jkuria

The Op here. In CRO we always take the approach that no one knows anything and test everything. But we usually start with what has demonstrably worked, as proven by statistically significant tests. The Trust Pilot is their actual rating, which is favorable. Why not show it? It is likely to sway new users. Do consumers check review sites before buying? If they didn't all the review sites would not be thriving.

Yes, it is a luxury brand but their promise is luxury for a steal. That is the premise of the site. Why not reinforce it at the point of purchase? For me this would be worth testing.

As for the Norton Seal, original research in 2016 shows that:

"Females were significantly more likely to trust the Norton security seal"

"35.6% of participants voted for Norton’s antivirus seal."

"Participants showed no preference between trust seals and SSL seals but did show a preference for antivirus companies (possibly due to their familiarity with them)."

source: https://cxl.com/research-study/trust-seals/

What do visitors expect Paris to be like? What do they find instead? The article is missing this critical piece of information.

Not according to In the Plex. They had raised money from Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins and John Doerr was almost losing his mind on how much cash they were burning through with no business model. Finally, in an act of desperation, they copied Overture's model. The rest is history!

Google didn't have a business model when they started but they were sure they were building something useful. I don't know much about fashion and I don't know if what they have is truly useful, but I respect them a lot and will see if I have contacts I could introduce them to.

Nice but too simplistic. The best work I have come across on the topic is: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/d...

I believe Marc Andreessen has said the same thing in the past. When he was accused of elitism, he said:

"That is my test of whether this person is a true entrepreneur. If they are, they will find a way, by hook or crook, to get to someone who knows me"

Are they a direct competitor of Stripe?

Hmmh, wasn't there another article like this some time back that cited clear writing (of prose/email/documentation) as the most important programmer skill, especially if one wants to ascend to the highest ranks of an organization?

In the discussion thread, I believe one of HN's elder statesmen (ChuckMcM?) quoted a Nobel prize-winning physicist who said "clear writing in English" was more important to his career than math.

there was the association with Jeffrey Epstein recently, which I think was overdone. The journalists seemed to be on a fishing expedition.

I remember reading somewhere that his only source of income was giving talks, which he does irregularly. As the @krapp noted (don't know why he was downvoted) he may or may not be in dire straits but he is said to care little about money to the point of getting himself in tricky financial situations. Kinda like the brilliant Computer Science/Math student who helps everyone else with their assignments but gets kicked out of school for failing too many classes--because he didn't bother to turn in assignments.

> I suspect there might not be "one gene" that makes a person a homosexual, but a collection of genes that increase the odds of someone being homosexual.

One theory I've heard is that having lots of boys in the home, increases the likelihood that the next baby born will be gay (from Professor Adam Grant of the Give & Take fame). Somehow, all that testosterone in the home seeps through the womb and flips a switch on the unborn male baby.

Did you mean this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arturo_Benedetti_Michelangeli

You linked to the main page!

I also remember reading somewhere that the guy for whom the Higgs-Boson is partly named, defiantly responded with "nothing" for many years when his university did their annual (or was it quarterly?) roundup asking all the professors to submit their latest published findings. Later, after winning renown for his work on Higgs-Boson he remarked that he would never have succeeded in today's impatient environment.

We are talking about Whales not dolphins. Dolphins have always been the subject of researches for their higher than average intelligence.

Exactly. This is what Steven Pinker Says in the parent article:

The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard. The mental abilities of a four-year-old that we take for granted – recognizing a face, lifting a pencil, walking across a room, answering a question – in fact solve some of the hardest engineering problems ever conceived... As the new generation of intelligent devices appears, it will be the stock analysts and petrochemical engineers and parole board members who are in danger of being replaced by machines. The gardeners, receptionists, and cooks are secure in their jobs for decades to come.[7]

Hmmh, but a whale's sensori-motor skills are quite rudimentary compared to a human's. A human can manipulate objects, walk, run, dance, swim, jump. A whale can only swim and maybe do a fairly restricted set of dives?

"There may be no 'i' in team but there is definitely one in 'Win'", Michael Jordan is said to have told Phil Jackson, when criticized. "If the team is not doing it then it is up to me to score 55 points", he added! (more than the rest of the team combined).

