cmatthias

> if i were to become a persona non grata to google, apple, HN, social media, etc., how would i talk to anyone? how could i do anything?

I honestly don't understand this argument at all.

To answer your question, you could:

- Use one of the thousands of other available email hosts/search engines/cloud providers/etc besides Google or Apple - Pick up the phone and talk to people to get things done - Leave your house to talk to people and do things - Find something enjoyable to do with all of the free time you've gained now that you're off of social media and HN

But more importantly, you're saying that without those companies you somehow can't live your life? In that case I just flat-out disagree. I believe that most people make social media out to be more important than it is, and this feels like the extreme of that style of argument.

Wait, either I'm missing something huge or this analogy is fatally flawed.

Are you claiming that the _government_ is censoring Twitter?

Thank you! I did not make it up but I don't recall where I first heard it, unfortunately. But I am definitely not claiming credit for it! :)

I reject the notion that this is a narrow definition. In the US, it's the _standard_ definition that was widely accepted until the recent advent of the "but muh free speech" people on twitter and other social media.

I'm also quite skeptical of the "slippery slope"-style argument regarding IP connectivity. The number of available ISPs, web hosts, domain registrars, etc is pretty large. There are even web hosts that have an explicit policy of letting you host _any_ content you want as long as it's not against the law in their jurisdiction[0]. And they'll even host it on a subdomain of theirs, if for some reason you have trouble getting a hostname for your hateful or crazy (but legally protected from censorship by the government) blog. And if laws are ever made restricting what those web hosts can do, then we're getting into the realm of the government restricting free speech, which is a different conversation entirely.

Regarding your second paragraph, the right to "get heard" is not a right guaranteed to anyone, at least not in the US. If you are spewing garbage, no one should be forced to hear it.

(caveat: I'm in the US, so my opinions are US-centric)

[0] for example, https://nearlyfreespeech.net

You are conflating the concept of free speech with "free reach."

At least in the US, you have always had the right to create your own web site and say whatever you want. That right should never be taken away. However, another privately-run website should never be forced to broadcast anyone's content to hundreds of millions of other people.

I never said "not the people committing the fraud". Why not both? Amazon is the entity warehousing and shipping the products in the United States (or wherever the buyer happens to be), and is and is the party enabling the fraudulent products to be sold to the buyer. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd have to think there are consumer protection laws being violated here, as well as mail fraud, assuming at least some of these products are shipped via the postal service.

I support legal action against the companies selling the products too, but they tend to disappear and reappear under different names, and are likely all located in China, which I assume makes prosecution more difficult.

Responding to your edit: this is not "private companies doing the job of the government." If there are fraud and/or consumer protection laws on the books, then companies need to follow them, and they need to face legal consequences when they don't.

No, the sellers of these fraudulent products (at least the first 5 on the search results page the OP linked to in the twitter thread) are already using FBA.

Amazon clearly doesn't care. Maybe a prosecutor bringing legal action against Amazon would be the best way to make them care.

This isn't true, or at least there's more nuance to it: I just logged in to my number-based account which I must have last used in 2002-ish while playing Ultima Online, as another commenter in this thread mentioned. My account still existed and all of my contacts were still there.

Had to look through my emails but it looks like it was in June of 2011.

edit: http://www.geek.com/news/dropbox-security-glitch-meant-any-p...

I did the same when that incident happened.

Similarly to the reduction in RAM on the 13" rMBP, they also removed the discrete video card from the baseline 15" model.

Contrary to what this article states, this type of story domination has happened several times before; the most memorable one for me was the night that Steve Jobs died. For a period of time, every single link on the first three pages was about him.

I also got these emails. Nice work, Github.

I'm convinced that Apple wants you to think that SSD prices are still where they were in 2010-2011, both to sell you the "Fusion Drive" baloney and to make it seem like paying $900 for an UPGRADE to a 512GB SSD[1] is in any way reasonable.

[1] http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD104LL/A?

The base MacBook Airs are not fairly-priced, though they might be less overpriced than other Mac models.

For example, consider the Asus Zenbook Prime[1], which can be found for $1100-$1150 configured with a Core i7 (faster than the base $1200 13" Air) and a 1920x1080 screen (about 1.5 times more pixels than the Air).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Zenbook-Prime-UX31A-AB71-13-3-Inch-Ult...

Not really an investment. See: http://thezikomoletter.com/2012/12/10/you-are-naturally-shor...

This article is badly in need of an editor.

That is a seriously large iPhone at the bottom right of the landing page.

I'm not quite sure whether there was ever an original source for this claim other than a bunch of tech blogs parroting each other, but iSuppli shows that this was false, at least as of July 11th:

http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/pages/Low-End-Google-N...

Sure, if you add in the $25 Google play credit, and leave room for some margin for Asus (since Google is just a reseller), you might get close to breaking even, but as far as I can find, the Nexus 7 was never sold at a loss.

Cambridge, MA (Kendall Square) (on-site, no remote)

Software Engineer/Senior Software Engineer at Cogo Labs (http://www.cogolabs.com/)

Cogo Labs is a company that creates companies, kind of like an incubator with a twist: all of our ideas/startups come from within the company. We don't offer investment in outside startups. Thus far we have had two major ($100MM+) acquisitions, and a handful of smaller ones, and we are anticipating more in the near future. Typically, once a startup we are incubating gets off the ground, we hire employees into that startup and assist them with whatever they need to make the company successful. Cogo Labs itself has around 40 full-time employees now in our office in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA.

