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wooster

2,571 karma · joined February 11, 2009

http://andrewwooster.com/

http://apptentive.com/ (TechStars Seattle 2012, Sold in 2022)

http://planetaryscale.com/

http://uncorkedapps.com/

Ex-Apple. Worked on software updates, many parts of OS X, Parental Controls, Time Machine, other stuff. Sometimes cattle rancher.

Mars-shot investor.

http://twitter.com/wooster

submissionscomments
wooster··on FoundationDB: A Distributed Key-Value Store
Interesting… https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/pull/10156
wooster··on Psychic Paper: iOS Sandbox Escape
The format plists used before XML was very JSON-like. It had its own set of issues, however.
wooster··on Why Japanese Whisky Is So Good and So Hard to Find
The photo looks like it's of a cask firing at Ariake Sangyo [0], which manufactures barrels for a variety of uses. About 10 percent of their barrels go to domestic whiskey producers, and the rest to shochu. Yamazaki has their own cooperage, so that barrel isn't going to them.

However, Yamazaki does use a variety of different barrels, including wine casks for finishing, sherry casks, mizunara (Japanese oak) casks, new American white oak puncheons, hogsheads made of used barrels, and ex-bourbon barrels. AFAIK they use a variety of char levels on the barrels they produce in house and on re-chars.

[0] http://www.ariakesangyo.co.jp/, mis-captioned as a distillery here: https://www.masterofmalt.com/blog/post/qa-brian-ashcraft-aut...

wooster··on Show HN: I invented a caffeinated toothpaste
There is a George T. Haymaker Jr. who "served as an Executive Vice President of Alumax Inc. from 1984 to 1986 and Vice President of International Operations at Alcoa Inc. from 1982 to 1984" [0].

His profile at Genstar Capital includes what seems like a recent photo [1].

Is that who you're thinking of?

[0] http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?p...

[1] http://www.gencap.com/team/george_haymaker.php

wooster··on A Silicon Valley Dream Collapses in Allegations of Fraud
Have you been to southern Italy? The homeless/squatter situation I saw there was very similar.
wooster··on Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind
What's your experience of art like (especially paintings and other visual art)? Does it ever evoke strong feelings? Is there some art you like more than others for reasons you can't articulate with words? Ditto for UI design.

Thanks for writing this, by the way. This is totally mind-blowing.

wooster··on Google I/O 2016
CHM is great and the docents there are fantastic. The Cantor Center at Stanford has a great little collection of art. There's also a TeamLab exhibition at PACE in Menlo Park that I hear is wonderful.
wooster··on Sherpa: They Die, We Go Home
The trekking part of my Nepal trip I found a lot easier (and interesting) than my Kilimanjaro hike. The trek to EBC lends itself to a lot of flex days being built into itineraries (delays of flights between Kathmandu and Lobuche are normal) and some nice side trips that help with the "climb high, sleep low" pattern that helps prevent AMS. Kilimanjaro, on the other hand, is a straight shot up and down, tends to be a much shorter trek, and doesn't have as interesting terrain for side hikes.

Climbing Lobuche East and glacier traverse+rescue training on Cho La glacier were both harder than hiking Kilimanjaro, but were my favorite parts of the trip.

As far as ill effects… there were some injuries, sickness, and minor AMS symptoms among my group on both trips (headache, cough, shortage of breath… nothing serious). We were careful about acclimatization, though.

Of the two, I'd really recommend trekking in Nepal. It's one of those places I find myself missing, and I'd love to go back.

wooster··on Sherpa: They Die, We Go Home
The study shows no lesions on the Kilimanjaro trek, which is more akin to an EBC trek than to climbing Everest, even if you climb Kala Patthar on the EBC trek. Even then, Kilimanjaro is much more intense than hiking to EBC, and a lot more people proportionately get some sort of altitude sickness on Kilimanjaro due improper acclimatization.

Honestly, if you want to hike to EBC, I'd worry more about the flight into Lukla. Or edema from AMS.

(I've climbed a "trekking peak" [Lobuche East] in Nepal as well as Kilimanjaro.)

wooster··on Skirret: a forgotten Tudor vegetable
I've seen US-grown wasabi at some specialty stores in San Francisco.

