jon_dahl

23 ms·

181.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Not at all. A stock represents a share of a company's earnings, which has real fundamental value. There are bubbles and random swings, but at the end of the day, a stock is worth something like the present value of future dividends. (Even f
182.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Yep. I was there, and he did say this (amongst other things) during his talk. Good talk, all in all. 4chan is a refreshing change from VC backed, liquidation-event-directed online communities. Not that 4chan is a Facebook replacement by any
183.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Fair question. What you get is scalability (Softlayer is explicitly for low-volume transcoding), an API (Softlayer might have one, though it's not documented at the above link), a lower error rate, higher visual quality, better compression,
184.
Why cloud services should care about customer support(zencoder.com)
34 points by jon_dahl 16y ago|2 comments
185.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
They will then file a number of lawsuits in a shotgun fashion, perhaps a few hundred, half of which will be against Google, and the other half against various companies using WebM More likely, they will announce licensing terms and ask fo
186.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
How, and why, do these things get leaked? Is it in either Zynga's or Whereoscope's interest to get a little PR before a sale? In other words, is this sort of thing strategic, or a lack of discipline on one party's part? Whatever the case, c
187.
Is massive infrastructure always an asset?(gigaom.com)
5 points by jon_dahl 16y ago|0 comments
188.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Despite some flaws, I like the overall investment thesis. Traditional portfolio theory would say that 70% "safe" stocks (say, blue chips) plus 30% bonds is about the same as 50% "risky" stocks (say, small caps or emerging markets) plus 50%
189.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Overheard at a 500 Startups event: 500 startups isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion startups.
190.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Did you do the production in-house, or hire someone? Definitely well done, and a good tone.
191.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Yes, but his real position isn't 10%. It's 10% plus a stake in Weebly, Wufoo, and a dozen other companies that are still alive. Discounting those to $0 isn't exactly accurate.
192.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Honestly, I think the main reason is inertia. Some of our customers started using VP6 back in 2007-2008, and don't want to simultaneously support two codecs. They generally want to switch down the road, but it will take a bit of work to re-
193.
Web video stats: December 2010(zencoder.com)
23 points by jon_dahl 16y ago|8 comments
194.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
This is often true, but not always - some video formats put header data at the end of the file, not the beginning, so you can't just start encoding as bits come in. Or if you can, you're encoding blind.
195.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
IANAL, but generally, you need a license if you're using open-source encoders or decoders and you're the one who actually compiles them. (Again, not a lawyer, but that changes ffmpeg from "a source code description of an encoder" to "an enc
196.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Nope. Use it as long as your Zencoder account is active.
197.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Thanks! And great writeup by Matt. You should do a blog post on your video workflow - GAE and a transcoding API like Zencoder. :)
198.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Twitter is a network that is used by 150 million people. It is embedded deeply into thousands of software systems. Millions of people consider it an important part of daily life - maybe more important than things like newspaper and cable TV
199.
Ask HN: awesome web-based documentation?
38 points by jon_dahl 16y ago|46 comments
200.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
This is a fair question, and I have two answers. 1. Even if we were just using ffmpeg + simple scripts, we think there is value to using a service instead of our customers running video encoding on their own. We offer easy integration, auto
201.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Thanks for the feedback, Kevin! If you don't mind sharing, what's your impression of Zencoder based on our homepage? What would better explain what we do to you?
202.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Thanks for the writeup, Steve! Takeoff is really well done. The UI is beautiful and really intuitive. Congrats on a great service!
203.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
My concern is, Heroku makes add-ons almost too easy, and in my opinion, it may become [for me] a form of vendor lock-in. ... how easy is it to migrate your application and attached add-ons from Heroku once you have installed / integrated t
204.
Zencoder Challenge Winner: MovieNight(blog.railsrumble.com)
31 points by jon_dahl 16y ago|1 comments
205.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Got it! I'll respond soon.
206.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
Hi! There is no one "best" setting, unfortunately. Here are some guidelines, though. -- You have two real codec options in FLV: VP6 and H.264. H.264 compresses significantly better than VP6. -- Bitrate and lossiness are directly linked. Inc
207.
Offer HN: Help understanding online video
6 points by jon_dahl 16y ago|4 comments
208.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
most Ror jobs pay way less. Wide variability here, though. I've never had trouble finding Rails gigs around $125/hour, and have done some at higher rates. (Edited for typo.)
209.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
I think it's four or five steps up from the rogue drivers at NYC airports. The drivers are licensed limo drivers, and everything is official/on-the-books.
210.
by jon_dahl 16y ago
That's kind of what King suggests. He recommends starting with life-like characters and an interesting setting, and seeing where the story takes you. The result is that some of his characters and settings are more interesting than his plots

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