Also, some advice on your webpage. I am not going to bother downloading your app. I'm on my computer. However if you geolocated me based on my IP and then said "There are currently 5 games for Today, and 3 for next Thursday, in City Name", then I would be a lot more compelled. I am just skeptical, since a lot of these Show HN posts are duds.

The idea behind science is not to study it because you'll make a lot of money off of it. Even less it is so for humanitities.

If they're having you use your own vehicle and not forcing you to adhere to a specific schedule, they can probably do it.

Sure, some people are very self motivated and don't need a degree to help them grow. But for most, it lends them more options and also more ammunition for future career growth. Most high end jobs or opportunities today are intellectual/knowledge skill based.

Most of the US population lives (and will die having lived with) making less than that annualy.

He seemed to be targeting a specific group that's considered "ambitious." One could argue that everyone is ambitious but I'm sure his point was that those people who aren't satisfied with low-wage jobs and want to do something they see as important, would consider 80K "not enough."

Why now, in 2014, one with a B.S. makes about as much despite all that knowledge escapes me as well.

So you have to take into account current value of a college degree and value based on future evolution.

Automating a delivery driver is actually a harder problem than it appears unless you can convince people to accept packages dropped on the curb. I would not lay odds on that being the next job to be automated out of existence.

Totally negates the value of some college degrees. And to be frank, it's unclear why some of those degrees exist in the first place (beyond just bringing in easy tuition money to the university while making the students feel that they are following their dreams).

I've talked to engineering executives who agree, "I've read all of Joel's stuff", but then fail to implement his ideas at a concrete or abstract level. I don't know why.

Joel's advice is best taken at the founding stages of a company. It's extensive, and it's structural, and it needs to be part of the company's foundation. If you're the one group or division at a large company that "goes rogue" and operates on Joel's principles, even if you have the political clout to do so, you're painting a target on your back. You're taking a huge political risk. Maybe it pays off. Maybe it doesn't. At any rate, very few people reach executive status at established companies without a keen understanding of internal politics, and the constraints it imposes.

I'm not defending politics, of course. I'm just saying politics exists, and it's a powerful organizational force.

1) A whole lot more work and responsibility will come your way.

2) Other divisions will want to emulate your success.

If you are not successful, then yes I think sticking your neck out in a big organization is a good way to lose your head. The thing to remember is that if this organizational change is well executed then your likelihood of success increases.

3) Other divisions will get envious and seeing no way to emulate you they will try and stab you in the back or in other ways sabotage your work.

Maybe they will fail, if you're that good and/or have great political skills. But it's definitely something that might happen, and you have to be prepared for, and potentially prepared to lose.

Another powerful force to consider is employee morale. Employees tend to settle into a routine and resist change to that routine -- even if it's nominally better for them. You'd be surprised at how powerful a force this is. I can almost guarantee you that if you went to any big company with an open-layout, cube-farm floor plan and proposed that everyone be given their own office, a significant percentage of those employees would grumble about it. It sounds silly to think so, but it will happen. People fear change. They tend to read into it. They think it's a harbinger for more sinister or scary things to come. Loss-aversion is very real and very strong.

Of course, the upside to making big changes is the chance at big success. If you turn around your division, or if you're the one division outperforming all the others, you're a hero. And other divisions will follow suit. That's a wonderful thing. But the risk that that won't happen, and that your changes will backfire or be scuttled in some way, is every bit as real as the potential upside. When faced with that calculation, and especially when taking into account the stability of a very nicely paying and high-ranking job, a lot of managers and execs will opt not to rock the boat.

Again, this is not a defense of change-aversion. It is an explanation for why you don't see more change in established firms. The vectors of big change tend to come from outside: a new CEO, a new executive hire, or the formation of a new business or division. In those circumstances, the organizational and psychological frame is oriented towards change, rather than towards the preservation of the status quo. The person leading the change has a clear mandate to do so. In other, more day-to-day circumstances, the mandate is less clear and less easily secured.

