skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Tiered pricing vs Pay-As-You-Go. What works when?
I'm currently building a small online service and have a problem when trying to decide the pricing model. As far as I can see, there's three possible models:

1) PAYG: you get an invoice monthly which lists what you've used, and you pay it. Can also do pre-pay (Tarsnap, AWS)
2) Tiered pricing: you pick a tier, and pay a fixed amount every month that gives you a usage limit. (Github)
3) Tiered-As-You-Go: a bit of a blend of the two, it's like PAYG but the usage billable 'units' are fairly chunky, so you get a mostly consistent bill but with the flexibility to use more on-demand.

I've read a fair bit about why pricing tiers make a lot of sense from the business side. There's lots of stuff around psychology and maximizing profit out of each customer and that all seems to make sense. However, I can't get away from the fact that as a consumer, I hate tiered pricing. I usually end up feeling that I'm being ripped off, unless I use everything that my current tier offers. The tiers hardly ever fit my needs, and it's generally not a nice feeling. And once I do get to the limit of my tier, the next small thing that I need equates to a big jump in cost, because suddenly I need to be a super-platinum customer, even though I don't need most of what that offers.

So my question is this: If you were building a startup now, what factors would influence your pricing model? Is there anything that would make you rule out PAYG or pricing tiers completely?
So Facebook. :) How about limiting the audience of your Facebook posts to a list of developer friends?
Hi, funny someone reported that issue about 6 hours ago. I re-upped the font files and it's looking fine for me now on Win 7, can you confirm?
From Wikipedia: Some clinicians and scientists criticize giving genes frivolous, whimsical, or quirky names, calling it inappropriate that patients with "a serious illness or disability are told that they or their child have a mutation in a gene such as sonic hedgehog."
Life approach:

- Some people look at the world as a series of things that happen to them. They relish the sympathy and attention they get. Do not befriend these people, they will drain you emotionally, and you might be the next person they accuse of doing them wrong.

- Instead, think of the world as a set of resources provided to you for the purposes of achieving your goals.
Show HN: We created a Mac app that creates presentations from Markdown
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikachurin
This doesn't necessarily mean food.

It also doesn't apply 100% of the time. Does anything?
also: the "good" feeling is caused by neurotransmitters being released/binding to post-synaptic vesicles in the brain. Thinking about this really helped me overcome some hard times/feelings/emotions
Everybody is a victim of their own narrow viewpoint, even (and sometimes especially) people who claim they're open minded.

The tricky part is, when you're talking to someone, to figure out the boundaries of their viewpoint and take that into account when you communicate.

The trickier part is seeing the boundaries of your own viewpoint and forcing them wider. This is hard as your view of the narrowness of your own viewpoint is limited by the narrowness of your own viewpoint.
What is the epiphany here? What is the insight or enlightenment to be gained from this story?

I have my own, but I'm curious about what people believe is the moral of the story.
I work in customer service for a sub-unit of a large telco. When people run into annying issues, I am kind of at liberty to issue a refund if I want to, sort of to please the customer and make them stay with us.

However most people don't ask for it. So only the ones who take the time to ask for it and write two sentences of why they should receive one get it.
'Hacked' Drone Plummets And Injures Athlete
Our Bitcoin Transaction Analyzer is live
Sir, A truly inspiring career. Much Respect. Your interview with Scott was truly motivating.

http://hanselminutes.com/342/an-interview-with-paul-lutus
I put the amount of time I have been getting paid to program. When I think of 20 years of web development it is kind of cool.
Wow. There are so many levels of interpretation on this. From the unspoken progress of humanity down to the lack of recognition of fellow engineers who keep the show running with no apparent recognition from management.
I'm part of a community that limits how much you can post and (up)vote in a day. The points for these actions are shared. There is no down-vote.

There are two kinds of users, regular ones and "elders" of sorts. First few were established years ago and they can vote on others to become "higher tier" users as well. How much votes you need depends of how many people can vote.

