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Who do you respect, and why? | qhoxie: Well-roundedness. Programmers who can write, designers who can code, and so on. |
Who do you respect, and why? | calambrac: I really respect people who know their own shortcomings, and work hard to overcome them. In an effort to live up to my own ideal, I acknowledge that I often fail in this regard, and often catch myself dismissing something I don't immediately understand.The converse of that is that it's always sad to me to meet someone who can't admit what they don't know, or can't acknowledge the achievements of others. All of the people I've known that I consider brilliant have also had an amazing amount of humility about what they didn't know, and have been fast to praise the achievements of others. It's a goal I strive for, but again, I know I often fall short. |
Who do you respect, and why? | gstar: Collectively, HN posters and commenters seem to 90% get it. Unbelievable for a website like this.Reddit runs at about 50%Metafilter runs at about 40%Digg at 5% |
Who do you respect, and why? | swombat: I respect only one thing: competence.In fact, that breaks down into 3 things: competence, knowledge, and experience, but only because the last two are often indicators of the first, so it would be unwise to dismiss them.Achievements are a symptom of competence, so I do respect people who have achieved what I consider great things.However, even where someone is knowledgeable, experienced, and having apparently achieved great things, if they display something which indicates a severe lack of competence, my respect for them will automatically decrease - not to zero, of course, but still, it can take a severe hit. |
Who do you respect, and why? | 13ren: I try to respect everyone, because I've found my own happiness seems to vary directly in proportion with how well I do this. In both directions.I think you're also asking about who you admire, and what achievements you admire. Great questions, need some thought. |
effects of prefix notation on coding / thinking | eru: Have you tried coding in postfix aka Forth, yet? |
List your favourite social news sources | weaboo: http://peeklocal.com - Pakistani news |
List your favourite social news sources | lolorunner: http://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering |
Who do you respect, and why? | jnovek: Like everything else that we feel, I sense that we don't have a lot of control over who we feel great respect for... we only have the opportunity to justify it in hindsight.I think that the people that I respect the most are people that I feel are honest and trustworthy. I have no patience for those who play politics or talk out of both sides of their mouths.You could be the most talented coder or illustrator or kung-fu master or whatever fits the bill for the project that I'm working on... and if you're not honest and trustworthy, I really can't build any kind of working relationship with you. |
List your favourite social news sources | iuguy: Could I be terribly sneaky and promote my infosec news startup? - http://news.mandalorian.comApologies if you've all seen it before :) |
List your favourite social news sources | shafqat: I heard NewsCred.com is full of awesomeness. In all seriousness, we have thousands of visitors a day loving it, so something must be good about it.Personally, my day consists of Hacker News, NewsCred, some Google News, and a sprinkling of the Onion. |
Who do you respect, and why? | vaksel: I respect people who go above the call of duty. Sure you may be great at X, but if you only do whats assigned to you, it shows me that its just a job for you and not something you truly enjoy. |
Who do you respect, and why? | njharman: > What do you see people emphasizing about themselves over and over again, which actually signal they "just don't get it"?Hard to answer, "it" has many values...That the have the or all the answers. That they know and they have nothing to learn on a given topic.Hubris, ego.Also anyone who worships "personalities" like PG, joel, Jobs, Greenspan, Rand, etc.In other words I care little about prestige, can't stand celebrity and value achievements lightly(which are often little more than being at right place at right time and not totally sucking). A person's character is vastly more important.Character is something you can only discover up close. So, I personally know the people I respect and you have no reason to have ever heard of them. |
Who do you respect, and why? | maxklein: I think that what I respect is anyone who is unpretentiously humble. People who just do their thing, do it the best way they can, and do not constantly introspect about how good they are, or how they are in a better class that other people.The difference is that if a humble person who has a lot of experience in a field talks to someone who is new to the field, once he realises that the knowledge of the person does not match his, and it would be impossible to have an interesting conversation, he just switches the topic to something else. But the non-humble person will insist on trying to teach the other person, or tell the other person how things should be done, even when his opinion is not solicited. |