As for Rodman, he had become irrelevant and unmarketable and all he did was suck up to Kim Jong Un. There was a WSJ article about this. He was not in a position to talk him out of anything.

Get in touch: jkuria gmail. I can connect you with people who are already involved in this.

Glad to hear this. Apparently, unfortunately, for many HN'ers, this is exactly the kind of post they don't want to see! There has been a movement clamoring for a pure tech HN without any marketing business-y type of stuff.

Only articles about the finer points of segment tuning and tweaking x86 assembly registers! Or all the reasons why classes can never really approach the elegance and terseness of classic K&R C structs. Or how Common Lisp and Scheme have this and that and the other but only that and no more :)

The former are really life skills that make even the most hardcore techies more effective human beings!

Much harder to do after GDPR. See this:

https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/1856/how-do-you-find-...

But if you are able to find the domainsbyproxy email e.g. domainsbyproxy@<domainname>.<tld> you can email it it will be forwarded to the owner. You can then ask whatever questions you want.

You have a point but there is also quite a bit of churn in the billionaire ranks. So if you include all that have been billionaires in the last 10 - 20 years you'll have many more than just 2,000. And for practical purposes, having $500 million vs. $1 billion is really the same league of wealth. So if we make the criterion $500 million my point is absolutely true! 5,000 at any given time vs 480.

A great sales book is The Ultimate Sales Machine. Here's a summary:

https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/893/book-summary-the-u...

So true. This is also the 'Dilbert Theory of Value Creation' that I have used to great profit. Scott Adams likes to say, he is not the funniest guy around but funnier than most people. At best, he'd be a mediocre comedian. He can also draw better than most but hardly a Picasso. And yet, by combining both skills he has something "rare and valuable" that has led to enormous financial success.

He also adds that it easier to do this (combining two or more skills) than it is to be the very best at one thing e.g. an NBA player--it is actually easier, statistically, to become a billionaire than it is to become an NBA player.

There are more than 2,000 billionaires worldwide but only about 480 NBA players (32 teams with roughly 15 people on the roster). And if you think about it, becoming a billionaire usually involves multiple skills (good at programming + business, bill gates. Good at research/analysis + cultivating a rare temperament that allows you to act on the insights produced by the research even when everyone around you is losing their shirt, Warren Buffett etc, etc).

Being an NBA player requires one skill at a minimum. Being tall!

So true. Google isn't interested in dealing with individual live human customers. They want to aggregate all interactions and treat them as data.

Agreed. I read about half way through and the op still hadn't made his/her point. Too much set up for too small a conclusion.

Good study. The phenomenon is also well documented and explained in George Leonard's book Mastery:

https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfil...

James Clear has a nice summary here:

https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries/mastery

Not even Dave Cutler? I thought he single-handedly wrote the first version of the kernel. At least that is the legend:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler

Lots of great stories about him. One is recounted here:

https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/930/xbox-co-founder-my...

Hmmh, I though Jason Njoku's irokoTV was doing really well? Isn't it the same concept?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Njoku

I guess they target Africans in the diaspora, who have much more disposable income.

It is very tough to succeed targeting Africans in Africa without first focusing on a specific country.

By the way, I see this phenomenon a lot with African restaurants in the US. If you are targeting, say just Nigerians or Kenyans, your restaurant will fail 100%.

They are not enough of them and are often unappreciative and judgemental--complaining it is not like their mother's cooking!

The African restaurants that succeed make it exotic and exciting enough to appeal to Americans and the broader populace. They may invent dishes or create a 'fusion' menu but who cares! After all, there is no "General Tso's" chicken in China!

Yep. The infamous ballot box number 13 determined the course of American history. Without that stolen box, LBJ would not have become a senator and would not therefore not have become president. His means to power were always corrupt (he stole elections at the student body president level and the congressmen assistants organization) but once he attained it, he was surprisingly effective. From electrification of the rural Texas Hill country from which he hailed to enacting legislation for the civil rights movement.

You can think of it as headline writing "with Chinese characteristics" :)