onetimeuse001

Dude, if Apple is liked and their brand loved even more, that $xxx million spent on solar there is nothing, even if it's declared a total loss. So, in theory, you can be a total capitalist and "waste money."

My point was not to assume that this makes sense economically just because Apple did it. They have other ways of getting their money back and if they lose, it's just a rounding error http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=AAPL&annual

You sure have seen the Beyond Petroleum ads, haven't you? http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/01/15/beyond-petrole...

As someone said, these are bright people and will probably make it, if not they can still go back to college.

But for 99.99% of "smart people," college is probably the best bet. Even if you had a few $million, that can go very easily over the course of decades with a few bad investment decisions, medical bills or whatever. A safe job usually provides a steady income for decades and decades.

Thiel is set for life and then some, but even if he loses the money he has a top college education to fall back on. So it's easy to make experiments with other people's lives.

No matter what, do not expect to work for Thiel's funds without a degree and from a top college http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-05-14/wall_street/3...

Not necessarily, it could very well be a PR trick. Going solar is trendy so they may have done it to get some press. It pays off but maybe in extra iPhone sales /brand building

Who cares why he made it? The internet is full of videos and posts mocking Jesus, Buddha and virtually every sect or religion or lack of religion out there. Also people mock fat people, skinny people, black, white, green and everyone in between. Do they have to blow something up to get attention from Google?

I understand that just because you can do it, you shouldn't do it, but Google is different, they did not make the film and their platform should be open to all but illegal stuff (child pppron for example).

I am upset that certain people call me an infidel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafir . Google should remove those videos that cal everyone else an unbeliever or else ;).

The estimated cost projections for the bullet train project keep getting bigger. I've seen estimates as high as $68 billion

Wait until it starts, it will at least double the initial projections. It sure makes you wonder if it's just payback to certain groups or spending to create (very expensive) jobs for a while.

Suffering from hypothermia? Many are enterprise users, and this can mean a strike against Google Apps. Many of them stick with XP because it works great for their purpose and many applications only work with IE.

Like it or not, Microsoft wins a lot of points for supporting older versions for a decade plus. They might lose a few bucks on a new Windows license but make it back on reputation and other enterprise tools.

"I suspect your comment will seem obviously wrong in five years."

I suspect your comment too will seem obviously wrong in sixty-five years. Geez

The carriers are also dying for a third major OS, but time will tell. Maybe the features Apple left out aren't as loved by common people as bloggers make them seem.

Personally I'd want better battery life (who wouldn't) but would not buy a phone for a stylus and 5.5 inch screen is too big for me.

Google needs to be harder on these manufacturers for the good of the consumers, the ecosystem, and ultimately the manufacturers as well. What will the "Android ecosystem" become if they create bigger and bigger incompatibilities and make developers jobs that much harder?

Devil's advocate: How has Kindle Fire hurt consumers? It hasn't but it has hurt Google. This is the same (minus the market share) like Microsoft saying to Samsung, Sony and Acer "Release Android phones and no Windows licenses for you" or something to that effect, considering the Google Apps /vs Android code.

Acer sells in US and prob in EU too.

If my guess is right and "Aliyun" is an Android fork, then cry me a river -- if Acer wants to sell an official Android device they shouldn't expect to make money selling gray market clones on the side.

Lots of speculation from all of us, but assuming that the story is true, you are wrong. First Google says that Android is open source and free to improve so what's the big deal?

Secondly, Google holds a large percentage of the-mobile market through the official Android so anti-trust is listening. A clear case of anti-competitive behavior since Google would not be able to control the non-official forks.

I think he is looking for the next Zuckenberg to say: "give me $50k and here's 25% [of the next Facebook]. What, we need to incorporate?" but YC has done the initial steps.

Hi James, http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2012/01/... http://www.torymcbroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/google...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4476508

"facebook integrated - no thank you apple, we want privacy"

Who's we? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_statistics

Personally I use it on a separate browser but wanted to point out that you (and me) are in the minority.

