dsirijus

This is obviously Google trying to grab a piece of advertising budgets of apps and impact of this on "discoverability* will remain to be seen as emergent property later on. Definitely not the primary driver behind this feature.

However, before we start booing Google...

Facebook already holds unarguably the biggest part of this already, and Google heading closer to the center of that particular arena will likely result in a net positive for publishers.

My guess for would be that this will push Facebook little by little to specialize in iOS ad-mongering.

Responsible countries handle this through a simple legislated idea - personal bankruptcy; this is a political populist move not inspired by any actual reasoning into effects of this on economy. Not that I think effect is of any serious impact, for anyone.

This move is exactly of the category that is crippling Croatia. We (yes, a Croat here) are in a bit of a pickle, and let me explain the core of the it...

Even excluding astonishing amount of pensioners (many from previous regime) and war-inflicted disabled persons (whose actual condition is matter to be looked upon suspiciously) and other non-working class of people, work-force segments into two distinct categories - directly or indirectly dependant on the goverment as source of income, and the good "old" private sector. The trouble here is that former is riddled with catastrophic inefficiency, corruption and evades competitive market, and the latter carries the burden of former. The issue is - in democratic elections, majority wins, and the former here is the majority.

So we keep up with this cancerous tumor of goverment-dependants who won't ever vote for someone who'll put a stop to it (hey, they're not crazy, why would they vote against their immediate interests), and violently cut it out of the system.

Maybe, and just maybe (haven't crunched the numbers), within a generation, when few factors align (war-disabled die off, unemployed numbers increase even more), the actual critical mass of value-adding work-force outweighs the tumor, brighter days await us. And even that is under assumption there will be an election choice that'll be catalyst for those changes at that point.

I personally don't hold an optimist view. Hell, even our geographical geometric shape looks unstable and unnatural. War ended by higher powers putting a stop to it, not resolution. And as far as EU membership goes - meh, we're again at the age-old role of a border country as a proxy for keeping the region stable and keeping the muslims out. Important role, but hardly grateful.

Not to end on a completely sour note - I did notice a sentiment of unity last few years. Particulary noted during holiday sales (or the lack of excessive spending), people seem to coalesce in misery, slowly perceiving that we're in this shit together, unlike during last two decades, where they would aspire beyond means, due to many factors including prominence of war-profiteers. Like my grandma said: "It was never worse here during my lifetime. After WWII at least everyone was poor."

Had to affirm this beyond an upvote - don't even think of going there.

I didn't find it painful at all too. Neither did these guys - http://www.audiotool.com

Would you be more envious if there was a million people that are better at whatever you're envious at or if there was exactly one such person?

You've got it in the wrong order.

Scaling. Like any proper startup.

You're also hogging my 'ds<Tab>' completion in #startups, dude. One stupid letter in front of me!

<3

Plenty of us read and appreciate your contributions and ilk of ill-fated on HN (not to name names).

They always complain about lack of optimistic outlook on the future, so I gave it a shot.

Spandex suits for everyone!

Yes, my statement might be a slight straw man, albeit an honest one - I just think that "being better enterpreneur", "being disruptive", being anything or having any goal implies making optimal actions to reach it, and I've projected that onto OP's statements.

In my book, it's simple - if I have a maxim "do not be an asshole", then I won't be. If I do not, but instead "unseat a corrupt taxi monopoly", then I'm bound to be an asshole in some of my actions. If I have both, they're bound to clash in some subset - there's no synergy of limitations.

And, like my thread sibling stated, paraphrased, you're bound to be marked an asshole by some anyways, whether you're Gandhi or Zuckerberg.

It's not false.

There's N options for optimal action, some more in category of "asshole", some more in "non-asshole".

Blanket statement all "asshole" actions are non-optimal is a pretty huge leap of faith.

The real question you should be asking yourself is optimal for what? Your statement (or sentiment at the very least) says you're optimizing for not being an "asshole", in which case, you're correct. That's also the only case where you're fully correct.

Sold.

Now we just need to get 7.2 billion minus 2 people on-board.

I'll do my best to fix my language as soon as you fix your units.

Your units suck.

You're wrong about categories of analogy, but I don't blame you - analogies are a pretty slippery slopes. In particular, you're most likely conflating these because of the implementation detail - you write HTML, so writing music is an analogy. Not really - writing HTML is closer to performing music.

You can teach almost everyone to perform "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on piano or "Smoke on the Water" on guitar within 15 minutes, both of which are de facto "Hello world!" equivalents to many aspiring musicians.

EDIT: Removed attempt at drawing a HTML/music analogy which could be closer to truth. It is really fruitless endeavour, makes no sense.

It is pretty simple:

1. Determine how much time are you willing to allocate for work.

2. Set whatever the price that will fill up that time with client work.

3. Once you have more clients than allocated time, increase your price.

(bonus) 4. Client pool and time permitting, target projects that will further evolution/creation of skills you want to improve/develop, not the ones that you've already good enough at.

To be able to do that, you should have some form of rudimentary tracking of your time/price/value performance. No need for overkill here, a simple regulary updated spreadsheet or even just a text file will do. The accent is on "regulary updated".

What a glasshole.

Find an understanding partner. Since you obviously don't have a clue about anything besides programming (sorry, harsh words, but I don't have the time to type out a list of mistakes you did here), it'll have to be business dude that handles stress and load well.

