loganu

Yo! Tried to reply to your post about a visa (thread locked now). I'm a Canadian, founder, been through the process multiple times, and am helping people with visas. @loganullyott on twitter, loganullyott @gml dot com

I don't seem to be able to DM... maybe not enough karma? DM me or logan@legalpad.io and I can walk you through a few options.

I don't seem to be able to DM... maybe not enough karma? logan@legalpad.io and I can walk you through a few options.

Seattle | Maybe remote | CTO | UAV / Drone programmers | DroneSeed.co

DroneSeed is bringing tree-planting drones, remote-sensing data, and predictive analytics to the forestry industry. We're building a fleet of 15 drones to fly over forested areas and fire seed capsules into the ground with pneumatics. It's pretty cool. We're a 4-person TechStars company in Seattle right now, we've got our first customers, and we're looking to hire in two positions.

We're looking for a Co-Founder CTO. Ideal candidate will have experience working with either GIS and Image processing, or UAV flight planning, as well as working with large data sets. Capable of leading a team, the candidate will be designing backend architecture, can estimate hours and evaluate talent. You're keen to provide the software element to our hardware and business skills. Helpful but not required experience includes: ArcGIS or QGIS, PixHawk, Pix4d, AgDrone, Python, Q Ground Control, ArduPilot, Python. https://angel.co/droneseed/jobs/115308-cofounder-cto-drone-s...

UAV Mission Planner: This position will be charged with owning the software stack to allow 15 drones to be pre-programmed on how to plant tree seeds, where to go, and how to land autonomously. You have 1-4 years experience working writing code for mission planning software. https://angel.co/droneseed/jobs/114965-software-engineer-uav...

If you're motivated by the problem, equity, and are comfortable working at a fast pace in an aspiring startup in a prestigious accelerator (TechStars Seattle), we would love to talk. Candidate should consider moving to Seattle for 1-4 months. (Housing may be provided depending upon need.)

Logan@droneseed.co , @droneseed on twitter, or PM me on HN

I didn't particularly love the last one, on Musk's "secret sauce," but the rest of the Musk series was absolutely fantastic. You could give it to someone that has never seen a car or rocket, and by the end of it they'd understand the majority of the energy, auto, and space industries.

I was just imagining an autopilot lane with cars flying into the city to pick up their owners.

You could also have parking garages with a much higher capacity per sq. foot if all the cars were smart and could work together. (Or even sections designed for this) Instead of single or double car rows, you could have them 4 or five cars deep, and self-rearranging to let each other out.

I was thinking more of something like "I'm drunk, so I'm going to voluntarily give my car control to take me home." Basically turning it into a driverless taxi. "No seatbelt, no car move" is restricting in that it's always enabled. Something like what I've dubbed "drunk mode" or "taxi mode" gives you more options.

Thinking about your last sentence: Elon has been tweeting about Tesla's summon feature - tap your phone and your car will come to you, across the street or across the country. If a car can drive LA to NY legally, without a driver, there should be a way for it to carry a drunk passenger. Whether that means enabling "drunk mode" so you can't grab the steering wheel, or that you have to sit in the back seat, there's surely room for a compromise between the automakers and lawmakers. Technology like this will save lives.

That was my first reaction. I played Draw Something for a week or so, 3 years ago. I know many people still play Candy Crush Daily. The purchase to get Draw Something was probably premature, whereas this is a more established market.

Is droneseed related to BiocarbonEngineering? Looks like the same premise, technology, etc.

There have been lots of articles mentioning Dorsey taking sewing classes, sketching classes, going sailing, etc while running Twitter. (And in moments that outsiders consider crises, and employees were working longer hours to hit deadlines). The 6/4/1 is an exaggeration, but still...

From what I've read in the Musk biography and elsewhere, he is involved in really really low level decisions, to the point that he's been labelled a "nano-manager." Surely he's not involved in absolutely every decision, but by all accounts he is much, much closer to the details than you would expect a CEO to be. Especially when it comes to design/ engineering details.

I saw Ben (I think it was Ben) speak at the Solidworks conference in San Diego, about 4 years ago. I was familiar with Quirky before his big talk, (I'm an industrial designer) but walking away from the talk I was thinking, "This is fucking brilliant. They set up a system to get free ideas, gauge interest, receive feedback, iterate a product, and have a batch of initial customers ready to buy something once its developed. They're outsourcing a decent amount of work to the customers, and the customers are happy to get small royalty checks."

They told the story of the kid that led that power strip's development through Quirky, and how it paid for his college - but it was easy to see that most customers or contributors or Quirks or whatever they called them would not be making big money by choosing a new product's name or color or whatever.

As everyone else has pointed out, they got halfway to successful with a bunch of products. Their connected products had people excited about them, and many could have turned into legitimate businesses or product lines. But when you're making a new product every week,( 50+ a year) from concept thru development to production, your focus and execution will stray.

There's also the signal to the market that this flight is in demand. If you're only on the flight for points, (not the utility of the actual flight) then you're making a purchase without it actually being in demand. How this plays out - the airline seeing demand and adding another plane, or having more passengers so they can drop their rate to cover marginal costs and encourage even more passengers... I don't know. No judgement, just saying there's more to it than the jet fuel.

Are they paid?

There's not enough original/exclusive content yet though. If their library were to disappear tomorrow, so would huge swaths of their subscribers. The library provides enough necessary value to warrant the membership, until more exclusive/original content becomes available.