The registration is not automatic, but you fill out a form with an open-ended question and selected users (mentioned above) can vote to approve the registration.

The system has threaded discussions where every post is equal. So you create a post and it can become a new "topic" (or forum, or however you want to call it). These can be nested of course. Whether something is a comment, topic, list of topics, blog, ... depends entirely on the template used to view that entry. You can manage privileges (rwx) to these subtrees (or any single node in the tree).
or tricking your brain you are about to die (bungee jumping did this for me)
Who cares about non-Americans on 'washingtonpost.com' ?

(besides that anyone with 4th grade reading comprehension skills can understand what the point of the analogy is)
what ? this is a normal web page. what do you mean CSS page ?
I agree, unsolvable is not what I believe. I agree, what we have to learn is that is a frequent problem with organizational systems we create. I think by thinking about the problems we can create systems that work, but it requires some real focus - attempts that don't provide some real focus on the areas likely to create problems are likely to fail.

I think it is due to some systemic factors in most of our organizations so it often requires changes beyond some simple change. A huge key is what you mention the communication between "business owners" and the development team. You also need to stop the shouting down of people who say the new attempt won't work as being negative. Given the results around the globe there is lots of evidence it won't - we need to delve into why those who are criticizing the new hope think it won't work and try to adopt improvements to make it more likely to work.
This is fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing!
Weird. For me it's the reverse.

Edit: I see you elaborated on your comment a bit, which makes mine read quite differently. I also agree with you loads more now.
You can't tell anyone anything that they are not ready to hear.

This affects your ability to influence others and be influenced by others.

The takeaway for you receiving wisdom is to be open to things that you are not yet ready to hear, to remember them and keep them in mind as it may apply to you in the future when you are ready.

If you need to share wisdom, empathise with where the receiver is currently and tell them what they're ready to hear based on where they are today (or will shortly be).
Dead Man's Snitch – Monitoring for Scheduled Tasks
'Dads Resume' is called like that because apparently he can't even type up a resume on a computer, a skill that is right down there under 'assumed to know, not even listed on the job requirements' along with 'tying own shoes' and 'not forgetting to breath'.
Check out http://helpmewrite.co/ - submit the title, lets people vote.
Free Markets are extremely powerful.

Tons of people will buy stuff for reasons you can't even conceive.

The difference between being poor and having a bright future has a lot to do with knowledge and awareness, more than initial means.

There are heaps of differences between people of different cultures, religions, countries, but there are still very strong common elements you can use as a basis to work together.

Building a solid network and community around you is a big driver for luck, probably more than your own skills.
I studied this at university in 1996. I hope university courses haven't "forgotten" this sort of thing since then.
On http://typesafe.com you'll find plenty examples using the whole stack. When I was learning Scala I found http://twitter.github.io/scala_school/ best source to break into it. http://playframework.com is a good source of tutorials and docs for Play. http://akka.io is the home of Akka and http://slick.typesafe.com is Slick's website.
Not sure if I agree with this. Governments are a necessary outgrowth of agriculture: producing more food than you personally can consume means the population can grow in proportion, which necessitates a mechanism for distribution. The fact that governments can exert power beyond their purpose of food distribution is incidental rather than central to their role.
Another problem is sometimes work requires people to do things they don't like. Sure seek solutions that make everyone happy with what they are tasked to do, because it is nice and also more likely to work. But if part of someone's responsibility requires doing some stuff they don't like, make sure they do it (give them the opportunity to adjust things to accomplish the needs in a way they like better but just not doing stuff you don't like is not acceptable).

