HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

smeagol

55 karma · joined August 7, 2010

enginerd
submissionscomments
smeagol··on An infographic that shows you where your friends travel
the infograhic is pretty cool.

http://zetrip.com/recommendations/landing?u=4015

but i'm not sure if i'd keep coming back to the site. what's the long term vision?

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
ryan's info is public. he put it on our feedback forum. i wanted to make sure everyone was aware of his public info since we (as well as others) were very concerned with his course of action and questionable statement "Still managed to get a few dozen AWS keys though."

i'm not sure why thanking him is in order... ?

5 people emailed me privately about the security issue. we fixed it promptly, and followed up with instructions to everyone exposed (~20) on how to protect their credentials. i haven't yet heard a complaint from our actual users.

smeagol··on Never Give Your Information To 10 Minute Old Startups
RE: durability:

http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/#How_durable_is_Amazon_Gl...

smeagol··on Never Give Your Information To 10 Minute Old Startups
huh? you realize this was a pet project right? we're two dudes with no jobs.
smeagol··on Never Give Your Information To 10 Minute Old Startups
we're incredibly sorry about all of this.

honestly, this was all accidental. it was a pet project we started to toy with Glacier and a week later i accidentally hit the Like button sending a ping to my friends on FB. bless my friends for being so influential i guess. shame on us for using Rails carelessly.

if you have any experience with startups, you'll know that 99% of the things you launch go nowhere--this project was no different. we honestly thought our site was of absolutely no consequence. we're truly thankful so many people found it useful, but trust me we're sorry there was a hole.

however, just to be clear:

- about 20 accounts were exposed, including me and my buddy - i emailed all of them, and wiped out the credentials - they quickly responded (i saw the updates come in)

thankfully, AWS is designed for such situations. with a few clicks, people deactivated their credentials (both IAM and main account) and regenerated new credentials. the fact that all the early signups were techies who know their way around AWS really saved us.

one more thing: the correct quote is:

"Glacier is built for durability of 99.999999999%"

also: i agree with ryan--don't trust 10-minute old startups :-)

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
we hope to get to that very soon!

most likely, we'll just keep a small data center. something to get around the bandwidth limitation and availability. we would definitely need to charge then in order to cover those costs.

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
WePay is in no way related to IceBox. they're terrific guys; don't trash on their reputation.

i left WePay ages ago. also, our info is publicly displayed here:

http://www.iceboxpro.com/about/team

we're not a company. we're two nerds.

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
good idea.

actually, we'll just wipe them and force new ones.

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
in case you have issues with your AWS keys. RKearny's email:

ryan@ryankearney.com

https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f7d7b021fb488fe6a67ddb286...

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
sorry about that. like i said before, we accidentally "launched" today. be nice?

if anyone's concerned about your AWS key, just destroy your IAM user and create a new one. that's what it was designed for.

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
all Dropbox apps require approval. someone from Dropbox actually signed up, reviewed IceBox, and approved it.

we have no intentions of competing with Dropbox. (like that's even possible.) if we get a complaint, we're more than happy to comply.

we love both Dropbox and Amazon Glacier so we decided to pair them. i'm almost certain Dropbox will eventually add a similar feature soon--we may just be beating them to the punch.

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
yes.

http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
soon... :-)

akmiller, can we talk offline? i'd love to hear more about your ideas. (we actually have photos in mind.)

just email anything@iceboxpro.com

smeagol··on Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined
hey guys,

i built this with a friend and didn't expect it to get posted to HN already. we just got it approved and i accidentally hit our Like button before we were even ready. my friends immediately commented on the story so we just said, what the hey :-)

in any case, it just "launched" today, was only meant for friends to test out, and yes i agree we need to write more copy.

to address some concerns:

- this is really only meant for developers at the moment; i.e. those who actually know their way around AWS. if and when we decide to take payments and provide a service, you can expect a lot more documentation and support. we have no desire to dupe normal folks. we built this for ourselves and really only expected friends to try it out first.

- you don't need to go to your AWS console to get your files. once a file archives, you can click a button to download it back to your Dropbox

- putting in warnings about the quota is a great idea! we'll do that ASAP.

keep the feedback coming, we really appreciate it and wanna build something useful for everyone.

smeagol··on Watch music videos in style
you can just go to /watch. i probably should've added a link ;-)
smeagol··on Watch music videos in style
sorry, i just sorta checked everything ;) i'll remove some of those. it's seriously not used for anything. you can actually just watch videos by going to /watch.

this was hacked together in a few nights so it's very incomplete. (collaborative) filtering coming soon.

smeagol··on Watch music videos in style
the pitch is: "pandora for music videos"
smeagol··on Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal
i really like the suggestion to add "Create Account" next to "Sign In". i'll see about getting that in sometime soon.

cool mockup. perhaps we'll try it out and see how the conversions look.

thanks!

smeagol··on Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal
thanks for the feedback!

can you be more specific about how we can improve the home page? we're constantly trying to improve it, but our oldest (and admittedly ugliest) one always converts the best. tell me the dominant page color and i'll know which version you're looking at.

smeagol··on The Obligatory WePay "Company Culture" Blog Post
you really think 60 hrs/wk is hard?
smeagol··on The Obligatory WePay "Company Culture" Blog Post
it's easy to maintain these hours when you love your job and you believe in your company (and have great teammates). you can't let equity and/or salary be your sole motivation; you have to actually enjoy what you do.