Since I started reading HN a couple years ago (yes, reading. I don't feel confident enough to comment) I learned so many things. Now I use code almost everyday in my day job as a UX designer. I work in tech, so it only makes sense I understand as much of it as possible.
Also, it's a hobby of mine to build things. Since I joined HN it's been quite a journey : got myself a RPi and played around with it, build a couple dynamic websites on my own server, taught myself Ruby on Rails (that's what the hackers use at my startup) and so on.
IIRC, they always try to sell their consoles at a profit, unlike the other companies in this space. It's part of why the Wii was such an amazing success for them (combined with their successful Blue Ocean strategy[0]).
Could you elaborate on what you consider to be Nintendo's Blue Ocean strategy? I mean, I get that they've often tried to be first movers with e.g. motion control, is that what you're referring to?
Specifically, it's that they do stuff qualitatively that their competitors don't, to the point where they're not so much competing as they are the sole player in a brand new market.
I remember when the seventh generation came out, Microsoft did Nintendo's PR work for them by telling people that they can buy both a 360 and a Wii for the price of a PS3. That's right, they got Microsoft of all people to tell consumers to buy a Wii! Why did MS do it? Because the Wii is so qualitatively different from the 360 that they weren't directly competing.
Nintendo set things up such that nobody would ever ask "should I get a 360 or a Wii?" the way people would ask "should I get a 360 or a PS3?". Instead, they made it so a large amount of gamers wanted to get both a "normal" console and a Wii in the same way that people own both a console and a PC. On top of that, they also attracted people who would never buy a normal console because normal consoles don't appeal to them at all.
> On top of that, they also attracted people who would never buy a normal console because normal consoles don't appeal to them at all.
Sounds like me. I don't buy a gaming system to play games generally, I buy one to play the kind of games Nintendo makes and attracts to its hardware. That's why I still pull my Gamecube out to play SSBM from time to time, but have never owned a Playstation or X-Box, and have barely touched either of them. I haven't had a new system since GBA and Gamecube, but I think I'd enjoy the newer Nintendo systems more than the systems they were released next to.
It might be what "should" be done but given the election results last night I'm not sure it's a winning recipe for electoral success. A big part of the country is not down with pulling harder to the left.
There are different axes of "left"-ness at play here. A large portion of the country doesn't like hearing about how urban liberals are the only moral human beings on the planet. Much the same portion of the country wants their goddamned labor unions back.
I think it's safe to say he, sarcastically, is implying that failure to match the ease of getting torrents of movies means that movie studios are by default leaving torrenting as the best way to watch. Thus they seemingly endorse torrenting by offering no proper competition.
I find it interesting that Netflix is such a success, despite the availability of many great films.
As the presence of great films on the platform may suggest, it's a long shot to assume that they're more interested in creating their own -great- content than simply offering you great content. But given the unavailability of a single legal platform to rule them all, the bet on original ideas propelled with data and smart marketing was and is still the best one.
IMO, if Netflix had all the content in the world, they would probably stop creating their own.
There is a time-to-market distortion with this excitement over bot platforms.
On the one hand major messaging actors (Facebook, Slack, Kik, WeChat and Line) are competing over their IM platforms. On the other hand, they are competing over who gets the best bots (thus, the developer market). No unsupervised AI is reliable, yet everyone is fighting over who gets there first.
I think the company that will seize this market has not been born yet. Thoughts ?
A considerable part of our base does not come back after the first two weeks. However, we are noticing an increase of the segment that comes back more than twice a week. They seem to use Jam as a way to get rid of tasks that demand little reflexion/benchmarking (eg. "What's the best oven for <150€", "Where can I eat brunch right now at République ?"). Our ideal user should ask 3 things per week.
About the travel assistant feature, it is indeed a feature that many could use. I have personally discovered this use-case and found it truly powerful.
This week, we have put a lot of effort into making the experience around bars as delightful as possible (put some interpolations and randomness in our wordings, put a few jokes in there, etc...).
About the business model : So far, we have tried to help companies hire talent using Jam. We signed 3 contracts in one month (25k€) but abandoned the idea eventually because we felt the product was not ready for that.
Right now, we are interested in helping brands grow in the student market. Say Uber is looking for ambassadors, we can find them rapidly as our user-base is cash-poor and time-rich and there is already a high demand for student jobs.
Here's a repartition of our requests received in the last 7 days (878 "student jobs") : https://infinit.io/_/BHZzvHE
We are based in Paris and the entire team is French (some of us work remotely). We could either translate it into English or more "rare" languages (ie. where text-based training sets are rare)
