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zsupalla

274 karma · joined March 14, 2012

CEO/Founder of Particle (IoT Platform-as-a-Service)
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zsupalla··on Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science
This is a perfect example of confusing correlation with causation.
zsupalla··on Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science
Exactly! I'm always disappointed by reporting on scientific research; reading the research helps, but how many people are going to do that? A lot of people will probably change their diets based on this research, assuming that eating meat is as bad as smoking.
zsupalla··on Show HN: FAQT – A lightweight, personal knowledge base
siavosh, this looks great - I think this would be super useful for a team (especially with slack integration), are you or will you be looking for beta testers for a corporate solution?
zsupalla··on Drone Adventures, Pt. 1: Building a Drone
Awesome, this is a great resource; thanks for publishing it. How did you find the Crazyflie's autopilot? I've got to order one to test it out.
zsupalla··on Introducing the Photon
The cloud back-end is open source so you can do that:

http://www.github.com/spark/spark-server

zsupalla··on Introducing the Photon
Yep that's right! It's an Arduino-like microcontroller development board, but with built-in Wi-Fi and an open source cloud back-end
zsupalla··on Circle opens doors to global audience
Less marketing jargon, more actual content. What I find particularly fascinating is that bitcoin is mentioned a bunch of times passively without anyone ever saying "this is a bitcoin bank". It's like your supposed to just intuit the function of the site from a bunch of vague adjectives and adverbs like "everywhere" and "instant".
zsupalla··on Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign
Actually it's not down, just needs a www (the link on the site points to https://spark.io, which doesn't resolve, but https://www.spark.io works fine)
zsupalla··on Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
Don't forget Autodesk's open source 3D printer platform Spark! So you can print the enclosure for your Spark devices with Spark too.
zsupalla··on Spark Labs Raises $4.9M to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart
Zach here, also from Spark. We're definitely working on next-gen hardware now, haven't selected a final chipset yet.

Our hosted cloud is somewhat different from the open source version, and the differences will grow over time. As an open source company, the question always comes to "how do we make money?" Our open source thesis is to give away basic technology and sell advanced technology. Right now the biggest differences between our hosted cloud and the open source version is scalability; our system is designed to scale horizontally whereas the open source one is a single instance (although it could, of course, be modified). We are still deciding which features that are still in development will be open sourced, and which won't. We've learned from other for-profit open source companies (like MongoDB, for instance), that even after being on the market for years they're still trying to figure out which features to give away and which to sell.

zsupalla··on Building an open source Nest
Performance issues are resolved, now the site only plays the videos that are on-screen.
zsupalla··on Discourse
The differences between a forum system designed to be implemented on someone's webpage and a big platform for "social interaction" are significant. Discourse could be used for a narrow purpose (i.e. creating a developer forum or a customer service portal), Branch can't. Just because their external appearance shows similarities doesn't mean they are the same product, or even in the same market.
zsupalla··on 3D Systems sues Formlabs, Kickstarter
Ok, I understand why they might sue Formlabs - it's a shame, but without knowing the details there's opportunity for patent infringement there. But Kickstarter? Seriously?