I understand in this case people can say they don't like it and it isn't something they should have to do. Well that is another issue. Why have people do stuff (wether they like it or not) that isn't providing value to the organization.
It's a constant stream of ridicule. Would be much better if it slowed down at least once in a while.
Think Valleywag but even shallower and more intense.
That Israel has exactly zero interest in peace with the Palestinians. Continued conflict is the perfect excuse for continued oppression and occupation. The insight came as a flash - and now I can't understand why I didn't see it sooner.
I've read this twice so far. I found it useful, personally http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html.
Compound interest works. Every penny you save before you're 30 has a dramatically large impact on your quality of life after 60.
Looks a bit off in Safari 7 too.
People who believe themselves to be lucky are lucky. The opposite is also true.
I cannot shake the feeling that this is just yet another iteration of the usual concept.

If you look at Google Renderscript, Microsoft C++AMP, NV Cuda, OpenCL and whatnot you'll realize that they all do exactly the same thing, difference being only in syntax level (with few caveats, but those are relatively minor). Some being more cumbersome to use than others.

Halide looks neat to use syntax wise but it doesn't seem to make the actual algorithms any easier to write. You still have to do the same mental work on same level as you have to do with OpenCL.

All of these are to eachother what Fortran, Pascal and C are to eachother. Same basic idea in different package. I'm waiting for the first system that is equivalent of C++. Something that really brings new concepts to the table instead of just a different syntax.
I read The Inner Game of Tennis based on Alan Kay's description in a youtube video. It is an excellent book.

I am glad to see Csikszenmihalyi on the list as well. Flow is a very powerful concept; we all know it, but understanding it and using it effectively is a different matter entirely.

After reading The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, I realized that all three books are actually talking about the same subject from different perspectives.

To this list, I would add:

anything by Robert Grudin, but especially:

Time and the Art of Living and The Grace of Great Things

How to solve it by G. Polya

Conceptual Blockbusting by James Adams

Nice to see the Mortimer Adler recommendation as well, but I think his How to Read a Book should be a prerequisite for serious reading.

As I've gotten older, I've come to the conclusion that true understanding requires the kind of depth that comes from knowing one's self intimately. It's a lot harder than it sounds, especially for a technologist.
Don't be the chump who offers the rational middle ground as your opening bid.
The exhaust might do that, but the sound certainly doesn't. Any sound is wasted energy.

And in any case there are better ways to harness energy if you want create downforce.
Stretching the word "hacked" to destruction.
And of course, I'm very happy to answer any questions!
> I know how I get annoyed when my country gets generalized as "Eastern Europe" (first, we're Central Europe, and second, countries in this part of Europe are quite different from each other)

Good point, I'm not fond of that oversimplification, either.

I wrote about it:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6584077

That's a classical read worth recommending for those willing to understand the subject better:

http://www.euroculture.upol.cz/dokumenty/sylaby/Kundera_Trag...
Toto is way ahead of you; their patents has already been issued and expired: https://www.google.com/patents/US5111539?pg=PA25&dq=5111539&...
Actions in Gmail
0.9 * 5000 != 5000
You can scan barcode most of the time.
Can you combine this with AVISynth for rendering videos? It would be cool to be able to completely bypass Lightroom when I need to process individual images and do it instead in a single script.
That realization was a gradual one for me. I tell people that I have a limited amount of Life Force and I don't want to waste it.

The upshot of that is (A) that you can't do "everything" just because you can afford it (B) life is too short to "stick it out" if you really don't like what you are doing.

Books are a perfect example of "B": If you read part of a book and you don't like it, stop/quit and read another instead. It makes no sense to read a "bad" book just because you've been conditioned to "finish what you start". There are just too many other great books you could read if you quit reading the bad one and started reading another one.
The 10-20 year monopoly idea would prove to be problematic if the cable provider is also your ISP. I can only imagine this leading to deterioration in quality of service and over pricing. Regulation might help to an extent. Having a large number of companies using a myriad of technologies could well negate market forces. Where as having a standardised set of technology nation wide could save a lot of money (think maintenance contractors who only have to learn a small set of technologies).

