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Do you think there is room for mobile startups that neglect the Iphone? | blender: Symbian (Nokia) has something like 65% marketshare so definitely. |
Tech Start-up for people with families? | mixmax: This guy: http://mortenlund.wordpress.com/ is a crazy serial entrepreneur that has started around 40 companies. He was an early investor in Skype, started antivirus company Bullguard, etc. He has a wife and four kids...He is in Denmark, but according to the Economist Copenhagen is more expensive than both New York and SF. |
How do you share screenshots? | cjvino: Snapz Pro X for screenshots and department web site or email to share. |
How do you share screenshots? | junglist313: super+drag (ubuntu) and Flickr |
Tech Start-up for people with families? | gasull: > This is especially important in US because the cost of living is highCost of living in the US expensive? Have you traveled to Europe or Japan? Life is way more expensive in Europe, and in some European countries salaries are way lower than in the US.It's raising kids what is more expensive in the US than in Europe:* ‘Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke’
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3079221/* The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A* The Two-income Trap By Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=_IFTf-_9fSsC&...Solution: Move to Europe. I did the opposite. I moved from Europe to the US, but that's because I don't have kids. |
Best way to send MMS | pmsaue0: For 3 years I worked on a startup that built SMS applications. Although we did not work with MMS, I am very familiar with the struggles regarding carriers and just getting set up. Ultimately our startup failed - our costs were just too high, our slice of the pie was too small, and to reach the volume that we would need to become self-sufficient would require a bigger financial investment in advertising than our CEO was able to acquire or willing to make. Anyway....I read over a long email string that I had with reps from several carriers regarding setting up direct relationships with them. At the time, our company was working with the carrier aggregator (middle-man) mQube - they were then the best, but we wanted to cut them out of the picture. If you don't already know this, carrier aggregators are essentially the gatekeepers to the carriers, and if you want to do ANYTHING substantial, you need to go through an aggregator. The alternative is to have direct-binds with the carriers themselves using lease-lines or special relationships. Through my correspondence, direct-binds are no longer offered, therefore it is pretty much impossible to become an mQube (Verisign became an mQube late in the game only by purchasing mQube). The next problem is that mQube's UI and customer service is pretty horrible, and you have to go through it if you want to get your program brief approved. Getting your program brief approved will most likely be your biggest challenge, and program briefs are like $1000/mo at least. The different carriers have different requirements, etc. You'll probably have to peruse and follow something like this: http://www.mmaglobal.com/bestpractices.pdfWe spent months trying to convince mQube that we weren't going to spam people and that our app was legit. We were a non-subscription based service that supplied information/content only when a user initially requested it. That type of application is in the VAST minority of SMS apps, as most out there are horoscope type subscription services that people have trouble opting out of. In short, you are always going to be playing the carriers' game, and you will probably never win or even break even unless you have BIG BUCKS.In Europe and Japan, if I remember, and it may have changed, there is only one cell provider ie Vodaphone, and it is much easier to get things done. The CTIA has the potential to create some standardization, but I don't see that happening.Best of luck |
Recommend a server co in Europe | cnu: We use Hertzner (http://www.hetzner.de/) in my company. Pretty good machines and cheap too. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | tahir: Callmeed, I am looking to use Slicehost, how is your experience with them? Thanks. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | mark_ellul: we were using Flexiscale (by XCalibre) but their last outage was long, and corrupted all our data. So I would avoid them! |
Recommend a server co in Europe | Russelldb: http://rimuhosting.com now have a datacentre presence in the UK (London). I find them very useful but best of all they have very, very good support. They are NZ based. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | Deadsunrise: You can find cheap dedicated servers in france at www.ovh.com . They have a lot of OS distributions and if you can manage your own servers it's a good choice. I work in an spanish ISP and we exchange traffic with them at AMS-IX so it should be properly connected to all the important european ISPs. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | silencio: ovh, vectoral (netdirekt dc, not reselling), leaseweb I've had personal experiences with. their support generally sort of sucks (at least they reply to you..hehe).oh, ovh doesn't sell to people living in certain countries. they said they'd change their policy sometime soon, but have yet to see it.. |
Pointless Spam? | ph0rque: Maybe it's to throw the email system's bayesian spam filter off? |
Pointless Spam? | noodle: a lot of spam nowadays is sent with the explicit purpose of pinging email names and bypassing filters, just to find out of the address itself has a person that checks it. war-emailing, as it wereperhaps that email had something like an embedded image or javascript that could/would dial out to tell the spammer that your email address is active.other tactics i've seen are the "unsubscribe to this email" links on blatant spam which are social engineering attacks to trick the unwitting into telling the spammers that yes, someone is home at this address. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | Erwin: Rackspace does also have a datacenter in UK. We have a small server there to satisfy certain EU privacy laws. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | macco: DomainFactory works pretty well for me.
