freejack

Two things:

- a GPS lock can easily be defeated by the earnest with a GPS simulator, about a $2k fix. This isn't a great solution for the honest buyer, but anyone with ill intention could easily activate these in Kansas and re-export to a controlled state.

(edit: a GPS sim can't help with the gyros, so maybe its a better "lock" than I originally reckoned ;-)

- there are excellent "open-source" substitutes available. The Mechmate community is thriving (http://mechmate.com) and these plans make it possible for a DIYer to build their own 4 axis CNC with tolerances to a thousandth of an inch or better. My father-in-law is a a cabinet maker (http://woodforyou.net) who built one of these for his business a few years ago, here's a demo video showing his results... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU3-6AapV3I

(Edit 2: I wrote this before I had an appreciation for the difference between a CNC mill and a CNC router. The Mechmate is a CNC router and used for very different purposes than a CNC mill. Anyways, comment might still have some value for some. Sorry for the noise ;-)

What makes me absolutely, terribly sick is the extent to which the USG waves its hands to dismiss the seriousness of the extent and reach of the NSA's domestic data gathering activities and at the same time deciding that Swartz's data gathering was worth going to the mat over.

My advice is this: You and your co-founders should each take a couple of days (separately, not together) off, away from the office, in some quiet contemplative place (most hotels in America fit the bill) where you can each do some thinking about what is important to you. Don't plan to do any work during this period, turn off your email and phone and just think about what's most important to you for the business. If you can come back from the short retreat with a clear destination for the business, you've achieved the initial goal. Then, take a day or two to discuss with your co-founders, with brutal honesty and candour, about the overlap and differences in your respective view of the business. If there's still a lot of overlap, then take whatever time you need to come up with a plan.

The game plan here is simple: get clear, define some goals, build some consensus and come up with a plan.

I get the sense that you've got a lot of pain, confusion and doubt clouding your thinking right now, so taking a few steps away from all the noise of operations should help you find what you need to find.

Good luck with it all.

I've found that the notion of the "Ideal Customer" is only useful when I'm able to line up the expectations of that customer with what our product can actually deliver. When I've been able to refer to that customer during the product design process, the results have been good - i.e. I've been able to market successfully to other customers that match the profile of the Ideal Customer. However, when I've tried to use the notion of The Ideal Customer to create marketing positioning that didn't necessarily line up with the product, its been a dismal failure - i.e. the customers I managed to attract eventually discovered where I had "spun" the story and they either passed on the product or didn't turn into long term customers.

Over time I've realized that the easiest way to make sure people are buying product from me is to make sure that what we're selling is what we've built and to make sure that those Ideal Customers have been taken into account every step of the way.

I read this story and I couldn't help but think about the actual extent of the pressure that was brought to bear on Aaron Swartz and whether or not there's a lot more to that story than we've been made aware of.

No. In fairness to the operators though, I tend to think of these just like any other startup - they don't need my support for their business plan in order to give it a shot - so long as they can fund it and find customers, who am I to judge whether or not what they are doing is useful.

I say this because for some reason people feel like these strings should be vetted before they go into the root and all sorts of obstacles are thrown in the path of these nascent ideas. Most of ICANN's work in the past few years has been focused on creating and implementing these obstacles in the name of "stability", etc. I'm not advocating for a completely open root, but what we've got is a bit much.

obDisclaimer: I work for a registrar.

Interesting. What is "Style management" in this context? I'm assuming the ability to modify a style once and have it applied to the whole document?

I'm kinda surprised to see this. I'm a big iWork user and I didn't really miss any of the features they took out. I mean, not having those features didn't affect my ability to do my job, so I didn't really know if the outcry was realistic or just a sense of entitlement. It is good know that we'll see some rapid improvements - although I'll be wondering how necessary some of these features are if I didn't miss them in the first place ;-)

edit: what kind of things are people doing with Applescript in Keynote? It sounds interesting...

I've followed this story since the beginning and I'm more convinced than ever that Flint would have eventually killed himself on his bike, with or without Strava.

This article makes it exceptionally clear that Flint is a classic "rookie" in the sport with few if any real bike handling skills - no programmer or policy will ever prevent these types from hurting themselves or others.

At a club level, the sport is rife with cyclists that have quickly found a bit of fitness and not taken the time to let their skills catch up - and they are always dangerous.

Its also true that experience != good judgement and unfortunately (as the article points out) there are a good number of experienced riders who don't factor safety into their riding.

I'm not sure which type of cyclist is more dangerous. Fortunately, both are easy to pick out and I make a point of not riding with them. My riding and my life are simply to precious to let someone else's mistake become my penalty.

(As background, I hold a world record in Ultracycling and ridden as much as 25,000 km in a year. I didn't ride much this past year, taking a break to spend some time with my family. Stories like this don't discourage me from wanting to jump back wholeheartedly into the sport I've loved all my life. And oh yeah, I adore Strava - and I also realize that using it requires a tiny bit of common sense...)

