ryanelkins

A ride in an autonomous vehicle should be far less expensive than a ride in a manually driven Uber vehicle.

If the end goal for both is a fleet of autonomous vehicles and a strong app to facilitate the use of that fleet by the public, I would much rather be in Tesla's position. Having a fleet and needing to create an app sounds a lot more promising than having an app but no fleet. Tesla will be able to get an app up and running far sooner than Uber will be able to get a fleet.

The revenue thing is addressing a conflict in LinkedIn's approach. The value in the platform is the users but their monetization of that platform tends to drive off users (due to being spammy). So they are saying they need to find a monetization system that encourages user growth rather than detracts from it.

You may not agree with that, but that's their logic. It's not quite as tautological as you make it seem.

I can see where you're coming from but I think you're oversimplifying it. Spending money and showing up ARE ways that you CAN get good at things. They might not be the only ways or even the most important ways but they are definitely ways.

No matter how skilled you are you can only get so far in life without spending any money. You'll definitely lag behind less skilled people that are willing or able to spend money. I don't like in app purchases myself either but even I can recognize when a timely purchase can have a big payoff. Sure, some games make to too easy to pay to win, but that's a balance each company has to discover.

Likewise, sometimes a big part of success IS just showing up. Much of luck is putting yourself in a position to take advantage of situations when they arise. Even in MMO type of games - I've seen plenty of people go from terrible to pretty good just by showing up enough and learning how to play.

Of course, by themselves, neither of these are good indicators of success and perhaps they are overvalued in some games, but they are definitely applicable to real life.

I'd kind of like to see an actual post before I sign up. Your first post is short and just telling me what to expect - why not just give me a real post so I can see what I'd be getting? Right now you're asking me to sign up without really giving me any idea of what I might be getting in return.

When I worked as a dev I hated having people walking around behind me. I worked at a place where my desk was near a relatively high traffic area so there was a constant stream of people walking past.

I find it hard to really concentrate on something with random people walking around or hanging out behind me. It has nothing to do with them looking at my screen even - just knowing someone is standing around behind me can be a little unnerving. I'd much prefer having them in front of me than behind me.

It almost feels like a primal survival instinct. When you're concentrating on work you're more vulnerable because you're less aware of your surroundings. It's not like I'm really expecting to be attacked from behind or anything but something deep in my brain is sending up an alarm.

Every customer of mine pays through a bank transfer.

Some pay monthly, some pay the full contract upfront. We offer a discount for those that pay upfront so it's the customer's choice.

Most of our customers pay within 15-30 days. Our invoice says Net15 but some customers insist on different terms. It's just another negotiation point for us. Often the company policy is something like Net60 and the people we are talking to can't change that.

Whatever the terms end up being, some customers are really good about sticking to them, and some aren't. Sometimes a customer doesn't pay for 2-3 months and then we get a deposit for all those payments lumped up at once.

In almost all cases, the people making the payments have no relation to the people who bought your product. They most likely don't even know them or even work in the same state (or country). The bigger the company the more likely this is.

Once you've worked with a particular customer for a while you at least have a good idea of how they pay.

I just hate sites that won't accept spaces and restrict how long a password can be (usually to something relatively short like 8 or 12 characters). Also, many require you to use mixed case and/or numbers or "special" characters. I usually just use complete sentences.

I definitely think gamification is in a hype stage right now. Some people seem to think it fix anything and others are happy to take their money. Gamification is young and no one has a good grasp of what it actually is or how it can best be applied.

I like the idea that it can act as a better source of feedback. I think the Stack Exchange sites do a good of this. It obviously works - HN itself moved to make karma less noticeable because it was altering behaviors so much. The key will be to figure out how to best harness it apply it to a worthwhile end. We're working to use gamification to help people learn new systems faster, understand what is expected of them, and drive business goals. It's working pretty well towards those goals so far.

Talking and sharing things with friends wasn't new before "social". Gamification is about better feedback for the end user in real time.

Yes, people have been doing it for a long time but they've been using low-tech means. I've seen a lot of "leaderboards" on white boards, Word docs, and emails. They get updated every few days. The data exists to make these measurements much more complex and yet present the results in a simplified, easy to consume fashion. Gamification is taking these existing practices and moving them into the modern age.

Managers get a lot of this data already, it's just often not exposed to the end user, and it might be confusing if done so in the same manner. Gamification allows us to present meaningful metrics to the end user to help them understand how they are meeting expectations. People may resent that information but not displaying it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Instead of getting feedback in an annual review now they can get it anytime they want.

