ajdecon

48 ms·

421.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Which would be interesting to see them try, but I don't think they'd find many takers among popular authors right now. Most of the anti-Amazon press this weekend was generated by authors angry over the stealth delisting of their physical
422.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Specifically, the big point I thought interesting: at the moment ebooks seem to have a pretty small demand which falls off fast, so they sell more like limited editions than mass-market. This might make it difficult to justify releasing t
423.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Submitted for having a pretty good explanation of the economics of ebook publishing (through major publishers), and discussion of the recent Amazon-Macmillan dispute.
424.
Why my books are no longer for sale via Amazon(tobiasbuckell.com)
69 points by ajdecon 17y ago|36 comments
425.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Trumpet proficiently, with ok performance on other valved brasses such as french horn, baritone, or tuba. Some rudimentary understanding of piano, and I wish I could find the time to improve that. And of course I made the typical college
426.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Webapps which duplicate the functionality of open-source tools can make money, but I think they have to position themselves well. Basically I think people will pay for this type of webapp if: * The web app is substantially more convenient
427.
by ajdecon 17y ago
You lose an object; unattached objects are loose. Which doesn't cover every case I can think of, but demonstrates the difference. Also lose is a verb, loose is (almost always) an adjective.
428.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Also note that the code at the core of packages like numpy is often still written in Fortran or C. For example, I'm pretty sure all the linear algebra processing in numpy is handled by the popular LAPACK written in Fortran. Note that softw
429.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Because wisdom (and, more to the point, advice and mentoring) is highly context-dependent. It depends not only on your current understanding of the material, which software has trouble measuring anyway, but also on the way you are thinking
430.
by ajdecon 17y ago
No, but respectful is.
431.
by ajdecon 17y ago
You can do that: post@whatever.posterous.com
432.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Also useful is mathURL: http://mathurl.com/ which provides a tinyurl-style link to the formula, and a png which can be saved or referenced using the same reference.
433.
by ajdecon 17y ago
This is hardly surprising. I don't know of anyone previously setting out to make "fake DNA evidence", but the synthesis of arbitrary DNA strands has been possible for a while, and is a common technique in molecular biology labs. The applic
434.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Several things about Einstein's work made it plausible and not obviously the work of a crackpot, despite its initial non-falsifiability: * It was consistent with most observations and experiments done thus far. * It offered an explanation f
435.
by ajdecon 17y ago
I've heard this argument before, and while there might be something to it, I think it's more specific to say that ambitious people tend to have fewer children. This makes sense purely in terms of time commitment: the more time is devoted
436.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Not really. I post the occasional tweet (<1/day) and keep up with maybe three friends I have who only use Twitter, but the majority of my social networking is on Facebook. I'm not impressed with the article's rationale for this, though
437.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Not to mention electrical, mechanical or chemical engineers, scientists, editors, diplomats, or anyone else who requires a large and deep pool of specialized knowledge.
438.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Possible but difficult: good work will speak for itself, but there are a lot of network effects which make it easier to publish from within academia. A trivial example might be that it's much easier and cheaper to find and read existing pu
439.
by ajdecon 17y ago
OK, so you won't charge jobseekers. Does your service have a flipside where you allow employers to search resumes, or do any sort of matching between jobs and seekers? Are you charging the employers at all? And if not, why not? A free s
440.
by ajdecon 17y ago
I'd probably pay $5/mo for Pandora or Google Docs, GMail, etc., but most of the other services here either rely on network effects or are better advertising-supported. As they are, anyway: I can imagine premium features for almost all of t
441.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Probably it would still be popular, tho maybe not as much of a hit. Physical toys and puzzles are still pretty popular among non-gamers. And some pretty technical people still enjoy playing with this kind of puzzle: during undergrad I noti
442.
by ajdecon 17y ago
Well, no. In fact, for services which are purely free, complaining is really the only way to push for a change. But it does mean that if you're complaining about something very far outside the core of the product, you're a lot less likely
443.
by ajdecon 18y ago
But you're still taking the view that your goal will be achieved eventually, unaltered, right? And if your opponent knows that your goal is unchanged, and his does not change either, compromise is worthless: you're both bargaining from a p
444.
by ajdecon 18y ago
Sure: black and white exist in the world, and there are fundamental truths. There is justice in the world. But there exist people who will disagree with your view of justice, and the question is how you will interact with them. If compro
445.
by ajdecon 18y ago
Um... does this actually have anything to do with Silicon Valley?
446.
by ajdecon 18y ago
Really? I use most of those, but none of them very often. The heart of the Facebook experience--especially in the newest iteration--is the status news feed, with the profile Wall probably in 2nd place. And it feels like some of their app
447.
by ajdecon 18y ago
I can see some merit in those points, but mostly only because computer science as an academic field and the jobs real-world CS majors do are fairly disconnected at the moment. Most of the "50 year old professors" I've met are nowhere near
448.
by ajdecon 18y ago
Would it really remove any pressure to increase follower count? Presumably you could still see your follower count and who is following, and if you're trying to drive traffic or affect a conversation than you're still going to be trying
449.
by ajdecon 18y ago
Is it just me, or does a "college is obsolete/failing/just plain sucks" article hit HN about once every week or two? And most tend to assume the target industry will be IT or web-based, ignoring fields like engineering or non-computer scie
450.
by ajdecon 18y ago
It would certainly be nice to be able to hit the 10-year goal, but I think it's going to take longer than that. The thing I wonder about is how hard it will be to scale up the manufacturing of the required components of such a system: PV c

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