cullenking

Ride with GPS | Rails Engineer and Mapping Data Engineer | Portland or Remote | Full Time | https://ridewithgps.com/about

We are the world's largest library of bike routes, and we enable cyclists to go on better rides, more often. We have a website and mobile apps that allow riders to discover the best riding in their area, and get turn by turn navigation using either our mobile apps or the bike computer of their choosing.

Come join us in taking Ride with GPS to the next level! We have two openings right now:

- Rails / API engineer: https://ridewithgps.com/careers/backend_engineer

- Mapping Data Engineer: The job posting is not up yet, but this role entails working with mapping technologies, both custom and open source, as well as working with our large store of geo data from riders, in order to extract interesting information about the best places to ride. As an example, we have a very high performance custom heatmap builder and server, written in rust. You can see that here: https://ridewithgps.com/heatmap. As an example of working with existing open source tech, we processed all our rider data and matched it to OSM data, and wrote some customizations to the graphhopper routing project that enable us to route based on popularity of roads. If we had a skunkworks department, this would be it.

Instructions available at https://ridewithgps.com/careers. Send resume + cover letter to careers@ridewithgps.com with an optional brief paragraph about your relationship to cycling or the outdoors. Riding bikes is not required, but we do find it helps!

I recently got a broad panel of tests done, and found out I was Vitamin D deficient. This was a big surprise to me because I live in the high desert of central oregon, which gets lots of sun even in the winter. I am very active and outside everyday. It is cold however, so my arms are always covered. We are 45 degrees north of the equator.

I was at 20 ng/mL which is considered deficient. 3 weeks of 5,000 IU a day supplementation (162lbs, fit, active male) brought me up to 31 ng/mL, which is just barely up from deficient. I upped to 10,000 IU a day for 1 week, dropped back to 5,000 IU a day, and will test again in two weeks. Everyone is different, but hopefully this gives some helpful numbers for anyone considering supplementing, and whether or not the paltry 1,000 IU commonly advised is adequate for people living at a higher latitude in the winter.

It does not cost Apple millions of dollars to distribute our app. The only viable choice to not releasing on iOS is not having a business, one that started on the web and due to customer demand, moved to iOS. I get the value they provide, but it’s clearly not in line with the cost they charge.

Our small business could fund dedicated programmers and accountants to handle all that and still come out ahead compared to what we get hit by Apple for. 30% of annual revenue on Apple devices per year is millions for many small software companies. Money we used to get from direct web sales. And we have a nightmare time getting app updates released due to their opaque and unfriendly review process with no accountability. Not to mention their horrific tooling. Apple is a blight on the industry.

Reply to my own reply to say, I forgot to mention this is really cool, and a fun use of OSM data I hadn't thought of before. Nice work!

That's actually one of our main focuses over the next two months, along with mapping and routing improvements. We've seen a decent uptick in people migrating, and they are asking for more social stuff. We've always been shy about becoming a social network, so our focus is on making it much easier to connect with people you know, see what they are doing, while making it optional and not pushing it too hard to our existing users.

Hey Sam, I run ridewithgps.com and have been reaching into the guts of graphhopper to do interesting routing stuff as well. We just silently rolled out popularity based routing, where we used our database of 50mm rides to build a popularity graph which is used to add a popularity weight in routing decisions. Got a long pipeline of other projects coming out in the same space. Drop me a line if you ever want to yack about these things! cullen@ridewithgps.com

I am curious why you think this. I run https://ridewithgps.com and always love constructive feedback to improve. There’s always improvements to make, but I wouldn’t quite go as far as calling things abysmal!

I have never once checked a reference or performed a background check on any candidate for our now 20 person company. There are a ton of companies like mine. My guess is more than less but that’s just a hunch.

Diesel mechanic isn’t a bad career (my dad is an elevator mechanic and I still sometimes think I should have just done that), grass is always greener etc

There are a couple other mentions on this thread of OpenStreetMap, but what they don't mention is that half the value of google is in their mobile app. There are a few mobile cycling apps, mine included, that solve this while using OSM data for routing.

We use an open source routing engine called graphhopper. It's really good, the team behind it is great, and I strongly recommended it out of all the major routing systems. We tried them all, graphhopper is the most extensible, fastest, and best managed project. Graphhopper takes OSM data and computes a routeable graph based off one or more routing profiles you specify. There are default profiles, but we have spent a considerable amount of time making our own custom routing and weighting profiles to give the best directions for cyclists, and are in the process of extending it further so that it takes into account our database of about 50mm recorded bike rides by our users. The result is that our cycling directions are pretty dang good at this point. We hope to deploy the new popularity based routing stuff in the coming weeks.

