Ryan Bednar

Jeff the Brotherhood - Wastoid Girl Going to see these guys...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:20:00 -0500

Jeff the Brotherhood - Wastoid Girl

Going to see these guys tonight at Maxwells. I imagine it’s going to be loud.

Path: We are sorry.

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:46:43 -0500

It’s funny that only Path got called out for importing user address books, when this is common practice and almost every related iOS app does it.

thepersonalnetwork:

We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts.

As our mission is to build the world’s first personal network, a trusted place for you to…

From Ivy Halls to the Garden, Surprise Star Jolts the N.B.A. *...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:04:00 -0500

From Ivy Halls to the Garden, Surprise Star Jolts the N.B.A.

* Also - SeatGeek is saying that Lin is driving up Knicks ticket prices.

* WSJ chimes in: Jeremy Lin’s Success Provides Spark for New York Knicks.

Jeremy Lin - ALL I DO IS LIN

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:41:41 -0500

Jeremy Lin - ALL I DO IS LIN

LINSANITY!!!

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:45:37 -0500

LINSANITY!!!

"I have been in meetings where people look down and notice my socks, and there is this universal..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:34:42 -0500

““I have been in meetings where people look down and notice my socks, and there is this universal sign, almost like a gang sign, where they nod and pull up their pant leg a little to show off their socks,” said Hunter Walk, 38, a director of product management at YouTube..”

- In Silicon Valley, Socks Make the Entrepreneur (NY Times)

Uhhhh. What?

Hoboken Tech Meetup Keeps Growing, Gettting More Awesome Aaron...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:17:00 -0500

Hoboken Tech Meetup Keeps Growing, Gettting More Awesome

Aaron and I giving our pitch for Tutorspree to the NJ Tech meetup crowd of ~200.

Knicks Bulls (Taken with Instagram at Madison Square Garden)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:07:45 -0500

Knicks Bulls (Taken with Instagram at Madison Square Garden)

I’m excited to be helping out at as a mentor at Startup Weekend EDU this weekend. I’m...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:32:31 -0500

I’m excited to be helping out at as a mentor at Startup Weekend EDU this weekend. I’m not sure how helpful I’ll actually be to the various companies, but thankfully, the website already has a disclaimer to ignore people like me who don’t really know anything:

6. Use the mentors -- but wisely.

The mentors can be amazingly helpful. They can also be distracting. Use them thoughtfully. Read all of their bios beforehand and understand their expertise. Proactively reach out to them when you want help in their areas. Mentors will often offer advice on every aspect of your idea: after talking with five or six, you might feel more at sea than when you started. Think of their advice as data points…

Getting all commutey.

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:15:36 -0500

Getting all commutey.

"At about 7 months the kitten becomes a Catten then 5 months later he has a cat mitzvah, bears full..."

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:27:21 -0500

“At about 7 months the kitten becomes a Catten then 5 months later he has a cat mitzvah, bears full responsibility for his actions, receives 500$ worth of catfood and is Cat.”

- Elizabeth Mead

Quora: At what age does a kitten become a cat?

This guy sounds pretty cool. zachklein: I met a guy named John...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:07:03 -0500

This guy sounds pretty cool.

zachklein:

I met a guy named John Crockett. This is his business card.

I’m tempted to say This is the future of business cards. But that’s silly. Business cards already seem anachronistic.

However, this strikes me as the future of self-actualization. I think people more often will understand and describe themselves as sets of granular expertises. Organizations that help people accredit themselves will usher this movement, I think.

Jeff the Brotherhood - Hey Friend (We Are The Champions,...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:19:00 -0500

Jeff the Brotherhood - Hey Friend (We Are The Champions, 2011)

We are the Champions is a great garage rock record and it’s super impressive to have such big sound coming from a duo.

I’ve been thinking about your mom

You can tell me if it’s really wrong

It’s been going on

for way too long

I can’t help it if I am happy

when she is around

Jeff the Brotherhood play at Maxwell’s in Hoboken on 2/9.

IT Crowd - Memory is RAM Classic. (via Daniel Ahn)

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:13:03 -0500

IT Crowd - Memory is RAM

Classic. (via Daniel Ahn)

"Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching..."

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:23:46 -0500

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

- MPAA head (and former U.S. Senator) Chris Dodd speaking to Fox News (as noted by Hillicon Valley).

I mean, he actually said this.

In one soundbite, he’s both threatening any and all U.S. politicians and implying that they’re corruptible. It’s a statement that so egregious, it’s hard to think of anything worse he could have said. Maybe: “if these guys don’t start supporting whatever we say, I’m going to hire some goons to fucking kneecap the bastards”.

But actually, that’s not worse. Because that doesn’t imply the politicians accept bribes (in the form of lobbying money) to support issues.

This is much, much worse than Dodd’s assclownish statement the other day. And it also shows that Dodd really, truly does not understand what’s going on — why people are so upset about these bills and the subsequent reaction to them, as Mike Masnick lays out perfectly.

