seltzered
Joined 16 years ago
Karma
259
Submissions
184
Member since
Mar 2
This is my older account, now at https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=seltzered_
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Comment · 11 years ago
For those wondering who runs this site / if it's endorsed at all by snowden himself (can't find anything stating such a thing outright yet) - from the bottom of the faq (https://edwardsnowden.com/frequently-asked-questions/):
### Who runs this website?
The site is commissioned by the trustees of Courage to provide information on the threats Edward Snowden faces, how he is being protected, and what you can do to support him.
### What is The Courage Foundation (formerly the Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund) and who runs it?
Courage is a trust, audited by accountants Derek Rothera & Company in the UK, for the purpose of providing legal defence and campaign aid to journalistic sources. It is overseen by an unrenumerated committee of trustees. Edward Snowden is its first recipient. The terms of the fund and its trustees can be obtained from Derek Rothera & Company.
Comment · 11 years ago
They'll be sold to someone (stalking horse bidder is Flextronics) within 60 days. See http://blog.wink.com/wink-blog/2015/9/22/wink-corporate-upda...
Comment · 11 years ago
I've done the pacific starlight from SF to Portland/Seattle a couple times over the years, and while I love the scenic-ness of the train, I felt like the author painted a bit too rosy of a picture of the amtrak.
Here's my anecdotal list of downsides of amtrak train riding:
- People will talk on their cell phones in the cabin despite the rules. You wouldn't think this a big annoyance, but it gets annoying after several hours.
- Amtrak cars can have issues - I spent 12 hours in one with a door that kept opening and closing making a huge 'clunk' noise every 30 seconds. A passenger finally figured out a way to make it stuck open.
- Watch your stuff, Things can and will get stolen - particularly in areas where there's multiple close stops (e.g. the stops near seattle) - last time the person in the seat in front had their smartphone stolen while they took a brief break in the snack car.
- The co2 savings compared to flying depends on the actual route and timing - I have to point this out because amtrak does market themselves a bit on co2 savings - I calculated this once between flying and taking the train from seattle to spokane, and after factoring in the need to stay at a hotel an extra night for the train along with it's non-direct route, the co2 difference was negligible. Here's my math for those curious: https://i.imgur.com/zTHfSB8.png
- Certain trains are historically, tragically slow - amtrak has a website logging the timeliness of trains, typically 70% on time for a long train is on the good side.
This said, I do want trains to be more of a thing here - I've had great experiences with the ones in europe, wish the pioneer train ( http://pioneertrain.org ) and ski train ( http://www.skitrain.com/ ) make a comeback, and prefer taking the business class amtrak trains for shorter trips over flying or driving. Plus you can pack a folding bike like a brompton on amtrak just by tossing it into the overhead compartment.
More: here's a blog of someone traveling the us by railpass: http://railpass.tumblr.com/
Comment · 11 years ago
Oddly, I learned about Gary Kildall a few days ago after reading a wired article about the "Halt and Catch Fire" tv series ( http://www.wired.com/2014/05/halt-and-catch-fire/ )
"Easter eggs: Gordon and Donna Clarks’ first initials and back story echo those of Gary and Dorothy Kildall"
Comment · 11 years ago
another option is just keep the assets as SVG's and use a library to do the conversion (ios/osx specifically, I personally use SVGKit - https://github.com/SVGKit/SVGKit )
Comment · 11 years ago
As referenced at the end of the article, there's a This American Life podcast from a few years ago about the whole thing: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/m...
Really worth the listen.
Comment · 12 years ago
Are any of the hp Sprout folks from the MS Research 'illumishare' team from a couple years ago? the video reminds me of this demo of kids playing games over skype with a similar system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODx5t53j66M
also, an even older demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnL34XwTgag
I'm actually a bit surprised they didn't stress the collaboration features more, guess there's an initial fear of how many people will own the same device.
Comment · 12 years ago
I looked into this a bit, and if I'm guessing correctly, the alloy isn't different than the alloy 'ethergraf' tips that have been in the market since 2010, and saw them as cheap as ~25 bucks. These are the sites I bookmarked when looking into it:
http://www.axelweinbrecht.de/en/Produkte/Schreiben_mit_Metal...
http://www.napkin4ever.com/it/
http://www.vat19.com/item/the-inkless-metal-pen
Basically it's not 'everlasting', but lasts for maybe a few years, and you may have to sand the tip down occasionally to make it a finer point again. Note that it does use a bit of lead, and so isn't recommended for use by children. I don't plan on buying any one myself, since it just doesn't seem like the writing give fine-enough of a point for my needs (search on youtube, there's a review or two of these things.)
Comment · 15 years ago
Read iTulip.com / the book "The post-castastrophy economy"
I'd argue it was the rise of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) economy that grew very rapidly over the past 30 years. The FIRE economy is opposite to the classical producer - consumer economy.
There's plenty of times I sometimes wish I just made money like my friends doing trading/finance/etc. instead of studying electrical engineering. I'd get to work downtown instead of in a far away suburb too.
Comment · 15 years ago
pinboard, usenet, and occasionally small community forums.
soon picasa web albums, rhapsody, and a vpn provider.
I'll pay for anything that saves me a lot time, has a great interface, and/or replaces something I already use.
I'd consider paying for a very usable todo-list app that synced over dropbox instead of charging me a monthly fee (i.e. remember the milk), and had an amazing user interface over the free google task apps.
I'd also love to pay for mint if it similarly just worked over something more secure/local, and had an open backend (I had accounts that didn't sync at all correctly on mint). Maybe wesabe should be revisited.
not counting vps'es or anything as that's more of a hobby/entrepreneurship thing.
Comment · 15 years ago
that's a rough and very large social circle (for me at least). I'd still expect circles or whatever "next-gen" social network to make setting up groups of friends and information control a very easy and pervasive process, enough to make me pry myself away from using email for group communication.
Comment · 15 years ago
Thanks for writing this. I recently started an etherpad server at work, and while it's still going to take some time to gain traction, I figure it's way easier than sharing files on the network or teaching managers to use subversion.
Comment · 15 years ago
I love this post. The problem is that many people (including myself) are not working for (and possibly won't find) managers with this view towards hiring.
Many managers hire people as a sudden reactionary event ("we have an open rec, we've got to hire before the rec closes!"), leading to rushed hiring decisions, and then negotiation issues a year later where you ended up hiring someone (and they took the offer) out of immediacy / desperation, and the employee ends up leaving or accepts the lack of interest and doesn't work to his/her full potential.
Comment · 15 years ago
very cool, thanks! I was using wunderlist until I switched to android, I still feel a need to build a native desktop app for some reason, but this works.