Who do you respect, and why? | ericb: I respect people who can silence the the inner voice that fears embarrassment--people who can "dance like no one is watching." I've been working on this personally. I'm convinced it is one of life's great keys to success. |
effects of prefix notation on coding / thinking | parenthesis: Of course, infix is (always/usually?) only for some operators (e.g. arithmetic ones), with everything else prefix, just usually written foo(x, y) instead of (foo x y), but prefix nonetheless. |
Who do you respect, and why? | edw519: I respect demonstrated performance.Is is done? Does it work? Does it bring value to others?Anything less is just posing. |
Who do you respect, and why? | daniel-cussen: The guy who stood up to those tanks in Tiananmen Square. |
Who do you respect, and why? | DaniFong: More than anything, I respect awareness. I respect people who are self-aware, and cognizant of the world around them. I respect people who appreciate themselves and other people and the universe around them as the mystery they are, yet who still try to make inroads of understanding.Compared to awareness, creativity, determination, and integrity, awareness stands alone. |
Who do you respect, and why? | Eliezer: I respect people who, on at least one occasion, have been right when I'm wrong and think I'm right. The only way to really get my attention is to defeat me. Other qualities like kindness and honesty earn my regard and I'll do things to help that person, but that's not the same as hesitating to disagree with them.Regardless of what this reveals about my personality, it's true. |
Who do you respect, and why? | cglee: People who are diligent, intelligent and most importantly, compassionate. |
Who do you respect, and why? | froo: I think the people that I most respect are the people that inspire me to be better. So in no particular order:Steve "Woz" Wozniak, Sir James Dyson, Yuri Gagarin & Fred Hollows are the ones that I could name off the top of my head. |
Who do you respect, and why? | ricardo: I respect those that have found a job they truly enjoy doing. |
What do you think about this Entrepreneurship program? | mechanical_fish: It's a con game. Avoid, avoid, avoid.They're going to charge you hundreds of dollars per course for the service of rephrasing some business books and feeding them to you one piece at a time. And it's online only -- you don't even get a human teacher or a flesh-and-blood classmate, so the experience will be literally indistinguishable from just visiting the library and reading some books, except that it will be more expensive and the books won't be as good. In the end you will receive an "Entrepreneurship Certificate", which is a kind of anti-credential: In order to succeed in business you will need to hide this piece of paper from anyone you meet, because it will literally be less impressive than your work experience as a 14-year-old running a successful lemonade stand.Just go buy some business books and cut out the middleman. You can use the leftover money to actually learn a useful skill -- like accounting or programming or nursing or cooking or A/C repair or paralegal -- or get a useful piece of paper -- like a certification in a field that actually requires certifications, or even an actual college degree. And your useful skill will help you to solve the hard problem: How do you build something people want? |
Algorithm to identify the same events based on semantic similarity | haidut: OK, there is a pretty "simple" way to do it but I can't divulge all the details b/c we are using it for my semantic news startup. However, I can give you a hint on what you need to do. You need to find a way to reduce different words to their "base" semantics and then compute a similarity measure of sorts between the different event descriptions. Traditionally, people have been breaking down the text into word vectors and then calculating a pearson or tanimoto, or whatnot similarity measures b/n the vectors. The problem with this approach is not the similarity measure but the fact that (as aristus points out) different people use different words to describe the same thing. So computing the tanimoto score of two sentences like "Bush visits Iraq to encourage soldiers" and "US. President arrives at Bagdad to raise troops morale" will result in very low similarity score using just the literal words used in both sentences. However, in reality both sentences are almost identical in meaning. So let's say that there was a way to reduce the semantics of both sentences down to their "base", then for sentence one you would have something like "US President present in Middle Eastern country to increase spirit of soldiers", and for sentence two you would have "US President present in capital of Middle Eastern country to increase spirit of soldiers". So NOW if you take the tanimoto measure of similarity or actually any other decent similarity measure b/n the semantic "base" of both sentences you would get a very high score, which is what is needed. So, like I said I can't divulge the method of how to do reduce text to its semantic "base" but there is definitely at least one way, which is what we are using.