I don't see why a government authority can't coordinate an infrastructure rollout like fibre, provided they have the right expertise. They seem to manage the same task fine with roads, etc. That's not to say it's the only model that can work.
Cities Advance Their Fight Against Rising Inequality
I find the qualification of "appropriate for the situation" somewhat disturbing in the example of comic sans. Just like wearing a clown costume to a job interview is hardly ever appropriate (except when you are applying for a job as a clown, then it could bear bonus points for bringing your own).
Stretching the word "hacked" to it's limit.

If I walked into a store and turned over the TV with my own remote control, suddenly I've "hacked" it.
I read the Tao Te King by Lao Zi when I was 25 and it was a major epiphany, this passage especially:

Although the saint puts himself last, he finds himself in the lead.

Although he is not self-concerned, he finds himself accomplished.

It is because he is not focused on self-interests and hence can fulfill his true nature.
The Help You Help Me Dinner
Ye I doubt the greedy guy would settle for a quarter when the other is getting 3..
I live in Sweden, which is by all means a "rich" contry. But a normal developer salary in my not-largest-3 city is about $ 50000 gross.
Certainly not a new idea, this approach was discussed in the early 2000s but instead using pennies. I've always been a skeptic of this approach as anything that has value will inevitably be traded for money making it entirely possible for organized actors to create inequity in the system to their own ends.
Boosting Ecommerce Customer Referrals: 11 Best Practices
11 tips on how to boost natural customer referrals in ecommerce
Don't be silly. Other than perhaps in a school playground where _any_ word said repeatedly enough can be considered abusive, boffin is not word that anyone can take offence from really.
Honestly, in my own experience, which I'm loathe to use as advice for anyone else, I've had experiences that fall into both.

Bored-wise i'll enter a job, get acquainted with a practice, and almost immediately see failings/things to improve/things I can automate. Then I will. It'll be great, and then I'll have sorted the problems that exist within the context of my little environment over which I have control, and everything will be going 2-3 times better, but then i become bored again... In the best case scenarios, if there's not scope for any new challenges/problems in the job/company, I tend to move on amicably at that point.

However, there's been a few points where I've clashed "ethically". And this probably does have to do with philosophy, because its quite clear I've thought quite deeply about how I think I should live my life, and the minimum values I expect those around me to hold, and other's can be quite surprised/offended/awkward when you don't just go along with it all. I won't work with certain employers/jobs/industries (probably not what people are thinking, I'm not religious). So far this hasn't hindered me in terms of putting food on the table and living a comfortable life, but i accept it could one day, and I don't know what i'll do if I ever were to fall upon particularly hard times. But I try to live simply compared to most anyway :P Generally I try to do the right thing, then I'll leave if i can't. Its only really happened once so far, and the jobs I find obviously objectionable i've never applied for/accepted in the first place. I've taken some risks here and there which other people probably wouldn't have in that regard...

Now, being a general philosophical person, I do wonder about the ethics of what I do, and god, looking back i've probably got some reflections and thoughts about that one...but I can sleep comfortably at night and don't really have any regrets yet :) I'm trying to work towards going it alone (or at least in charge) myself eventually....
Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say
You could probably get in touch with the trade representative of any the embassy of the country you are interested in. That would most likely be a good starting point to get general information.

In Ghana a few good points of contact would be:

Ghana Consulate Warsaw: http://www.worldembassy.us/embassy/ghana-poland-warsaw.html

Google Ghana:

Mark Davies: http://markdavies.net/

Ghana Telecom University College: http://gtuc.edu.gh/

Meltwater: http://meltwater.org/

University of Science and Technology: http://www.knust.edu.gh
If you want links from reddit use the site tag :

portify site:reddit.com
EnyoJS – Native-like HTML5 apps
that a lot of the fears: failure, rejection, risk taking, success etc, are learned and embedded in our subconscious, stemming from life events in childhood. These fears operate in our subconscious and are projected outwardly in everything we do in the day-to-day decisions we make. Being able to recognize/rationalize against these fears is life-changing, at least for myself.

