lawrencewu's comments

Yup!

It also doesn't mean a decrease in unemployment, which is what this report claims. I'm also still unclear on _how_ a minimum wage would have no effect on unemployment, which is what the law of supply and demand predicts.

- Raise the minimum wage

If we raise the minimum wage, that would surely increase unemployment. Even a minimum wage job is hard to get for an uneducated, unskilled person, so how would it be easier for them to get a job at a rate employers are even less willing to pay?

Easy to say, hard to do. We don't like change. Change means possible danger, it means relinquishing opportunities, it means no safety net.

Part of the happiness that comes from a new relationship comes from not just discovering new things about each other (or NRE, or the Coolidge effect) but from the (misplaced) belief that things will go on this way forever. Embracing change means sacrificing that pleasure, which you might be able to do if you possess foresight/discipline, but it is hard and not obvious, especially when you have an of love that's foolish, us-against-the-world that reinforces that mentality.

Nice playlist!

Shameless plug, but you can also check out a collection of my favorite songs on my Juicebox: http://www.juicebox.dj/lawrence

It's mostly hip-hop, deep house, and experimental music.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted because you're absolutely right. The first three markets named (airlines, telecommunications, health care) are all heavily regulated and the barrier to entries are controlled by the government, not natural market forces.

Monopolies are not all bad. Sometimes a company has a monopoly because they just offer a better product (Amazon, Google) and they shouldn't be punished for that, especially when there's no government intervention that exists to protect them.

I don't think this is a good solution. Where is the incentive for anyone to maintain properties anymore?

"Owners of valuable land would be forced to make maximum use of land with higher density rentals in order to make sufficient rental income to pay the land tax."

I don't see how this follows if all income is taxed at 100%.

The correct solution is to eliminate NIMBYism by eliminating the ability for homeowners to restrict the construction of new buildings so that new housing can be built. Rent control should also be eliminated, allowing demand to match supply.

It rubs me the wrong way too. But rationally, it's just your classic price discrimination tactics (coupons and special discounts) on steroids, so if you aren't upset by those, you shouldn't be upset by this.

I guess my main issue here is the clickbaity title, since I don't think Amazon is making us suckers. The consumer ultimately has the upper hand since they can just choose not to purchase the product, or use a price search engine to find a better deal (which is akin to using a coupon - people that are price-sensitive are more willing to put in effort to save money).

So is it unfair when someone uses a coupon they found in a flyer? They're not paying the same price for the same item as someone without a coupon, and people using coupons are likely to be less affluent.

And what about student discounts? Is it unfair that students get better deals on Photoshop and Microsoft Office?

This article paints a pretty good description of how price discrimination is used in online shopping and how places like Amazon try to extract consumer surplus. I don't know if I agree with the title's claim, though. If a product is shown at a higher place and you click buy, you're still choosing to buy the product at an accepted price, i.e. the value of the product is still worth more than what you're willing to spend, otherwise you wouldn't have bought it at all. How does that make you a sucker? Because someone else might be getting it for cheaper? That might seem unfair at first, but ultimately it's irrelevant. Other people have different opportunities for a lot of things. Complaining about what price someone is voluntarily willing to pay for a good is probably near the bottom of my list of injustices.

I've been working for about a year now on Juicebox, which is like turntable.fm but better:

- Can play from YouTube and SoundCloud

- Autoplay makes a juicebox more like a radio station that plays your favorite tracks

- Allowing users to create and curate their own juicebox gives them a sense of ownership

https://www.juicebox.dj/

Use the invite code HN to create your own Juicebox!

I'll consider adding that functionality. Thanks for the feedback!

You're not supposed to be able to pause. But this is a UI flaw. Sorry about that -- I've disabled interactions on the player so it's more clear.

One difference is that Juicebox is still alive :P

Kidding aside, one feature I really like about Juicebox is that it will play songs that have been previously added to the queue. One problem I had with turntable.fm and plug.dj was that it required a lot of energy to keep the music going (you have to continually keep adding songs to the queue). On Juicebox, I can just join my room and I can enjoy music without too much hassle.

Juicebox is a great way to share your music with others. You can create rooms, add songs, and share the URL with others, and they will be synced to the same song as you when they join. It's built on React, Node.js, and Firebase. I've been working on this for fun for the past few months, and I'm hoping to hear some feedback from the HN community.

Thanks for checking it out!

True, but one could probably come up with codewords for any really personal reminders.

http://hellojarvis.io/ is a Messenger bot that reminds you to do stuff. You can phrase time in many ways, which was quite tricky to do: "in 3 hours", "on the 25th", "tomorrow night", "next wednesday" all work.

We currently have almost 25k users and I'm proud of the fact that people really do find it useful. A friend recently mentioned to me that he used Jarvis to remind him about his dentist appointment.

Here's mine too, I guess: http://lawrencewu.me/

Would love some honest feedback on it!

Hmm, sorry about that, it should! What city did you put in? I'll try to get that fixed ASAP.

Personally, I never use Siri because I don't like talking to my phone. I'm also almost always on Messenger, so I'm sure to get these reminders.