joshuago’s Bookmarks

A really useful thread on Hacker News for non-programmers who want to be involved in an early-stage startup.

Sure, Wal-Mart is making a statement that it’s a player in the online world, but the real goal of this conflict isn’t to lure readers away from Amazon, and it isn’t to get people to buy one of those ten books. It’s to lure them online, away from big booksellers and other retailers, and then sell them other stuff.

Both in terms of the political calculus of the Democratic Party, and in terms of making the United States a more equitable society, expanding health-care coverage now and worrying later about its long-term consequences is an eminently defensible strategy. One might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted. But as an economics reporter and commentator, I feel obliged to put on my green eyeshade and count the dollars.

The big three tend to believe that their brand will carry them through the digital era and they refuse to believe that powerhouses in the worldwide Print industry have fallen prey to the smaller, nimble highly technology savvy digital companies which is what will happen in India if they fail to wake up from their slumber. While these large media companies continue to invest in their digital businesses heavily the results are shoddy. Even the true Internet players from the early days of the Internet era in India like Rediff and Sify continue to underwhelm the market with poor product offerings and declining ad sales.

Strong horizontal lines across the page discourage scrolling.

Dictators provide strong incentives for the ruling clique; democracies provide more modest benefits for everyone else. For democracy to beat dictatorship, the dispersed population needs to have the skills and motivation to work collaboratively to defeat dictatorial coups and executive aggrandizement.

It's a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. The answer to saving the forest (or the trees) isn't always to suggest we burn the whole thing down.

What fonts are safe for me to use on the web?

In the software world, the first, second, and third versions of any product are really pretty good, because everyone can use them. Then companies start adding more and more stuff to keep their existing customers happy. But you end up dying with your customer base, because the software is too complicated for a newcomer. We keep our products simple. I'd rather have people grow out of our products, as long as more people are growing into them.