The biggest suggestion I could offer would be to give your potential customers a reason to use it - ask them a question on the conversion page that qualifies them as a customer - i.e. "Want to spend your money more effectively?" or "Want to cut down on the amount of time you spend tracking corporate expenses?" or something similar. As is, the site kinda assumes that everyone has the problem you are trying to solve, which has the affect of making it appeal to "no one". Be more explicit about the problem you'd like to solve in your copy and it will boost user confidence immensely and get many more of them to the point where they will want to try your service.

"Rapid takedown" was foisted on us in 1999 when the original registrar agreements were being negotiated at ICANN. At the time, it was held out as a threat - agree to rapid takedown, or be subject to US regulation. At the time we didn't realize that it was the intellectual property community making the threat - it came to us under the cloak of the ISP community, which we've since realized meant "Big Telco's with massive media holdings".

Its been a slippery slope every since.

oBDisclaimer: I work at a large registrar and was in the room when the original contracts were being discussed and negotiated. I'm sorry for the part I played!

I wonder how these costs fluctuate by position and country. It'd be interesting to see how these costs adjust for our own companies.

Definitely fun. A few of the random's seemed familiar enough that I wanted to search through old business cards and Linkin contacts to see if someone I know was actually using them ;-)

A great list.

I'd add - Understand the cost of fitting in. Being truly outstanding at what you do sometimes means you need to do it by yourself. Fitting in is comfortable, and will rarely lead to excellence and deep personal satisfaction.

I don't see how considering the social implications of scientific change is a diversion, YMMV.

Fair point.

I'm not saying "don't bitch about paypal", I'm saying "paypal doesn't carry a lot of risk in the first place".

I'm going to try and say this in the most warm and well-intended way possible.

I wonder how long it will take before someone from the Christian right claims that if science can reverse DS in mice that it won't be long before we can reverse "gay" in people.

yeah, I totally agree. My only nit was your claim that Paypal bears risk. Its true that their model comes with risk and they've built their business model in a way that they shift it to third parties as extensively and quickly as possible. Its a sore point with me in how Paypa, Visa, etc. operate. The merchant is rarely right.

Nope, Paypal only eats the risk if they release funds. They rarely release funds on high risk accounts, at least not without retaining a rolling deposit.

Whoa there. Paypal loses nothing to fraud. Just like all the other middlemen, Visa, MC, etc., they shift their losses onto the merchants.

The way this works out is that Mailpile files an answer to Paypal's RFI, Paypal reviews it and says something like "There's a 90 day hold on funds deposited to your account until you can demonstrate that you aren't high risk", Mailpile complies and everyone walks away happy.

(Background: I'm a Paypal merchant and we're processing close to $30m/year through them. Over the years I've paid Paypal hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, in chargeback fees, fraud fees, Visa fines, etc.)

We run a psychometric test on every candidate that walks through the front door. The ones that get hired get their test results in a sit down with HR and the option to share the test results with their colleagues. I don't get to see them unless the hire shares them with me. The purpose of the test and its results is to start the new hire down a road of self-discovery and awareness (if they so choose) that we can leverage into ongoing development and improvement together (again, if they so choose). Its worked brilliantly so far.

I lost interest at the tasteless killing your ex-girlfriend joke...

Oh, that's awesome eh! I can't wait to put up my "Brew in a Canoe" project!

Are you a mouse user or do you use a touchpad? I have a theory that the new OSX scrollbars only really work for touchpad users and everyone with a mouse hates them ;)

With apologies to the original...

"You tell everybody. Listen to me. Hatcher. You've gotta tell 'em! SOYLENT IS MARKETING SPIN! We gotta stop them! Somehow! Listen! Listen to me… PLEASE!!!"

I'm not judging and I wish the creators well - there's just not a lot of real new thinking in Soylent - most of its promise is just pure marketing, like most products I suppose ;-)

nothing to see here. its just showing that the query syntax for whois (in the wild) is broken.

Its showing name servers with hostnames that match the query. I first read about this on Slashdot in 1998 (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating that a bit - this has been making the rounds for years...)

If that's true, get a new registrar. I've had my home number and alternatively, my cell number, listed on my registrations and I've never received a phone call as a result.

My point is that they don't need drones for aerial enforcement. Its been going on for years and in some ways, the "do it with a drone" element is a bit of a red herring.

The very real question that needs to be considered is whether or not law enforcement should be doing aerial enforcement at all. How they do it is less interesting to me than the question of whether or not they should.

Modern unmanned aerial vehicles like the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 and the General Atomics MQ-1 cost in the millions. Cessna and helicopters do not.

Granted there are cheaper UAV out there, and generally its unlikely they could carry a payload sufficient for the level of surveillance necessary for traffic enforcement.

BTW - my intention isn't to advocate for drones, just to question the rationale of making a distinction between manned and unmanned surveillance, when in fact it might make more sense worrying about being aerial surveillance more generally.