yarianluis

REI has a 100% satisfaction guaranteed. About a year or two ago I purchased a few different bicycle parts. I kept them without using them for a few months and decided I didn't really need them after all. Since they were a few hundred dollars worth of parts I didn't want to just keep them or get rid of them, I wanted to return them. Even though their policy is "satisfaction" guaranteed, I felt like I was abusing the good faith of the policy--knowing just how heavily discounted their garage sale items are.

What I ended up deciding to do was returning them but asking for an 80% refund. The guy behind the counter gave me a really weird look and told me he had to ask if that was even allowed. Luckily for me, it was. They refunded me 80% of the total amount and I called it fair.

As an Android developer, I love that Google is doing this!

Android has come a very long way in the last few years in terms of usability and design. A large part of this has been due to an increasingly uniform design language and feel. That, and the new distribution model for what are basically Android updates (Google Play Services) has made Android feel more polished and actually allowed it to stand on its own against iOS. It also means that developers like me don't have to spend nearly as much time worrying about fragmentation in the traditional sense. Each day the percentage of people using sub-ICS phones falls, and we all get one step closer to the day we can support ICS+ only.

However, companies like Amazon would force me to rewrite the maps integration, the sign-in portion, the wallet, etc... Amazon did a great job of replicating Google Maps API V1 but they have yet to mirror V2 and don't mirror the other components I mentioned.

Aside from fragmentation and developer sanity, the article mentions another key point here:

"[M]any of Google's solutions offer best-in-class usability, functionality, and ease-of-implementation."

Exactly! Google APIs are not perfect, and there's bugs (like when Google Maps broke map markers on high resolution phones like the HTC One). But generally speaking, I'm really happy with the quality of the APIs and services. In an ideal world, Amazon and Google would work together to provide great and uniform single-sign-in APIs, great maps, etc... As it currently stands though, I don't believe either party is interested in doing so. Prisoner's dilemma?

You know, I'll take you up on that. Is @bunsen Twitter? My family will never move--I've come to peace with that. So it'd be nice if I could at least tolerate Miami a bit better and maybe seeing it with someone from the HN community is what is required.

I was raised in Miami and my family lives there still as well! We should meet up some time and complain about Miami together, haha. I agree with all the points you made.

Miami has quite a shallow population. I've also found as time goes on that as I develop new interests, there is poor community around most of them--the little things like rock climbing or playing ping pong. It's even extremely difficult to find a coffee shop to work out of when I visit family.

This article makes points that sound fine on the surface, but ignore reality. There's a very good reason why a lot of sites do this and won't stop any time soon--it works. The article claims some effects to "conversions, usage and how people feel about your product" but is very light on the details of how it actually affects those things.

Getting a user to sign up facilitates a whole range of options (promotional emails being just one of them) that help drive user retention and engagement. I am not advocating making your product obscure until they sign up. The value proposition of your product should be clear, regardless of whether someone signs up or not. But it is not clear that making them signup before they can actually use it for themselves decreases conversion or usage.

The complaint made here will become ever weaker as "Sign Up with Google" and other single-sign-on services become more widespread. Signing up in those cases takes a single click, and my experience is in many cases instantly personalized with my data from other services. This might make some HN denizens cringe, but the average person seems to not mind.

Don't like how they use one image at the top which is from a completely different event, as explained at the bottom. The image seems to be chosen to generate a specific emotional response but I'm not sure it actually represents the events covered in the story very honestly.

I'd say it's more than fine. I just spent three weeks in Europe and I was underwhelmed by the beer everywhere except Munich, Berlin, and Copenhagen (Mikeller was great). Foreigners seem to think of American beer as PBR, Bud Light, Miller, etc... and they have a good reason to--it's what most Americans drink.

But the strong microbrew renaissance going on right now is producing some of my favorite beers. Beers with the same depth and complexity as the finest of wines--he said, opinionatedly.

Now, I've learned that this experimental attitude towards beer is highly American. I don't think I've seen anywhere else in the world, except maybe Belgium, that is quite as crazy and experimental with what they put in their beers. After all, who in their right minds would like sour beers?

If you think the beer situation in the US is poor try out some Russian River, Boulevard, or Elysian brews and come back to me.

Something for everyone out there to keep in mind. Reactions are always negative when you talk about doing something risky in the future and are much more likely to be positive when you decided to actually do it.

I dropped out of college a few months ago. Through the different talks I've had with family and friends about it in the past year, you would have guessed that everyone would have criticized the decision tremendously. But the day that I went from "dad, I want to drop out" to "dad, I signed a full time offer and I'm dropping out", I received staggering amounts of support.

Suddenly people knew I was serious about what I had been saying for a while. At least that's what I think the difference was caused by.

Another good reason to do this is for example the android tag. Most of the top results are Android documentation for basic classes like ASyncTask and Activity. If I could filter out google domains I'd be left with interesting links related to Android.

I was on highway 84. Amazingly, we can do things like this:

http://goo.gl/maps/vC1Cu

The car stopped roughly where the men are standing.

I am always very thankful for people with EMT training. When I climbed Mt. St. Helens last year a man had a medical complication and passed away on the mountain. There were about 20 of us who spent about 45 minutes helping him out until the helicopter arrived.

That experience really solidified for me the importance that we all get some basic medical training. Even something as simple as CPR certification can really save someone's life.

I get a little bit nervous for you cyclists. On the motorbike at least you have thick leather protecting you from road rash. I can imagine that that part can't have been fun.

