potater's comments

I have two immediate thoughts. Forming a company and then taking time off of work to raise a child for 4 month is indicative of non-ideal planning, more than anything. That said, in this case the gentleman in question is an employee of an established company, not the cofounder to a startup.

Additionally, leaving work at 5pm every day sounds great and, I suspect, may actually result in a more productive work week with happier employees. All parties win in such instances.

To that end it's also a data problem. Getting 100% accurate unique identifiers like UPC, MPN or ISBN for such items can be a challenge for online retailers. Also the notion of smaller retailers who fall under this legislation having to (pay someone to) modify their systems to support these third party services to calculate the collect tax is also kind of a bummer.

These issues are mostly resolvable with time and money. Regardless, the transition is going to be rough, in my view.

I'm kind of upset they didn't clarify this in the initial email/blog entry. The way it was worded ("if applicable") implies that resetting the API might not be necessary in some cases. I think it is reasonable to assume that those who never generated an API key in the first place would've fallen under such a bucket.

Now it sounds like basically everyone should have reset their API key. Bleh.

Unless it has changed recently, I think anyone can receive Snapchats until disabled. At least, that's how it was when I opened an account a few weeks back. That was discovered when I received an unsolicited snapchat from a name I didn't recognize (I have no friends on the service aside from the default teamsnapchat).

Rather than risk viewing something regrettable, I deleted the "message" and quickly found the setting to disallow unknown users from messaging me. :)

Ahh, thanks for the heads up, thewordis. It's nice to know that they're aware of the problem.

My overall experience with Google Music has been kinda meh. I like their sharing functionality, but my first purchase was a pain in the butt….

I finally decided to buy a few albums during the big music sale G Music promoted during the holiday season. Unfortunately every time I'd check out it would prompt me to log in again. During this I noticed that at least some element of the process was using a different subdomain than the album page I was checking out from. Not sure if the login cookie just wasn't persisting across differing subdomains domains or my browser was set to block cookies set by third parties, but I vaguely remember having to manually whitelist the domain in Chrome's cookie exception manager to complete my purchase. It took a moment to figure out because there was no particular useful error - just the prompt to log in again.

I have no idea if I previously changed a setting in Chrome that resulted in this annoyance or if it was a default setting in Chrome, but that nearly prevented me from buying from Google's music service. There's no way someone like my Mom or sister would've figured that out. I hope they resolved that component assuming the problem wasn't limited to just my set up because at the time I thought it was rather silly that I wasn't able to easily purchase from a Google browser without modifying settings.

Oh man, the OS X integration utility is remarkably obnoxious. I wasn't pleased that it was getting a bit more into the guts of my system than expected without letting me know (although the system authentication request at the beginning was clearly a tip off, assuming I'm remembering correctly). After completing the install I suddenly had a Google Music menu icon and the app was accessible only through my system prefs pane. I much prefer Amazon's approach with their standalone application.

I've also had issues where the app wanted to completely reupload my entire library. No thanks---I now just keep it set to monitor an empty directory.

In heading to the restroom I know that I'll have the opportunity to wash my hands after, so the handle leading in is of little concern to me.

In my admittedly anecdotal experience, the rate of full grown adults who casually ignore the sinks after finishing up their business and leaving a stall seems to be disturbingly high. It just kinda gets my ick-factor going. Granted, I'm something of a germaphobe (I wash my hands many times/day) so I might just be more inclined to notice those who don't vs those who do--- regardless, I'll almost always save a paper towel or something to turn the door handle when possible.

Anyway, I don't think the lack of a trash can nearby excuses those who would dispose of it on the floor though. I just hold onto it until I find the next closest trash can outside the bathroom. That usually takes less than a minute, depending on where I am.

While I certainly can't fault an organization for attempting to maximize revenue, I think there comes a point when they seem to be focusing solely on short term numbers to the extent that it may actually harm them in the longterm should customers decide they've had enough and start taking their business elsewhere.

Of course, customer switching is less likely for service providers where there are real barriers in place that effectively prevent users from actively doing so (e.g., coverage issues, other networks with similar policies, etc)

It's the whole "yeah, we're taking advantage of you, but it's not like you have any other real options here, so sit back and like it." thing that just makes me sad.

I can see how the 'dude, not cool' comment likely made it seem like I found it less reprehensible than I really did. For what it's worth, I agree with your comment.