http://df.eu |
Pointless Spam? | andr: This is designed to distort Bayesian filters. From an economic perspective, this is fairly interesting, because the spammer that sends this gets no rent, or direct profit, from it, but helps the spammer ecosystem. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | 3KWA: OVH |
Pointless Spam? | MaysonL: It's actually a coded message meant for only a dozen of its 3 million recipients - Al Qaeda's way of outsmarting the NSA. |
Pointless Spam? | dcminter: Did you check the headers as well? I've seen quite a few emails that had the "body" of the email in one while the real body was empty or contained similar noise - I presume there are some broken mail clients that will render them regardless. |
Know any good Email Servers? | olefoo: I can heartily recommend postfix http://www.postfix.org/It's a good idea to keep a logical separation between the sending MTA and the receiving MTA (separate hostnames at the least, separate machines/instances is best because you can manage security policy better).Do plan on keeping the SMTP operations separate from the web application, and if your application is going to read email, plan on building spamfiltering in from the beginning. |
Know any good Email Servers? | cperciva: I recommend looking at postfix and qmail -- they were both written by people who understand security, but there are significant enough differences in their configurations that most people like one or the other but not both. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that, but it's worth looking at both so that you can decide which taste you prefer. |
Know any good Email Servers? | kngspook: I run an email server on a VPS for my own use. I run Postfix [SMTP], Dovecot [IMAPS], and Procmail [email filtering/sorting]. I think it would certainly be affordable for a startup.I've also, at some point in the past, looked at 90% of the email hosts out there, and tried my fair share. (And found none satisfactory to my (admittedly stringent) requirements.)Email me, and I'll try to share what I've learned with you. (kngspook, gmail, you know the drill...) |
Pointless Spam? | kajecounterhack: seems almost like http://scrumy.com 's url generator. |
Know any good Email Servers? | RobGR: I recommend you find a friend, or friend of a friend who does sys admin work at a company or school, who uses Linux and one of the common MTAs -- sendmail, exim, postfix. Pay them a flat monthly fee to handle your email, and do whatever they tell you, get a VPS or hosted service or linux machine on a cable modem or whatever. Pay them until you can afford to have a "real" setup, and in the meantime focus on making your startup work.Personally, I would put a light weight (cpu and bandwidth will be minimal) linux server on whatever is the cheapest way you can get a business class fixed IP. I use exim.When olefoo said keep the MTA and web operations separate, and you asked "with a queue?", I think olefoo meant keep them on separate servers. The MTA and web operations are normally separate daemons that run, and the web submits an outgoing mail to a queue in the MTA, but it's not somethingk you have to write or set up, it's the default way an MTA works.When olefoo mentioned keeping incoming and outgoing MTAs separate, that might be a good idea but I would warn that if your account notification email comes from a different IP address than is listed in your MX record, some of those emails won't get to users because they will be blocked, dropped, or spam-foldered.Once you start having to deliver lots of email, you will find that there is an incredible amount of pain in doing it reliably. You have to regularly examine all your bounces, and check for successful delivery to test accounts at the big places such as yahoo, gmail, and hotmail. First, you will have to make sure your From: and other headers are configured exactly correctly. Get a reverse DNS record correctly set up. You will probably have to learn about SPF records and domain keys and stuff like that. It can be a chore.I still have problems with it. I have fixed IP addresses from a business class Time Warner connection, and I have had those IPs for a couple of years now, and some spam block lists still list me as "dynamic" ips, even though I have been through the removal process over and over. I have given up on ever being able to deliver mail reliably to earthlink addresses. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | qhoxie: Try to give a (not too outlandish) problem that they cannot prepare for. People memorize algorithms or can adapt their mathematical knowledge, but when given an obscure or abstract scenario, you can get a good idea of how their mind works. Encourage them to take their time and think out loud so you can understand their process. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | eries: I would add, work together with them on a problem that is completely out of their comfort zone and/or background. See what kind of questions they ask, how fast they recognize a dead-end, and whether they learn from what you are trying to explain. If you have a hard time teaching them something new in an interview, probably it's not a good fit. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | woid: http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-... |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | giardini: The answer is obvious and right before your eyes: you can't.This problem has been examined again and again. The only way to find people with sufficient skill in any field is to test them (formal graded test, not idiosyncratic problems).No one has ever demonstrated a reliable technique for selecting "great" software developers (or great scientists, or great engineers, &etc). |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | swombat: I find that a 15-minute chat about a related topic that's not on their CV (i.e. something tangential to their "career") is a great way to sniff out hackers. Being a hacker myself, I have a very sensitive bullshit-o-meter and fairly varied interests, and I can quickly figure out whether that person is a "career programmer" who will end up disappointing, or someone who's got real passion for the job.Add to that an intelligence filter (well, I have an affinity for smart people too), and maybe an informal chat about some past projects that they've worked on if still in doubt, and I think I can recognise good programmers even on a text chat system.In fact, I spotted our last hire on IRC and was about 80% sure that he was someone we wanted to hire, after just 30 minutes of chatting.Someone already posted the link to my article on how to recognise a good programmer - that breaks down the process I follow (though it's more internalised by now). |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | albertcardona: Sit down for a week with each candidate, perhaps with all candidates, in a hackathon. Solving a real world problem. Then you can see who is worth what, their strong points, their weaknesses. It costs you time, but it's --in my experience-- worth every minute spent. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | gaius: I interviewed someone recently, someone much older than me, and it was a strange experience. We talked through his career, early on he had done some really interesting things, attacked some problems from unexpected angles and won big. But as we progressed through his career, it seemed to fade. Gradually all that early fire was crushed out of him and he became a 9-5er. So I thought, do I hire him and maybe try to turn him back into what he was? Or is it too late? In the end he was rejected by the other interviewer anyway, but it was a tough decision, and I could have forced it if I really believed in him. But it just goes to show, an interview can open up more questions about a person than it answers, and there's just no way to tell without actually working with them for some time. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | furiouslol: I would probably give them a problem that involves processing/handling a large copious amount of data and compare their strategies.Usually the great programmers come up with clean, elegant, efficient and scalable solutions. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | tomjen: Set up a competition geeks would be interested in, then try to hire the bests (for your definition of bests). |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | maxklein: I'd give a real world problem that is quite large, for example: Develop a school management system which synchronises across several computers.I'd ask for 2-3 possible ways of designing the architecture. Then just drill down to the details, ask about the technology they would use, how they would go about implementing the algorithmic parts of things, the networking part of things, etc.You'll get a good sense of how the person works on a high level as well as on a more detailed level. You'd also find out if the person is current on available technologies.Algorithms are pointless to know, very rarely does one use that knowledge as a real life programmer. I know how quicksort works, but I've hardly ever _needed_ to know, and I've NEVER had to implement it. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | bitdiddle: I ask questions about two things that seem great predictors. The first is interest in music. I'm not sure why but people who can read music and play any instrument well tend to make great programmers. I have no explanation for this. The second question is what the highest level math course they had was and what they found hard about it. This one reflects a personal bias. Knowing the answer for myself gives me a rough measure of how hard the person can think and their ability to handle abstractions. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | luis_ca: I use slicehost from the UK and performance is good. |
Recommend a server co in Europe | st3fan: I am very happy with http://hosteurope.de .. excellent service, good hardware, barely downtime. They have VPS instances and also dedicated servers for prices you can only dream of in the US. |
