skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask: Pricing Schemes: Nickel And Dime Vs. Yearly Subscriptions
My partner and I are releasing products over the next few months to a large community of people that belong to groups. There are around 35,000 people and about 1200 groups of those people.

Most start ups charge a yearly fee in a freemium model to make their money. While we like this freemium model, I am no expert on what schemes people or groups of people might pay for.

We are debating between two charging models.

Asking each person in the group to pay $4 or $5 a year or what we all would think is a fixed price for our services. This renders about only half of the next idea in profit a year for all the groups if they signed up.

Or we would charge per service rendered. These groups of people have between 7-15 service requests a year. We would charge $10.00 a service This would render at minimum 6 figures a year. We would consider this nickel and diming the customer.

The customer also makes money doing this service we provide that $10.00 I don't feel would make much of a difference on their end figure.

We know start ups like yearly fees, but we think we are both a service company and a software product company. We also know that through the government, they really enjoy nickel and diming folks. And people put up with it. So we think because we are providing a service, we could get away with "nickel and diming" these groups.

Please keep in mind, when I use the term Nickel and Diming, I only use it because people understand it. Its not that I actually feel, we would nickel and dime them. But we are providing a service.

We are also providing a freemium model for our products. So not only would we be charging for services, we would be charging them for our products as well.

I just want advice. Im not expert at services, nor am I an expert at freemium models and we are just getting started. So if you have any experience, please provide.
When you have to draft chunks of your population in order to conduct warfare, public opinion is very much against you if your cause is not 'just'.

When you have to draft chunks of your population in order to conduct education, public opinion is very much against you if your cause is not 'just'. There will always be people willing to teach for a chance at gold.

People will oppose most policies if you tie the policy to forced labor, and rightly so. Forced labor is really bad.

That's not an argument for forced labor, that's just a ruthless political maneuver you want to apply to get the policies you desire. Similarly, politicians often attach poison pills to bills they want to kill (e.g., attach tax cuts for coal power to an environmental bill).
Not to be too pedantic here -- but what do you mean by "PRIVATE CRYPTOGRAPHIC CERTIFICATES"? Certificates are intended to be public. Private keys are intended to be private. They are not equivalent although they are certainly related.
I reviewed the Illinois law a while back -- if you even had a security system on private property you were breaking the law. I imagine that a large percentage of Illinois' business were being run by non-convicted felons.
I actually enjoy calling out passive aggressive HN comments like that. I probably should see a shrink.
Well, "rude" is the clear winner, with 54 occurrences (and one "intentionally rude"). Runners-up:

harsh 21 ("overly harsh": 2; "too harsh: 1)
negative 13 ("unduly negative": 1; "completely negative": 1; "overly negative": 2; "negative Nancy": 2; "too negative": 2; "totally negative": 2; "intentionally negative": 1)
snarky 12
overly critical 11 ("too critical": 3; "critical": 3)

Other common phrases:

an ass 8
pedantic 8
argumentative 8
insulting 6
a downer 6 ("(a) Debbie Downer": 2; "down": 1)
dismissive 6
flippant 6 ("flip": 3)
offensive 7 ("blatantly offensive": 1)
cynical 5 ("overly cynical": 1)
condescending 5
glib 5
a jerk 5
mean 4
pessimistic 4 ("overly pessimistic": 1)
that guy 4
crass 3
curt 3
a hater 3
disrespectful 3
patronizing 3
presumptuous 3
nit-picky / nitpicky 3

Terms that were only used twice: obnoxious, picky, insensitive ("culturally insensitive": 1), discouraging, crude, impolite, preachy, a tease, adversarial, coy.

HN has quite the vocabulary. There's a long tail of single occurrences: meta (ed: ha-ha), naive, cheeky, shortsighted, dumb, hasty, racist (ed: surprising!), stuffy, demeaning, snide, dense, nasty, personal, unhelpful, contrary, contentious, fanboyish, cold, doom-and-gloom, frivolous, facile, accusatory, callous, lame, inflammatory, hating, ironic, skeptical, trolling, trollish, patronizing, spiteful, sexist, disagreeable, controversial, simple, overly reductionist, hard on Aussies (ed: chuckle), antagonistic, off-topic, crabby, crude, derogative (ed: think they meant derogatory), passing absolute judgement, an idiot, an alarmist, an insensitive dick, a curmudgeon, an HN curmudgeon, a troll, a jackass, a tweak, a word Nazi (ed: surely not), a grumpy gus, a dick, a total dick, a stickler, a hardass, a killjoy, a huge downer, a turd, a burden, the grumpy skeptic ...

...and my personal favorite:

"the next snarky Lisp guy in the room".

There were about 7 other things roughly fitting the pattern here, but not quite within the spirit of the rest: e.g., "trashing Ballmer", or "overly favorable towards Google".

