mikehawkins

"Fascinating" indeed... I've no problem with the general practice of selling lost or mis-directed packages that are reasonably never going to be claimed, but if the facts are as the columnist writes - with one box of 88 books x $28.95 being sold under the $25 threshold, the USPS should be worrying less about the PR damage and more about keeping its (dwindling) customers happy.

Reallllly basic UI, and a horrible name - but I'm a big fan of the end result. :)

Sounds promising - anything that can improve on our current use of the frankly non-intuitive Google Analytics in providing clear metrics is worth a shot.

Sigh. I just got back from Zion and had absolutely no problem with this policy... worst case - you buy one round of sodas drinks, then refill with water for the rest of the trip. No brainer.

He was ahead of the curve.

APIs are definitely the way forward but there are still some hold outs - and increasingly, many of the social platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn are putting limits on the type of data they share.

Yup - this has really been a humbling learning experience for us... shame as well, because we ended up missing out on the sort of feedback HN community often provides.

Well - it sounds like all these comments are from actual users... but TBH - the positive comments are great, but we’re much more interested in the constructive (and blunt) feedback HN is known for… any thoughts?

Thanks - we'd love to get any ideas on what you think we could improve if you've got a sec to share? :)

Woohoo! We like to hear that... any features you'd suggest or things we could do better?

Thanks so much - we really appreciate it!

And any feedback - about the good, the bad, and (hopefully very little of) the ugly - we'd love to hear about it.

Mike Co-founder

Great recommendation - I immediately spotted the point about blue light, but wasn't aware of high quality sleep apps that help address the problem. Looking forward to trying your guys' suggested apps.

Absolutely - thanks for sharing; you were far more concise than how I was going to explain my solution. :)

Fair enough - equity valuations and markets are enough of a Wild, Wild West without adding all of this pre-IPO share shenanigans.

Definitely agree on the science side - but I'd have to differ on the sexism argument. True, Pixar and Disney have recently taken small steps to balance the almost overwhelmingly boy/male as hero model with Brave and Frozen, but we're a loooong way from thinking that there's a dearth of independent, forceful male characters.

Sheesh. I feel like we should just create a script to auto-post 'Tube strike' every 24.5 days or so; it certainly seems like they threaten to strike enough.

Agreed - and echoes a similar case I read about when the folks behind the Ordnance Survey (government agency and makers of truly exceptional maps for outdoor enthusiasts in the UK) proudly showed how they made their data online for a licensing fee that generated about £10m a year.

The people they were presenting to? A group of European governments that endorse massive, free access to this sort of data - as a means of spurring innovation and economic growth.

Now contrast that with London Mayor Boris Johnson's movie to open up the data for their city bike sharing scheme... released on a Friday, by Monday there were two apps that were slicker and better-developed than the city was planning, plus were now two small businesses.

I agree... especially with the comment about terse and unclear error messages. I recently got lured into the customer-facing side of things, and nothing annoys me (or our new users) than a message like "Incorrect syntax" when I used a unsupported symbol for my password.

First, be clear with your design and instructions. In my hasty password example - "Please create your password (6 or more characters, letters and numbers only)"

Then - if the user messes up, explain a bit... "Whoops, please only use letters and numbers"

So, so much nicer. :)

</rant>

Good point... a key problem though is self-inflicted. Taxi driver unions have a vested interest in keeping the number of licenses in operation low (so keeping rates high). That only pushes the value of each license up - and you have to spend thousands to buy someone else's license.

Same thing used to happen in NYC - but with the onset of Uber, the value of licenses (which were steadily climbing) has flatlined or even dropped.

It's unfortunate for the last set of drivers with these licenses, but it's a horrible way to run a much-needed service.

Insurance, training - absolutely. But forcing investment in super expensive legacy licenses is very inefficient.

Great article - cars are an old idea that are dramatically in need of a fundamental reboot. Google's self-driving cars are a huge start - as combined with the rise of the sharing economy, could signal that the car industry's approach of many slightly different models of the same basic tech to different segments of the market will no longer work. Safety, convenience, and reliability could be the new important features consumers look for.

Sorry dsego - this was already posted yesterday. :(

It's far too early to know what's going on - but Reddit will need to get way out in front of this to defuse things. When there's an information vacuum, and a community of passionate users involved... things can only snowball.

My knee-jerk reaction was 'ah, jeez - there's going to be a big percentage of lazy people just gaming the system'. But on reflection, as some other posters have already said, these folks would probably not being looking for work regardless - and if this helps the majority be more productive and happy... to me, it's worth a punt to see what happens.

Good on you Utrecht - I love the bold thinking. It might not work - but at least they tried something new to address one of our oldest problems!

Thanks for including the source - that was my question as well.

Same here - I was also guilty of feeling a bit clever and avoiding the obvious "oh, the numbers double every time" answer. So, when I found out that if the spelling of each number was one letter longer (4 = four letters, 8 = five letters, 11 = six) I got smug, and didn't bother testing further.

Good article - and a humbling experience. :)

Yup. I can imagine also the ease of having to only deal with a limited pool of private funders - all of whom are known quantities vs. faceless public funds - would be also be a key benefit.

My friend is a prosecutor and said basically the same thing. She recommended that any time the police read your rights and just want to ask you questions - immediately ask for a lawyer. Just keeps things much, much simpler for you.

Well put - and I had to chuckle at your use of the term 'rageviews'... I hadn't read that one before.

Well put - centralized decision-making with a minimum of public interest groups does tend to speed things up. But yeah, it was their utter economic collapse that caused this particular case.

I'm a bit guilty of this myself - I tend to use this in emails, when trying to give the feel of an informal conversation.

So... I'm curious what you think about this case? ;)

I'll agree with much of this - but after 8 years living in London and now in Manchester, the 'objective horribleness' of British food is now about 15-20 years out of date. Back in the day, sure - man, how my parents could tell stories when stationed over in the UK.

But now? I've had superb meals in both city and country - and there's been a big rediscovery of the roots of British cuisine. Just with better ingredients, imagination, and avoiding shudder the classic blunder of oversteaming the veggies. :)

Case in point - hit up the Bull in Highgate in London. Amazing pub, that serves top-notch food for about $15 a plate.