Doesn't that defeat the purpose of obtaining a dedicated host?

Technically, its the equivalent of a leaseback. It may make sense depending on the profitability of the arbitrage you're targeting.

Not if it's primarily to accommodate bring-your-own-license for per-machine-licensed software. Needing to have control over what machine runs your instances doesn't mean you can't allow other people to run their instances on "your" hardware.

Because it's a pain in the ass to sideload apps on iOS.

You shouldn't trust Amazon, Google, Facebook, MSFT, Twitter, or any other mega corp, really. Just don't use the internet at all!

Google Play Music

Easy, just use TwitterSort to validate TwitterSort. People can't be wrong twice!

Even better, use stacksort to validate twitter sort! That means you get redundant architecture!

This is no more invasive than Ok Google and Hey Siri.

I think both of them don't need to send any data to the mothership and can process this phrase on device.

For instance, in airplane mode with no network access iPhone response to 'Hey Siri' is 'Siri is not available. Connect to internet'

It would be shocking if Echo doesn't work the same way, that would be an incredible waste of bandwidth and AWS CPU power otherwise.

Yes! And hopefully you aren't using them.

I certainly am not using OK Google, as shouting at my dashboard whilst driving makes for a frustrating driving experience. It just never hears what I say correctly.

Worst case, it's a music streaming speaker that doesn't require you to stream via bluetooth. I wonder how the audio stacks up against something like the Bose SoundLink.

I've been using a chromecast + an HDMI audio splitter as a cheap way to stream. It works really well for apps that support chromecast, such as pandora.

Can you tell me exactly which HDMI audio splutter you use? I want to try something similar.

Remember that Amazon has its new music service for Prime customers. If they didn't integrate that into this somehow, it would be quite confusing.

Echo is always on and connected to Wi-Fi so it's ready to respond instantly.

Music: Listen to your Amazon Music Library, Prime Music, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio.

Probably just heavy collaboration with Google, and Google wanting to push Chromebooks.

I read your website for 5 minutes and still have no idea what you're offering. Can you summarize in a sentence?

We make a few (mostly B2B) SaaS products for college bookstores. Namely:

Compare, where students come to buy their books through a portal that compares their book store's prices to their online competitors.

Compete, which helps bookstores buy and sell books online and price them competitively (for buying from/selling to students).

Collect, which helps them get their book selections in from faculty.

Each of these are part of the ecosystem of college textbooks and we've really helped turn struggling bookstores around in the face of, e.g., Amazon.

I agree. In particular, the following line really turned me off GitHub's upcoming culture:

>We’re in the planning stages of designing a diversity and communication training curriculum for GitHub employees with input from Hubbers and external experts. Topics will include diversity training, effective communication, giving and receiving peer feedback, and conflict resolution.

I'm not sure if you're objecting to the topics they're planning to train for, or the perceived formality of the training, but I don't think either needs to hurt the culture if done well.

Communication is incredibly important at any company, but startups often fail to treat it as such, saying "we don't need meetings to get shit done" or "we hire great people so things will just work out".

Some people, through work or life experience, will have no problem giving constructive feedback at appropriate times, and working through differences of opinion. Others will suck at these things. The latter may otherwise be strong contributors - especially if you were hiring for ninja rockstar coding ability and not explicitly for communication skills - so it's worth helping them acquire those skills, both for their own career and for the company.

In particular, some people with conflict-avoiding personalities may have never experienced productive conflict resolution, unless you consider always backing down and feeling increasingly disempowered to be productive.

Now sure, if GitHub HR (or employees) treat this training as a box-ticking exercise, or use it to encourage bland, conflict-free discussion, the culture will nosedive. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Well said. Let's not forget why GitHub is putting such things in place. Had they existed before, they might have avoided all the unpleasantness they (and their former employee) went through (which also led to the CEO's resignation).

Communication, giving and receiving peer feedback, and conflict resolution are all extremely difficult to do well, and almost anyone would benefit from regular training.

It seems like a lot of programmers, engineers, hackers, etc. have a strong case of Dunning-Kruger in these areas.