Yes, they mentioned that was the best centralized place to do it from.

Google also recently removed Facebook contacts from Android with the Gingerbread 2.3.3 update. Facebook had an exemption up to that point where they played by different rules with regards to how/where contacts are stored when syncing contacts using the Facebook app. It will be interesting to see how this back and forth goes.

The problem is that even answering that question just leads to another question. It ends up the way conversations go with inquisitive children - an endless stream of "why"s with no real end because we don't know everything. At some point you just have to reach a satisfactory answer and realize that the more you learn the more you come to understand how little you know.

There's a difference between visual design and architectural design.

Yeah, I might like to be notified when it is actually shipped out, or maybe even when it changes locations. Often time you might have a date range so it could also be useful to know if it's at the local hub and should be delivered today if I need someone at home to sign for it.

Anyways, it would sure beat digging up the email and visiting the tracking page all the time to keep up with it. I also liked the suggestion about being able to see the status of all my packages on one page across shippers.

I'm sure all this complicates things for you quite a bit, as right now you don't need people to sign up or anything. You don't even need much of a website beyond what you currently have. If this version goes well I'm sure you have plans to incorporate some of this stuff, so in that regard, this seems like a great MVP.

I can understand that - to be honest we're still trying to work all of that out. I'm going to try to write up some more details to address this concern. The short answer is it will be free as long as you are "small" although I need to define that and what happens after that. We definitely plan to have that in writing (for both parties benefit) before going ahead with anyone.

Heh, yeah I think we're the first officially funded startup by Neumont alums. Glad to see some people from there reading Hacker News.

This actually has been an issue for the App Store recently, primarily concerning VLC. See http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/no-gpl-apps-for-apples...

Yeah, seems to be working now, although he had seen my previous comment so he just gave me a dirty look when his phone started ringing. He did answer though, and I heard him mutter something about "pickles and tomatoes" trending on twitter.

Seems like it might be down. I tried sending an example to my cofounder because I wanted him to answer the phone and have a rooster scream into his ear but so far all I've got is an ajax spinner going. Now all the giggling I was doing on the other side of the office just seems extra creepy.

I was at the lunch he mentioned - we have a good startup community here in Utah but it was surprising to see the number of people that showed up to hear him. I hope to see the number of scalable startups in Utah increase over time.

I don't play WoW currently and haven't for over a year now but I did enjoy my time playing. I was accused of being an addict although I don't think I was - I just enjoyed playing and hanging out with people online.

It's funny reading this article and all the comments. IT's not so much about WoW vs being productive as diversions in general. I know people who spend most of their free time reading fiction. Isn't that just as bad? What about watching TV and movies? How about browsing the internet for hours on end? Yeah, maybe you learned something interesting, but unless you're going Jeopardy it probably won't really pay off.

Being productive for productivities sake is also an interesting view point. At what point do you decide to just enjoy your life by doing the things you enjoy rather than trying to "make it better". If you enjoy the journey then great - if not, do you arrive at a point where you are satisfied? Or do you continually struggle to reach some goal that is always just out of reach?

Yes - some people may feel trapped in a game like WoW. I think there are also many people who just enjoy the game and the experience and prioritize their life accordingly. Just because someone doesn't have the same aspirations as you doesn't make them a bad person. I'm sure if you ask most people they would like to be more successful - but few are willing to give up all distractions and diversions to achieve that.

The problem is not many people would play that game. Of those that do, not many would play for very long.

These games are formulaic because the formula works. I've thought of numerous things I would like to see done differently, but really the way they are done now are what get people to play them for so long. I've played some really great games, but I've never played any of them for nearly as long as I've played WoW.

Many developers have the initial gut reaction to build instead of buy. I've found that many people don't really fully understand the ramifications though. Even if some of these places only have 3-5 developers working on this full time - that's still probably FAR more resources than another company, especially a startup, can devote to the problem. You also now need resources to maintain and update it. All of this takes resources away from whatever it is your business actually does.

I guess the hard part is really determining what is trivial vs what is worth letting someone else take over. Some people may look at the above services and feel like they look pretty easy - and then a week or a month down the line they realize there is more to it than they first thought.

Other aspects people often don't think about - dashboards and admin sections usable by a non-developer.

I'm not vouching for any of these services as I have never needed to use any of them, but I would definitely guard against blind "not invented here" syndrome.