Quoted text was ignored where possible; instances of "or", as in, "insensitive or rude", counted as a point for each, except for "or anything", which was ignored. Terms were very lightly massaged, for example, "so callous" would have counted simply as "callous".
Why would you debate putting it on your CV? It'd look a lot worse to look like you were out of work for that time.

Besides, a startup that wouldn't hire you because you worked as an engineer at a failed startup would be insane. I'd be more afraid to hire engineers from startups that did succeed, because I doubt they'd be as motivated the second time around after the big windfall.
Are you saying that the frontline changes people? Or something else? Just trying to clearly understand your meaning there.
What HN users are: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22I+am%22&...
Are you willing to apply this logic to policies you support?

Is public education unjust if the citizenry is unwilling to submit to forced labor in public schools? Is care for old people unjust if the citizenry is unwilling to submit to forced labor cleaning old people's bedpans?

(I'm assuming you support these two policies, based purely on the observation that most people do.)
From what I understand, it was a hackers playground to hack nasa computers back in the day (90s). It used to be the easiest to get into and some of the biggest systems to play around in.

Its no surprise that since it was so easy in the past, its still easy today.
You're right, I did take the route of attacking single-metric incentive systems despite the fact that they're not 100% single-metric. I wanted to get a point across that I think still needs getting across.

I'm not arguing against the use of data in helping teachers understand their effectiveness for one second, and I mention in the article that the data becomes more correlated and useful as more years are included.

"If folks make conclusions that exceed what is supported by the data that is a fault of the analyst or perhaps a function of poor communication or visualization, not evidence that the data is junk."

...completely agree. If my article seemed to argue that "metrics are dangerous" instead of "metrics are dangerous if you choose to publish them publicly while simultaneously using them as a significant component in compensation calculations," then I missed my intended point.
In any given exchange, the speaker is likely optimizing both honesty and diplomacy, trading one against the other as the situation requires. The phrase "to be honest" signals that the next bit is going to sacrifice an unusually large amount diplomacy for an unusually large amount of honesty. Or something.

It's a verbal flag and a hedging move. "I am about to say something potentially hurtful, but I am doing it with your best interests at heart, so don't instinctively retaliate" is kind of what it's used for. Reading too deeply into the literal meaning of the words doesn't really go anywhere, any more than with other verbal rituals. Compare to the greeting "How's it going?", often used even when the asker doesn't really want to know how it is going.
Interesting you may be right then, my version is just what I was told by my latin teacher.
"I don't mean to be" easily translates into "There's a hell of a long conversation here, with a lot of qualifiers, but frankly I don't have the time for it. Instead I'm just going to offer some generalization that you can easily throw rocks at. I know that you will, and now I'm telling you to have fun with it."

So if I say "I don't mean to be old grumpy guy" that means that what comes out of my mouth next will be a generalization and summary of my feelings that I fully know for all intents and purposes sounds like old grumpy guy. Sorry, can't be helped. That's the way the summary looks.

Most of the time people do not use such linguistic qualifiers out of some desire for self-protection or having some mechanism to inoculate them from some horrible thing that follows. It's simply a shortcut. I always thought this was pretty obvious.

I know pg posted this, and it's his site, but is there really something here worthy of this being on the front page? Is this some kind of clever editorial about the quality of the commenting? If so, I don't get it. People are trying to be nice about their criticisms?
I might be being naive since he seems to be rather bravado about splitting the money with everyone, but I like to think Notch is doing the absolute best thing for Mojang and probably for himself in the end. I personally would love to work at a company like Mojang for a boss like Notch who disperses the hard work of the company with the company.

It seems to me that executives like Gates, Page, Brin, or Jobs who take $1 salaries (discounting their travel subsidies and Jobs's Gulfstream) are better for their companies in a number of ways than someone taking a lavish salary. I'm not saying the latter is wrong, but it seems like the "selfless" executive at the very least demonstrates the need for the company to do well--a real connection between vision, company, and leadership.

I hope good things come for both Notch and Mojang as a result of his sharing the wealth, their focus on satisfying their customers, and their general attitudes of honesty and openness.
Thanks for your response! I definitely am open to coding, but I don't think I have enough time to learn how to code right now!
The blog post almost sounds like a pun at Apple.
Someone should put together a "Founders At Work" for lifestyle software businesses.
Great suggestion! Thanks so much!
How To Achieve Five-9’s (99,999%) Reliability With Trust Control Level?
In any outsourcing relationship between customers and service providers, SLAs (Service Level Agreements) have been long touted as one of the important factors.
So if you reserve yourself to making conclusions merited by the data, then there is some value to this (i.e. identifying the extremely ineffective and effective).

