Andrew Hyde, a startup community organizer, writes about extreme minimalism, frugal living, startup resumes, and travel.
HN links it for his minimalism project of owning 39 things and his startup resumes post; the author himself joined the discussion.
> How does Amazon accomplish their free 3G with the Kindle and why aren't they selling this service?
It's not "free 3G", it's "free ebook shop browsing and delivery via 3G" - relatively small files, and Amazon directly profits from each one. Thus they can afford to pay for it, and they're big enough to negotiate reasonable prices. But note that it's very limited: audio books are not delivered via 3G, nor are files sent in by the user for conversion (actually I believe you can pay for that service). And for their 70% royalty option, delivery is actually charged to the author at 15 cents per MB: http://andrewhy.de/amazons-markup-of-digital-delivery-to-indie-authors-is-129000/
Lots of sales offices in Melb (Google, LinkedIn...)
Losing Startcon to Sydney was one of my top reasons other than that international startups (particularly fintech) seem to gravitate towards Sydney.
Melbourne does have some noticeable startups - Carsales.com.au, realestate.com.au, envato, seek but I think there isn't enough done to phrase them. If you are in Melbourne however I'd recommend coming a Inspire9 pitch night or a SiliconBeach meetup. Finally Andrew Hyde's writing speaks of some of the strengths in Melbourne http://andrewhy.de/why-your-startup-should-visit-melbourne/
You didn't mention your specific skills, but no matter what, start building a decent profile on linkedin and a portfolio ( take projects on upwork, fiverr, toptal, crossover... whatever ) right now. Heck, write a "how to" tutorial on medium....
Also look for a roommate, to decrease your fixed costs without breaking the lease. This could give you some ideas too: https://andrewhy.de/how-to-live-comfortably-on-36-a-month-for-food/
Buy a second hand bicycle, and ditch uber... and, as soon as you can afford, go see a doctor !
>The major flaw there is that most americans will never want a visa anyway, so it ends up being a largely invisible protest on the part of the other countries.
Most Americans don't even have passports! [1]
By punishing the tiny fraction of Americans visiting Brazil or China, these countries are simply shooting themselves in the foot.
It's a mostly invisible protest - and the only people witnessing said protest are the ones who already like you.
[1] http://andrewhy.de/percent-of-americans-with-passports/
Andy Baio did this last year with the additional task of including "why do you turk?"
http://waxy.org/2008/11/the_faces_of_mechanical_turk/
Interesting to see how the demographic has shifted in that time period.
Regarding the bit about crowd-sourcing ideas; Andrew Hyde used Turk to solicit startup-ideas:
http://andrewhy.de/using-mechanical-turk-for-ideas/
OP here. I've updated the items I own list (now 39!) and written a bit more about it here. http://andrewhy.de/minimalism-project-update-39-things/
The linked post up top is from May. Lots has changed since then.
Great discussion here. Always interesting how people look at the project.