"So maybe, just maybe, if we truly want to end this system, some of us will have to risk our lives."
Or you could just elect Ron Paul. The powers that be would have to assassinate him to stop him from legalizing most drug use.
1,341 karma · joined December 14, 2011
shingen80-at-yahoo.com (just for HN, I check it once a week)
Or you could just elect Ron Paul. The powers that be would have to assassinate him to stop him from legalizing most drug use.
We could change its name as specs evolve, but the idea of (and demand for) an information browser will remain so long as humans find it desirable to not personally decipher the code for each page or application.
Hop into the iTunes Store - you're suddenly in an 'information browser.' As a general consumer, whether you're looking at information on the web or some other platform, you will be using a browser of some sort. A web browser just happens to be for the web, and that isn't going anywhere any time soon. The curve to change mass consumer behavior is extremely high once you've deployed a billion versions of a software concept and people find it comfortable and effective to use.
He better stay away from rounded corners.
Those robots need to be constructed; R&D'd; improved; maintained; installed; removed; and the robot ecosystem would support millions more jobs. The efficiency gains would justify the expenditures. The US economy will be made over by robots; we have the most efficient, large production economy on the planet, and are still the world's largest manufacturing nation (ahead of China, we export less).
Our labor force participation rate has dropped from 67.5% in 1999/2000, down to 64% now; our U6 unemployment number is 15%. Millions of net job gains by taking manufacturing back from China, would not destroy many jobs at all (domestically), quite the opposite.
Robots are amplifiers of human labor, not replacements. They still must be created, cared for, upgraded, overseen, and so on. The whole point is about one American with 30 robots to manage, becoming as labor efficient on price to output as 30 or more Chinese workers. The improvement scale in robotics is almost limitless; direct human labor however is extraordinarily limited in its capabilities.
5 million new jobs courtesy of taking manufacturing back from China would instantly push our labor force participation rate back up to where it was in 1999. While we'd simultaneously generate a massive pool of new domestic wealth by keeping that money here instead of sending it elsewhere for someone else to benefit from. We'd make more of the goods we consume; and we'd export more goods to the rest of the world. Competing with China is just one example, the reality is we'd want to look to create jobs by competing with everywhere we've lost manufacturing to since 1964 when America had 55% of all global manufacturing.
And then let's remember that efficiency gains produce more wealth. Wealth is not a static pool to be swapped or stolen back and forth. Neither are jobs. It's entirely likely that we'll be able to create entirely new products that are now impossible courtesy of advanced robotic manufacturing, and that will mean completely new jobs, that would not have existed otherwise (versus say taking back old product manufacturing from China or similar).
Today's factory robots are absolutely nothing like what's in the lab today, and what's coming this decade.
Robots will, in the next few decades, wipe out all the labor benefit that China has. Their huge population base value will shift to being a huge liability.
Bring 5 million manufacturing jobs back to America through 100 million robots (that never riot, demand wage increases, unionize, go on vacation, can work 24/7, and get better constantly), and the cheap labor advantage that China has completely disappears. The only question is who will dominate robotic manufacturing, not whether it'll happen.
There are formulas for success and failure. Some people learn faster, some people learn slower; some lessons are better than others and get you there faster; some people are fortunate enough to be able to fail in more modest ways while they're simultaneously being successful in the grand scheme of things (Zuck). Sometimes randomosity bails you out of stupid choices, sometimes you hit the floor hard; the choice to learn or not is up to the individual either way.
Some people become successful early, and fail late. The list of former Forbes 400 members is littered with these people. Some people fail early, and succeed later, and for the rest of their lives, having learned their lesson.
In my experience, failure can feel a bit like living through a great depression. You become emotionally reflexive based on what you've learned / digested. Same way people learned to be extremely frugal after The great depression. If you learn the right lessons from it, your reflexes will keep you from making similar stupid mistakes later on. I don't know how you really learn those lessons without experiencing them (even if you do so in the 'fail small and often, while succeeding overall' manner).
I don't think most people are taken seriously until they're successful. You're typically going to be valued based on how other people value you. It's why networks become so powerful (such as YC or Ron Conway). That's sometimes an effective system regarding efficiency of time (faster due diligence); and sometimes it's bogus when the reputation is wrong (either direction). Sometimes it accelerates innovation by getting the right people the right resources; sometimes it holds back innovation by ignoring potential buried under a non-existent reputation. The difference between being in one camp versus the other is often how hard (and intelligently) you work to get noticed. On the up side, once you're in, you're usually golden, the work to get noticed pays off.
Worse, this is slander on Sarah's part. The notion that he's a rip-off artist has a distinctly negative impact on his name and good standing as a developer.
Particularly when it's the exact opposite case. Pinterest is more of a clone than Reform.
I'm in bed with a large tech investor for my current company, and I'm working on this tech on the side. My term sheet is such that my company owns whatever I create right now, so I'm hoping said large investor isn't too annoyed with me allocating some time on the side; my plan is to ask forgiveness instead of permission.