Yes. Anyone who cares about the education of children will welcome any further improvements in evaluating teachers, but there is already actionable information available today. Bill Gates makes the good point that the best system of evaluating teachers should lead to interventions to help each teacher do better. But the existing performance gap, which may also be shown by which teachers other teachers who have children choose for their own children, could guide a system of encouraging the worst performers to seek other occupations

http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication...

while rewarding teachers who teach effectively and are willing to take on challenging classrooms with students who have the greatest need.

http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publication...
An easy way to introduce open source to friends and loved ones
Your video needs to be between 30-60 seconds...MAX

Your phrasing, "Broadcast any document into your location" doesn't explain what you do. I'm probably slower than the average hacker news reader, but that being said, I don't get it...especially after watching the video (which explained it to me). Something like, "Location-based document sharing" is a very functional explanation, but lacks lacks creativity. But, you get the point. A one-liner has to be both easy to remember AND something that when I repeat it to a friend, they get it too.

As another commenter insinuated, generally, the product applies to a lot of people, only a very small percentage of the time. I highly recommend you target carefully. Maybe the convention audience (thought probably not), or college recruiters. Be something specifically important to someone first and grow from there.

Caution: this has been done with QR codes. Check out why others that have tried solving this problem a different way have been or weren't successful.

Find out, as early as possible, how much people would be willing to pay for something like this.

Best of luck,
How would this have any advantage over a defensive system like Phalanx?
I agree, I prefer "to be frank" as I think it avoids the misunderstanding.
You are absolutely right. I'm not going to defend what I did, but the question deserves an answer. I was caught up in my own emotions. Tom not showing up for the meeting felt like personal attack against me. That he was flaunting my "authority", shoving it in my face that he didn't need to do what I asked.

With a bit more maturity and hindsight I know that I should have waited until those feelings had passed before doing anything. That's another lesson learned -- never act when in the grip of your own emotions.
Plangrid (YC W12) Builds A New Market For The iPad: The Construction Industry
And when someone start a sentence with "Honestly, ", it is usually a lie.
What terrorists? If there were terrorists skilled enough to hack into "key NASA computers" they'd be skilled enough to successfully blow things up in the US. Which isn't happening.

This isn't the 90's anymore, NASA computers aren't a revolving door anymore.
Umm. Healthcare is an industry that touches 100% of citizens' lives.

Apple is a corporation that sells a few percent of the computers and phones bought each year.

What is embarrassing about that?
Invent a new category, charge more
Launched a Pinterest friendly Dashboard.
This one produces an interesting list of offenses: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22far+be+i...
It's a way to convey tone through text. Sometimes the same comment can be taken in either a rude or a helping way, and prefacing it with "I don't mean to be rude" is a way of saying "please take this in the helping way."

When talking in person you can infer this through how they say it, but in anonymous text on the internet the disclaimer is helpful.
I'd argue that "I don't mean to X ..." has actually fallen victim to the euphemism treadmill ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill ). It can still be used earnestly for its original meaning, but that usage has been overtaken by the usage where someone essentially says "I'm not racist but - " and then proceeds to make a racist remark. This leads to the situation that your parent comment points out.

Language, of course, varies, and we should keep in mind that some uses tend to crowd out others - but I definitely think that this is something like the euphemism treadmill at work.
Why are foreign subnets even allowed to access JPL systems? Sure it's not going to prevent someone from using a compromised system on a non-banned subnet as a proxy but it seems like a simple step that would make it a little harder.
Ask HN: We are preparing for interviewing with Paul Graham. Your questions?
>Apple would have little to no interest in llvm if the plan wasn't to completely replace gcc from the beginning.

Sure, I have no doubt that Apple's sponsoring/stewardship of llvm is entirely fueled by them wanting a full toolchain which they can incorporate into their proprietary solutions and Clang is obviously a result of that (it's functionality reflects exactly what Apple want, C, C++ and ObjC support).

That said llvm was already 5 years into the making when Apple came and hired Chris Lattner (one of the original creators of llvm) so they have no say on the initial aim of the project which again was to be a backend replacement for gcc.
Sorting descending by time makes this a meta post:
http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22I+dont+m...

It also makes this comment a meta^2 post.
Where does the violence start? Modern warfare? AA? CS? What about fantasy like World of Warcraft? If hitting someone with a giant hammer ok, if you don't see the blood? Then what about car racing? If you can crash the car, do you assume people will think about the guy inside who has shards of glass inside his skull now? Is that violent? What if you don't see it? And animal cruelty? Is the frogger with cars running over the main character violent, or not? What about the games which depict whole wars but need only your imagination to add 2 and 2 together and realise that in chess you aim to kill as many soldiers of the opponent as possible (some skilled and specialised, half of them just cannon fodder - it's ok to sacrifice those), until the king is left alone and captured by the enemy...