It looks like there's actually a farm in Half Moon Bay producing it: http://www.foodgal.com/2014/04/californias-only-grower-of-re...

wooster··on Yahoo’s Engineers Move to Coding Without a QA Team
It looks like Yahoo Messenger for iOS was released on December 3: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yahoo-messenger-chat-share/i...

And apparently there's a native OS X client coming, as well: http://mashable.com/2015/12/03/yahoo-messenger-is-back/

wooster··on How Swift standard types and classes were supposed to work
A navigation controller presenting a tab bar controller presenting a navigation controller with a child controller presenting a tab bar controller… on an iPad. Or any set of permutations of those.
wooster··on How Swift standard types and classes were supposed to work
It's been awhile since I looked at this, but tab bar controllers (selectedViewController), navigation controllers (topViewController), and child controllers are probably going to cause your current method some difficulties.
wooster··on Ask HN: FBI showed up at my house this morning. What to do?
Based on what you've said above, I would believe them. I have heard, second-hand, of another person getting a very similar warning. That person is taking it extremely seriously, and the FBI wouldn't have any credible ulterior motives in investigating them. (Sorry I have to be so vague.)
wooster··on Getting to Antarctica
I can confirm this, having flown through airports in both places. I flew into Ushuaia from Buenos Aires and out of Punta Arenas, taking a bus between the two (since Chile and Argentina apparently don't get along all that well).

Speaking of which! The website also says "the team will link up with a British Antarctic Survey transport plane". The British and people in Ushuaia (and Argentina generally, although feelings seem to run a bit higher in Ushuaia) also don't get along terribly well. So, this may well be the closest a British team is able to get commercially and link up with a British flight to Antarctica.

Fun fact: the area around Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego) has a beaver infestation problem, thanks to enterprising souls importing beavers there from Canada.

wooster··on One in Three Farms Is Using FarmLogs
What crops do you grow? Growing up near the Salinas Valley, I always associated row crops with produce and not grains, so a <600 acre "row crop" farm can generate pretty massive revenue.
wooster··on One in Three Farms Is Using FarmLogs
Thanks! That's helpful for clarifying what your target market is.
wooster··on One in Three Farms Is Using FarmLogs
Also worth noting that the Ag Census likely overstates the number of farms in the US, so it's not out of line for FarmLogs to come up with their own number for their target market.
wooster··on One in Three Farms Is Using FarmLogs
This number ("one in three") is really ambiguous[0], as I haven't seen them state what they consider a farm to be. It could be the Ag Census data (~2.2 million farms), or along some subset (say non-family farms at ~90 thousand), or some farm type (I believe I've previously seen them say "row crop farms").

I'm sure it seems like an impressive stat to throw out there, but it's a lot like saying they're offering a million shares of options to new employees; without the total number of shares we don't know what that means.

[0] http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html

wooster··on Apple meets California officials to discuss self-driving car
The stagecoach roads of the American West? (Often un-deeded right-of-ways through private lands, many now home to paved roads.)
wooster··on What we break when we fix ad blocking
Ad blocking is not an attack on the open web. Ad blocking is the open web.
wooster··on Winds of Change at Dyson
Yeah, that actually looks nice.

Some of the best programmers I know work from places like that. There's a lot to be said for getting away from big cities.

wooster··on Winds of Change at Dyson
Second the Miele. Compared to a Dyson vacuum the Miele is unquestionably superior, IME.
wooster··on Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle
I mostly take the 7 (nee 71), 6, and 21.
wooster··on Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle
Anecdotally, at least, I see a lot of people riding Muni who are fare evading. I've also never seen any fare enforcement on a Muni bus, despite living here for ~6 years.
wooster··on Here Are the 52 Startups That Launched at Y Combinator Summer 2015 Demo Day 2
The audience for the message is investors, not customers.
wooster··on Letters to the Editor: Misleading Mathematicians [pdf]
The referenced article is available here: http://www.ams.org/notices/201502/rnoti-p165.pdf
wooster··on “Swift will be open source later this year”
Threatening to kill people isn't funny.
wooster··on Data hacked from U.S. government dates back to 1985
For those wondering how bad a data breach of OPM is, this is what a typical OPM clearance form looks like:

https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf

wooster··on Los Angeles Plays Itself
One problem is that what may be a 1 hour drive normally could stretch to 3 or 4 hours at random. It makes planning difficult.
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