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foysavason Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover

Engine Yard's management took several strategic missteps over the years. One of them was stifling Merb. The quotes from Yehuda describe his difficulty in making the best of a forced merger.

Ezra's vision for Merb and DHH's vision for Rails were distinct. Both warranted development. Over time, I assume they would have collectively strengthened the Ruby community. It was a mistake for Engine Yard's management to have instead framed it as zero sum and forced a merger.

foysavason Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover

I wrote a book on Merb and was an active contributor. Before that I had developed several apps with Rails.

That said, the Rails vs Merb era was mostly good natured competition and I don't view the Rails vs Merb period as itself having been problematic.

Merb devs believed we could make app development both simple to start (as a single file like Sinatra) and easy to evolve (into a modular codebase with Rails-like conventions). Existing outside of the Rails ecosystem allowed Merb to pursue that distinct vision.

The Merge between Rails and Merb, accreted many of Merb's modular architectural enhancements to Rails, but sadly deprecated the overall Merb vision. To me that was a shame, but I still wouldn't describe any of it as toxic.

foysavason Try and

The "and" in "try and..." may be a shorthand for the material implication of two temporal modal paths:

"try and X" = can X -> must X = not can X or must X

That said, the word "both" doesn't collocate before "try and X" because it instead pushes us toward an interpretation as logical conjunction:

"both try and X" = can X and must X

Likewise, despite the usage of "try not to", the phrase "try not and" doesn't show up, because under material implication the phrase becomes nonsense:

"try not and X" = not can X -> must X = can X or must X

foysavason The Future of TLA+ [pdf]

> "specification of system behavior" sounds like a programming language to me

By "specification language" Lamport means one capable of verification via model checking.

In contrast, "programming languages" are not capable of such verification.

foysavason Aristotle influenced the computer (2017)

Th article traces the development of computers back through the development of symbolic logic.

It may seem silly to connect to such ancient history, but the path from then to now has left a large backlog for future technologists to resurface.

foysavason What Chinese looks, feels and sounds like when you're from Korea or Japan (2009)

Mandarin speakers ability to understand slowed down Shanghainese is likely a recent development. This is because much of traditional Shanghainese diction, grammar, and even pronunciation has been reduced or morphed to better suit the newer generations of speakers whose principal language is Mandarin.

foysavason Life is Short

Most likely, 'vita brevis'.

foysavason Passcard

Namecoin isn't actually a "registrar" in this case, but the canonical blockchain used with Passcard.info. You can think of it as the self-registration alternative. The Namecoin link is definitely a conversion blackhole. This would be a bit better: https://github.com/namesystem/namesystem/wiki/Namecoin

Onename, which has designed Passcard.info, is attempting to standardize the identity protocol by decoupling it from its core identity registration service.

A somewhat fragmented space, here's an example of another blockchain based identity protocol using the id/* namespace on Namecoin: https://nameid.org/?name=domob

foysavason Introducing Progressive Equity – Increase employee ownership as company grows

For educational purposes only and not legal advice:

This incentive plan is structured as restricted stock units that are paid out as shares upon an IPO or trade sale (called in the doc, the "Initial Vesting Event").

Tax laws in the U.S. will impose ordinary income tax on the fair market value of such shares when they are issued, which for clarity, is at the Initial Vesting Event.

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For the record, I am a bit peeved that the word "tax" is being used to describe aspects of this plan, as it may make looking up actually startup tax matters harder.

foysavason Reasons Not To Raise Venture Capital

FYI: The carry distribution schedule mentioned in the article (carry after 3x) is way off market for a VC GP-LP relationship.

The most typical arrangement is 20% after 1x in LP distributions, with some variation in what are called hurdle rates (that is, different percent carried interest at different multiples or IRRs).

foysavason Google vs. Death

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

foysavason 1,600 Year Old Goblet Shows Romans Used Nanotechnology.

Sadly, I've read pieces where obsidian blades are labeled as nanotech as well.

