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Bostwick

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Software Developer in Boston, MA

http://www.danielbostwick.com/ http://github.com/bostwick https://www.linkedin.com/in/dbostwick

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I think part of the problem with IoT firmware updates is that so many companies are rushing to get v1.0 of their project out the door that it's very difficult to even think of v1.1 or higher. Agile development and Lean Business practices, as practiced by many organizations, can often encourage this short-sighted behavior. So updating gets punted on because it's _technically_ not necessary for the first version, and it's definitely not one of the "cool" core features you get to put on the glossy marketing website for the device.

I tried the application, and it looks great!

One thing Caret gets right that other Markdown editors (Macdown is what I currently use) don't is wordcount. In Caret, the document wordcount is always visible in the upper right corner, and if I select some text, the wordcount for the selection is displayed again. Others have mentioned the lack of live-preview as a deal-breaker, but I'm ok with this because of the easy, obvious shortcut. My main purpose with Markdown editors is writing READMEs and blog posts, and I usually don't keep live-preview open as I'm writing.

The one missing feature to keep me from pre-ordering is detection of jekyll YAML headers.

Reading this article leads me to believe the writers at Techcrunch are slowly discovering basic economics, and they think it's revolutionary.

  Instead of selling “software-as-a-service,” these DIFM companies are
  delivering “software-with-a-service.” The result is awesome customer
  experience that can only be delivered with a human touch.
Techcrunch has it reversed. These companies are selling a service, and happen to effectively use software to create their competitive advantage.
The Apple Watch 12 years ago

As a daily bike commuter around Boston, this idea terrifies me. Multitasking is extremely dangerous while biking. There are already enough bikers out there who choose to distract themselves with earphones and music while biking. Reading a text message while weaving in traffic is a recipe for disaster. When you're on a bike, be on the bike.

One of the assumptions made by this article is that the user in question is loading your web page with jQuery on a mobile device running on a 4G network. In reality, however, it is unlikely that a user will be on a 4G network. In 2004, the 4G penetration is 25% in North America, and only 3% in Western Europe. [1] It's certainly growing on a yearly basis, but it's still not at the point where you can rely on users having 4G speeds on a mobile device.

The 4G worst-case scenario is still better than the best-case scenario for a 3G network, which is what you'll see with a majority of users. I'd like to see this analysis done with a 3G connection as well, because I suspect the real jQuery tax for a majority of mobile users is over a second.

I do like the point made about latency and the suggestions at the bottom of the article. It's a strong incentive for apps to introduce a real asset pipeline and js and css minifiers.

[1] http://graphics.wsj.com/4g-european-investment/

Streetpong [video] 12 years ago

I like this concept - small, usable art installations designed to make inconspicuous things social. But the pessimist in me takes one look at their concept and things "That's going to break so quickly here in Boston."

What I would love to see, and which seems realistic from this video, is an installation that shows the people waiting a "loading bar" or countdown or some visual indicator of how long until the crosswalk is green for pedestrians. In the video they show this as the background color - red or green - gradually draining from the screen.

You can't write cli applications in a JVM language because the start-up time is too slow. Which means you can't compose scripts that call Java apps.

You're right. In the case of small, fast applications designed to be called as part of shell scripts, the JVM does suffer start-up costs. Some testing on my personal machine shows the JVM to be 2x to 8x slower than a comparable Ruby or Python script in startup time. [1] Depending on the script, that startup time may or may not acceptable, and if the script runs for longer than a second, which is entirely possible for anything that goes beyond the local machine, the JVM will get progressively faster.

This is not just 1 type of application, it's the most important type of application by far.

This needs more explanation. I've used Unix for many years, and I've definitely bought in to its philosophy of small and composable; It's a philosophy that in many ways mirrors functional programming. However, in my opinion, the most important type of application varies considerably by person. For you, the small, single-purpose applications may be what you use most.

And I agree, if you're programming for the Unix platform, the JVM would not be the best choice. Unix was built on C. A program that builds on that platform is probably a better choice.

But there are many more applications out there, and for any command-line program that operate in a time domain longer than 10 seconds, the JVM startup costs are mostly eliminated. This time-domain is very plausible for a command that operates on medium-scale databases or anything with network connectivity.

It's silly to completely dismiss an entire platform because it is not the absolute best choice for a single domain of programs.

I'm curious: What do you do where the short-lived, composable Unix functions are the most important programs?

[1] https://gist.github.com/bostwick/8ee1d4df9c7743f9efed

And building Twitter [1], and big-data next-generation databases [2], and android apps, and desktop apps, and big data [3], and as a platform for new languages (Clojure, Scala, Frege), and many more applications.

Really, the JVM can be used for anything that _computers_ can be used for, and it does so in a way that the code is runnable across all major platforms and still maintains a top-5 language performance spot, even beating C/C++ in some specific cases.

Why do you feel that the JVM is limited in its applications as a development platform?

[1] http://blog.redfin.com/devblog/2010/05/how_and_why_twitter_u... [2] http://www.datomic.com/about.html [3] http://hadoop.apache.org/

Could you provide some links or sources to substantiate your claim that Orson Scott Card is bigoted against sexual minorities?

I'm a fan of the book, and I've been waiting to see this movie, but I confess that I don't know much about the author. Sources would be greatly appreciated.

USB Condoms 13 years ago

Boston Logan airport has certain benches dedicated to power charging, and for the most part they all have two power sockets and two dedicated USB charging ports.

I've also seen dedicated cell phone charging stations at other airports that have USB charging ports alone.

USB-only chargers in airports definitely exist, and are sometimes fought over in busier airports.