We have both a web and mobile route planner that are worth checking out. The mobile route planner is a paid feature, but allows free demos without saving. The web route planner is free, though some of the more advanced bits (multi-route editing, advanced libraries of routes, etc) are paid.

https://ridewithgps.com

Finally, another mention in this thread of a quadlock - they are awesome. I take my quadlock mountain biking and it has never budged. I'm not talking gentle mountain biking, but big jumps and drops and high speeds. They are super durable, the case is solid and is extremely protective of your phone. They are worth the premium!

yeah I am certainly not an expert and I don’t know why the us military hasn’t used them, but they haven’t, and still aren’t going to from what I can read. I found that rabbit hole while researching hunting ammo, not because I am a military scholar or anything.

Seems kinda odd to me anyway, though I suppose limiting the damage a combatant receives while fighting isn’t a bad thing. Coming up with a stance makes you have to mentally address the concept of good vs bad guys, and I suppose I don’t see enemy fighters as bad people, just people fighting for differing ideals. That makes me tend to agree with rules that limit fatalities and excessive injury.

Read the second paragraph of that section. And sorry, Hague convention not Geneva. Either way, only special circumstances aka special operations from my understanding, which is more like international policing than warfare.

Hollow points are against the Geneva convention. The round you linked is only for use in special circumstances to prevent over penetration, Things like terrorist hostage rescue. They won’t and can’t be legally used in general warfare.

There was actually a big argument in the past over match grade rounds that have a dimpled front and a hollowed core, which keeps the weight toward the back of the round. They aren’t effective in hunting for the same reason they aren’t considered a hollow point by the military.

A few years back I bought a sofa from a small manufacturer that claimed it was free of fire retardants. Similar story for my mattress. The mattress side took some research, but from what I found most foam mattresses are free of them, and some manufacturers use a tightly woven cotton cover to get the fire retardant properties, rather than a cover treated with fire retardant chemicals.

Do your own research, but from what I found it’s not too hard to be careful about this stuff.

My dad is an elevator mechanic, and you'd be pretty surprised at what the job actually entails. He has to maintain legacy elevators with logic implemented by relay (1), up to brand new computer controlled systems. Over the course of his caree he has taught himself what would have been called an electrical engineering education 20 years ago. He had to become proficient in the basics of mechanical engineering, in order to run retrofits in older buildings. He had to become proficient in CAD, because half the work to fit new elevators in old buildings is custom fitment. On top of this, he has to be a project manager.

Now, add in liability insurance and other normal business overhead, custom tools, and niche market effects, and $500 an hour isn't out of the question.

(1): https://youtu.be/_xjXdjj2m5Q?t=152

You are forgetting delivery charges. It's between 0.11 and 0.12, with appropriate charges.

I don’t!

Yup!

I religiously wear eye protection. Sticks can make their way around glasses / goggles. The flap created during lasik doesn't need an object in the eye to dislodge though, a blow to the head will do it in the right circumstance. Lasik makes your eyes more vulnerable to damage, PRK does not. This is why police/military/sports require PRK for corrective surgery, rather than lasik.

In my case, I went to a world class eye institute that is part of OHSU. I am lucky in that we have a pretty serious research hospital here in Portland, so I didn't have to travel.

I don't know how you find the best in your area, but I was mostly referring to the strip mall lasik centers. If you aren't familiar with these, they are a budget lasik provider that has past generation equipment, run by technicians instead of eye doctors. They run ads on billboards, and in the local coupon books that are delivered to your house....These are the places that I think are mostly being referred to by the article.

There are a couple other mentions in this thread about PRK. I went the PRK route instead of Lasik, and don't regret it one bit. I chose PRK because it was less risky, and was more durable. Look it up yourself, but brief summary:

  - no flap, they remove top layer of cells with a scraper, then laser
  - no flap means stronger eyes. if you box, mountain bike, work in a high risk environment, it's the procedure to get
  - long recovery time, and it's pretty painful for the first week. ~ 2 weeks to reasonable vision, 4-6 weeks for 20/20 or better.
  - less chance of dry eyes (still a semi-common outcome)

My eye doctor, the casey eye institute, pushed lasik, but that was purely for what people commonly want. They were enthusiastic about PRK, considered it a better procedure for people who were OK with the recovery time, with less chance of complications.

My complications:

  - dry eyes, but nothing worse than contacts get midway through a day
  - sensitive eyes. meaning, a scratch on the eye becomes eye wateringly bad
  - slight halos at night, but again, nothing worse than contacts at the end of the day

I am happy with the results, would do it again, and am currently advising my wife to do PRK instead of lasik (she's on the fence of doing anything). I ride mountain bikes, dirt bikes, and do lots of building, so chances of complications with a flap are non-zero. If you haven't read, those complications are pretty bad - get lazik, take a stick to the eye a year later which causes the flap to dislodge, you now have potentially uncorrectable vision in that eye.