What is your database sharding strategy? | eries: We're just discussing over in this thread:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=296656I have had really good experience with a very simple centralized lookup facility. It's very easy to prevent that from becoming a CPOF, either using replication or, if you insist, some form of hash-based partitioning of the directory itself.I'm a fan of doing the partitioning at the app-level, and doing it horizontally rather than vertically.The loss of joins is an issue, but in some cases you can vertically partition the parts of the app that need those joins. For the others, I have had good luck using a transactional message-passing system, where one shard can reliably send a message to another shard. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | watmough: Obvious answer: You probably can't identify the good ones without actually testing them.I worked at an oil services company where I fairly regularly interviewed candidates. I was 180 degrees wrong on every interview I did. The bad ones turned out good, and the good ones turned out bad.I would not, knowing what I know now, bother with anything else except a chat with some managers, and a some pseudo-code testing of the kinds of problems I'd expect a computer science grad to be able to solve.This opinion is backed up by a basic training course for some new hires I gave recently, where my ranking basically flipped around from my first impressions, and the guys with actual real ability didn't really float to the top until after about 10 or 12 hours of training / evaluation. However, this could be shortened easily into an interview format.There's a lot of people who hide their light under a bushel, and a lot of people who talk a good game, but are basically just warm bodies. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | Locke: Despite how hard you try, you can't get this 100% right. This is how I approached hiring:1. Weed out the truly incompetent. A very simple programming exercise is sufficient. Keep in mind that the goal of the exercise is not to identify a great programmer, but rather to identify those who can't program at all.2. Set expectations. During the interviewing process, try your best to work out what you would expect from the individual if hired. Would you expect them to churn out a ton of quality code? Do you expect them to be great at determining business needs and writing less code, but code with a high impact? Is this going to be your go to guy for technology X? Do you expect your junior person to learn Y and Z so they can start contributing after N months?3. Communicate your expectations clearly. Make sure the candidate knows what's expected of him or her. Towards the end of the interview discuss how they feel about those expectations. Ask how they plan on going about meeting them.4. After hiring: If you get it right great, if not, let the person go sooner than later. You do yourself and the individual a great disservice if you try to turn them into something they are not. Don't try to turn a lump of coal into a diamond. It's a trap. It doesn't work. They will be unhappy and resentful if you try. Nobody likes to be fired (or do the firing) but you have to tell yourself it's best that they get back out there and find the job that they can be happy and successful at. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | ojbyrne: I think its obvious someone fresh out of college will have "excellent algorithmic thinking" since that's how they spent the last 3/4 years. So in that case you should be spending more time during interviews looking at the more likely areas of weakness, which I'd sum up as "real-world experience." If you're interviewing experienced candidates, then you can generally hazard a guess that their areas of weakness are elsewhere (lack of passion, knowledge and experience that hasn't kept up with the state of the art, etc).Interviews are all about probing. They shouldn't be a set of rote questions that you apply to every candidate regardless of background. You should make a guess at what the candidate's weaknesses are, and then push on them, push on them some more. This will also help you learn how well they deal with adversity.Of course, before this, testing is a good way to determine what a candidate's strengths and weaknesses are.As a total aside, I've found that US Customs and Border Patrol (the ones who do "secondary inspections") are about the best interviewers out there. They probe so much you end up feeling a little violated. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | vaksel: Setup a dozen seemingly random questions that will help you know what personality the person has. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | cosmo7: I've seen people do great, well-commented code at interview, and then after I recommend them, they turn into mediocre 9-5 coders.People always misrepresent at interviews; I can't think of a way around this. |
What is your database sharding strategy? | PJM: There's some good answers and examples to the questions about database sharding here:http://www.codefutures.com/database-sharding/ |
How do you share screenshots? | hs: import (ImageMagick) + hg (mercurial) |
Launching a new site next week, what do you suggest to promote it? | emmett: Just launch. Don't promote at first, except to those 30 users. When you stop getting useful complaints from the 30, start expanding it. Eventually you'll have to think about promotion, but not yet. |
How to virally market an individual website? | iamdave: How to virally market an individual website?
You don't. Simply saying "viral" doesn't make it so.How many readers/browsers can he hope to have in a month or two?
Totally depends on how he does as a blogger. Write great content, get readers. Write shoddy content, get naysayers.Should he CC license some of his work (he's a pro - so no chance of him doing all of it) so others can play with it?
Yes, but not soley so others can 'play' with it. License it to protect his work and his name.What kind of linkbait is good and what kind is bad?