Aiming to kick it out to the public in a month optimistically.
The iPod had a moat around it courtesy of the extremely difficult dynamics of dealing with the music cartels. Apple broke the cartels and came to dominate them; nobody else was able to. Such problems don't exist in either smart phones or tablets.
You don't have to like it, but the answer is: the same country that now owns Hong Kong.
Foxconn is a Chinese company. It's why they're given special privileges that no foreign company can ever get, when it comes to everything from trade protections to labor regulations.
Who ever said Apple wasn't going to try to maximize profit? I certainly didn't say that. So I'm not sure what your point is.
Consumers don't all want to own the same smart phone, in fact quite the opposite: consumers are completely unwilling to all own the same smart phone.
Then to top it off, the smart phone market is roughly 20 to 30 times larger than the iPod market. Which means a helluva lot more competition. There's also no simple blocking method available to Apple to own the smart phone market, unlike the iTunes + music licensing moat they had in music players.
They're a Chinese company. Period. If China believed differently, they wouldn't be allowed to do what they do in domestic China.
China is nationalistic first, concerned with money second. That has always been the case and will always be the case. There's no amount of money that can buy you a lot of segments in their country; there are countless monster companies locked out of China right now, who would willingly pay countless billions just to get proper access to their markets - China promotes their domestic giants first, always.
I always find it fascinating how the Apple arguments now center almost exclusively on who's making the most money. It's a fine argument to make, but it sure sounds shallow when you stack it up against the supposed Apple ethos.
You'll notice I didn't say Apple wouldn't dominate the profit center, much like they do in PCs.
I said they'll lose their market dominance. Their market share will erode until it finds a balancing point based on the iPad being at the high end of the product category. Apple has no interest in positioning the iPad anywhere else, so they will absolutely hold their pricing high.
Foxconn isn't going to hand Apple a permanent monopoly over efficient processes to the detriment of their domestic buddies. That's not how China works.
Every day that goes by, Apple's lead will erode in both quality of product and manufacturing advantage. It's not due to anything Apple will do wrong, it's due to how markets work, particularly in technology.
The assumptions by the slate article defy the nature of constantly improving hardware with falling prices.
The iPad, unlike the iPhone, doesn't get to benefit from the carrier subsidies that hide the real price from consumers. The radical majority of iPad sales are the wifi model. The iPad will be left to compete straight up on price, much like Apple's PC products.
Cheap tablets will dominate the market, Mr. Moore will make sure of it.
"Because Apple has used its plentiful cash to corner the market on key tablet components—like touch-screen displays—many competitors will find that the only way to make a tablet with comparable features but a lower price is to sell it at a loss. You can’t do that unless you have some other way to make money, like a big digital media store."
That argument was used in regards to the iPhone as well. Apple's supposedly insurmountable component purchases would make it impossible for competitors to ... compete.
And there's Android, out activating the iPhone three to one. Apparently those Android phones are either made out of cardboard, or the manufacturers found components.
In reality, 2012 will be the year the iPad loses its market dominance in tablets. By the end of 2013, Apple will hold 1/4 to 1/3 of the market, which is exactly what their entire business model is designed around: lower market share, much higher margins.
There's a track record in publishing, where new money has an itch they want to scratch in old media. The last decade, this has happened in magazines and newspapers a few prominent times. Someone gets rich, they decide they want to be a publisher, and they follow their heart in regards to high quality journalism, and spout all sorts of great sounding bytes on how important x y z is.
The new money rarely realizes just how hard it is to stay afloat in the world of magazines and newspapers.
Then reality hits, and the crushing difficulty of running a magazine becomes apparent. Unfortunately, what's most likely to happen is Chris will take at least a moderate financial loss on the purchase. And he may very well not mind, that's understood.
Surprising given their small stakes. All I've seen are the surface features of the YC deals, so I'm not up to speed on the specific terms they get.
It's very plausible they walked with between $500k and $1m. That's an awesome return on $20k.
If we had to tally the financial toll, the community toll, the prison toll, the fiscal toll, the death toll --- you'd have to break out the Korean and Vietnam wars to find a good comparison.
Then I saw the price. Hopefully the market teaches them a lesson.
Twitter has stated their business model is advertising. If I'm recalling correctly, the sourced estimates are that they're at a $200+ million run rate on sales. If they get to $500 million in the next few years, that's a great base, even if it's not on Facebook's level.
$300 / month? Ok, so -
1) how many people buy, due to HN, that they can't directly attribute to a HN follow-through click?
2) what has the exposure been worth, for literally everything they do (from pushing books to all their services)? Particularly given the rather high value group that they reach through HN.
Try putting a price on the massive branding and credibility they've acquired through reaching the HN audience, and then the follow-on value. I'd argue that their exposure on HN is worth radically more than advertising; for the same reason your friend sharing a link directly with you is worth a zillion times more than a block ad on facebook.
Spanning several years, I'd peg the value into the millions of dollars given the size of their business and how hard it actually is to get traction and exposure in their market.
They surprisingly don't point that out. (har har)