kwis

I tend to agree with you. When I write scripts, I target sh, not bash. If it doesn't fit in sh, then I look at a dedicated scripting language (perl/ruby/python) that will almost certainly be a better fit.

This makes a lot of sense, and meshes with my own experience. I've created a lot of programs that collect data using Python/Ruby/similar and then use R for the analysis.

While using two languages is an overhead, it feels like it plays to the strengths of both sides.

Congrats to the Zite team. You made one of my favorite apps, and whether you continue development at CNN or move on to other ventures, I wish you the best and look forward to seeing what you do next.

Zite is one of the most used apps on my iPad, and has been for ages. I would've happily given you a few dollars for it, but I guess this worked out well for everyone.

If you're on FreeBSD you can use dummynet to simulate packet delay and loss.

It's quite handy. My partner has slow, unreliable, high-latency Internet in his house and there are an entire class of performance problems that are extremely obvious when I work from his place that are barely measurable when I work from a 100mb line that's only a few milliseconds away from a major datacenter.

You know nothing about the people you judged except that they threw a coffee into a virtual 'give a coffee / take a coffee' tray. And from that, you've extrapolated that they care more about art than world hunger.

That's as illogical as it is self-righteous.

Being a fast-follower is often an excellent strategy.

I've long thought that somebody will make a fortune by setting up a company that clones successful America-centric startups into Europe, Asia and/or Brazil; using a fast-follower strategy to test core ideas, but then implementing them in untapped markets.

I don't agree that ACSOI makes sense. Marketing isn't just the initial customer acquisition cost. It's also a substantial expense that keeps existing customers active, engaged and profitable. If it was just about customer acquisition then we'd never see an ad for Tylonel, Coke or Budweiser.

Fortunately Groupon is issuing a new S-1 tomorrow, so it's likely that those who are looking for more information will get it.

It'd be trivial to sort the calls by listening to a few seconds of each to identify potential high value phone numbers (banks, florists, catalogue ordering lines, etc), then listen to every call to the high-value numbers.

What's the point of an apology?

Homeaway.com, VRBO.com, and roomarama.com all offer similar products, and they built their businesses without dishonesty or spam.

If my business could borrow at the same rates as the US government I would take on as much debt as possible, in perpetuity.

The only blessing in this story is that the miscreants made their damage so plainly obvious that the problems were identified quite quickly.

If they'd been a bit more subtle and a little patient, they could've engaged in massive identity theft and financial fraud without ever making it clear that AirBNB was the attack vector.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=DlttAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&...

It appears that's allowable now, since the patent has expired.

I'd argue that the existing system does just that.

The big boys have portfolios of patents that they fling at each other until some sort of cross-licensing deal is reached, whilst smaller players just have to cross their fingers and hope that nobody decides to tax them too extravagantly.

I omit the possibility of creating non-infringing products simply because it's virtually impossible to bring any meaningful product to market without infringing on somebody's overly broad patent.

For any project, you're always balancing quality, schedule, budget, scope and risk to try to get the best business outcome. Because of this, I don't believe in any of the hard and fast rules about the "right" way to code. It's far too situational.

That said, you make an excellent point about the importance of project prioritization. A management team who is good at identifying high ROI projects will stomp all over one who sprays pointless change requests at their dev team.

I'd argue that USAA is already trouncing BankSimple.

USAA competes with the same sort of value proposition (convenient banking with great service, but without a B&M presence), and is a fortune 500 company with millions of happy customers.

It's hard to find discussion about retail banks on the Internet without finding satisfied USAA customers telling their stories.

Some people might also be concerned that the note about sending emails wasn't added to the post until after there was mass outrage at the lack of notification. Makes it feel very inauthentic, as though they were really hoping they'd be able to sweep it under the rug.

I think term limits are probably ineffective, if only because so many staff stick around even as the names on the offices change, and they hold so much of the power.

Can you provide me with one or two examples that are 50x slower on pg than my? We're a postgres-heavy shop, and would be interested in finding solutions to any such problems that you can identify.

I routinely work with vendors who make non-contractual promises, where the only recourse is damage to their reputation and the probable loss of me as a client if they break them.

Not everything needs to be a contract or a lawsuit. Sometimes it's fine to take a man at his word, and then simply tell him to walk away if his word is no good.

Thanks again for the great work.

My manual says: When disconnecting the power adapter from a power outlet or from the computer, pull the plug, not the cord.

But it doesn't say anything about tilting.

I feel like I read a product announcement that claimed this thing is here, and world-changing.

But I couldn't see anything I could use today, as a consumer, merchant or developer, so it didn't feel like it was here.

And I couldn't really understand why it was so great, even if it was here... so it didn't feel world-changing.

I've seen a lot of companies do this, where they pump up things that are still in the pipeline for one reason or another, and the net result is that visitors like me feel like we wasted our time by giving you our attention.

I just accidentally deleted my post, but here's a rewrite.

Constraints: - little/no capital required. - location independent, or available at your current location. - must provide enough income to service/remove debt. - should provide a routine.

Assets: - can do "everything but coding", with most experience in a tech sector - a reasonably large amount of free time.

Possible opportunities: - sales, for either a local or a remote company, either in-person or on-line. any product. - consulting (niche yourself and show you're really good at one of your many skills, and pick something that can be sold without always being at the client site.) - what else can you do?

I'm attempting to strip away the emotional baggage from the situation, to make it easier to see what might be possible. Maybe that could help.

It doesn't clarify anything for me, really.

I feel like your PR is ahead of your product.

A high college GPA sends me a very clear message: this candidate has a proven ability to identify what dozens of different professors and TAs wanted, and deliver it.

When I was 19, I didn't see it as a valuable skill, I just thought it was obnoxious bullshit. Today, I see it as so valuable that when faced with a pile of potential candidates, nearly everybody who graduated magna or summa gets at least a phone interview.

> It's just false.

No, you just misunderstand the actual statements.

Deflationary currency doesn't mean that people don't buy anything. It means that the supply and demand curves shift, reducing (but not completely eliminating) investment and consumption. The magnitudes of the shifts vary depending on the product being discussed, but the direction of the shifts is the same in every case.

You didn't spam anybody. You didn't go against anybody's explicitly stated contact preferences. You didn't even represent yourself as real identifiable people, since the whole site was built to support nicks and personas.

I've never taken any issue with what you did.

There are two-sided networks that have launched without spam, or deceit.

The standard approach would be to pick a city like NYC, and pound the pavement selling the site to every high-influence group you can possibly identify, do that to get a decent inventory built up and then launch with that inventory and start proving the model.

Then, pound the pavement in other high-influence cities, work to get inches in the media, do biz-dev deals with travel/vacation sites, get yourself interviewed on local radio and tv, find every possible way to insert AirBNB into the news stories of the day And frankly, with the real estate crash, there were a lot of possible ways to insert themselves into the news.

Or they could just spam craigslist.

That said, my big question continues to be 'did they disclose this behavior to their investors'.

> but... she put the cup between her legs while driving.

No she didn't. She was a passenger and the car was parked.

> The McDonald's case is the poster child for frivolous litigation because,

It's the poster child because if you don't bother to learn any of the facts, it sounds outrageous. And the world is full of people who can't be bothered to learn the facts before they form strong opinions.

I've sold products.

I didn't spam. I talked with customers before the product was even finished to make sure we were solving a real problem, to make sure they understood our marketing message, and to make sure we really understood the space.

This led naturally to a situation where I had paying beta customers, and even more customers who signed up and started paying as soon as we launched.