Personally, I think all linkbait is bad if you're creating it for the sole purpose of labeling it as linkbait. Make quality content, give people something to read, don't just dangle flashy headings in their face and then let them down with bad or even irrelevant content.All of what you're asking is dependent on your content. Don't fall into the corporate America trap of thinking because you use the latest techniques and resources you've got the right to use buzzwords inappropriately. Viral marketing movements are organic, unpredictable, but most importantly: they aren't made. They happen. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | yan: Well if you consider learning what you want to learn or grad school as a middle step, what do you want your destination to be?If you want to go into research or teaching, then a higher degree is probably a very good idea. If not, it might not be the best. That is not to say that you can rule it out with certainty.If you're doing it purely to satisfy your curiosity and desire to learn new things, I would (and did, and am) just pick up some recommended books on the topic and try to absorb what you can. I find if you force yourself down a path on what you currently find interesting, it can begin to feel like a chore.Find some like-minded people, join a community, start a project and never stop learning.In terms of recommending books, you'd have to be more specific what interests you. If you don't know, which is fine too, you can read about general things you find interesting on Wikipedia and crawl links starting there. You're almost guaranteed to stumble on something interesting. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | lallysingh: One of my favorite things about graduate school is that you can be a complete information glutton. Go as ridiculously far as you want in your research, and then justify some of it later with a degree :-)If you've got the time, money, and diligence to do it, it can be a lot of fun. By fun I mean lots of hard work and suffering, but yeah, "fun." :-) |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | zitterbewegung: I would recommend SICP http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | stanley: What are your goals? General success? A flourishing startup? CEO of Google?Regardless of your end-goals, the steps you take to achieve them depend largely on your personality. Are you a natural born entrepreneur? Do you enjoy networking moreso than coding? Are you prone to take risks? Would you rather improve an existing project or jumpstart a new one?The only advice I can give you is not to grow too comfortable with the educational arena. If you're interested in pursuing a career in education, it's a different story. But I've met quite a few bright individuals who've grown too accustomed to life at the university to do anything else. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | michael_dorfman: I'd definitely recommend trying some self-study before grad school-- better to find out on your own if the work really interests you enough for the required investment.As to recommendations, I second the recommendation for SICP, but I'd also suggest the video lectures: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma...Then, I'd move on to various online courses (with video)-- besides the MIT OCW resources, there are some good CS courses from UC Berkeley. Specifically, for someone getting started, I'd recommend MIT 6.046J (Introduction to Algorithms), and the Berkeley CS 61A/B/C and CS162, but your interest may vary.Naturally, there are a lot of good video course for mathematics as well-- I enjoyed Gilbert Strang's Linear Algebra from course from MIT as a nice brush-up in Linear Algebra, for example (and as a companion to his textbook).But the guiding thread has got to be your own interest. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | jacobscott: MIT OpenCourseWare is a valuable resource for college curriculum type stuff. You can get a cursory overview of the ugrad/grad CS courses, and pick which ones interest you. Some courses have audio/video.ocw.mit.edu |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | dustineichler: At this point I've learned a little bit about exactly this. If you work at a large company, grad degrees are somewhat essential. On the other side, no one can take an education away from you.Having said that, I know many cs grad students who know little and couldn't bootstrap a startup like self taught autodictacts. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | gills: There are some good things you can do to learn on your own (like SICP), but some CS grad courses or even high level undergrad courses will be more effective if you are interested in theory. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | mwerty: My favorite is Sipser's book on theoretical cs: http://www-math.mit.edu/~sipser/book.html |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | wheels: I'd recommend grabbing a book on Discrete Mathematics. It's the foundation for much of CS theory and will get you into the terminology there. MIT Press's Introduction to Algorithms should be penetrable if you've had some basic calculus at some point. It's worth its price tag. I'm not sure that I'd recommend the Discreet textbook we used at it's going price of $130 now though... |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | smanek: For Math, I'd really recommend The Road to Reality and Beardon's Algebra and Geometry. TRtR is ostensibly a physics book, but it is one of the best math lessons I've ever read. (I have a bit of a review of those two up at http://arantaday.com/blog/the-new-classics/) |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | newt0311: Well... If you would like to go into CS a little with some rigor, a book on compilers would actually be very helpful, if only because compilers have to deal with some of the most complex problems in CS today. I would advise starting with the purple dragon book and then moving on to research paper to get a feel for the current state of the field. The dragon book is a bit outdated imho (I don't think it even covers SSA and advanced value partitioning, etc...) |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | raffi: On the topic of reading SICP and other things. I find the exercise of porting programs/concepts from the presentation language to one I use helps me reinforce what the book/paper says. It also helps me honestly contrast my tool choices with what is out there. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | rmk: hello,if you are in california, you have a way of measuring your interest in cs before you commit. i would suggest you take a course or two at a community college in your area. i know that there are many in the bay area that act as feeder institutions to berkeley etc.
community college is usually less demanding than a university, so it is an excellent way to find out if you can handle the demands that will be placed upon you if you decide to do cs (undergrad/grad).best of luck! |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | raffi: Oh yeah Logic in Computer Science: Modeling and Reasoning about Systems by Huth and Ryan. We used this as a textbook in a formal methods class. The book teaches techniques for developing proofs and for specifying and proving properties about systems. All the way from basic logic, to proofs for structured programs, to using model checking for verifying properties of distributed systems. These techniques will allow you to call your work engineered when you can apply them.What I appreciate most is the consistent structure for teaching each logic. Each logic is taught by introducing the syntax with the BNF and parse trees. The semantics are then introduced. Then there is a mix of relevant algorithms and toy examples of how to specify systems. This is book you could teach yourself formal methods from. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | dilanj: Uh courses! Just install visual studio and start hacking some c#, its super easy to build something cool. A lot of tutorials out there. Start with a screen saver!Then,