About five weeks ago I fell of my motorcycle into the path of an oncoming car on my way to Skyline/Woodside. The motorcycle went in front of it and lifted the car into the air. Then I slid underneath it. One of the rear wheels landed next to my head and I came out of the rear part of it.

The outcome was a broken left wrist. That's it. Literally nothing else happened to me.

There are things that happen to you that make it clear how close we all are to death at all times. I am glad to hear your injuries weren't too bad and hope you recover from them well.

Edit: I have to add, it's also times like these that you will oftentimes show you the best of people. The girl who was driving the car was very nice about everything and even offered me a ride into the city (more than 45 minutes) even though she lived in the opposite direction. The tow truck driver charged me only half the normal rate because "we gotta stick together" and he rode bikes too. Lots of people who were around near the accident helped immobilize my arm after the injury. The friendly folks down at Motoshop unloaded the bike and removed some of the ugly bits sticking out. Friend came to pick me up and take me to hospital. It was pretty inspiring. People are amazing.

Fair enough.

Hacker News isn't just strictly news anymore than the New York Times is strictly about New York.

We do live in boring times. The 24/7 media cycle may have taught us otherwise. But day-to-day, not that much new events happens. The way I see Hacker News, it's a place for smart hackers to post interesting articles. If other hackers find the article interesting, that's all that matters.

Not to mention that urls to images get posted in-line. Do you know how many funny animated GIFs can be posted on a chat room?

This sounds like me being facetious, but it's a great morale booster for teams.

While this article makes many good points:

"The other great unfairness has to do with the preferences that elite American universities give to well-connected children, either because their parents went to the university themselves or because they have given money."

"An educational institution should focus on attracting the best people, and then work out how to finance the poorer people in that category."

====

Legacy admissions usually come with legacy donations. These donations can be in the millions each year for an organization like Harvard, which in turn pays the tuition of the poorer people in the category.

The issues of legacy admissions and affirmative action are pretty closely linked. So to address one part of the issue without looking at the other is not quite fair.

Nobody gets a free pass. Didn't mean to imply that. They all suck, it's just a matter of venting :)

This is far from the worst offender.

Banks are typically the worst. All sorts of gimmicky password requirements. 8-12 characters. Must have one capital letter. Must have one number. No special symbols.

So "I can't believe it's not butter!" won't work, yet that would probably be a pretty secure password, and be entirely rememberable. In fact I could come up with a silly pun-filled sentence for each site I visit and make passwords fun again.

It would be much more useful if you could select where the snapshot focuses in and the zoom level.

Still made me smile very much.

I've found that it's sometimes the case that you will officially get offered a fixed amount of vacation time, but informally you can take more than it if you want.

The unwritten rule seems to be "you're working really hard to get a featured shipped, if you need extra vacation to decompress after, feel free".

From your link:

"The informational value of the credential comes from the fact that the employer assumes it is positively correlated with having greater ability."

An often-cited reason why a lot of recent college-grads are without jobs is that they are not actually prepared for real work.

As the number of people graduate college, the meaning of a degree lessens. If everyone has one, then it stops meaning as much.

Unless you are trying to make a snarky remark about college-graduates being taught how to work for someone else instead of run their own company--this is not true.

It is not hard to imagine a society where work is more collaboration among equals and less hierarchical. I.e. Valve Software.

Not in the case of firing the company outright but the article clearly illustrates what happens to the children these companies employ against contract terms:

>Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report.

They're open source. You can probably get started here:

https://github.com/iamues/Simvla-Network/blob/master/public/...

I think he means that, the reason he took it to the extreme that his family life suffered was due to his unfortunate circumstances.

This is a really great documentary. Just saw it because of the post and the entire time I can't help but think of how this applies to any life and the to the pursuit of happiness.

So if breaking grammar provides certain effects, wouldn't the standardization of such constructs into canon grammar diminish the effect?

What qualities would you say make someone a good Android engineer?

I thought the same thing initially. That they did not care about Android as much. After all this app is released over eight months after the iOS and on top of that it's outsourced?

But according to Simple's official blog statement they actually consulted with TwoToasters and have their own Android team.

https://simple.com/blog/Banking/announcing-simple-for-androi...

Incidentally, their jobs page has an opening for an Android engineer:

http://banksimple.theresumator.com/apply/phViRT/Android-Engi...

I was born in La Habana, Cuba. When I was five my family moved to a city in Mexico called Cuernavaca. There I saw and used a computer for the first time. A few years later I had my own and used the internet for the first time. This was like 1998/1999.

Funny enough, during my middle school years I thought programming would be boring. It wasn't until college that I found that I really enjoyed it. By chance I came across PG's essays perhaps 16 months ago. Now I am moving to San Francisco to work for a startup. Funny how things happen.

This story particularly illustrates why I avoid going into places with a selling mentality (most places in malls) and prefer to shop in places with a completely customer-centric perspective (what I call the REI model).

One easy way to find such places is to look for lack of pay by commission. REI and Apple are too relevant examples. However a lot of the time even stores that pay based on commission will have a larger customer focus than a sales-pitch focus. Nordstrom is one example that comes readily to mind.

In short, be careful where you shop.

I think a Stack Exchange website for educators would be a very good first step in the direction of collaboration. Stack Exchange is by far the most effective platform I have ever seen for questions and answers. Wouldn't take much to set up a teaching beta.