scottw

This probably isn't the right crowd to test this out for you :) I'd wager a non-trival percentage of us use text-only email settings or clients (long live mutt).

I don't think that's what it means... I've read many T&C (IANAL either) and some of them state, to the effect of, "your stuff stays yours, even if you put it on our site". That, to me, would be closer to "we're not responsible for your copyright infringements."

Just because I post something publicly doesn't make it publicly owned (or in this case, owned by the host)—I want to retain the copyright to my works, and this T&C says "nope, we own whatever you post here."

In the end, it was too much for me, and I didn't complete the signup process. If I'm completely wrong about it's meaning or intent, well, shrug, they should write T&C that you don't have to be a lawyer to grok.

Anyone else have a problem with their T&C? Essentially, "you post it here, we get to do whatever we want with it":

> "By placing any information or other material on such publicly accessible locations on the Website (including but not limited to posting messages, uploading files, inputting data or engaging in any other form of communication), you automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such content has expressly granted) to Zerply a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, copy, sublicense, reproduce, distribute, redistribute, modify, adapt, publish, edit, translate, transmit, create derivative works of, publish and/or broadcast, publicly perform or display any materials or other information (including without limitation, ideas contained therein for new or improved products or services) you submit to public areas of the Website (including but not limited to chat rooms, forums and bulletin boards) alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether by any means and in any media now known or hereafter developed and to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicenses."

I'd love any service that can easily make my backend mobile.

Cheap (as in free) cloudy things can be found at http://www.dotcloud.com/

I used it for my last Mojolicious API (http://www.fakecall.net) and it's a pleasure to work with.

Probably, but the Twilio call is only two lines of code :)

I may look into other backends, but Twilio was by far the easiest to get going. Currently checking out Tropo and Teleku.

I launched a fake call API (http://www.fakecall.net/) to help polite introverts exit unwanted conversations or meetings. I need someone to make a nice app for it ;-)

I wrote an article on `find` performance a few years ago, may be useful to someone:

http://scott.wiersdorf.org/blarney/071024a.html

tl;dr version:

find examines each entry in a directory hierarchy; if the entry (be it a regular file, symlink, directory, device, or whatever) matches the given criteria, it will be printed. If no criteria are given, it’s an automatic match (and will be printed).

find evaluates its expressions in the order you specify them; by carefully choosing the order of the expressions, you can shave tons of time off the cost of the search and get your wanted results quicker.

As is true with most programming endeavours, a little investment up front in crafting the expressions will yield better results later. If you’re only running a find operation once, maybe you don’t want to take too much time fussing over saving a few syscalls, but if you will be running find frequently (e.g., as part of a cron, or some other regular occurance), do your disk a favor and let find skip as much as possible.

Safari on OS X. (Apparently I have no use for features and am content to just see headlines and click the interesting ones). Mainly I want to run as few apps as possible, and this fits the paradigm best for me.

Good memories of my buddy David, who, at some young age, inserted a dry pinto bean into one of his nostrils and left it dangling there. All of us began to laugh, of course, along with David. But after all good, long, strong laughs, you have to refill the lungs at some point. "Ha-ha-ha! sniff"

Agreed; follow the link the author offers near the top of the article to Secunia. Of a few common OSes I looked at (Red Hat Enterprise 5, Windows XP Pro, Windows 7, OS X), OS X had the fewest advisories for 2009, 2010, and 2011; most vulnerabilities seemed to be of a more benign nature than other OSes.

Perfect? Probably not, but it's still the OS I'm going to recommend to my mom.

Discovery (DISCA) faced this issue in 2008 and decided to lay off all employees who lived in a state with this tax nexus law (I was one of them). There were a total of three employees in my state, but there were probably scores of employees around the country. They probably saved several million dollars annually in sales tax by doing this (back of the envelope calculations). A handful of the employees affected in my group were re-hired as contractors.

That may be, but it's been a blissful 10+ years. :)

Ribbing aside, the OS X security model is, generally speaking, the Unix security model, which has been around a lot longer than Windows. Henry Spencer is attributed with saying "Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it -- badly." Perhaps OS X has done it badly, but perhaps not as badly as others.

I agree that lack of security problems is not indicative of good security, but Apple does seem to be making good decisions. As I said earlier, they've got some super smart security people working for them and letting them drive the security model.