1. Get a mac
2. Look around MIT open courseware stuff.
3. Keep hacking. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | enra: Keep the suggestions coming. I'm currently kind of in the same situation, except I just started Business School and I have been full-time developer and occasianally a entrepenuer over 4 years.What happened to me was that I got tired of hacking little things. I never kind of had the time or motivation to learn any advanced cs or math(since I suck even in basic math).I didn't choose CS school since I got quite a variety of intrests(like business, economy, arts, cs...) and I'm not sure that I have such a burning desire to be a hacker, or work as one, but I still want to learn more. |
How to virally market an individual website? | ScottWhigham: I'm confused - does he want international, nationwide, or local shoots? He has a few celebs on the photo gallery so I can't tell. If local, I would suggest taking each photograph and creating separate pages for each that include the town/city/shoot info as content (all in an attempt to raise the PageRank for searches like "beverly hills photographer").There's no way to make a photographer's site "viral" though, at least none that I can think of. I do somewhat disagree with "iamdave" - not all viral marketing movements are organic. Many of them are carefully planned 1+ years in advance. Either way, no one's going to be emailing around links/videos of your photog friend. |
Launching a new site next week, what do you suggest to promote it? | ScottWhigham: * Start running AdWords even if for no other reason to start learning how to run it successfully 2-4 months from now (there is a learning curve)* Set up a Google Sitemap.* Crete your blog, post useful content, and get it indexed* Make great products |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | tomh: ArsDigita University still has all their lectures online in RealMedia video format: http://aduni.org/courses/Here is the direct link to all the Discrete Math lectures, for example: http://aduni.org/courses/discrete/index.php?view=cwMuch more is up there, including SICP, Algorithms, some AI etc. |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | ced: Look at the course outlines for the math dept. at a few good uni, make a list a the most used textbooks, then head off to your local uni's library.That's what I would have done if I'd known better. I regret getting into the B.Sc. |
What does your room look like? | spydez: A mess.And after every time I have a serious go at cleaning up, it seems to devolve into something messier... |
What does your room look like? | dangrover: http://files.dangrover.com/markerdesk.jpg |
What does your room look like? | abstractbill: http://www.justin.tv/officecamThe white couch towards the top-left corner is my workspace - I don't like desks. |
What does your room look like? | thomasmallen: http://www.morleyfield.com/course/bench.jpg |
What does your room look like? | maxklein: After a while of mess, I redesigned my working area. The KEY to the redesign is that no matter what I do, it becomes almost impossible to make it into a mess. I also made the default position of things very conducive to not making a mess, so after a little work at the beginning, there is no further work.Step 1: Empty desk. No cups or paper holders or anything like thatStep 2: Digitalise what can be digitalised, and sort away all papers that are not directly relevantStep 3: Get 2 baskets, one for unimportant papers, another for papers you have to order. When anything comes in that is not critical, drop them in the basket. Don't keep the basket on your desk, keep it away in your cupboard. We don't push paper that often.Step 4: Sort the cables out. Tape them, put them away sensiblyStep 6: Get really good lightsStep 7: Get something to play with for when you are thinking. I personally use a 50 cm wooden ruler, and apart from my PC and a pen, that's the only thing on my desk. If I did not have it, I'd have chewed the pen dead by now.When you work with a clean desk things feel a lot tidier. When you have stuff on the desk, only when they are extremly high priority. Having a neat desk will make you focus even better on the stuff that is important when it does come on your desk.And if you have a desktop, consider moving it somewhere else. I keep mine in the closet and use it via network - that way I have some quiet.So, my suggestion is to plan in a way that it gets difficult to get untidy. |
What does your room look like? | lallysingh: I hop around town a bit for different parts of work.Newsreading is at home, a desk in a very small efficiency.Writing (academic) is at on or two coffee shops downtown.Research is at the CS dept, a desk with my sun box, 2 monitors, keyboard, space for the laptop, small bookshelf, two drawers and a hanging file folder.Different work at different locations. Keeps life a little interesting, and it makes each location force different habits. Helps me context switch easier. |
What does your room look like? | PStamatiou: After 4ish years of college (still in college), I finally got my own place. My productivity has shot through the roof now that I don't have roommates looking for a Mario Kart Wii companion.http://flickr.com/photos/pauls/sets/72157605398490674/That's when I was moving in, I have a more civilized setup now:http://paulstamatiou.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/pstam_ap...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3164/2831665151_83a0df503d.jp... |
