mpakes

The video on their 'Contact' page is particularly well done:

http://www.firespotter.com/contact-us

The narration is a series of excerpts from the 'Wave Speech' passage in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, written about the hippie movement in San Francisco. Apropos.

Kudos to Alex Cornell, who apparently made it.

..and by making photography easy, fun and simple to share, Instagram encourages practice, which then increases the user's skills. It's an awesome feedback loop.

FYI — You can enable a setting in Instagram to save originals to your photo library.

The author misses the point of Instagram, and it's no surprise, given that he self-admittedly has only posted one photo.

Instagram is about the community, not the filters, and not curation. The filters are just a fun way to stylize a photo as you post it.

Spoken like someone who has never used a machine with an SSD. My SSD is by far the best performance investment I've made in recent years.

A fast CPU is worthless if you're burning 30% of your cycles waiting for the HDD to deliver your data. Relying on file cache is not good enough.

All well and good except the move to use binaries in NPM. I really, really hope this doesn't become common on the UNIX side..

People said the same thing about Mint, but things worked out pretty nicely for them..

I've noticed the same thing. AWS keys appear to actually be RSA keys, with a .pem extension.

Nginx uses a configurable, fixed number of worker processes, handling many connections per worker process. This allows Nginx to maximize throughput on any variety of multi-processor and/or multi-core configurations.

If one worker dies, any of the connections it's handling will close, but connections associated with the other worker processes stay alive. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the master process will restart a worker if it dies.

All that said, I've never seen Nginx crash (except when playing around with an experimental third-party module - but never in production). For any production server, you should be using some form of monitoring daemon that will alert in case of a failure and automatically restart the web server process.

Untrue.

The RX-7's rotary engine (the 13B series) is actually phenomenally reliable, and there are many examples with well over 300k road miles. The RX-8 uses a newer variant of the same engine - the 13B-MSP RENESIS. Additionally, Mazda used the rotary in competition (in the infamous Mazda 787B) at the 24 hours of LeMans, which is a notoriously difficult test of engine reliability.

The myth of poor rotary reliability primarily stems from the 3rd-generation RX-7. The notoriously-complex mechanically-controlled sequential twin-turbo system (affectionately known as "the rat nest") was prone to hose disconnects and failures, which often led to over-boost situations. Additionally, owners that modify their cars often exacerbated the problem, installing free-flowing intakes and exhausts, as well as boost controllers, and did not properly modify air-fuel ratios to compensate. These situations led to increased engine heat and premature failure, which gave the rotary an unfair bad reputation. Many owners now convert to a simpler single-turbo setup with electronic boost control and careful air-fuel tuning, which is far more reliable.

The actual (and admittedly significant) drawbacks of rotary engines are poor fuel efficiency and high exhaust emissions, both due to incomplete combustion. This has kept them out of mainstream applications and thus they tend to be used primarily in performance applications.

Talk to the guys at Conjunctured coworking (http://http://conjunctured.com/). They're well connected with the Austin startup scene.

In particular, Cesar Torres (@cesart on Twitter) is a great guy to talk to.

"Free" as in speech, not as in beer.

The built-in Mail app does this (stored screenshot of current app state), but 3rd-party apps do not have this ability.

3rd-party apps can display a single static image (default.png) on boot. It is common for this image to be a screenshot of the UI without any content (e.g. nav bar, toolbars, but no buttons or data) in order to give the impression of a faster/more-progressive loading process.

I don't know how it is implemented under the hood, but Facetime on iOS does not appear to be a separate app (from the user perspective, at least). Someone who has jailbroken their phone and inspected the filesystem may be able to speak to this point more directly.

Fast app switching, depending on memory availability, does sometimes freeze an app and save state to stable storage. It's possible that this is a source of the rogue image data. A quick test with Instagram suggests that the camera is disabled when an app is "backgrounded." Perhaps Apple's built-in apps (e.g. Phone, Facetime) behave differently.

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

Also see this site, which adapts the book's contents to the web: http://webtypography.net/toc/

Of course you're right about this.. the turbocharged era produced incredible engine output. I worded my comment poorly.. I meant to convey that the power output of the 3.0L V10 format peaked in the mid-2000s.

Regarding the recognizability of the engine technology - it's fascinating to know how much materials science technology has filtered down from F1 into road-going cars.

The high-revving (9000RPM) F20C1 Inline-4 from the Honda S2000 has a peak piston speed that matches the highest-revving F1 engines at 25 m/s. The BMW S54B32 Inline-6 from the E46 M3 nearly matches the naturally-aspirated efficiency of F1 engines, at 14.3 bar mean-effective pressure (MEP).

We can also thank F1 and similar racing series for composite cylinder liners, titanium valve springs, hydraulically actuated cams (e.g. BMW's Double-VANOS), hydraulically actuated clutches (e.g. BMW's Sequential Manual Gearbox), dual-clutch transmissions (e.g. Audi and BMW Dual-Sequential Gearboxes), ceramic-composite brake rotors (e.g. Porsche PCCB), direct port fuel injection, etc.

One thing to keep in mind.. this article about 10 years old. The current engine configuration is a 90-deg 2.4L V8, rev-limited to 18,000 RPM. Typical peak power output is around 700bhp. Additionally, a team is allowed to use a maximum of 8 engines per season without penalty, which forces teams to run the engine more conservatively. This specification is frozen until the 2013 season.

Over the years, teams come up with creative ways to increase power output while still complying with the F1 rulebook. Then the FIA tends to ban the new methods or otherwise limit the engines in order to keep power output down. Power peaked in the early-mid 2000's with the 3.0L V10 format, with some engines producing as much as 950bhp at nearly 20,000 RPM.