Search the rest of this discussion for PRK. If you aren't afraid of pain, discomfort, and a long recovery time, it's the procedure to get.

Also there's a HUGE difference in lasik or PRK providers. As you can imagine, it's worth spending extra. My procedure cost $4k total, which is $3k more than budget lasik providers. However, I worked with some top eye doctors that regularly perform serious eye surgery, and are at the forefront of optometry. Strip mall discount lasik has less time spent on planning, comes with less experience in recommending procedures, and has less experience working with complications. Definitely don't cheap out!

I buy lots of custom water bottles from specialized, for our bike business. I sent an email to our rep saying we had a philosophical disagreement with their actions, and would stop using them. They received enough backlash which filtered up to management, apologized, and stopped. It was an effective use of boycott.

Probably only to a couple dozen large freeway exchanges....

Just bought a t495 for myself and my business partner. Returned both, the keyboard is horrendous. Lookup nkey rollover, typing on the keyboard was full of missing and transposed letters. Will never buy another Lenovo again.

Late to reply, sorry. Yes there are ups and downs, but you can setup automatic deductions from paychecks straight into an HSA. I haven't done the full analysis and asked everyone at work, but if the trend continues for the next few years it's going to be really hard for a high deductible HSA plan to not come out ahead. Whether or not we eat the extra cost to keep the convenience will be a decision to be made then.

My comment was only to serve as counterpoint that companies aren't all looking at an HSA because they want to screw people over. Many are looking at an HSA based health plan because they are increasingly becoming more attractive as benefits shrink while becoming more expensive. Again, I am friends with my coworkers, my family is on the same health plan, and I have everyone's best interest in mind, and I wouldn't approach the decision lightly. Obviously there are shitty people out there managing employer plans, I don't speak for them!

I manage a health plan for our smallish business of 19 employees. We offer "pretty good" health insurance, meaning, we pay around $600 per employee per month for health and dental. It gets worse every year. I am considering moving toward a HSA based plan, because upon analysis, it's actually probably better for everyone involved. The max out of pocket per year is the same, but instead of a $1000 deductible you have a $5k deductible. This works for our business (and I am assuming a bunch of other tech businesses) because our employees are generally young and in good health. It's a cheaper plan, the worst case scenario for an employee is the same, and I can give raises for the difference in price, and once every few years someone will need more than a $1k deductible, but the raise from the last couple years greatly exceeds the one time cost.

Anyway, just trying to frame my logic here, because I don't consider myself an evil employer trying to skimp on health insurance for my employees (which many I consider friends), but an employer that has to approve health plan changes annually which each increase cost by a considerable amount. If this trend continues, each employee will cost $900 a month within 5 years, and the coverage will be half as good. That's $5k a year per employee that I could put into their salaries, while not screwing anyone over on the worst case scenario.

I push all our spending through a 2% cash back capitalone business visa. Can't find a better cashback rate, though you could run multiple cards through different vendors with their own credit cards, but you get diminishing returns. If you are a big amazon spender (products, not AWS), it makes sense to do an amazon visa, and then the capital one for everything else.

It's really easy to believe the deal when you look at your interchange rates. The Capital One that I mention above has 2.3% interchange rate, so the merchants who take it get hit much harder than other cards. Capital One, stripe, amex etc are all still making a killing on these cards, they just do it on the backs of the merchants who accept them.

Based off our business spending on our card, which isn't extreme by any measures (18 employees, bootstrapped and cash flow positive, doing fairly decent), it probably beats that stripe card even with the processing fee bump.

Keeping your app up to date if you have any significant quantity of third party gems, is really nice. Meaning, if you need to upgrade, it's easier to stay on top of it than it is to pull an app from say, 4.2 to 6.0. This becomes particularly problematic a few years down the road, for security updates.

I race an r6. There's no difference at all between a 600cc and a 1000cc bike off the line assuming a capable rider. When I launch, I can't keep the front wheel on the ground at full throttle, until about 70mph. Yes, if we are talking rolling on the throttle, not using any technique etc the big torquey twin will win Everytime.

Once you are in third though displacement takes the lead, and my smaller engine bike is at a disadvantage!

You got it. They sell a couple different depths of products, the more guaranteed it is the more cost. They do the research to make sure there arent any valid competing claims or partial claims to any property. They bundle that all up with an insurance package for if they are wrong.