What does your room look like? | vaksel: Right now?Have a three point desk, all have some crap on them, the main one has the monitor and keyboard, also a water bottle and a bottle of ginger ale. The connecting piece has a laptop and empty water bottles(I drink it religiously ever since I passed my first kidney stone). The main piece has mostly crap like empty CDs, digital camera, phone, some documents, a few books, and the speakers and the computer.To the right of that I have a drawer with a lamp, phone charger, and more documents.To the right of that I have an unmade bed and a fan aimed downward.The other half of the room has the FAX/Printer/Copier on the left side. A cabinet with a bunch of books, and to the right side of that a hamper and the closet. Also have an unhooked fridge from my college days which I always put off hooking up.On the messiness scale, I'd say its a 7...meaning its a mess, but I can clean it up in about 10 minutes if I have to. |
What does your room look like? | zitterbewegung: Very messy. I really should clean it up. |
What does your room look like? | bootload: "... the whole point of it as far as Roald was concerned was that it was private, a sanctuary where he could work where no one interrupted him ..."I've long been interested in Dahl and his work area.He did his writing in a shed in the back yard of his house, Gypsy House ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2837817746/ The description of the setup is fascinating. The shed contained an old chair. His feet would rest on a his an old suitcase his mother had discarded. On his lap would be a large board that he would sit over his lap. Within his reach would be half a dozen sharpened pencils and some writing pads. This is all he needed to write. You can see some images of the setup here ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2837817764/ here ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2837817762/ As for my work area isn't a patch on Dahls. An overview you can view here ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/1131207/Programming is much like writing. You need the solitary (confinement) to get into the flow. You can learn a thing or two emulating past masters. Dahl recongnised that to write you need the discipline of regular practice in an environment free from distraction. |
How do you identify a great software developer in an interview? | timcederman: I honestly think too much emphasis is placed on fixed questions and a particular style of interviewing. I've had a huge amount of success with improvised interviews that have both conversational elements drawn from the candidate's resume and some kind of problem solving task drawn from the type of work they will be doing. |
What does your room look like? | iigs: It's completely full of junk and I sit in the living room with my laptop in my easy chair. Except today, as I'm on the BlackBerry sitting outside by the garden with the dog in the sun. :)Actually, my room is fairly full of electronics stuff: oscilloscopes, computer hardware, small electronics tools. I'm too ashamed of the mess to show it, as I haven't cracked the organization aspect yet. Insofar as I have, I'd say small organizers for binnable items (LEDs, resistors, little rubber feet), and pegboard for cable management under the desk, and horizontal surfaces (layered when possible) seem to be key to making it work. I would say having a place for everything is 90% of it and keeping everything in said place is 10%. |
What does your room look like? | ryanmahoski: http://twitpic.com/ao6r |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | brentr: I was in the exact same position you are now. I went to the University of Florida and received a degree in finance. I have always had an interest in computers, physics, and mathematics.It took me three years to finally make the decision to go back to school. I am now pursuing a second and third BS (mathematics and physics), however, I am applying to grad school for 2009. I am hoping that the work I have done since returning to school will be enough to get me into a program for which I don't have an undergraduate degree.My recommendation is this: If you are really interested in mathematics and computer science, pick up a copy of How to Prove It by Daniel Velleman. Work through every single problem. If you don't enjoy doing the proofs, scratch mathematics off of your list. I can't speak about the computer science side of things, but maybe someone could add a respone to mine for a suitable computer science book. |
What does your room look like? | dustineichler: Clean desk. neat bed, organized room enough for desktop, server and laptop. Creative posters. Fans for cooling. |
What does your room look like? | dkokelley: Before: http://fuzzyshot.com/dkokelley/post/zpeM5KGvvn/photo/6PnHjhM...After: http://fuzzyshot.com/dkokelley/post/HQsw5xt2yd/photo/1ZSu6IQ...And the desk: http://fuzzyshot.com/dkokelley/post/vDo6FGezfF/photo/TRLWCje...It's a little private (it's my room), but I figure it would be neat to share here. Having things organized helps me to think, and my room was not organized (but now it is).Some background info: I live at home while I'm going to school. My brother just moved out (we shared that room, and the desk was where his computer used to go), so I now have 'ownership' over that room, meaning I can't expect anyone else to mess up or clean the room but myself, so I'd better make sure it's clean.Finally: The mess on the top of the bed is stuff that belongs to my brother, so I can't really clean it up. He'll get it later. Also, there's a closet to the right that isn't as clean as the rest of the room. I just shut the doors when I want to think. |