The primary reasons for managing engine output are driver safety and development cost. In the early 2000's, Ferrari spent an average of $300M/year on their Formula 1 efforts. The cost to be competitive in F1 led to some manufacturers pulling out of the sport. Limiting engine specifications and the number of engines a team can use in a season has helped bring down the costs, and the sport now has a full grid of teams participating.

Agreed on many of these. The "Post-Rock" genre, which usually is anthemic and instrumental makes great music for concentrating on intensive tasks. A lot of ambient electronica can be good as well, but sometimes the repetition gets monotonous.

Boards of Canada, Explosions in the Sky, Ratatat, F*ck Buttons, Tortoise, and El Ten Eleven have been in constant rotation for me lately. I often use them as seeds for Pandora as well. Works like a charm.

CloudKick ( http://cloudkick.com ) - Configurable server monitoring with SMS alerts. Love this service.

CoTweet ( http://cotweet.com ) - Shared Twitter account management. Great for support and guerrilla marketing.

Uservoice ( http://uservoice.com ) - User feedback and support management.

Dropbox ( http://dropbox.com ) - File sharing - we share the business dropbox with our individual dropboxes to share files.

Droplr ( http://droplr.com ) - Screenshot capture and sharing. Also allows for file sharing.

As mentioned by others:

GitHub ( http://github.com ) - VCS

Google Apps ( http://www.google.com/a ) - Email and documents.

Pivotal Tracker ( http://www.pivotaltracker.com ) - Project management and issue tracking.

Wordpress ( http://wordpress.com ) - Blog.

These are very specific to Rails, but extremely useful:

New Relic RPM ( http://newrelic.com ) - Deeply integrated Ruby on Rails app monitoring and performance measurement. Immensely helpful for troubleshooting and analysis, including slow query detection/explanation, etc.

Hoptoad ( http://www.hoptoadapp.com ) - Rails exception monitoring and alerting.

San Francisco, CA

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We're changing the way people watch TV — building a social entertainment platform that makes watching TV, sports, and movies more fun.

Our offices are located next to AT&T Park, on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, near MUNI and Caltrain.

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Interested? Email us at jobs@gomiso.com

Miso - http://gomiso.com - The second screen that makes watching TV more fun.

We have an amazing team, but we're changing the game with Miso, and we need more talent to make it happen.

We're looking to hire:

- iPhone/iPad wizards

- Front-end web heads

- Server-side web devs

- Better yet: a killer developer who can wear all these hats and more.

Current technology stack: Objective-C / Cocoa Touch on the iPhone/iPad, HTML5 / CSS3 / JS / jQuery on the web, Ruby / Rails / MySQL on the backend. We constantly evaluate other technologies to incorporate where they make sense.

We're funded and located in San Francisco, in Pier 38, on the Embarcadero, next to AT&T Park.

Send your info to jobs@gomiso.com .

I used to work on the Atlas V as well.. and I applaud SpaceX's efforts. The reliability of traditional launch vehicles like the Delta and Atlas have come at the cost of innovation. The fundamental design hasn't changed in decades. Private efforts like SpaceX promise a return to innovation.

Low-cost launches make it possible to try experiments that would just be untenable on traditional launch vehicles. Lower costs lead to more innovation, at the expense of some (acceptable) risk.

I'd hop on a SpaceX launch vehicle tomorrow. Seriously. The opportunity to go to space is too compelling -- I'm willing to take the risk, and I'm sure many other people would as well. I really hope this can usher in a new era of manned space exploration.

Your argument holds well for military and large commercial payloads, though -- When the cost of the payload approaches the cost of the launch (100-500MM+), it makes sense to fly on the most proven hardware.

Thanks for posting the details. I was originally trying to organize a SXSW event together for Hacker News folks, but this is much better.

See you all there.

The link is now on the front page, but just in case you missed it, here's the official YC event info:

http://ycombinator.posterous.com/yc-sxsw-monday-march-15th-s...

See you guys there.

It seems like there is an official YC meetup at Submerged on March 15 from 5-7pm, although the only details I can find are here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138610

Given that there is already an event (with PG in attendance), I don't know if there's any need for a separate HN meetup.

Fully agreed about a day-time event. I'm actually not planning to get a badge for Interactive this year -- hallway meetings and non-official events are at least as useful as the actual panels (although I will miss attending panels this year).

Halcyon is a great suggestion. I was originally thinking about The Ginger Man, as I'm a beer-snob and they have a great outdoor patio.

What days look the most empty on everyone's schedules?

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I'm always amazed by the little single-serving amusement sites that get sustained attention. Congrats.

(RE: Word of mouth - point taken.. I was just expressing surprise that you didn't take advantage of more direct forms of social media virality)

Can you explain how this web-ified Magic 8 Ball is viral? I'm surprised not to see any Twitter / Facebook / Digg links anywhere..

Also, is this $500-1000 / mo sustained over a long period of time, or is it more like the flash-in-the-pan Facebook apps that briefly go viral, peak, and then collapse after a few weeks?

It does seem to be improved, but on my system (new-ish MBP running OS X), Chrome and Safari startup is nearly instantaneous, and Firefox still lags. I don't know how it compares on Windows.

Still.. bravo to the Firefox team for making a big improvement in this department. My ire is now refocused on the (lack of) JavaScript performance. :-)

After using Chrome for 6-8 weeks, I can't go back. Firefox has so many things going for it (history, extensions, compatibility, etc, etc).. but I can't handle the slowness. The JavaScript performance deficit is bad enough, but the outrageous startup time puts it over the top. I'll keep it around for occasional compatibility testing, but it's no longer the go-to browser.