Actually it's hard to find games which do not imply violence in one way or another. Even cards symbolise opposing kingdoms on them. Even Go happens around life, death and taking liberties...
The two major public banks in Brazil require clients to provide additional information if you are on a "new" PC.
One of them asks personal information (id numbers, etc), the other sends an SMS to your cell phone and you enter that number (a very good two-factor auth).

They don't use client certs, though, and I have no knowledge on the private banks.
Ask HN: Most affordable method to host a lot of files
I'm working on a file sharing site (more info here for those interested: http://blog.serve2.com)

I'm looking for an affordable, stable and scalable solution, where I can host a large amount of files with fast upload speeds for people downloading the files. What solution would you suggest?
Here's an interesting one
Why you should blog posts
http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=why...

I'm sure there are as many how-to's posts.
I wonder how many Iraqis or Afghanis died as a result of that noble choice to become a gun for hire.
I happened to be watching RT while at a hotel on business. I thought the obviously Kremlin slanted take on Syria was a bit amusing, that Syria was fighting an armed insurgency. You'd read the New York Times and think they were just mowing down civilian protestors. Sure enough, a few weeks later the cover of the Economist has Syrian "protestors" wielding machine guns.

Whats impressive is that both the "right" and "left" media in the United States pretty much run the same story, leaving some minor disagreements on detail making each seem to be at opposite extremes of each other. That's important when you have to you propaganda or marketing to get your message out.
Very well done, as a photographer I think the concept is just great. Very inspirational for a web site design.
First off, I'm going to call "straw man". No one is forced to clean old people's bedpans. They all do it for money, or because of a sense of obligation/love.

But, there are a few other big differences between waging war and providing social services.

Perhaps the biggest is that a particular war is a one-time, no-easy-turning-back event, that generally provides little direct benefit to the population funding it. By way of contrast, I'm not saying that civil defense should in general go unfunded.

I'm saying that a single massive expenditure of blood and treasure, which will almost certainly result in the violent deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, should probably need to meet a somewhat higher bar than the requirement and funding of compulsory high school. Whenever many extra innocent people are likely to die prematurely, extra scrutiny of the decision-making process is required.

Because it is precisely when people are asked to pay for something that they seriously evaluate whether it is worth the expense -- and this is a calculation that needs to be made for war more so than for anything else. In general, I think most populations are more than willing to spend what's necessary to defend themselves from a large, immediate threat -- there was little trouble in getting people to pay extra taxes for WWII.

Also, because of its one-time nature, the cost of the war could easily come at the expense of other services. In general, people have consented to paying for social services (yes, in the long run they'll cause America to run a deficit if nothing changes, but for now it's being paid for with tax dollars).
Don't underestimate the power of the web though. For a new student/user, there's a big difference between step 1 being "click this link" rather than "follow this intimidating installation process".

Javascript is not ideal, but it's quite good, and it's there, already running in a sandbox on the student's machine.
Yelp is a leech on every small business owner in the USA. Their strong-arm tactics leave defined winners and losers. I've watched yelp drive business owners to madness. I've battled rogure reviewers leaving false reviews. My business page will absolutely deny every single review positive review left on it because Yelp wants to strong arm me.
And against all their guidelines I've witnessed a review from a person with 1 review, 0 friends, and a fake alias sit on a page for 8 months, it read something like "I called and they told me they did not perform the service I wanted and hung up. 1/5 stars."

Fuck this evil company.
>"I was recommending that MBA students drop out and launch an app on the App Store instead."

Wow, no offense, but that's terrible advice. Part of what's wrong with the tech culture is that everyone believes their "app" is a billion dollar enterprise waiting to happen.

Go look around at the crap on the App Store. Do you really believe that launching an App teaches you anything remotely close to what's covered in a MBA program? I mean, you're supposed to learn the stuff (marketing, economics) then apply that knowledge to things like building an app.
Of course being in the service changes people - going to war even more so.

I'm saying that not every grunt is a coarse thug.

We leave the service, get a job, get an education, get a life. We leave the soldier behind, is what I'm saying.
Specialized
"After I EASd I realized that a _lot_ of perfectly normal behavior in the service is downright _weird_ in the civilian world. ... I think about some of the stuff I thought was funny, some of the things I did when I was 20, and I'm appalled."

This is part of the brilliance of the military: they mostly use young people who are still maturing and often don't know any better and brainwash them in to doing their bidding. Older, more experienced people are not so easily used.

I have a feeling if humans were physically feeble and infirm for their first 25 or 30 years and became fit and healthy afterwards, we'd have a lot less war.
Notch has tweeted complaints about taxes before. Unfortunately with 16,000+ tweets I can't reference them.
U.S. Science and Engineering Labor Force Stalls, but Trends Vary Across States
Hasn't SETI been shut down?
Why you’ll always think your product is shit
Why not use S3 with cloudfront.