Have him insulate you from the support, monetization, PR, and so on, and let him assemble Terms of Use to be very generous towards you as a programmer in a way that you don't have to respond to reported bugs (especially concerning monetization) immediately but leisurely.

Agree with him on the priority of types of fixes/improvements and have him deliver lists of tasks to you on a weekly/monthly basis.

Have that business partner on a probation period first, to see is he supportive of your persona and then split profits with him 50/50. It'll be a great opportunity to learn from him strategems of handling stuff you cannot.

Aim long-term. These types of games are something people stick around for quite some time. Adjust monetization model accordingly. These numbers you have or project right now are meaningless from that context.

Do the right thing and good luck.

As a side note, an analogy to first-time parents is an appropriate one here. A lot of them panic a lot when they find out baby is on its way. But I'm not ready! I'll make mistakes during parenthood! Will I be able to support it!?

And most kids still turn out just fine.

Cheer up. :)

Already prepping groundwork for the next CEO in the 2015, no worries. I know I'm not fit for this. 4 months to go.

"He who tells the truth will be chased out of nine villages."

I see that many people handle many responsibilities while the rest of the team is completely oblivious of the extent of their contribution.

But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about risk. That's being picked up by only me and is _the_ determinating variable in the end game from my moral viewpoint. Risk can be in form of financial risk, time, legal... But I'm here taking all that while they're being paid market rate to, what, do regular JavaScript, Photoshop and ability to pack their suitcase and leave with no consequences at any point they feel like?

Nah, I don't think so.

My personal work experience has led me to believe that world is filled with self-entitled people without much to support it in either responsibility/risk handling/actual productive value. Mind you, we're from different cultures (Balkan).

The more I push the line of "I don't care what others think about me" to its absolute, the happier I am as a person. That does not neccesarily mean me earning more money or having a better team morale.

Ask HN:

So, I'm the sole founder here with investor. The dude's awesome, but the contract we signed puts me in significant financial risk if the company doesn't turn up profitable.

I have more than several employees (some of them will probably read this) who I pay regular and competitive money though I'm not particulary pleased with their output (but hey, it's improving, and there's not much of a talent pool here). Most work on their hourlies, and if milestones/deadlines are not met, I try to find somebody else and handle all the consequences of that myself. Basically, I handle entire risk and stress.

Now, if what we work on turns profitable, or has a successful exit or whatnot, you know how much of that money do I think it's fair to give to them?

Nada. Zilch. Zero. Go through the shit I'm going through yourself if you want a big payout and then we'll talk.

What do you think?

I know a few folks from http://houseogames.com

From what I recall, it didn't really pan out, but people grew wiser and better at what they do, so that's good.

Personally, I got some investment money and almost all the developers included in my current projects live/lived/will live in a big place with me now. I think it works because of clear hierachy, discipline and common concrete goals.

In a commune-like system, you'll get a bunch of extremely individualist personalities and not much of a team, unless planets lined up.

Which reminds me, I need to start distributing morning coffee to their pillows and round 'em up right now.

Any sufficiently advanced business model is indistinguishable from a scam.

The most important bit missed here is - what exactly are you doing?

I started as a physical worker, and when I switched to computers, coming back to physical work felt like taking a holiday.

Now when I'm actively managing people and finances, having a 3-day code crunch is my definition of a walk in the sunshine. Sometimes I literally can't stop smiling during that period, it's such a relief.

I don't really care if it's silent or not, but I find it important that it's controlled by me as much as possible. Even to the point of running a rain noise simulator under some music album.

As far as actual volume is concerned, I play music all day long, unless I'm extremely hung over and need to rest. In hands of a skilled operator, music is basically a mood control board. I can't imagine why would someone want to live without that power.

Extremely insightful. The blame is on all of us, even if the pollution did in fact leak from China (fact about which we have no clue about yet).

This is exactly the sort of thing where we're all in it, hands dirtied, want it or not.

It's all too easy to jump to conclusion and shout "China!", but in spirit of true political correctness (without the usual hubris) - there is nothing so fundamentally different between Chinese and any other dear humans of this world that would, given just slight changes in political/social/economical/religious enviroment, prevent them from doing something like this.

What Adobe got right with Flash (and Blender unfortunately failed to do for 3D) was entire self-contained production pipeline within a single product. You get to fire up Flash IDE, draw in it, layout in it, add scripts to it, debug there, test, publish, and voila - game done. This led to huge productivity/creativity boosts and single-man chop shops.

I had my little hybrid Tablet PC back in 2008 where I'd fire up Adobe Flash IDE, get to draw on it with a pen with pressure sensitivity and custom brushes, swivel to PC mode, get to some coding, attach scripts, debug some, and get my game prototype up in few hours with decent hand-drawn art. Hell, I remember fully completing (to production binary, with zero or very little tweaks afterwards) some adver-games in under 3 hours.

Imagine that - you need just a single application to do absolutely _everything_ in order to publish a successful game. Fast.

I'm still waiting for anything even remotely close to that in terms of both quality and features, on _any_ other technological platform for game development, lest one that was immediately deployable to >99% of potential customers.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be (probably) better if they did release it but that the fact that they do not isn't surprising.