aarontait

You're right. Y Combinator doesn't deserve a shred of the respect they garner. I don't know why I thought I could trust one of their portfolio companies. I assumed they did due diligence and had customers/users in mind when selecting companies to invest in.

I feel bad for the users that were left holding the bag. I put a good amount of money in the YC backed StableGains (Terra) just to watch it evaporate overnight. The investors and founders should feel deeply ashamed for selling these platforms as legitimate savings accounts. The fact that these platforms were backed and promoted by well know VCs/incubators, such as Y Combinator, is utterly appalling.

Same. Had to take a sip of coffee and do a double take.

Aside from appointing governors, what power does the president have over the federal reserve board? The president can direct/order the FCC to pursue a course of action, but as far as I'm aware, the president doesn't have executive authority over the fed's monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve, which is almost completely independent from the federal government, is the biggest player in regards to controlling inflation. In reality, POTUS doesn't have effective levers for controlling general inflation. However, I agree that their messaging has been absolutely horrible. They could at least create the appearance of doing something about it instead of just dismissing it as the Putin price hike.

Yea, I agree. I wish there was some kind of organization that would seek FDA approval for racemic ketamine treatment of depression. It's cheap, and widely available. Unfortunately, without the incentive for a patentable product, it's unlikely to ever happen.

FYI: Johnson & Johnson patented the S(+) enantiomer of ketamine and sells it as a nasal spray called Spavato. It's been FDA approved for depression since 2019. Although Spravato costs more on paper than regular ketamine, it's often less expensive for patients since it is covered by insurance (regular ketamine treatments are considered an off-label use and are usually not covered).

Interesting. Were they operating commercial passenger flights? The FAA's statement only mentions a groundstop.

The title is somewhat misleading. A groundstop is far less dramatic than "grounding" all flights (including ones already en-route). Grounding all flights would be akin to what the FAA ordered during the 9/11 attacks.

Anybody know if you're able to transfer your cryptocurrency on Coinbase to Robinhood? In theory, I could avoid Coinbase's fees for selling.

I think it's worth pointing out that, like all autism spectrum disorders, there are varying levels of severity for aspergers syndrome. It's entirely possible for a highly functional adult to have a minor form of aspergers and never be formally diagnosed or treated.

Okay, I checked out your site and you guys have me at "CouchDB provides a RESTful JSON API than can be accessed from any environment that allows HTTP requests."

To put it mildly, this sounds fucking awesome. I have no idea why I haven't checked this out sooner.

I'm an iOS developer that has no idea what CouchDB is other than another database system. I'm a little confused as to what CouchDB Mobile is. Is it at another database engine I can use to locally persist my data on the device (like an improved SQLite), or is it some kinda of API system that can be used to communicate directly with a CouchDB hosted on a server without the need for a REST API to be created to manage the interaction?

True, with the difference being humans (and our predecessors) had to wait hundreds of thousands of years for the fossil fuels to form under the immense pressure (and additional energy input) of the earth.

Hydrogen is a storage medium. Fossil fuels are used as the energy source to make the rocket propellant.

I can also guarantee you that fossil fuels were used in the production and distribution of the rocket boosters and that the airplane the video was taken from wouldn't be flying if it didn't have any jet fuel in it's tank.

Humans are smart creatures, but we shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking we would be where we are at now if it weren't for a cheap, albeit limited, supply of highly concentrated energy.

Or that fossil fuels are incredible...

Unfortunately the graph doesn't take the geopolitics of the situation into account. American oil reserves are long past their peak (about 40 years ago) and we are largely dependent on foreign oil. If demand begins to outstrip supply, what's stopping the Saudis from keeping their oil to themselves? Or better yet, what's stopping them from selling it to China for a much higher price than what American oil companies can bid.

I get this all the time. It can be rather freaky.

Get QuickTime Pro (totally worth the money). Go to File->Export. For the format, select QuickTime Movie. Open the options window. Under video, click settings... and choose H.264 as the compression type. Adjust the quality settings for your taste. For sound, use AAC and select a quality level that you feel comfortable with. IMPORTANT! CHECK PREPARE FOR INTERNET STREAMING and select "Fast Start". This places the MOOV atom at the beginning of the file so the entire thing doesn't have to download before it plays. And viola, you have H.264 video that is playable in Flash. If you want, you can just change the file extension to .mp4. Sometime Flash doesn't like it when you use a relative link to the video file. Use an absolute web link to the video file if you are having issues. If you want a super easy was to play back these files, be sure to check out the open source FLV media player:http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player

Paul Buchheit also gives an amazing interview in Founders at Work. I'm sure everyone here knows that book by heart.

I agree with his point. The development of software is not an engineering discipline because there is a literal and metaphorical art to it. Software creators need to take quantitative aspects of engineering, and incorporate qualitative aspects such as design and aesthetics into the final product. There are no real metrics for measuring some aspects of software creation. Software creation can be viewed as an art.

I believe the good book Allen states that your GTD system can be mobile. I think I even remember David saying he uses a mobile version with folders in his suitcase.

I personally think that founders have a more sentimental value. These are the people that strongly believe in the vision of the company. They will be their working with you when the cash has dried up (or even before you have funding). If the people that are working with you where to stop getting paid (in cash), would they still be their? If not, I would consider them to be employees, not founders.

Grab your laptop and head to the nearest Starbucks or coffee shop. I find I need to constantly change locations at least every four hours to keep productive and prevent my mind from going "stale". Thank god I work at a university where I can just hop around from the library to other common areas.

Try changing where you usually sit and work in your apartment. I sit in all kinds of weird places. My new favorite place is on top of my desk. Don't knock it until you try it.

I stand corrected. Thank you. Although I'm not too sure on the financial status on whether or not Flickr actually makes a profit. There appears to be a lot of speculation surrounding Yahooo and Flickr's profitability.

UOIT has a great CS and Software Engineering program. They are also the only school in Canada to offer a masters in information technology security. UOIT is also Ontario's newest, and most wired university. http://uoit.ca

CS or Software Engineering at Ontario's newest and most high tech university is, in my opinion, beyond what Waterloo can deliver. Check out UOIT http://uoit.ca/

Learn to love Mr. Noddle.

19... Looks like I'm the youngest one... Suckers!

I kind of agree with Mark Cuban. Sure, there are a bunch of new services on the web, but anyone could predict this linear growth in innovation. The thing is, we are not seeing the exponential growth in mindshare and adoption that we saw in the 90's. We are still using the same or similar standards that we used in the 90's as well. When the internet started to gain interest, it was mind blowing. It simply isn't anymore. More bandwidth could allow us to deliver deeper innovations. Imagine if Gigabit connections were the norm. We could bring massively parallel grid computing to consumers. Just imagine encoding H.264 in seconds instead of hours. Right now we are in a stalemate with the telcos.