why have a separate URL at all? They should be able to serve up the same content from the same URL for web or mobile or whatever device.