zumbojo

pg's "Ramen Profitable" essay contains an excellent Rice and Beans recipe: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n

The "Siracusa County" reference refers to this Hypercritical episode: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/15

The Walmarts you mentioned:

Lush: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=walmart++Hilton+Head+Island,+...

Fully paved: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=walmart++Hilton+Head+Island,+...

Stack Exchange (including Stack Overflow, etc.): http://stackexchange.com/

One of Jeff Atwood's blog posts on the topic: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/the-gamification.ht...

The most recent Freakonomics on Marketplace segment focused on this study:

http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/08/23/there%E2%80%99s-cake-...

In the case of Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange, see Jeff Atwood's (slightly dated - IIRC job candidates are no longer charged) answer to "What is Stack Overflow's business model?":

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-...

And their Careers 2.0 employer page:

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/employer

Did you apply to YC, or were you invited to YC?

(I am curious how the process works for startups that already have significant traction before joining YC. Humble Bundle comes to mind.)

E-ink Kindles write a "Your battery is empty" message to the screen shortly before the battery becomes completely discharged.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickbilton/3636447946/

Xbox 360 (mostly for Netflix and YouTube)

Sencha - http://www.sencha.com/

A NYT article during development in 2009:

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/business/10novel.html

There was an excellent discussion on this same salary negotiation tactic in a recent episode of "Build and Analyze":

http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/19

(Salary discussion was at some point after discussing VC but before Android market share.)

I believe it ends up getting enforced at the retailer level; most major chains will refuse to purchase Christmas lights that are not UL listed, so you can be reasonably sure that the cheaply manufactured lights you purchase at Walmart don't burn your house down. They also seem to be providing education [1] and revising their standards [2] to discourage particularly ill-advised appliances such as electric turkey fryers.

[1]: http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/offerings/perspectives/co... [2]: http://ulstandardsinfonet.ul.com/scopes/1083.html

I believe Underwriters Laboratories and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety would be US examples of similar private agencies.

37signals Podcast, This Developer's Life, Freakonomics Radio, Hanselminutes (in addition to several already mentioned by others).

I am a fan of both Top Gear (seen every episode, save for the most recent series) and Tesla (would kill for a Roadster or Model S).

The Tesla Roadster review seemed to be fairly typical of Top Gear; with Jeremy Clarkson pointing out his likes and dislikes in fairly equal proportion. Clarkson in fact seemed very impressed with the Roadster’s performance and I believe the official lap time placed it somewhere around a comparable Porsche 911. The breakdowns seemed believable, especially for a supercar; as Richard Hammond pointed out in a later episode within that series (wherein a Pagani Zonda breaks down within the first few test laps on the Top Gear track) that it’s the nature of supercars to "explode immediately" on use. Tesla didn’t seem to receive a harsher treatment than any other car manufacturer.

The Tesla Roadster is an amazing product, but it -like every machine made before it- has a few bugs to be worked out. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I have yet to give Evernote a full test drive but personally ever since Google implemented two-factor authentication Google Docs seems to have a profound aura of safety that makes notes feel super-private and nigh-unloseable. It’s hard to complete with that. If Evernote were to implement OpenID I would likely be much more interested.

A barebones, 30-minute (5 minutes if you're good) FizzBuzz-esque puzzle given to candidates up front has drastically reduced the number phone interviews that leave me paralytically depressed at the state of CS education.

I pop the SIM out of my iPhone and put it into one of these whenever I go biking or camping. Mine cost $15 as a GoPhone (not unlocked). Couldn't be happier.

Jeff Atwood did an excellent piece on exactly this issue:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/05/on-working-remotely...

Same here; I think cable companies’ complacency in customer service issues isn’t receiving due consideration when discussing this “cord-cutting” trend.

When I purchased my house in 2008, I proceeded to call Comcast (intending to sign up for basic cable + Internet), set my iPhone on speakerphone, and paint the walls of my new rooms. After three nights of 30-45 minute waits with no answer, I gave up and purchased AT&T DSL.

The upgrade is practically automatic. iTunes nags you every time you plug in an out-of-date iPhone and only requires a single click. That and the jump from 3.3.1 to 4.x is an absolute night-and-day excruciating difference in speed and usability.

Companies that have vast numbers of adjustable desks (e.g. Fog Creek [1]): How many developers use them in standing mode vs. sitting mode? Do many pick a mode and stick with it forever, or do they change it up throughout the day? And how many who are normally sedentary switch for a few days following a story like this on HN (or the hailstorm of similar stories on Lifehacker not too long ago)? :-P

Selfishly, my question can be boiled down to "build a standing desk or splurge on a GeekDesk?", but I am genuinely interested in how people use them long term.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMVeHFrgOpE

The founders of Instructables seem to have a reasonably good treadmill desk + code setup (though I personally couldn't tolerate his monitor configuration).

http://www.instructables.com/id/Treadmill-Desk/

I haven't been to BK in a while, but during grad school the back of every receipt asked you to call a number, complete a survey, write down a code, and redeem the receipt for a free Whopper. The code consisted of two letters corresponding to the month (the key to which was easily found online) and four digits (which I just randomized).

The kicker was that BK would give you the free Whopper...and a receipt for the free Whopper. And the cycle continues.

Nova did an excellent (and surprisingly technical) episode [1] on the 2005 race mentioned in this piece, including Thrun's Stanford team. It was especially impressive as a triumph of Thurn's software-based approach over several of the other veteran teams that relied heavily on complex hardware (e.g., those teams used camera gimbals while Thrun's team just compensated for camera bumps using code).

For those of you on Netflix, it's available as a streaming video [2], and I highly recommend it.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/ [2] http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Great-Robot-Race-Nova/700...

During a talk [1] at Stanford, Loren Brichter mentioned that he was living off income from Tweetie (this was before Twitter's acquisition of Atebits and the rebranding of Tweetie to be Twitter for iPhone).

[1] http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewiTunes...

Netflix, Flickr, GitHub

Netflix's streaming is reasonably efficient; one forum user mentions that HD streaming consumes 3.8 Mb/s (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1115352), which is comparable to what I see on my Tomato bandwidth graphs (~4.0 Mb/s). I have a coworker that lives out in the middle of nowhere. He gets ~1 Mb/s and lives on Netflix streaming.

So you're probably not doomed. That being said, I am against any reduction of USPS service and in favor of caching Netflix Watch It Now movies, as you have mentioned.