SEEKING WORK — Remote or Luxembourg

I am a freelance web developer & generalist. Happy to work with Ruby/Rails/JavaScript/Python. I would also enjoy pairing on projects if you are a freelancer yourself.

Get in touch for a quick chat: matthieutc.com

I am experimenting with "reading minutes left" as a better indicator of progress on a page. This is similar to what medium.com is doing for their articles, but it could be extended to any web page.

The extension does not work everywhere, but it works on wikipedia and articles from theatlantic.com if you want to try it out.

What do you think? Is this useful to you?

I couldn't disagree with you more. People solving the problems have a choice. If they don't want to look it up, more power to them. Otherwise, leave the decision to the learner.

I always hated it when teachers would hold on to the solutions to the exercises in the textbook.

You can share the solutions in the Project Euler forums --- after you have solved the problems on your own.

... unless the discussion for that question's already gotten 100 comments, in which case the discussion's read-only.

Oh, I did not know that. I usually concentrate on the newer problems.

I would expect the market for extended warranties to be competitive. At least as competitive as the market for the product the warranty is slapped on. How can stores make so much profits on warranties but so little on the associated products?

For a big-ticket purchase people tend to act more rationally and thus margins are lower but for extended warranty people tend to make snap decisions.

The effect is amplified by two factors:

1. When the product is hedonistic, anticipated pleasure undermines rational thinking, and anticipated loss of almost-real-already pleasure (brought up by the sales agent) leads to excessive risk aversion

2. Timing. To pony up a large sum of cash one has to go through some emotional upheaval, and the moment right after that is the moment where a person is likely still convincing himself how valuable the purchase is. Anyone who didn't convince themselves is not buying, thus all buyers are either indifferent (not enough money) or momentarily very attached to the product. Timing is very important here and commands 100% higher margins as demonstrated by the 2x different between in-store and after-market warranty costs.

Good in-store salespeople also master the art of looking slightly surprised and/or disappointed when you decline the extended warranty, the implication being "Oh dear, Sir cannot afford the extended warranty, Sir is not quite as magnificent as I estimated him to be."

The disappointment, however, is genuine as as the article points out the warranty is about 80% pure profit.

I agree with you although I wonder what happens in the case of repeated purchases. Wouldn't the store with lower prices and lower profits on these warranties attract more buyers? Or what if it's Christmas time and I'm buying a gift, I would consider the extended warranty much more rationally.

I suppose when people comparison-shop they compare on prices, not thinking about extended warranty yet. That part comes later.

You are also neglecting an important factor - someone who is that much into forethought and rational decision-making (such as yourself) so that he is comparing extended warranties before shopping is more likely to buy after-market insurance or better yet skip it altogether because it's pointless.

In fact, I would prefer to shop in stores with more expensive extended warranty because such stores can allow lower margins on the products themselves.

Like the lottery, extended warranties can be thought of as a tax on the mathematically-challenged.

Because odds are that the product won't break before the buyer stops using it.

You're forgetting a very important fact: most participants on HN have highly analytical personalities. The rest of the world really doesn't see the need to examine everything so deeply.

I think you overestimate the ability of the average person to understand the mathematics of risk.

Pairing has helped me and my code a lot but as with most things there is a learning curve. Only an atrocious pair would say something like "Oh... yes, that function... I already thought of that, and here's why it can't work.". When pairing, thinking is talking. If the one not typing at the moment is allowed to get bored, then the pairing is not done correctly.

Also, in my experience, two developers working as a pair will have better work ethics and discipline than any of the two taken separately.

BTW, you're calling the one not typing the 'passive' one? That's the wrong attitude.

More on global warming ranking low: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_...

Hacker News is among the 5000 most popular sites!

I'm also curious about why companies might want to opt out of the news aggregator.

Although I'm wondering why companies even have a say in it. Isn't the aggregation involved fair use? If I start my own news aggregator do I have to ask publishing companies permission? I feel like I should be able to just aggregate them whether they like it or not.

Except you can press [esc, .] multiple times.

Sorry if this is misleading. I read the article on paper and that was the pull-quote. I decided to use it because the real title 'The upside of a downturn' was not descriptive enough to me.