Sure, people argue on the semantics of IP infringement and while many feel that intellectual property laws are woefully one sided, most of what I've seen suggests that at least a fair number of people feel that copying material in contrary to the creator's wishes is wrong. Do some folks do it anyway? No doubt. Regardless, I think much of the hard assedness has been in response to the media companies and lawmaker's approaches in addressing the issue--- poor legislation that overreaches, failure to address the actual issues that leads to piracy, copyright length extension, circumvention provisions & fair use implications, etc. In the end, I can be against efforts like SOPA while also being against ip infringement. Similarly, I would assert that it is not inconsistent to feel that curebit's approach to publicly using another other company's design w/o permission directly in their commercial product is unfortunate while also feeling like IP in the US needs to be retooled.

Ultimately though, this forum compromises many viewpoints. While there will be trends, consistency when dealing with large numbers of folks seems unrealistic (but again, I don't think having issues with contemporary IP law and being against using another site's design in a commercial product demonstrates a consistency issue. It's more of a "dude, not cool" thing to me.).

In regard to the lack of detriment, certainly at least one representative of 37Signals is unhappy with it. If it were my design, I'd prefer that my efforts remain tied solely to my products given the time and money spent on them since I think there is marketing and branding value in developing a reasonably unique look and feel even if the products themselves are not direct competitors. Do I recognize that designs will inspire other designs? Certainly. The line between a copied design and inspired one is blurry. Would I personally give more leeway to someone who was just experimenting for a non-commercial, personal project? Probably. This, however, was a commercial entity that just received a big check for their (and 37signals') efforts. That said, if I were an employee of curebit, I'd probably have felt uncomfortable with the approach they took regardless of any legal implications that may exist. It would just kinda feel wrong, ya know?

Anyway, my initial reaction was along the lines of "well, that was stupid of them" and progressed to "WTF is wrong with this guy?" due to Allan's tweets in response to dhh. Some of his tweets have almost felt like he was trolling for controversy/publicity. Regardless, I really think he should simply stop tweeting at this point and let further public responses come from someone better equipped to NOT dig themselves deeper.

I'm not sure I agree that it is idiotic. Certainly the GOP's track record on neutrality is abhorrent, but if the Republicans successfully turn this into a partisan issue where they are against and the dems are for, those who typically vote democrat and also support the internet will be faced with a decision in regard to what issue(s) take priority and who will be rewarded with the vote.

Keep in mind that a republican does't necessarily have to get a democrat's vote to come out ahead in this case. All it takes is for the democratic voter to be so disgusted with his party's position that he either votes third party or doesn't vote at all.

I despise the idea of it becoming a for & against partisan issue because of the swell of support that would ultimately result in, but it could be politically effective in an evil-ish way.

Ooh, I heard about photographers taking to the network, but forgot to check it out. I'll give it a look. Thanks for the heads up!

I'd see'em in Google-themed subreddits like r/android pretty often which makes sense, but in regard to the more popular subreddits, they pop up every now and then in r/programming, r/atheism, etc. kn0thing submitted a post to r/technology the other day in regard to his plans to speak to the committee on SOPA and PIPA. I think I ended up following him on G+ after that one. I also vaguely recall the 'Comcast using tricks to raise rates' post also getting a fair amount of attention from r/technology

That said, I'm pretty sure it's possible to do a reddit search for submitted links to a particular domain if you're looking for more details. (I'm a little hesitant to link directly to a bunch of reddit pages here. Don't want to step on anyone's toes.)

Anyway, it's not like G+ posts are exceeding imgur links or anything. It just seems that based on my completely non-scientific observations, I'm seeing G+ posts linked more frequently than previously (or perhaps I'm just looking out for them more often ;)).

True that, particularly on the meaningful conversation side of things. Like many, I initially approached G+ as a kind of Facebook. I focused on basically friends, coworkers, acquaintances - personal relationships developed through assorted means. That was neat in having a replacement for my Facebook account, but I kept on hearing about noteworthy commentary being posted via links to G+ on hn, reddit, etc so I started exploring with new non-friend circles.

After branching out to my immediate interest areas (tech), a little later I ended up adding Philip Plait (bad astronomy guy), Fraser Cain and other sciencey/astronomy folks. The amazing Hangouts that these folks do a number of times/week makes me feel really lucky to have access to such a resource. Certainly having some degree of access to experts in assorted fields is nothing new thanks to the internets, but G+ has, in my view, made such interactions far more accessible.

I can only imagine that there are other groups doing awesome things with G+ who I have not yet found.

Do the carriers count these reported metrics against data caps? Overage fees can quickly add up I'm not sure I want my phone using my bandwidth in that manner. Granted, the amount is relatively small compared to user-triggered activities (viewing online video, etc), but the point remains...if I'm nearing my bandwidth limit and am consciously trying to limit my data use, but they're collecting and sending out as many metrics as they indicate in real time, that's not cool.