thailandstartup's comments

I was looking for a service just like this the other day.

Because I'm in Thailand, Paypal freezes my account regularly, and for CCs many places won't ship to a different address, let alone a foreign address because of the risk of CC fraud. Online shopping is set up to protect the consumer and so merchants are cautious and prefer to deal with the 90% low-risk transactions and turn away the 10% risky ones.

When you're in the 10% though - you want to just say - 'I trust you to ship. I'll take the risk. Here's the money. Ship it.'

Wallaby is a feature of the IDE to publish as HTML5 - it doesn't seek to address all the SWF content that is already out there.

It's counterintuitive but Adobe should be working on a project like this.

A decent server side SWF->HTML5 would enable existing websites to offer the first class experience (the SWF) to Flash enabled browsers, and push a HTML5 conversion for non-Flash browsers (Apple mobile devices). It would shaft Apple (Why does this run so slow on the iPad?) and slow the move away from Flash (Adobe could still make a credible 'runs everywhere' argument).

I saw an old cleric at a funeral of one of the protesters killed in Egypt on AlJazeera. He spoke of how they had mocked him for his blue jeans(!) and his facebook. He begged forgiveness and said that he saw now how he had been leading the way. Moving stuff.

The key mistake the author makes is to assert no-one will ever spend or sell bitcoin trying to secure greater future wealth. As a bubble grows, large holders find that that a larger and larger proportion of their wealth is tied up in a single asset and start to diversify that wealth into other assets. I assume this is already the cause for most of the bitcoins being sold on the market.

Click to Flash is the ideal middle ground for mobile devices. Only load the Flash when the user explicitly requests. 90% of the time, the user won't notice the Flash missing, the other 10% it is available on request. That solves the issues of 1) Flash in the background draining the battery or exploiting security holes and 2) the annoying advertisements.

It's great to have Flash there when you need it. So many sites still have integral Flash content.

You need to think a little bigger to properly understand his point.

Humankind is mis-allocating some of its most talented labour to what is essentially an arms race in financial market predictive algorithms. It provides some benefit for humankind - increased liquidity in markets, but the value of the marginal liquidity is small compared to the talent that is wasted.

Salman Khan is an excellent example - he left his job as a hedge fund analyst to start Khan Academy. How many new Khan Academies would we have if the incentives were right to have talented people working on useful projects instead of the financial arms race?

Sure, the incentives are right for an individual or country to specialize in financial markets. Think bigger - an alien looking at what we're doing here on planet earth would say we're wasting a lot of our talent on stuff that just re-arranges the pie instead of making it bigger.

You'd think it would be wouldn't you? It's not. It's all about iTunes for Apple.

Apple's number 1 priority is getting iTunes&cruft onto every computer their products touch. It won't be long before they put an end to this blasphemy.

If the court considers the value of the item and agrees with the valuation of the shopkeeper then no.

If the shopkeeper says the loaf of bread was worth $200K and the the court doesn't question the amount because the shopkeeper has been billed $200K for replacement of said loaf according to a contract with the bakery, the shopkeeper and the bakery have legislated the punishment for the crime.

The two companies can write whatever they like in the contract between themselves. You seem to agree that the contract should be held to some standard of reasonableness where it is used to establish damages caused by some third party. You think 200K is reasonable. I do not.

The position you're advocating is that a contract between two private companies should be used to calculate damages for a criminal act. That's a very bad idea - it makes those companies legislators.

That contract could have been written to make them contractually liable for $75 trillion dollars. Following your logic, it would then be easy to establish $75 trillion dollars as a basis for damages.

If I had a contract with a company that charged $193K to replace said $80 artwork - should I then be able to claim $193K damages?

>Justice Tennent jailed Monks for 18 months, with the last 12 months of the sentence suspended on condition she be of good behaviour for three years. >She was ordered to repay Aurora $193,187.43.

This is a horrendous miscarriage of justice. 4 months internet access = approx $80.

"We also accept Bitcoin. Please e-mail to arrange payment via this method."

I wonder long before they're shutting down foreign .com sites for the 'crime' of infringing US patents.

Having only a .com for a business feels a lot like having all your eggs in one basket now.

There's three factors I can think of -

Number one is that it is an uneven distribution. Some hackers might make millions, some will make nothing.

Number two is that hackers may focus too much on doing the work they understand and enjoy, when all parts of a business need attention (like sales and networking).

Number three is that 3 million just sounds a bit on the high side.

Yep, I'm pretty sure they're aware of Location, and they may be the best placed and biggest player right now. None of that is a guarantee for the future. The possibility is a new player can come along and understand Location in a way Facebook doesn't.

They already fail to understand Privacy - but maybe that's more of a bet that it is an old fashioned concept. Maybe they'll fail to understand Social Compartmentalization - I don't want everyone in my life to know everyone else. Maybe that's just my old fashioned ways too.

But my bet - they'll fail to understand Location.

The next big thing is Location, Location, Location!

My adwords account suddenly stopped displaying any ads about a year ago.

As I tackled the problem, my understanding grew that the Google's Adwords support staff didn't have any additional information than what was already published online. That kind of support is fine for maybe 50% of your users who don't read the online docs. Probably not of use to HN readers.

I suspect that Google doesn't provide information about recent changes to algorithms to the support staff that would help them understand what's going on. I can understand why they might not want to, but it reduces the quality of support that can be provided.