You know what else I hate? Typing in long commands in the Mac OS X terminal and then them wrapping weirdly. Especially when I hit the up arrow to go back in my terminal history.

  shopt -s histappend
  export HISTSIZE=100000
  export HISTFILESIZE=100000
  export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups:erasedups
  export PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a;history -c;history -r;$PROMPT_COMMAND"

It looks like it clears your shell's history, and then re-populates it from the .bash_history file?

   history -a  # append history lines from this session to the history file.
   
   #History file may contain history from other terminals not in this one so:

   history -c # clear [in-memory] history list deleting all of the entries.
   history -r # read the history file and append the contents to the history list instead.

    > You know what else I hate? Typing in long commands in the Mac OS X terminal and then them wrapping weirdly.

Do this at the command prompt, or once in your ~/.bash_profile to make it permanent:

set -o vi

After that, you can search for any of the commands in your history, edit it, and then execute the edited command, by doing this:

At the prompt, type Esc once to get into vi command mode. Then you can press the k key repeatedly to scroll up through the command history, or (often easier) use the ? (search backward) vi command to search for a pattern to find a specific command. Once found, press v to edit it in a temp file. Then when you save and quit, the edited command gets executed.

The same technique works with emacs as the editor instead of vi, if you don't give the 'set -o vi' command, because the default editor for command line history is emacs. Also, if you have run 'set -o vi', you can switch the editor for commands back to emacs with 'set -o emacs'.

The 'set -o <editor>' bit sets the readline editing environment to be similar to vi. It can be set to emacs.

C-xC-e (edit-and-execute-command) invokes the editor specified by $VISUAL, $EDITOR, or emacs, in that order. You could set it to scrivner if you wanted to (though I'm not sure that would necessarily work on exit).

I've tested with VISUAL set to nedit, from which I then changed it to uptime. Now I get loadavg when I want to edit my command line ;-)

set editing-mode vi

in your ~/.inputrc (instead) and all GNU libreadline using programs will give you vi keys instead of emacs :-)

It's better than nothing though.

At the shell, it's true that you're limited to vi-style controls (so no text objects like ci").

However, once you press 'v' in normal mode you can drop into either vi or vim - this only depends on what $EDITOR is set to[1].

[1] http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/vi-mode-in-bash/

zsh has `setopt inc_append_history` and `setopt share_history`. i am sure bash has something similar.

Are you escaping your color codes in PS1 correctly?

Bad:

    PS1="\033[1;32m \w \033[m $"

    PS1="\[\033[1;32m\] \w \[\033[m\] $"

edit: couldn't get UTF-8 branch symbol to be properly displayed here, but this is how it looks:

http://i.imgur.com/zuq24gV.png?1

  function fancyPrompt {

   local bgBlue="\[\033[48;5;31m\]"
   local fgBlue="\[\033[38;5;31m\]"

   local fgWhite="\[\033[38;5;231m\]"

   local bgDarkBlue="\[\033[48;5;24m\]"
   local fgDarkBlue="\[\033[38;5;24m\]"

   local bgDarkGray="\[\033[48;5;237m\]"
   local bgLightGray="\[\033[48;5;245m\]"
   local fgLightGray="\[\033[38;5;245m\]"
   local colorClear="\[\033[0m"

   local branch
   local branch_symbol="\[\] "

   if branch=$( { git symbolic-ref --quiet HEAD || git rev-parse --short HEAD; } 2>/dev/null ); then
   	branch=${branch##*/}
   	export PS1="${bgBlue}${fgWhite}\h${colorClear}${fgBlue}${bgDarkBlue}\[\] ${fgWhite}\w${bgLightGray}${fgDarkBlue}\[\] ${fgWhite}${branch_symbol}${branch}${fgLightGray}${bgDarkGray}\[\] ${colorClear}"
   else
   	export PS1="${bgBlue}${fgWhite}\h${colorClear}${fgBlue}${bgDarkBlue}\[\] ${fgWhite}\w${bgDarkGray}${fgDarkBlue}\[\] ${colorClear}"
   fi

 }

I've been loving a prompt which color codes git branches (which, if I understand right, would be built-in if I used zsh instead of bash) [0], though I have to edit the last line in order to get my history appendation working as well.