If you are interested, send me an email to haidut@gmail.com and when I launch my startup within the next couple of weeks I can hopefully divulge more. Sorry for my vagueness but my lawyers will make a minced-meat out of me if I say more:-)
Here is something you can do and I am allowed to divulge. You can use Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI) to find out the semantic relatedness of words in both event descriptions and if the overall cross-word similarity is above a certain threshold then you can consider both event descriptions similar. To find out more on how to calculate PMI and some more info on how useful it is, read this paper:
http://cogprints.org/1796/0/ECML2001.pdf
Overall, what you are trying to do is simple in concept but not easy to implement. Basically, in order for semantic similarity to be computed automatically by a machine you'd need a mapping of EVERY word in EVERY language to its semantic "base" so you can create a table and compute this efficiently. Such mapping does not currently exists and one of the reasons is the constantly changing nature of English language itself - new words come out all the time and even if you could track them all - some of them don't have semantic "base". Using the example I gave above - the fact that Bush is currently a President won't be true in couple of months so that huge word-to-meaning mapping table would have to account for that, so mapping English language to a semantic base if a (very fast) moving target.That's all I have for now. Good luck in your endeavor. |
What do you think about this Entrepreneurship program? | bstadil: If you need to take a course to learn how to use a CRM program you are in real trouble.This is crock. |
Are there any Good Movies about StartUps? | amrithk: There's an interesting series on Hulu.com called Startup Junkies. It's about a startup called Earth Class mail. There are only about 7-8 episodes on it but I found it to be very interesting |
Are there any Good Movies about StartUps? | rms: Two feature length documentaries about Bubble-era startups:Startup.com (about GovWorks -- they had the contract to process parking tickets for NYC parking tickets but they of course blew it with their extravagant spending)E-Dreams (about Kozmo.com (RIP). haven't seen this, if anyone has it I would like to borrow/buy/digitally share it) The first 8 minutes are free here. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1283742294319360518&... ) |
What traps to avoid when dealing with offshore partners? | bstadil: First off why do you think a US hacker would be more honest? In US the first line of defense is always legal measures as your comment clearly confirms. This is not the case in Europe. There is a stigma attached to having to resort to legal means and as such things gets settled most of the time amicably.If I were the Eu hacker I would be somewhat reluctant to work with you. If this is important to you hop on a plane and visit the guy. Your can get a cheap ticket for a few hundred $. |
What traps to avoid when dealing with offshore partners? | michael_dorfman: I second the recommendation for a trip to Europe for a face-to-face-- if you're not willing to spare that expense, you're severely underbudgeted.With regard to the enforceability of agreements, etc., talk to your lawyer. Again, if you don't want to spend the money to talk to a lawyer now, you're definitely not going to be happy about spending significantly more money with him/her in the event you need to take legal action to try to enforce the agreements.... |
Are there any Good Movies about StartUps? | dmz: http://www.boondogglefilms.net/aardvarkd.php is something similar, though doesn't quite classify as a startup movie. Nevertheless it is interesting (features PG, Joel etc.) |
effects of prefix notation on coding / thinking | silentbicycle: Some languages allow an unambiguous mix of infix and prefix. OCaml & Haskell: 5 + 7 or (+) 5 7
Most non-alphanumeric operators are infix unless in parens. Haskell: map (\ x -> x + 1) [1, 2, 3]
or (\ x -> x + 1) `map` [1, 2, 3]
Two-argument, alphanumerically named functions can be made infix with `backticks`. |
Are there any Good Movies about StartUps? | paraschopra: Download: The True Story of Internet by Discovery Channel |
How can one deal with bad management? | kennyroo: In a big company, some problems can't be solved from the bottom up. Maybe you should find a better place to work. |
How can one deal with bad management? | noodle: you are not wrong, and there are many companies that operate like this. it sounds like you're in a service-oriented company, where the product is built to fit the requirements of the customers. there are many companies that operate like this. they're typically steady paychecks, but not engaging or challenging jobs.if you dislike whats happening, you're not going to change it, as the atmosphere is typically a byproduct of management's direction for the company. look for a job elsewhere. |
