sethjohn

6 ms·

1.
Office Rules (Why free software can't compete with Microsoft)(thebigmoney.com)
1 points by sethjohn 17y ago|0 comments
2.
by sethjohn 17y ago
You have hit upon a key distinction, unfortunately the author is intentionally muddling these two issues of 1)scientific data is missing or being withheld and 2) global warming or the skepticism thereof. "the data needed to verify the gloom
3.
by sethjohn 17y ago
Teach for America and Teach First (the British equivalent) are actually doing a great job at addressing this problem. They are able to recruit teachers from top universities to work in some of the worst schools, precisely by focussing on th
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by sethjohn 17y ago
I thought through this with a friend a while ago. The problem isn't getting the bandwidth to upload the content, the problem is getting access to content in the first place. In order to download PDFs of these papers, you need to have a subs
5.
by sethjohn 17y ago
There is something about the silver-blue glow of a Mac and it's zippy lines that seems to borrow from the hallucinogenic experience. Certainly, I've never seen while on halluginogens anything as garish, discordant, and downright ugly as the
6.
Ask HN: New car or used?
4 points by sethjohn 17y ago|6 comments
7.
by sethjohn 18y ago
I am a chemist, and I like it. I used to use webelements.com, which has the same information but is becoming more and more difficult to navigate with all the ads and subsections. I need a site that serves the same purpose as glancing up at
8.
Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of web 2.0 democracy(slate.com)
12 points by sethjohn 19y ago|2 comments
9.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Major props, in advance, to whomever can manage a high-quality recording of the talks. The podcasts are a great service for those of us who can't make it in person!
10.
by sethjohn 19y ago
So lets assume that the costs for a successful web company are a small fraction of revenue (maybe 20%?). That's profits of 100 million a year for last-year's-Facebook. So if this company makes 1/10th the profits of Facebook, it will take 50
11.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I've been frustrated lately at humorous comments and the rapid rate at which they are upmodded. A quick bit of humour can be great at cutting to the heart of the issue, but it often seems like humour comes at the expense of over-simplificat
12.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Yes, in fact web advertising has proved to be deep enough to support all of Google! Of course there is a limit to the total amount of advertising dollars available and many half-good companies may not be good enough to support themselves wi
13.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Don't make too much fun unless you know the numbers. For all I know they might be generating huge profits. What makes you think their valuation is too high?
14.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Come on, the laptops are not being given people for whom access to food, water, and protection from the elements is a problem. The point is to provide the educated working poor in 2nd/3rd world countries access to tools so that they can imp
15.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Laptops provide people the means to educate themselves and communicate with each other in new ways. Education and communication are among the best tools available to address problems such as fighting government corruption and clarifying lan
16.
by sethjohn 19y ago
To protect our valued customers from the dastardly practice of "Front Running", we engage in exactly this practice but do not refer to it as "Front Running" when we do it.
17.
by sethjohn 19y ago
All this talk about the Terms Of Service agreements misses the fundamental point that it's what people CAN DO (technologically) and what they WILL DO (including breaking rules) that determines how this will unfold...not whatever is written
18.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Like a hot night spot, each social networking site will eventually fall out of favor to the next cool place. The business-arc of social networking sites will be much shorter than for non-social applications, and I'm not sure how anyone can
19.
by sethjohn 19y ago
What is true 'de jure' may not be true 'de facto'. With technologies available to suck your information back out of Facebook (the new versions of which will presumably evade detection), and plenty of people happy to use them, the legalities
20.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Again, the future of the web is being written by petty acts of criminality. (aka civil disobedience, aka breaking stupid rules) Just as the entertainment industry will eventually have to adapt to the reality of file-sharing, regardless of t
21.
by sethjohn 19y ago
It's been interesting to notice over the course of this morning the modding activity on this subject. Seems like comments on both sides of the issue are being both up-modded and down-modded at a furious pace!
22.
by sethjohn 19y ago
There was no '5 year window', but the discount rate was a subject of much debate. Actually, to get climate change out of last place, they had to apply a much smaller discount rate than for any other subject. I would argue that the consequen
23.
Copenhagen Consensus - 'Cost efficiency' of tackling world problems(copenhagenconsensus.com)
1 points by sethjohn 19y ago|0 comments
24.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Some of the most interesting writing on this subject was the Copenhagen Consensus (www.copenhagenconsensus.com), and the critical responses to the Copenhagen Consensus. The CC was a group of economists who got together and tried to figure o
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by sethjohn 19y ago
"What's the worst case scenario" may be a valid question, but it's not a very helpful question...particularly not in a mass-market film where the caveat 'this is extremely unlikely' will be forgotten and the take-home message is that Florid
26.
by sethjohn 19y ago
"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming." "The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC" "carbon t
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by sethjohn 19y ago
Yeah, that could be right. Of course, "intact" doesn't mean that they will have a profitable exit.
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by sethjohn 19y ago
I was thinking the other day about why American scientists are so successful, given that they tend to work much less diligently than the Chinese or Indian scientists I've known. Of course issues of funding and infrastucture have a lot to do
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by sethjohn 19y ago
"- Warranty (can you extend it?)" Generally electronics warranties are an overpriced scam (sort of like the insurance car rental agencies try to talk you into). I've heard from several places, though, that the Apple warranties are a great d
30.
by sethjohn 19y ago
How will the YC model compare? I'd guess a higher percentage of failures and higher average return on the successful companies. (It's a lot easier to get 50X when you only invest $15K to start with!)

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