I've been doing Crossfit for about five years, at multiple facilities. The really good CF facilities, including Crossfit Southie in Boston where I currently go, place a huge emphasis on powerlifting and olympic movements. Take a look at the Crossfit Games workouts (http://games.crossfit.com/), and you'll see snatches and deadlifts everywhere.

The problem with Crossfit is that it is an affiliated brand. Every CF facility pays about $5,000 per year to use the Crossfit brand, but each facility is independently owned and operated, and so the programming at each facility is usually unique. There exist a number of questionable facilities, especially out in California where the concentration of gyms is much higher.

The Crossfit affiliates need to start doing some quality control. As I've watch the program expand over the past half-decade, I've been excited at how many people the gyms have helped, but dismayed at how the trainers at some facilities don't share the same love or ability for the basic lifts.

I would differentiate between "Purchases" and "Downloads" here. Purchases mean people paid for the application, while downloads imply no revenue.

It's great that your app took off when you dropped the price to free, and it's a good idea to pivot to offering extended features to power users. You're pivoting your app to a more 'freemium' model.

You might consider taking a survey of your users to find out what they want out of Typeli. iMockups has done this a few times, and it's worked well for them. Are you sure that your users want "auto-highlighted code"? You'll experience the same disappointment with sales if you build something before considering what your users actually _want_ from your app.

From CNN's live blog [1]:

  Chief Justice John Roberts had noted that however that the
  mandate would have been struck down based on the commerce 
  clause , saying it would "open a new and vast domain" for 
  Congressional power.
  ...
  Chief Justice John Roberts issued a long opinion in which 
  he said the controversial individual mandate may be upheld 
  and is within Congress’ power under the taxing clause 
  rather than the commerce clause.
This helped me understand their decision. I'm still not sure what to make of the decision, personally.

[1] http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/28/how-will-supreme-court-...

This is a great event idea. I wish the some of the VCs around Boston or NYC would get together and do this for the East Coast.

This is fantastic. As a student looking to start a company after graduation, I've wondered a lot about the legal issues surrounding equity, incorporation, and founders agreements. I feel that with this site, I can read sample documents so that, when I do need to talk to a lawyer, I will be much more informed.

I would argue that dodgeball is better expressed as an iterative algorithm. Consider the following pseudocode:

  def dodgeball(players, balls)
    until players.all? { |p| p.is_hit? }
      throw(nearest_ball(balls), nearest_player(players))
    end
  end
Most people think like this. Dodgeball teaches while loops, not recursion.

I disagree with your assertion that "American society is built to tear people down." In my experience, american society is built to reward entrepreneurship and creativity.

For education, we have free schooling for the first 18 years of life, an extensive community college system, and, if you live in the right state, fantastic public higher education. You can educate yourself through a BA for less than the price of a car if you're willing to consistently work hard for grades.

The private sector is similar. Those who have proven themselves exceptional rise in the ranks. Looking at Fortune 500 company CEOs, yes, there exist executives who are not the "best and brightest," but "there exist" does not mean "all are". By and large, I would say that most of the CEOs and their executive teams are working toward what they believe to be the best path forward for their company. As publicly-traded companies, those who hold stock in those companies act as a check on incompetent management, and companies incompetently managed have a tendency to be heavily penalized. See HP recently, and its stock price.

Your rant takes a very harsh and dismissive tone towards "American society" and its political nature is not what should be discussed on Hacker News. I don't think your harsh tone, your evidence-free assertions or your conclusion ("The only way out is to radically reshape society") have a place here. Please go back to the #OccupyWallSt rallies.

From their blog (http://planered.tumblr.com/):

We’d like to get subscriptions down to $150 a month. In fact, we’re guaranteeing that rate to some early subscribers, and the top PlaneRed.com referrers.

But, if at that rate we just can’t put enough planes in the sky to meet demand - we’ll have to charge a little more on the subscription - or add a small $25 cost for each flight. (We know - that ruins the ‘all you can fly’ but we’ve had several folks make passionate cases for doing so.) What do you think? Which would be better $250 a month, or $150 a month, and $25 per flight?

As it stands, I'm not sure this service is useful. I wanted to check out the space available in Boston, but according to their FAQ:

For now, the only way to receive time credit in order to book desks in the Kodesk network is by sharing your own unoccupied office space. If you don't have any office space, or are not in a position to share any desk, you won't be able to use Kodesk for now. That is because, in the first phase of the Kodesk revolution, we want to encourage companies to share their unused desks and feel all the power of having their employees working from anywhere, and even more important, the power of welcoming new ideas, talents and opportunities into their walls.

If you need to offer space in order to use space, I don't understand who will use the site or power the "Kodesk revolution." If I were an employer with an office, I wouldn't care about "all the power of having their employees working from anywhere."

I think they're missing the point of AirBnB: you need to connect people who _need_ space with those who _have_ space. By limiting themselves to only one half of that equation, I don't know how they will expand.

Start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Experiment. Then read http://blog.legendarylife.com/the-colorado-experiment.

Anecdotally, here's one guy's attempt at repeating the Colorado experiment. http://www.placeintheground.com/2008/07/21/testing-out-the-c... http://www.placeintheground.com/2008/09/25/colorado-experime...

Re-reading this makes me think that Tim Ferriss is probably advocating the Colorado Experiment's methods in his book. One of the other comments mentioned five-seconds-up, five-seconds-down.

You can synthesize more than 2lbs of muscle per month, if the muscle you're synthesizing has been in a trained state previously.

This is how athletes can return from injury in a few weeks. It's also how most before/after shots for health products and supplements are made.

I've done GOMAD (Gallon of Milk A Day). It's tough to drink that much milk. In the end, I gained ten pounds of muscle over a period of two months.