Reminds me of some similar predictions:

"This is almost certainly the year of the OS X exploit" (Feb 2006) http://www.securityfocus.com/news/113758

iPhone to be target of hackers (December 2007) http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/121107-report-iphone-t...

Apple has a few extremely good security engineers (two of which were stolen from FreeBSD and whom I know personally). I've never believed OS X is bullet-proof, but it sure beats anything else I'd recommend to my 60+ year old mom. She's had more security problems with her garage than with her computer.

Hi HN, this was my blog post. I fully expect the Wattvision to pay for itself in about a year based on what I've seen in the 3ish weeks I've had it (our latest power bill was almost $20 off from last year for about the same average temperature).

I thought we were a pretty energy conservative-household, but seeing the immediate effects that certain appliances and lights have on our consumption has changed how Mom, Dad and all the kids (even our 7 year old) use electricity. We know which light banks cost the most to use and when we leave everyone makes sure to check lights and shut down everything else we don't need.

Also, you can see live data for free. If you don't see the value in API and alerts, don't do the monthly payment options.

The original setup was actually far easier than I posted. When I first installed it, I had tucked the entire device into my phone utility box and had zero wires going inside the house. I reconsidered that plan after deciding that the box might get too hot in the summer. Fortunately I found some existing cabling and my OCD genes kicked in when I realized I could bring the gateway device inside with all my other blinking lights.

I expect most folks will simply run the (exorbitantly long) cable from the sensor through a window or other existing conduit. The original setup took under an hour for me and was working fine.

Someone have a tl;dw version? 45 minutes is too expensive for me right now.

You should also understand that big companies buy small companies for many different reasons. Sometimes they want a new revenue stream and sometimes they just want the brain power and have no interest in the small company succeeding. A founder who cares about his or her company's future will look closely at the strategic reasons a larger company may be eyeballing you.

A web analytics company in my neck of the woods (Omniture) was acquired by Adobe a couple of years ago. I've talked with a dozen employees there and I've heard nothing but good about it from both the business and technical sides of the house (I interviewed there to see for myself a couple of months ago).

Adobe's leadership still seems to have the "founder" mentality and gives their acquisitions (at least this one) relative autonomy to continue to do what they do well in addition to solid financial backing and all of the nice resources of a big company (benefits, software discounts, etc.)

Adobe is helping them expand with a brand new building with great freeway access. This will also help them attract new hires because it will be about 10 miles closer to a much larger metropolitan area than their existing campus (which is about as far from the freeway as you can get). So +1 for Adobe.

Your first submission has garnered nearly as many karma points than I've accumulated since I joined HN 3 years (and 1 day) ago.

Maybe "rockstar" is the new codeword for "confident junior".

love my elliptical

You mean former economist. He's now a columnist and since seems to have abandoned most of his critical thinking skills.

Most of us aren't interested:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722

I marked 'no' but that's not a completely true answer.

Happiness is overrated. I'm just fine with a life of mild melancholy peppered with occasional fits of ecstacy.

And how's that for serendipity: the original was posted exactly two years ago to the day.

That's the one—thanks for digging that up.

I've spent most of my adult life in failed startups in some form or another. Some were funded, most were bootstrapped. Probably 6-8 man-years if I subtract my dances with full-time employment (I'm doing contract work now and working on another startup on the side with a partner).

I have no regrets. I've asked myself a couple of times if it was worth it, and to be honest I can't think of anything else I would have rather been doing at the time. It's not like playing slot machines, hoping someday to hit the jackpot. It's more like an obscure artist trying to find his niche—you do it because this is who you are.

If I never have a big success, I'll die satisfied knowing I was doing what I felt I should be doing. I read a quote from a post on this list some years ago, I wish I could remember the source. But it was something like, "When I look back on my career, I want to say, 'Boy, that was a fun ride!' not 'Boy, I sure felt safe!'"

You can get the same MiFi 2200 device from Virgin Mobile (my local BestBuy carries them) which uses Sprint's 3G network for $40/month unlimited bandwidth and no contract. I bought one last month for a road trip and love it.

That's the feeling I'm getting from everyone I talk to: trying to shoehorn Agile into a process is not agile.