0: https://gist.github.com/tobiassjosten/828432

I solved this by adding the following line in my ~/.bashrc

  shopt -s checkwinsize

For all people who dont use Mac OS X:

This happens because your PS1 is wrongly set and bash cant calculate correctly the length left of your line. Try it out, by going back to default with no colors and crap and see how long it goes.

For mac os x users. The above wont help, dont even try it.

So far over 130000 command lines (with timestamp & cwd) for past 2.5 years, just on my laptop.

I used to feel this way. Then one day I figured out how to enable this in Bash. Resulted in a confusing mess. Turns out you most likely want terminal sessions to be distinct until you end them.

http://greencomplianceplus.markenglisharchitects.com.s3.amaz...

My guess: Eventually, as we begin to understand mathematics better, we will elucidate the underlying properties of theorems and there will be better "tagging"; the underlying language must also change. This will not happen for a minimum of 30+ years as new advances must be made and institutional faculty will object lest their life be rendered irrelevant.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6L6XeNdd_k [2] http://ncatlab.org/

Let's say you can optimize it down to $75 with better ad copy:

* Higher CTR -> lower spend

Then let's say you can optimize it down to $50 with better conversion funnel tracking

* You get their email and then send them a free eBook about Japanese candy or stationery, then you ask them if you have permission to keep contacting them. If yes, you keep providing value and eventually sell them on more Candy Japan packages.

* You include the video on your page

Then you instrument a referral incentive system

* You give someone double-candy if they refer a friend

Then you ask the people who aren't retaining why they aren't retaining. You bucket their complaints into categories and you provide solutions.

* "I only needed it for this one specific occasion" -> You sell them a gift subscription package instead, at a much lower price, so the recipient knows they are still thinking of them, with bigger upside kicking it at later months. i.e., month 1 = one piece of candy, month 2 = two additional pieces of candy, month 3 = 3 additional pieces of candy

Lifetime value could surpass conversion cost.

Did you ask them if they'd be interested in smaller packages?

\) Can you try switching them to "Pen Japan" 1.1 months before the usual cancellation point? This could be done with an opt-in.

\) Incrementally iterating on Mithaldu's idea, can you try giving them a price break (and announcing it with an email!) 1.1 months before the usual cancellation point?

\) Can you add a "But wait! If you stay around, you can get a 10% discount on your subscription cost" last-minute notice to your cancellation page, that is only presented if the user has been around for (the mean cancellation time - 1.1months)?

Hopefully with volume, better manufacturer/distributor relationships, maybe lower-cost fulfillment offshore and changing of shipping method/frequency, they can lower the price or increase the quantities.

One positive for this entrepreneur is that people already associate "Japan" with "expensive", so the sticker shock isn't really unexpected.

In our country, they will send you a notice in the post when a package has arrived. And then you have to go queue at the post office to receive it. However, every week I now find myself queueing at the post office just to see if any candy packages might have arrived.

I think the twice a month deliveries are great as they are still pretty far apart that you aren't sick of them yet. Lately the packages have increased in size and its a good size to make it enjoyable but not put you off sweets for a while.

Bemmu - You mentioned that a lot of people have un-subscribed, is this after you have changed from using an envelope size package to the new larger box?

In any service a certain amount of people will unsubscribe each month, but so far more people are joining and overall the service is growing.

That said, based on the testimony I've seen here I might try a few months and see...

One thing I actually appreciate about some of the random time-insensitive purchases I've made from HK/China on Ebay is that I tend to forget I've made my purchase by the time it arrives. It's like an unexpected Christmas.