I used to be crippled by some social settings, but identified the root cause of the paralysis from a very specific childhood event, rationalized against it, and was able to overcome it with practice.

Anyone with more knowledge behind the psychology care to elaborate/provide some resources? Thanks
"Talk is cheap, show me the code" — The true gravity of this quote (by Linus Torvalds) struck me at the crux of my first startup.
http://goodfil.ms does a pretty good job of this.
Yes, but with IP addresses your identity changes whenever your connection changes, which is much worse. When using fingerprints, instead, the machine identity stays the same (and conceivably you would just have to ping a decentralized repository of "fingerprints => IP" mappings).
We have these in few places in the UK, including some of the airports.
Complain more often.
The book that really got me going was The Way of Zen by Alan Watts. I felt like that was a good introduction for myself (a Westerner who didn't want the religious component of Buddhism).

From there it was pretty much a lot of sitting, breath meditation, and hard work - it's very tempting to chase thoughts that pop-up during meditation, but reminding yourself to let it go and move back to focusing on the breath builds the ability later in "everyday" life to notice you have a poor/misguided thought pattern motivated by ego or emotion and to step back and realize you are not that emotion or thought, it is just something happening, and you're able to let those emotions go much easier and make calmer and more rational decisions. I am in no way an expert of any sort, I'm still figuring out this stuff as well, but it's been significantly beneficial just from the short time I've been practicing.

Honestly the /r/meditation FAQ has some good resources and links there, especially ones relating to mindfulness in plain English (it cuts out the spirituality aspect quite a bit). There is also a course on Coursera called Buddhism and Modern Psychology ( https://www.coursera.org/course/psychbuddhism ) that I was interested, but I have no experience with it. Hopefully this helps in some way :-)
The observer is the observed.
My University did something that seems similar. There was a group hostname which I believe dropped you into one of a group of linux machines(with nfs homedir) but you cold always specify the actual hostname of the computer where you parked tmux.
The #1 paid app in the Google Playstore "Virus Shield" is a complete scam
I started with gw-basic at 9, qbasic at 11. An old ZX spectrum 16K was my first computer (486 were already on the market) and "Basic for kids" was my first programming book, with some kind of mr. potato clippy thing guiding you through the language description, examples and exercises. I don't remember much about that book (or GW-Basic) but I do remember taking it to the beach for reading. I was a weird kid.
All of them.

I think part of the problem is class, there's a psychological barrier in the UK that employees shouldn't earn more than managers.

The other part of the lower pay is that we had a lot more people dabble with development in our school system in the 80s/90s because of the BBC programs and the Micro/Archimedes in schools which means we started running short of developers a lot later than other countries.

Both of those are speculation, but that's my belief.
Exactly! You're more likely to fail for reasons beyond your control (like no electricity, bad Internet) in African than in San Francisco.

But those things ARE actually under your control. Just move to San Francisco :-)
For me it is exactly the other way around, apart from the cheap bit.
> everywhere I looked I saw CDMA.

That's a very provincial "everywhere", then.
I'm not sure you have to build and own your own fiber network to start an ISP, actually there's a trend of people making their own ISP and they report that it's not that hard: "Y U NO ISP, taking back the Net [30c3]"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPIoO3Pkc5U
Stocks and Surf: How Tesla Drivers Are Using Their In-Dash Browser
Not knowing you, I can only suggest questions to ask your self.

What yardstick are you using to determine your level of suckage? Is it true? How do you know? If it is true, do you care? If you care, in what way do you care? Does it matter? If it matters, is it important? How so? Hopefully, the books you have read will help with the answers. You may not be able to answer all of these questions (and honestly, the answers don't matter too much), but they might serve to orient you.

I have read a fair number of the books on the list (and many more not on the list) and can truly say that I am a better human being for doing so, according to my criteria.