Looks pretty cool to me. As for specs some people love: I don't care much, provided everything works smoothly and seamlessly. (Fine tuning Apache and MySQL has saved me tons of cash by doing a lot more with the same hardware.)

Now replace Redmond with ...http://farm1.staticflickr.com/29/43356340_36deb98522.jpg :)

Why? Or just because 10MP has more pixels than a 7MP one?

I doubt people could tell the difference between 7 million and 10 million pixels, unless you want to put it on a billboard

Not really, he's giving YC a lot of backhanded compliments

Oh, and how much net profit has Android yielded Google?

Android has cost billions but what if Apple and Microsoft shared the mobile market and replaced the default SE with Bing or Yahoo? That was Google's worry and that's why they spent billions for years. That huge expense was essentially hidden by filling web search pages with ads in commercial niches to the point of making them unusable. When earnings grow by double digit questions are few

or if they realize that the product/company will not become as successful as they though it would be.

I'd put my money on this one ^^, if I had to choose. If growth is 50% month to month founders can learn to "agree to disagree" over a lot of things. Quora was way too overhyped to begin with and maybe they bought their own hype

But they have less cars, to take an example. Dead is dead was my point and in whatever country you live, you will deal with the cars, lions, tundra or whatever.

Life expectancy is not entirely medical and is not a particularly good way to compare countries. Consider that among the top causes of death in the US are "accidents" (predominantly motor vehicles) and suicide, both of which are anomalously high in the US.

Maybe I am getting it wrong but does it matter how you die? Generally speaking (averaged out,) if you live in US and do what the average person does, you will get in accidents and deal with the pressures that push some to suicides (around 10 to 22 per 100,000 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-14/suicide-rates-rise-... .) Even if you are careful, the recently licensed teenager, to stereotype, can ram his car into yours.

When I talk to my wife or mother or boss over the phone, I just pick it up and talk. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy, and even if I was as smart as you to know how to encrypt things, 99% of people wouldn't know how to. So my point still stands.

Lives can be ruined by exposing private messages, website visited etc., so Wikileaks dropped a lot of notches in my opinion.

We're talking about 11 years ago.

on another note, here's a random message from the files:

|whats up listen tomorrow let me go alone to overnite ok its not cause i dont want you to go is that i need to think about somethings that i need to clear my mind dont get mad or trip i need to do this fo

Is it me or this is wrong? It cheapens whatever mission Wikileaks had. I do not want my private messages broadcast all over the world, especially when I'm a private citizen.

<start pathetic argument> I can't believe Apple is suing HP for making a computer with a keyboard, mouse and a monitor with round corners. Apple is a patent troll, suing instead of innovating</end android fanboi argument>

Apple won round one and really screwed HTC http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/20/us-htc-apple-paten... . It's not in HTC's interest to pick a fight will mighty Apple at all, so the best scenario for HTC would a deal with Apple. Apple can sue them again and again and again for patent after patent. Even the legal fees will be felt by HTC

Remember: HTC's loyalties are with their shareholders, not to fight a war against Apple on behalf of Google or Android fans. If their board determined that selling bottled water was better than making phones, they have a duty to pivot. Google (Motorola) is different, they have a much larger stake in Android.

There is no Android vs iPhone here. At worst for Apple, they let HTC off the hook and continue against others, for as long as they can.

Can they? Judges have to go by existing laws, not invent them.

Beats Audio success is also due to need. I have two laptops with Beats Audio, and presumably they got a few bucks from each. When buying them I wondered if there's something special about the speakers and probably made me more likely to buy them, but all laptops have speakers anyway.

Glasses are another animal, both price and the cool factor are hurdles. Not cool > http://www.freetechnologyadvise.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/...

In this pig case the PERSON himself might not be willing to spend $XXX given the odds. Let's face it we make such decisions each day: we face a million types of diseases and a million ways to die. Not to mention that we smoke, drink, eat red meat, buttered popcorn, ice cream...

not everyone has Medicaid, usually the lower middle class gets hosed (too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but barely making ends meet.)

Now that you mentioned it, they probably they charge individuals well over $100K if Medicaid pays $66k