In other news, cranberry glass is actually kind of cool and helped win this guy a Nobel Prize in 1925: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Adolf_Zsigmondy

foysavason Peter Thiel - You are Not a Lottery Ticket [video]

For anyone potentially dissuaded to watch the talk based upon this parent comment, please know that this talk is not actually about the dynamics of individual success.

Instead, it reflects on how the aggregate outlook of a society across two axes (optimistic-to-pessimistic and determinate-to-indeterminate) affects its strategies, pursuits, and stability.

The title of the talk is just Thiel pushing back on our society's increasingly indeterminate yet optimistic outlook, which, as Thiel subtlety alludes, may be tragically unstable.

foysavason If I were a single founder...

A list of misconceptions from both sides would alone pique my interest.

foysavason If I were a single founder...

Startup founders get tired now-and-again. Knowing a co-founder is working while you're resting is a source of invaluable relief against the pressure to get things done.

Long-term, this kind of emotional stability prevents burn-out. That's important because startups don't die, founders quit.

foysavason If I were a single founder...

Question for anyone: if you're not a single founder, how did you meet your co-founders?

foysavason What does 0^0 equal? Why do mathematicians and high school teachers disagree?

Only after seeing how many comments on the article attempted to genuinely refute the article did I get a sense of how few people grasp the foundation of mathematics (that is, the composition of arbitrary assumptions to agreeable statements).

foysavason I am nothing

There is clear resonance between his main point and Kazantzakis's famous epitaph:

Δεν ελπίζω τίποτε. Δεν φοβούμαι τίποτε. Είμαι λεύτερος.

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

That said, awesome post.

foysavason G- (Chrome Extension removes Google+)

Add in a few more subdomains to cover the other Google apps (docs and mail are the most important ones to me) and I'll probably switch over to your plugin instead (I mean who needs configuration options?). Also be sure to add 'all_frames' to 'content_scripts' or it won't work in Gmail.

foysavason G- (Chrome Extension removes Google+)

There are a lot of Google TLDs ;-)

foysavason G- (Chrome Extension removes Google+)

Would have saved me time!

foysavason G- (Chrome Extension removes Google+)

+1 it here if you find it useful:

https://plus.google.com/105349419062025895238/posts/LwzR4aJV...

foysavason Google Reveals Its Stealth Social Project, Google+

YAWN - Yet Another Way to do Nothing

BTW, thanks for giving up on Google Health. This is way better.

foysavason LulzSec: Why we do what we do

Who else has a hunch they don't yet have access to Brink accounts, but instead have access to log files that would reveal password when users now change them?

foysavason What’s Up With All These Changes in Rails?

I often wish that DM would have replaced AR in Rails 3. Why Sequel?

foysavason There's an intern for that

Wait, is the intent of the video to draw a comparison between the over-saturation of unpolished iPhone apps with an endless supply of interns?

foysavason 24 Sleepless Hours of Work = 1 Prelaunch Page

Here's what it looks like if you come from a small selection of elsewheres:

Cities:

http://loudly.com?rloc=miami http://loudly.com?rloc=los%20angeles http://loudly.com?rloc=boston

Campus networks:

http://loudly.com?rhost=bu.edu http://loudly.com?rhost=mit.edu http://loudly.com?rhost=caltech.edu

foysavason 24 Sleepless Hours of Work = 1 Prelaunch Page

Yeah, we also had the same debate on whether we should go with cityscape or first-person street views. I don't think we ever made a final decision, but leaned street view when picking photos.

Our landing page photo changes based on the visitor's IP and host, so most of our effort went into getting the right photos.

On a friendly note, the guy who signed up as no@no.no (seemingly in response to the question "was it worth it?"), probably didn't "no" that.

foysavason 24 Sleepless Hours of Work = 1 Prelaunch Page

click, click, click

http://loudly.com

foysavason Ask HN: Please rate my GF's startup

Nice catch with the zoom bug! I'll have to look into a way to either a) recognize zoom events and reposition the tags or b) from the get-go place tags that play nice with zooming.