I'm looking for a software engineer or senior software engineer to join my team. You should have a degree in CS or a similar field, and experience developing for the web, as most of our startups are web properties. Specific experience in Ruby, Rails, and/or Python are a plus, but not absolutely necessary. I'm more concerned with finding smart people than finding people with specific skills.

I am currently developing new features for a web site that we run that gets >50k unique visitors per day, and you'd be assisting in this effort. I can be more specific if you're invited for an interview.

We are big on metrics and analysis -- there are grids of monitors (we call them "NOC walls") all over the office showing up-to-the-minute stats about all of our properties. I can code up a new feature, deploy it, and walk over to one of the NOC walls and literally watch my change affect traffic on the site, or revenue, or profit. It's a really fun place to work. Benefits and perks are great as well (see http://cogolabs.com/careers for more info).

If you're interested, shoot me an email (cmatthias at cogolabs.com) with your resume and a brief cover letter (be sure to mention you saw this post on HN). Bonus points for including a link to your github page or other code repository where I can see some code you've written.

Cambridge, MA (Kendall Square)

Software Engineer/Senior Software Engineer at Cogo Labs (http://www.cogolabs.com/)

Cogo Labs is a company that creates companies, kind of like an incubator with a twist: all of our ideas/startups come from within the company. We don't offer investment in outside startups. Thus far we have had two major ($100MM+) acquisitions, and a handful of smaller ones, and we are anticipating more in the near future. Typically, once a startup we are incubating gets off the ground, we hire employees into that startup and assist them with whatever they need to make the company successful. Cogo Labs itself has around 40 full-time employees now in our office in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA.

I'm looking for a software engineer or senior software engineer to join my team. You should have a degree in CS or a similar field, and experience developing for the web, as most of our startups are web properties. Specific experience in Ruby, Rails, and/or Python are a plus, but not absolutely necessary. I'm more concerned with finding smart people than finding people with specific skills.

I am currently developing new features for a web site that we run that gets >50k unique visitors per day, and you'd be assisting in this effort. I can be more specific if you're invited for an interview.

We are big on metrics and analysis -- there are grids of monitors (we call them "NOC walls") all over the office showing up-to-the-minute stats about all of our properties. I can code up a new feature, deploy it, and walk over to one of the NOC walls and literally watch my change affect traffic on the site, or revenue, or profit. It's a really fun place to work. Benefits and perks are great as well (see http://cogolabs.com/careers for more info).

If you're interested, shoot me an email with your resume and a brief cover letter (be sure to mention you saw this post on HN). Bonus points for including a link to your github page or other code repository where I can see some code you've written.

You can reach me at cmatthias at cogolabs.com.

It's still ridiculously overpriced, just less so. ($975 to upgrade from 6GB to 32GB???)

That is all true! Thanks for the clarification.

I believe the Ivy Bridge E5s aren't due until early 2013 at the earliest.

Here's a forum thread posted by someone who's using a Supermicro Intel C606-based board with dual xeon E5s and 128GB of memory:

http://tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=169&t=55963

Looks like they had trouble getting the network functional, but everything else worked fine.

32GB of ECC ram compatible with a motherboard like that would only run you $300:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161...

Apple charges $975 for an upgrade from 6GB to 32GB. Highway robbery.

I suspect the reason that they did this quietly was that these are not new Mac Pros at all. Rather, they are same as the "Mid 2010" models they replaced, with minor bumps to the CPUs and memory. They continue to use the same generation CPUs that were available in 2010 (and same chipset, I presume), despite the fact that newer generation Sandy Bridge CPUs have been available for months now.

IMHO, the RAM bump wasn't even that good -- the base config now includes only 6GB, which is still laughable for a professional machine costing $2500.

Pretty pathetic if you ask me.

Plus, their control panel pages to assign custom nameservers doesn't work half the time! (or at least, it didn't in 2010 when I used them).

And, should you instead choose their DNS service, they'll throw in some free 3-4 hour total outages with no explanation from customer service! [1]

My recommendation would be to stay as far away from Moniker as you possibly can.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=moniker+dns+outage

(HN makes you wait a few minutes before you can reply. That's why the reply link was missing.)

"The reason to own a .com is not convenience. It's ubiquity at least in the US."

I know. I was not talking about the US.

"at this time using a non .com domain is a non-starter for the majority of people."

I disagree. For anyone who is not in the US (which is the majority of people), having a non-.com domain is probably not a big deal.

"Why? Is that just on principle? Or do you see this behavior by the government as rising to the level of the US taking down sites that flout or even break the law in a de minimis way?"

I think it's a combination of several factors. One is definitely principle. The other major reason is that if I'm running a business from outside the US, and do not deal with US customers or business partners, why should I waste my time figuring out whether what I'm doing is contrary to some law in one US state, just to ensure that the US doesn't steal my domain from me?

Especially in some industries, there are vastly different notions of what is considered appropriate in the US vs. Europe (see the sports betting example). My opinion is that based on cases such as this, the "convenience factor" of owning a .com no longer outweighs the potential risk of losing the domain on the whim of the US government.

If you read the article, you will discover that the author asserts that this situation is different, because it's the first time that a .com domain registered through a foreign registrar has been subject to seizure by US authorities. I don't know enough about the history of domain seizures to know whether this is true or not, but if so, it definitely represents an increased level of enforcement by US authorities -- if I owned a company operated and registered outside the US, I'd now think twice about using a .com name as my primary address.

I can comfortably reach the upper right corner of my phone. Maybe I have larger hands than I think I do, or maybe I hold my phone differently than most people. But I still don't see how that blog post linked to in the parent comment is at all accurate.