Recent submissions

Comment · 13 years ago
because Paypal has a history of shutting down accounts for no apparent reasons. Then it takes months to get your money out.
Comment · 14 years ago
isn't there? From what I understand Quora has been pretty stagnant. It failed to go mainstream. Sure the valley people know of it's existence...but most people? not so much
Comment · 14 years ago
Digg didn't collapse because of hardware or headcount...they collapsed because they trashed their product with unnecessary changes and pissed off their user base

Sure, the fact that they had a huge headcount, meant that they had to take more risk to try to monetize...but the nail in their coffin wasn't cost...but loss of traffic

Comment · 14 years ago
yeah you'd think with the VC investment they'd be going for that
Comment · 14 years ago
yeah, YC should have a page on their site with a list of all the funded startups sorted by batches. Maybe a small PR blurb by each startup to describe it.
Comment · 14 years ago
there are actually a ton of costs for them.

They have to pay for infrastructure, they have to pay for customer support, they have to pay for fraudulent transactions and on and on. I think most credit card companies have something like 10%-15% ROI

Comment · 14 years ago
because when you go up and up the ladder, eventually you end up with 5-6 huge companies that control everything...not too surprising when the companies end up with similar pricing.

I mean take credit cards for example. You have Visa and Mastercard with the majority of the market. Then you have American Express and Discover that have a tiny portion.

That's it. And that's more or less worldwide.

You'd think since the coming of the internet, we'd have at least some competition in this space. Just imagine how much money there is, in join Mastercard/Visa as a top 3 credit card.

Square is a little lower down the chain, so the main thing they are giving here is passing through their huge savings down the pipeline. But even then it's not 100%.

Their basic pricing is 2.75%. So essentially you need to sell $10,000 worth of stuff before you start profiting off the $275/mo...and you only have until $20,000 before you go up to the regular 2.75% pricing.

And 2.75% is pretty high...for credit card processing.

Comment · 14 years ago
It's probably a bit misleading.

The car is pretty eye catching: http://www.vibe.com/sites/vibe.com/files/styles/main_image/p...

So it gets attention...and most accidents happen when people don't pay attention.

Once these become more common, it won't be a huge deal, so people will stop noticing them and accident rates will go up. Probably not by much, since you'd eliminate most of the driver caused accidents

Comment · 14 years ago
Facebook does analytics...they aren't some tiny startup...surely they track the quality of their traffic...so they know that 70-80% of their ad traffic comes from bots.

So Facebook is knowingly profiting from this, and they have the resources to fix this...but they don't since this is making so much money for them.

Comment · 14 years ago
yeah if they only cared about protecting consumers, instead of fines, they'd let you pay a few bucks to get your house inspected.
Comment · 14 years ago
if you actually read all the rules of the municipality...every single person in town is guilty of something. It's just a way to enforce rules without looking authoritative.

We aren't telling you that you can't do X...but Article 294-984b, section 49a states that doing X is a $50,000 fine.

Comment · 14 years ago
yeah, something shady must be going on.

My guess is that you'll find similar people on Digg's and News.me boards. And this was just a way to a) write off Digg as a permanent loss off the books and b) transfer those assets cheaply to the other company, which might boost them from being a loser to being a winner

Noone sells Digg for $500K...not unless they are millions and millions in debt

Comment · 14 years ago
not having to drive to the store is huge

on Amazon you just search, compare, read reviews and click buy.

with brick and mortar stores, you have to drive to the store, park, then roam the store to find what you are looking for, then hope that they have it in stock before you buy, then drive back home. Even a small purchase ends up costing you an hour of your time.

and for large purchases almost always you have to wait 20-30 for the store associate to bring out what you want to buy...and you have to deal with a sales pitch for an extended warranty

Comment · 14 years ago
someone needs a reality check.

if he considers that kind of life "failure", he is going to lead a very depressed life unless he wins a few lotteries

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