How can one deal with bad management? | oldgregg: Aww man, you couldn't have described my situation any better. I came to the decision it wasn't worth my time to try to make a difference (they didn't really deserve the help anyway). I started working only hard enough to not get fired while living like a miser and working crazy hours on my own projects. It was really only a few months before I was ready to make the jump.Unless it's a job you very deeply care about you probably need an exit strategy. Both you and the world will benefit so much more if you're passionate about your work. If squeezed, management will often make concessions, but they almost never actually GET IT. If you choose to stay you will go bat-shit crazy unless you just resign yourself.Also, you mention you're passive-agressive and I'm right there with you... I'm a type-B INTP. One thing I have really had to confront head on was that while I do great work, I have a ton of fear and uncertainty about changing gears because I'm simply not like the type-A jackass in management with more confidence than brains. So everyday I have to confront that and just be willing to live in place that feels uncomfortable and reckless. |
How can one deal with bad management? | maxklein: Learn this lesson very quickly: Do not complain! You care about what you do, but think about your priorities. Really, think about them. You want to:1. Be happy
2. Make money
3. Be promotedIt's not a startup, so you are not trying to be ultra rich. Now, when you complain you are first and foremost making yourself unhappy. That defeats the purpose of working there. First rule is that you be happy. And the best way to be happy is to ignore the bad stuff, focus on the good stuff and work on making everyone else happy.You guys may be producing terrible code at work, but imagine a workplace where you are producing terrible code, but everyone is laughing and making jokes and so on.Refocus your energy on making you and everyone around you happy. Forget the technology - let them make the decisions! That's what they are there for! Just focus on making yourself happy and your team members happy.When everyone is happy, morale goes back up, make your manager part of this pleasant team. When people are laid back and relaxed, they are more likely to do sensible things.The minute negativity comes into the team, it's all going to go downwards. You dislike your job, everyone gets infected by your dislike, and even if you win the argument, you lose at life.So, forget the technology and focus on the people. |
How can one deal with bad management? | Harkins: Leave.The bullet points all sound like typical developer gripes, except being forbidden to talk to team members means one of two things:
1. Management is all messed up and is attacking 'troublemakers' instead of the problems.
2. Your coworkers have complained to management that you are a ball of negativity that they don't want to hear.Read the book "My Job Went To India". It's a great book for career planning and it'll help you figure out whether you're in 1 or 2, I can't guess which.
If it's 1, you can't fix it, you need to find a company with a healthy culture. If it's 2, you need to start fresh with a good attitude at a new company.Best of luck with your career. |
Building Credit | run4yourlives: >I didn't get approved because, well, my credit is too clean.Are you sure about this? I remember when I was just getting started, it wasn't the fact that my credit was clean but more the fact that I didn't have enough of a history of borrowing money that hurt me. (Why this is the case is completely mind numbing in today's economy, but I digress)Do you know what your FICO score is? You should find that out first. Second, everything I've seen seems to point to a "credit start" being achieved only after a co-signer is brought into the picture.Suffice it to say, the alternatives are to wait a few years until you are older, buy a used, less valuable car, or take on a nearly criminal interest rate from one of those high risk lenders.You can always do things the old fashioned way and save up for your car in cash too, but that won't help your credit any. |
Building Credit | Protophore: Your problem may also be dependent on the size of your allowable credit (credit limit on your card). If you have one major credit card, but your max credit line with that card is $5-10k you might have a problem. If you can get your credit card to raise your limit to 20k you might have an easier time with your lease. Alternatively you can open up another two credit cards each with a 10k limit to expand your available credit. |
Building Credit | noodle: "too clean" typically means "you have the credit but you never used it". when people lend you money, they want to see that you, at least sometimes, will actually use that money to the end.if you're the type of person who pays off a loan immediately or ASAP, that is lost money for the lending party. the time that the lenders' money is in the bank and not in someone's hands is interest not being earned. if you pay off your loans quickly, the lenders have to effectively pay for more overhead in finding another loan for that money you were "supposed" to hold on to for X years (but instead, paid it down much faster). lenders don't like to lose money, and therefore won't lend money to people that are effectively bad investments. |