Amazingly, this discussion is morphing beyond the destruction of the fabric of the Internet and into the underlying notion that our political system is fundamentally corrupt.

The MPAA should fire Chris Dodd immediately. Of course, they won’t — because in a year (when he’ll be far enough removed from his Senate term to officially lobby) he’ll be the best lobbyist ever. At that point, he’ll be able to do it behind the scenes (with people he served alongsides for decades), and not with fucked up statements like this.

(via parislemon)

Unbelievable.

Why was Megaupload shut down?

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:55:00 -0500

Ali Alkhatib: Ars Technica (as usual) has an excellent analysis of what’s going on (and why) here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-poli…

The reason seems to boil down to one issue, which is that they gave up the protection of “safe harbor” under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Safe Harbor
The DMCA is the main tool used by the MPAA, RIAA, and others to enforce copyright law, but it has a set of guidelines which outline what’s called a “safe harbor” for websites. Namely (in this case at least), a site is given some level of immunity if they’re not actually aware of the alleged copyright infringement on their site. If they’re aware of it and do nothing, they lose the protection of this provision in the DMCA. Ars points out that Youtube successfully used this defense in a $1b suit against Viacom.

The article indicates that Megaupload admins were not only aware of copyright content on the site, but complicit.

… the government asserts that … employees knew full well that the site’s main use was to distribute infringing content. Indeed, the government points to numerous internal e-mails and chat logs from employees showing that they were aware of copyrighted material on the site and even shared it with each other.

There’s more to the story (specifically regarding how the indictments are made murkier by some vague and seemingly meaningless charges), but I won’t regurgitate the whole article here. The article itself covers everything pretty well.

Why was Megaupload shut down?

I can’t believe that MegaUpload got shutdown today after...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:18:00 -0500

I can’t believe that MegaUpload got shutdown today after coming out with such an awesome song, and also announcing that Swizz Beats is their CEO.

I was here with the rest of Tutorspree protesting SOPA/PIPA in...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:46:07 -0500

I was here with the rest of Tutorspree protesting SOPA/PIPA in midtown. It was cold. Midtown is a strange place.

nytm:

This photo really shows the scale of #nytmSOS today

Amit, go kick cancer’s ass. We’re all rooting for...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:49:29 -0500

Amit, go kick cancer’s ass. We’re all rooting for you.

superamit:

Many of you have asked, so here’s what’s going on with me.

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE

8/1979: Born. Grew up in CT, built a killer eraser collection, fell in love with computers.

Left college to start a company. Fell hard. Fled to India for 3 months.

Started 2nd company. Learned to be an adult. Fell in love with NYC.

Moved to SF, discovered burritos & some of my fave people on Earth.

9/2011: Got diagnosed with Leukemia!

Cried. Went through 3 cycles of chemo. Hurt. Thought hard about what I want out of life. Grew up a second time.

TODAY

… After over 100 drives organized by friends, family, and strangers, celebrity call-outs, a bazillion reblogs (7000+!), tweets, and Facebook posts, press, fundraising and international drives organized by tireless friends, and a couple painful false starts, I’ve got a 10/10 matched donor!

You all literally helped save my life. (And the lives of many others.)

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Tomorrow, I’ll be admitted to Dana Farber in Boston for 4-5 weeks.

First I’ll get a second Hickman line to allow direct access to my heart (for meds and for nutrients if I’m not able to eat). Over the next week, the docs blast my body with a stiff chemo cocktail to try and eradicate all traces of cancer cells. In the process, the immune system I was born with, and my body’s ability to make blood, are destroyed.

Next Friday, I get my donor’s stem cells by IV. I start on immunosuppressants to prevent my body from rejecting them (I’ll be on them for 12-18 months). For these weeks I’ve no immune system, so I’m severely vulnerable to viruses and bacteria. My hospital room and hallway become my world.

Meanwhile, the stem cells make their way to my bone marrow and, with some luck, start producing platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells. At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own.

This is science fiction stuff. I can hardly believe it’s even possible, and there’s lots of chances for things to go wrong. It’s frightening.

AFTER THE TRANSPLANT

Recovery to a new state of “normal” takes about a year, but there’s a few storm clouds hovering:

My immune system is new, like a baby’s. I’m prone to getting sick.

Just as with any organ transplant, there’s a chance of rejection. Except in this case, it’s my blood that’s the foreign body, and it touches every organ. They call it graft-vs-host-disease and it can cause health issues and organ complications for the rest of my life.

Successful transplant or not, Leukemia can relapse. Stubborn mofo.

Overall, 75% of AML transplant patients survive year one, 50% make it through year five. My odds are a little better since I’m young.

THE GREAT NEWS

I’ve got a long road ahead. But I’ve got a donor & amazing family & friends. A few months ago I didn’t have many options. Today I have a plan.

I am alive. I start tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Thank you.

#gpoyw with Caitlin and I playing around with PopBooth on my...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:13:00 -0500

#gpoyw with Caitlin and I playing around with PopBooth on my iPad