Cory Watilo

Elon Musk is pushing the human race forward

I admire Elon Musk because he is not afraid of taking on the challenge of solving big problems. He has an impressive resume, but I want to focus on Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which are two companies he founded using much of his own money. Through these companies, Musk is developing technological advances that are pushing the human race forward.

The work of Elon Musk’s companies makes the accomplishments of the average tech startup look trivial. Reading about Musk makes a person reconsider whether or not they should be working on improving ad performance on the Internet when he or she could be helping to put a man on Mars.

murtza.org

I haven't been able to get this post out of my head since it made it on Hacker News a couple weeks ago. It continually makes me put my life into perspective. Sure, I'm building cool things, but am I doing anything that will make any lasting impression on society?

Most people will agree that we don't all need to do (nor are capable of doing) something on the scale of Elon Musk. But personally, I'm not satisfied with settling with the scale of work I'm doing now (nothing against it). I just want to do something much, much bigger. I want to make it into history books for doing something great.

Look out, world. Here I come.

There is a huge bug when Group Messaging is disabled in iOS 5. I'm shocked Apple hasn't fixed this yet.

Today a friend sent out a text message blast, announcing they got a new phone number. Shortly after, I got text messages from three random people I don't know. I was confused how these people got my number, but then I realized they were replies intended for my friend who sent out the text blast.

If you've ever used the Group Messaging feature, it's supposed to thread messages sent to groups, showing the person's name above their reply. But in order to use this feature, you have to explicitly enable Group Messaging.

If you don't enable Group Messaging, messages from anyone who replies will be sent as text messages to everyone on the thread. But what's worse: your reply will, unbeknownst to you, be sent to everyone on the group message. The problem is that there is absolutely no indication your reply will be sent to anyone other than the person you're replying to. If you don't have Group Messaging enabled, it's pretty cut and dry: your reply should not be sent to the entire group.

I kind assume this is an Apple backward compatibility "feature," but I'm not the only person surprised by how this works. In this Apple Support thread, representatives from both Apple and cell phone companies were shocked to discover replies get sent to everybody on the thread.

Apple really screwed up on this one. If you have Group Messaging disabled, you shouldn't be getting replies from people you don't know. But more importantly, your reply shouldn't be sent to a group of people without your knowledge.

The biggest err on Apple's side is the lack of communication of how this feature works. You can't just change how text messaging works without informing people. There needs to be instructions around the Group Messaging feature that explains if you turn the feature off, your reply can get sent to a whole host of people without your knowledge or intent.

I have a friend who is currently job searching. He's extremely qualified but keeps getting turned down for positions because his salary requirements are too high. While the rejection can be disappointing, getting turned down by employers who don't want to pay for an employee of his caliber is actually for the best. Here's why:

There is a difference between working for an employer who is willing to pay for a good employee vs. an excellent employee. And if you're excellent at what you do, you shouldn't want to settle for a company who would only pay you for a good job.

There was a time where I found myself without a fulltime job for a couple months. I could have easily settled for a lower-paying job instantly, but the reason I didn't wasn't because I was greedy or because I thought I was "above" lower-paying jobs - it was because I wanted to work for a company who recognized my value.

I believe I provide a very specific, and specialized service in the web industry. As such, I wanted to work for a company who saw the value in hiring a person with specialized skills such as myself, rather than hiring an average, more general designer. I was fortunate enough to find a company who understood that a person of my skill came with a higher price tag.

It's rare to find a company who holds this higher standard, but if you can find a company like that, it's totally worth it. You're going to find more satisfaction in the work you do, not because of the salary, but because you know the company recognizes every bit of value in your work - because they're paying the premium for it.