What does your room look like? | noonespecial: My workstation. My wife calls it "the bridge".Posted once before in the "screen shots" thread. Seems appropriate here as well.http://www.jonandkarrie.com/images/P8087198.JPG |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | ltbarcly: You can't make a reasonable self study. People will say you can, but they are full of crap. There are maybe a few hundred people in the world who can do something like that, and they are all top caliber geniuses.In reality, we need the pressure of school to push us into spending the unpleasent effort to get the hard stuff into our heads. Otherwise you skim books and dick around and have nothing to show for it other than an ability flip out buzzwords on internet forums.After all, why do you think there are colleges that teach this stuff? If you could just pick up books and learn it just as well as you can at college, why do people who are at college have to cram and study so much? After all, they are reading the material just like you, and they have the advantage of TA's, other students, and professors to guide and tutor them along. The fact is that you have basically no chance if you go it alone. Good luck. |
What does your room look like? | hs: i have a leafless bookshelf which is placed next to a bedthat way i no longer need chair+table (i sit on the bed and readjust the shelf's height to put my laptop on) |
Recommended path for self-study math and CS? | patrocles: Work through Spivak's Calculus, then Springer Verlag's Undergraduate Texts in MathematicsSICP is as foundational as Spivak, however Comp Sci still doesn't have the equivalent of UTM, you have to target what you're interested in and go from there.... |
What does your room look like? | iamah: it has a huge glass window, all furnitures close to the walls, and theres a big free space in the middle... its good for walking in, you don't need to go around any obstacles... the bed is like a sofa, non perpendicular to the wall... |
What does your room look like? | jseliger: Mine looks like <a href="http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/new-workspace/">this</a>. The important thing is the cleanliness of the desk: just a computer and a backup hard drive I can't see when I'm typing. The books were ones I was using when the picture was taken.Mostly, the desk doesn't have a lot of visual distractions. It's there chiefly for thinking, and I think a clean space helps thinking. The only major features are books, and those 1) put me in the thinking mood and 2) are occasionally consulted. Other posters have commented on the value of a plaything; I often have a squeeze ball to relieve stress and keep my arm from cramping, as well as a fountain pen, but otherwise it's clear. |
What does your room look like? | scumola: A couple of years ago, my setup looked like this. Since I've moved to LCD screens and a little nicer setup, but no picture as of yet.http://badcheese.com/~steve/gallery/albums/userpics/10003/no... |
Calculate Server Needs | jwilliams: 1. Most articles around start-ups, including Y Combinator, suggest that having more than 1 founder greatly improves the chance of success.2. It's impossible to answer that without a lot more information. Capacity estimation can be a black art... Unless you're using novel technologies, I'd focus on making sure you have scalable application first (you can always start out small). |
What does your room look like? | tdavis: You definitely don't want to see my room; it looks like a dirty clothes store threw up in there. However, here is a gallery of "TicketStumbler HQ" aka our apartment:http://gallery.me.com/binjured#100016&view=grid&bgco...The station with 4 screens is Dan's; the silver one is actually a TV so he can watch Foosball and other dumb sports. The one with the two mounted screens is mine; basically everything you see there I highly, highly recommend to all hackers.We have two whiteboards that have been invaluable (go to Home Depot and have them cut some board for you, it's super cheap!). I recently got a desk upgrade, thank god, and actually have some empty space on it now... mmmmm, empty space!The couch is for laptop-based hacking while watching pretty HD TV and movies. Photos care of my grainy iPhone camera, sorry :( |
Calculate Server Needs | m0digital: For server specs it really depends on technologies you're using. Java, PHP, Rails, etc. Each will need a different amount of resources. It's probably easiest to get an entry level container from a place like Joyent and scale up as you need it. |
Secret military technology as groundbreaking as the tank and airplane were | michael_dorfman: (3) an exaggeration of massive proportions by Woodward and/or his sources |
Secret military technology as groundbreaking as the tank and airplane were | gaika: Tracking people by their shadows :)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1052250/Could... |
Secret military technology as groundbreaking as the tank and airplane were | gojomo: I shudder to think of the prize for guessing right. |
Secret military technology as groundbreaking as the tank and airplane were | menloparkbum: sharks with laser beams attached to their heads? |
What does your room look like? | kaens: I don't have a camera, but I can tell you what it looks like.I don't have a "room". I have a futon in a shared office room in the house I live in, some homemade bookshelves (read wood, eyelet screws and twine), and a laptop. In this same room there is also a silkscreening station. |
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