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.