I agree. I think the adoption of the term "gamification" has caused a rift because really, this isn't about making things in to games or creating fun - it's about creating motivation. I think a big part of the backlash against "gamification" is this misdirection implied in the term. The feedback and reward mechanisms used are things that were honed in games - the idea is to take the ideas behind motivational and reward systems from games and move them into things that specifically aren't games - not to make these non-games into games.

I say this as a founder of a "gamification" or "game mechanics" 3rd party service provider. Unfortunately, the term is now lodged in our vernacular, I'm afraid.

People can't even agree what gamification is. As the article points out, there is a push towards what some people call pointification. (BTW I hate both of these terms.)

I see the main breakdown as being some people see gamification as making things more game like and some (myself included) see it as taking feedback elements from games and moving them into non gaming applications. There is room for intersection there, but those looking to amke everything "fun" are going to have their work cut out for them. I don't believe everything can be made to be fun - more interesting, yes, but not necessarily fun. I mean, even many games have elements that aren't fun. People don't grind in RPGs because it's fun. Achievement hunting is more about collecting than being fun. Fun is overrated. I'll take motivational over fun any day.

It's like rain on your wedding day.

The problem is that most feedback systems (which is mostly what gamification the way it's being implemented now really is) are measuring quantitative results. Bug tracking is a job that can be hard to quantify. All you can usually measure is quantity. There is virtually no quality metric involved. You have to make sure that the goal you're trying to accomplish by adding game mechanics doesn't get lost. Too often the game mechanics end up being there for their own sake.

As others have mentioned you also have to make sure to not create unintended negative consequences. For example, maybe people earn a badge for fixing 5 bugs in 20 minutes. What happens then if people stop committing bugs so they can "build up" fixes and turn them in at once? What if people start creating bugs for themselves to fix? You can very easily create more problems for yourself if every angle is not carefully thought out - and even then you'll probably still create some problems.

Keep in mind I say all of this not as a game mechanics cynic but as someone whose entire startup is based around helping other people incorporate game mechanics (http://iactionable.com).

I always think its funny when a bunch of nerds start talking about how to win a fight. I say that as a nerd who got beat up and pushed around a lot in elementary up through high school. Once I could afford it I made it a point to study self defense, not so that I could fight, but so I at least had the confidence to know how to handle myself.

Learning to fight for its own sake is dumb if your plan is to do it outside of a structured sporting event. Keep in mind I don't mean self defense. Most people won't get into a fight unless they feel extremely confident about winning. That could mean they are much bigger, well trained, armed, have lots of friends, etc. If you don't know how to defend yourself, you probably won't figure it out in the time it takes someone to punch you. The best defense is to know when to get out.

Just had a big confrontation with someone at a bar? The time to leave is NOW (before he comes back with friends, a bottle to the back of the head, finds you stumbling out drunk, etc). During that confrontation? Keep your hands up and the other person away from you - pretty much the same stance as if you were going to throw a punch but with your hands open. Don't turn your back to someone who is aggressive - back away slowly.

If worse comes to worse you won't remember any techniques you read here or elsewhere unless you've practiced them A LOT. Just try and remember that while there are no rules you shouldn't try to escalate a fight any more than you need to in order to get away. What I mean by this is if someone shoves you, just walk away. IF you throw a punch then they throw a punch, etc. You hit a guy and he goes down? Great, now leave. Start kicking him now and maybe his 2 or 3 friends decide it's a good time to jump in instead of helping their friend up. Don't escalate a situation unnecessarily.

If you want more than this - go take Krav Maga classes for a year or two - then you'll at least (hopefully) be able to throw a decent punch without hurting yourself.

I agree with this as it pertains to kids in school. I wish I better knew how to defend myself as a gangly teenager. I fully plan on making sure my son know knows how to defend himself and when it is appropriate to do so.

However, the author goes on to describe attacking people trying to mug him - that's a bit foolhardy I think. Sure, it may work with some people who thought they had an easy mark, others might pull out a knife and gut you. I'm not saying you hug they guy and tell him how swell he is - but for the sake of yourself and anyone that might be with you - just give them your wallet or car or whatever it is. Now if you feel they are going to put you in a situation where you won't be able to defend yourself (they want to cuff you, tie you up, etc) - now you have an argument for going on the offensive.

Even when those buttons DO work they aren't instantaneous. You presume a world where pedestrians have almost no patience. A more likely scenario is that people start pushing the button more and more trying to get it to work before they "give up in disgust".