I like this idea. If any rent-seeking group achieves market dominance, the government should regulate their prices. For example, the price of prescription drugs and higher education should be set by the government. Laissez-faire capitalism only works in markets with price competition.
Ultimately, I think most industries will evolve into government regulated monopolies. Consolidation is a standard part of the life-cycle for most markets. We should embrace the efficiency that dominant players can achieve.
With regard to individuals, I think a universal basic income is the long-term solution. Let a few people become billionaires, while the masses are paid to relax at home. There is a large amount of wasted resource in industries like retail, marketing and sales. Society would probably be better off if those industries shrank.
"As advances in turbine technology allow areas of moderate wind resource to be developed, more than a tenfold increase in the wind energy potential is possible. These areas, which cover large sections of the Great Plains and are widely distributed throughout many other sections of the country, have the potential of producing more than three times the nation's current electric consumption."
There is also the option of part-time consulting to pay the bills while building the startup. As a Django consultant, this person could probably make $50k annual income by consulting a few days per week. The rest of his time could be dedicated to the startup business.
Even if you have low living costs, you should still consider opportunity costs of not working. A consultant making $100k per year who takes two years off to do a failed startup has effectively lost $200k in income.
One recommendation, stolen from patio11: sell weekly blocks of your time. This is more fair to both those hiring you, and to your startup, because ramp-up and context-switch time are an expensive part of software development.
This is what I've started doing. Right now I'm consulting for a TechStars company doing some Akka stuff while I work on my own venture.
I'm single and 22 so doing this for a few months brings in enough to float me for ~year, not including the savings I had from the BigCo job I recently left.
The real bonus, IMO, comes from the fact that your former consulting clients are your most likely bet for job prospects if/when your venture fails, assuming they like your work of course.
Was the Xbox 360 really a huge success? It came second or third in sales for its generation of consoles. 75 million units in seven years is a small number compared to mobile devices. Android sold 144 million devices in Q4 2012 alone.
I think the next generation of consoles are going to struggle against cheaper systems like OUYA and tablets.
> Was the Xbox 360 really a huge success? It came second or third in sales for its generation of consoles. 75 million units in seven years is a small number compared to mobile devices. Android sold 144 million devices in Q4 2012 alone.
Yes it was a huge success. Even though it didn't sell as many consoles as others, its tie ratio flat-out beats[1] both the Wii and the PS3, and that's quite an important metric that's almost never taken into account, but that contributes a great deal to the success of a platform.
So 'tie ratio' is basically number of games sold per hardware unit? Interesting. For example, North America seems to buy about 50% more games per unit than Japan, with the exception of the PS1 and (S)NES.
I wonder if/how this affects the projects of different studios? E.g., should we expect games from Japan to tend to have broader appeal?
Why are you comparing consoles to mobile devices? Its apples to oranges. This is like comparing Netflix subscription to Xbox/PS3 consoles sold. People buy mobile devices and get the added benefit of playing games. I don't think there is a majority of people who prioritize games when looking to buy a phone (But I could be wrong).
Make that $20k the cost of living in Australia (especially the Sydney or Melbourne areas) is very high at the moment. $2.5kAUD/month is average for a single bed apartment.
Also getting a rental unit without previous references from Australian landlords/agents is particularly difficult.
Be prepared to spend out a lot of $$$ getting set up.
Just in case the OP reads this and is interested, this exaggerates somewhat for Melbourne. Particularly if you're a kid coming over on a working holiday, which actually sounded like a really good suggestion for the situation.
Yes you'd be looking to pay that for a nice, new or renovated single bed apartment in the middle of the city or an expensive area. As hinted at though, as someone with $5-10k in the bank coming here to be a barista there's no way you'd be able to get a lease for one of them anyway.
Head even a 20 minute tram ride out from the city, however, and suddenly you can pay AU$1,400/mth for a 1 or 2 bedroom place in an older building. (Though you may struggle to get a lease anyway...)
If you were on a working holiday you would likely be better off finding a shared place with some like-minded souls, and end up somewhere around $1,000 for rent + all your bills and such to live somewhere pretty nice.
Lower your expectations. Be grateful for your health and living in a developed country like Switzerland. You have awesome mountains there.
Startups are an escapist fantasy for millions of people. I would guess 99% of web startups make no money. Most HN readers are in the same situation as you, but that doesn't make them losers. Enjoy life and think of your startup like a lottery ticket.
I guess they were too optimistic on the home robot. Hopefully, they will start to become useful in the next few years. I personally would like to see Microsoft, Google and the other big tech brands launch home robots.
I think home robots are a non-starter. They're seductive ideas because they duplicate things we already know (servants). But robots and automation don't work the way humans do, and there's no reason to assume that there will be a point where that stops being true. It used to be that if you were wealthy you had servants, or a service, who would clean your clothing by hand, wash your dishes, cook your meals, etc. Today automation has changed much of that. You have specialized devices which make washing clothes and dishes far less of a chore. You also have innovations in the kitchen which make cooking far less of a chore (everything from electric ovens to stand mixers to refrigeration to a wide variety of prepared or partially prepared foods and so forth) and you have a significant increase in the ability to acquire pre-made foods (at restaurants, fast food places, delivery, frozen foods, etc.)
By the same token I don't imagine that further automation in the home will necessarily take an anthropomorphic shape. It'll be things we haven't even thought of yet, tasks we don't appreciate are time sinks or perhaps don't consider to be automate-able. Look at the roomba, for example.
I beg to differ. We already have walking and object handling robots and their agility is rapidly increasing. In the future we will have to deal with the aging population. As the quality of life increases and more people get university education, the rate of birth declines. Then who will take care of all those old men and women? We need household robots and they will be invented in Japan if not in some other place. They will be a good expensive item to mass produce and sell.
Japanese are incredibly xenophobic, it makes more financial sense just to import housekeepers from the Philippines or Indonesia, but many don't like the idea of that so they'll develop household robots instead (lucky for us!). Also, the rise of China set manufacturing robots back by about 10 or 15 years; we are just now beginning to recover.
Japanese are incredibly xenophobic, it makes more financial sense just to import housekeepers from the Philippines or Indonesia, but many don't like the idea of that so they'll develop household robots instead
With the housing so limited in places like Tokyo, wouldn't it make more financial sense to get a robot you can store in a closet than hire a live-in housekeeper?
OK, I am sold on Go as my next language for web applications. Unfortunately, I can't throw away the existing PHP/MySQL code. Any suggestions on how to integrate Go and PHP into a single web server? Should I be using FastCGI for Apache to call the Go programs?
If it hits Mars, it could help to terraform the planet. The CO2 ice caps would melt and heat the atmosphere. It would melt a significant amount of frozen water in the soil and thicken the Martian air with water vapor too.
Wikipedia is predicting a 1 in 1250 chance of hitting Mars. Outgassing as the comet nears the sun could change its trajectory significantly also.
Ultimately, I think most industries will evolve into government regulated monopolies. Consolidation is a standard part of the life-cycle for most markets. We should embrace the efficiency that dominant players can achieve.
With regard to individuals, I think a universal basic income is the long-term solution. Let a few people become billionaires, while the masses are paid to relax at home. There is a large amount of wasted resource in industries like retail, marketing and sales. Society would probably be better off if those industries shrank.