I also wouldn't count the "old strategy" dead just yet. As torrenting becomes more popular, you may see Netflix get earlier deals and releases from those that would rather some money than no money.

True. It's easy to slip, and it only takes one time. From my limited reading, DPR slipped often. But his case doesn't mean individuals can't obscure themselves. Look at Satoshi (Bitcoin). We don't even know 100% for sure if Satoshi is a group or individual.

"This. There is no contest. Right now there are only two options."

Only two options for you. And for people tech-y enough to find and understand PopcornTime, or be introduced to it by someone that is. Do your parents or grandparents know how to download torrents? I agree that torrenting is a better solution. Netflix is legal, well-advertised, and comes with almost every media device these days. It appears to be the only option for a large number of people. That illusion is the reason it's at a $40B market cap.

True, but a "dragnet" across (for example) all Argentinian devs with experience in Ruby and React (substitute whatever skills make sense)would have hits outside this small group. If enough people were this scared about LinkedIn visits, they'd likely have friends or colleagues outside the PopcornTime group saying "Oh yeah, he looked at my profile too. Don't worry about it."

I'm just saying, I imagine they wouldn't be scared about it if it was a big net fishing for info. Could be sensationalism for the story though.

Well, obviously Abad's come out about his involvement. But we don't know that the other devs weren't using any tools earlier. If you know more about this, share it.

"Popcorn Time-killer"

Direct quote, not my writing. But I personally see the capitalized "T" signifying it's the product, not a generic time-killer.

The quote from Abad is speaking about a product that doesn't exist yet. A Netflix-like experience without massive holes in content. That may or may not be Netflix, if it ever comes to be realized.

You're attacking Netflix as-is, and saying that this couldn't occur. Yes, Netflix is laggy. Personally, I find the interface awful, browsing and navigating to be horrendous.

The question is: could a well-designed Netflix-LIKE product exist, with enough content available that a large number of people will use it instead of torrents? Would simultaneous theatre/online releases be enough?

[ISPs] have moved beyond just delivering a internet connection to delivering "triple play" (net, cable/streaming, voip).

I thought this bundling was more to protect their profit margins. In Canada, for example, Telus has cable, internet, cellphone, house phone products available. For every product line you purchase, there's a discount. When they charge data overage fees on cell phones and internet plans, they make huge money, and subsidize the cost of running other product lines which help their lock-in effect. (Sorry for the poor wording)

"Most of the core team" anonymous. "All of the developers" being visited on LinkedIn. If it's not sloppy journalism, there's something really interesting about a multi-national company's legal team using (potentially) illegal means in tracking down developers.

"– We do not know how, but he had managed to track us. We were quite unsettled. We thought it was a scare tactic. And we were frightened. None of us were anonymous anymore. They knew where we worked, where we lived."

The geographic part makes sense. As for buying licenses - I guess purchasing the rights to broadcast could be considerably cheaper than a pay-per-view model. I'd be interested in how those negotiations occur, or if there are set prices. Take it or leave it.

Right, completely forgot about this. I think CanCon is a good idea in theory, but Netflix could buy all the Little Mosque on the Prairie, Trailer Park Boys, and Corner Gas spin-offs that Canada could possibly produce, and it wouldn't make much of a dent in the amount of content that Netflix could push.

Edit: Others have pointed out Netflix doesn't fall under CRTC guidelines after "internet tax" was threatened.

When your legal avenues of getting content become fragmented enough, and you're paying for so much extraneous and/or overlapping content, torrenting becomes the most attractive option. (If you can look past the legal/ethical issues)

"I am convinced that the Popcorn Time-killer is going to be a Netflix without borders. They should remove national restrictions for films,..."

Does someone have some insight into why Netflix has time and geographic restrictions on content? I can understand, in some cases, publishers not wanting to let their movies or TV out to foreign countries. (Maybe waiting for a marketing push, or a broadcast deal to be reached in a new market/locale) But I can't really wrap my head around movies and shows being phased in and out. (Example: Recently saw that some of the Transformers movies will disappear in a week or two).

From a technical standpoint, I can't see the issue being that they can only have a certain number of films view-able. from an economic standpoint, I would think that whenever someone watches a show, a portion of their monthly Netflix fee goes to the creators of that show, so there's always an incentive for the creators to let Netflix show their content.

I'm assuming they folded before burning $40m. IMO, it would be hard to go through that much money when you have (hundreds of?) thousands of customers and (should have) a decent profit margin. I'm more inclined to believe that HomeJoy was sold to investors as the beginning of a platform, and when it failed to hit traction, or growth potential seemed to stall, the investors decided to cut their losses and move on.

Not a programmer, but I've done this as well. Averaging a job change about every 14 months (always leaving on good terms after another company or recruiter has reached out to me). It's given me a wide range of experience, let me try a few different industries out, and I've upped my salary a little under 50% in 5 years.

I've been at my current job 2 years. Things have slowed down a lot in Alberta, so new offers and opportunities are very hard to find. But I've made myself useful to a handful of companies, and don't anticipate any shortages in work (during a period when many are getting laid off and taking paycuts). When things pick back up, I've got a verbal offer on a position which should bring me another hefty raise.

My advice: Switch whenever an opportunity comes up that offers better work or pay. Employers are generally reluctant to hand out a 10-20% raise, but they will easily pay that money to someone new coming in to fill a hole in their organization. It can be difficult to explain coming-and-going in interviews, but if you have a solid line of references and some okay answers, their need to hire is often stronger than their desire to see what's wrong with you.