boxcardavin

In undergrad astro my long-term project was searching for eclipsing binary stars, which are paired stars that are aligned with us just right so that they eclipse each other as they orbit. We looked one by one at known variable stars that are easily found by taking a series of wide angle shots of the sky and watching for periodic variations in brightness. The reason we had to look at one star at a time was because we wanted to characterize the light spectrum as being either shifting (pulsing single star) or mostly constant.

It always blew me away that the reason we had a project like that to do was because not every star had been looked at.

This was before Kepler data came out and it will not really apply once LSST starts kicking ass.

Thank you for your post.

Bah, thanks. We're developing a new version of the hardware for permanent installations, it has probably been our biggest challenge as end-users definitely expect consumer grade hardware while the number of units we build is very low so costs are high. Our first permanent installations will all be at corporate headquarters like WeWork NYC.

Oh yes, I love our Pelican's, we use them for our printers as well. The problem was the first few iterations of our printer were fragile once outside the protective cocoon of the pelican and in the hands of live-event people. As a result, we've beefed up our gear but it's expensive to do as such a small scale (dozens not thousands).

I think we're going to apply for Stripes Bring Your Own Team where they hire functional teams. Haven't decided to disband yet, we based it on time and revenue requirements for ourselves.

Yep, it is pretty cool but the decision-makers at most of our client companies are slow to approve budgets for Snapchat. It has been fun to work on, it's our first big push into hardware so I've had a ball. We'd like to push our prices way down to hit weddings but our hardware needs to be overbuilt as all hell to handle the rigors of being shipped and handled by half-drunk wedding photographers :P

A bizarre story that should be a reminder to everyone that your gut will often point in the direction of a problem.

Also, the article is written as a reminder, a warning, to not overuse commas when I type.

This speaks to my heart.

I've got 500 miles on my board and it has never been a problem, just something to be aware of. Adding mechanical brakes would involve one or two servos, two sets of brake disks and pads, and a few dozen more parts. That's a lot of hardware for a problem that few experience so it will likely never happen.

The whole deck (top) of the board is grip tape which is a glue paper covered in sand, so almost nothing will stick to the pebbled surface. A company makes an aluminum mount but skateboards rattle like mad and like to destroy mounted electronics eventually.

Forgot to mention, this happened to be the other UW, University of Washington.

This is more common with undergrad degrees, I studied physics at the UW where my friend and lab partner died during finals week of his second to last quarter. I suspect that it is usually done quietly for the benefit of friends and family, and in his case it did give some comfort to people who knew him.

Miss ya Kyle.

And yes, it was quite a hacky hack to make it work!

'Social Printers' a kinda a thing these days with Instaprint and others, but I think this is more equivalent to a photobooth or putting a bunch of disposable cameras on the tables at a wedding.

We built this printer to take Snapchat screenshots sent to us and print them out at events. It got a little nutty when we decided to put the hardware into a tiny box and 3M-tape it to walls. The faceplate of the printer is the actual Snapcode that users send their Snaps to, and a modified inkless printer (along with batteries, lighting, mifi, ddwrt router, cooling, and other electronics...) is jammed inside.

It was a ~4wk side project.

Hey, now it's goin pretty good!

Haha, yep.

Textingway - Twitter 2007

Shameless/shameful plug, we were (a bust) on PH today https://www.producthunt.com/tech/textingway

Cool, I'll take a look.

This might sound silly, but what do you think is interesting about it? We FEEL like it's good for something but we're trying to discover what that is. Don't tell PG I said that...

Will do.

http://textingway.com/BDMEM2S

Was there any followup to this in the years before his death? Mr. Wilson doesn't sound like the life of the party.

Advantage over Bootstrap in 5 seconds?

In addition to power being cheap (as others have mentioned), the humans would experience 'downtime' when moving between stops. Downtime for humans costs a lot of money.

You're losing a lot (if not all) of the efficiencies of growing outside urban centers. The efficient distribution and consumption of irrigation water and fertilizer is more of a cost ($ & CO2) than the final transportation of food to consumers. This is likely feel-good solution that produces great food, but not net savings to consumers or society.

Nothing groundbreaking here, just reframing (yet again) how to think about success so that founders focus hard on growth rate. Good stuff.

Sometimes I wonder if PG is targeting/excluding audiences by speaking in a mathy way.

"If he was bad at extracting money from people, at worst this curve would be some constant multiple less than 1 of what it might have been. But a constant multiple of any curve is exactly the same shape."

This makes perfect sense to a native math speaker but takes some effort for others to digest. I wonder if that is deliberate or just the way he talks.

This type of comment may be keeping them away.

Undergrad in physics, still keep up with my PhD physics pals.

Something that is hard to mention but is worth knowing is that Hawking is not at the leading edge of his field.

I think the comments on here would be a more valuable "MBA crash course" for Mr. Maffin.

Pincus? searches for date 2010