How can one deal with bad management? | SwellJoe: Fire them.Life is short, and jobs exist elsewhere. If this one makes you unhappy, change it. If you have a family to support, you obviously have less flexibility, and will probably need to line something up before leaving the current position.Of course, you may be too inexperienced to recognize the wisdom of some of managements actions and decisions (and we can only see your side of it from where we sit, so maybe we're missing that wisdom as well). Your application may be a small piece of a very large puzzle, and the cost of making other pieces fit what you're developing is far too high and the benefit too low. Humans often consider the things they are familiar with to be far more important in the grand scheme of things than the community as a whole does. Where you see huge glaring problems, management may see something that negatively affects only 5% of their users only once per month, while making the sweeping changes required to implement your vision could potentially effect all users 100% of the time.Again, I dunno. I can only see what you've shown us of the picture.As for this:I also have an annoying passive-aggressive attitude, and because I care about the project more than I care about my job, I think I became the whiner, the bad apple of our project. I hate myself for this, but the morale of the team is really low, and I'm not alone in thinking that every possible bad decision ever was already made, although the others cope with it better.Of course, I was blamed for affecting the team's morale, since I was so straightforward and sincere about it. I do admit that sometimes my words are not "politicaly correct", but this project is like my child. And since feelings are involved it is really hard to be "politically correct" and say things in a "nice way".This is a serious flaw on your side of the equation. The words "nice way" should not be in quotes...and since you've put them in quotes, you make it clear you hold them in the same disdain you hold "politically correct" (which most folks do have a bit of scorn for, these days). But, basic civility in the workplace is something that isn't optional.Work on it. You cannot change things in your current state. Victims don't make things better for anyone, including themselves...and though the situation may not be your fault, if you want it to get better you'll have to take some responsibility for making it better. Which could mean accepting that this is not the company for you and moving on to another (maybe starting your own, since we're on a startup-focused forum, and most of us think starting a company is the only way for us to keep our sanity).I've known several folks who quit their corporate job, and yet continued to work on the same project as a contractor...making four times the money for the same job, and able to come and go as they pleased. But, this requires circumstances that probably don't match yours (project is vital to company, employee is vital to project at least for the short term, and everybody still likes employee when he announces his intention to leave--and he is able to make a strong case that he's doing them a favor by staying on as a part-time contractor for a few months while they transition in new people for the project), and if you've given yourself a reputation for being difficult to work with, you'll probably find they're not so eager to have you back.In short, you can't change other people. They are out of your control. What you can change: Your approach to working with those people, whether you work with those people at all, and your own approach to the problems you perceive that are making you unhappy.If you can't change jobs, and you can't make this one a better fit by dealing with people more diplomatically, the best you can do might be to simply view your tasks in smaller, more humble, pieces. Instead of making the whole application beautiful (and thus requiring buy in from every department and uncooperative management)...make your little pieces beautiful...not visually, if visual beauty requires going against management mandates (I think you'd be surprised what you can do within such constraints--embrace the limitations and try again--color scheme, logo at the top of the page, and type is probably all that is really required to keep your bosses happy, but even if many things are dictated by style guides and such, you can still build nicer look apps than the standard by being simple, consistent, standards-compliant, and accessible). Just make your code smaller, more concise, nicely commented, well-tested, and reliable as hell. When you've done that, volunteer on any new projects that come up that touch your code...and do the same. Eventually, everything you have to deal with is wonderful (or as wonderful as you're capable of making it), and at some point you'll hopefully be happy enough to not be a jackass to your co-workers, and they might even begin to appreciate that you know better than they do on some things. You might just find yourself in a project management role and able to make real changes (not likely, but stranger things have happened). I can assure you that picking fights won't do it, though. |
How can one deal with bad management? | Protophore: I see a lot of bad behaviours on all sides here and have to agree with many of the posters below that it may be time to jump ship to a different company. Or if the company you work for is large enough you can transfer to a different department, just get away from where you are now.In regards to some of your points above, I think that it is often an issue that changes are made by upper management or by someone in control/power that do not make a lot of sense to everyone else. I'd suggest taking a positive and proactive approach to this situation. You can begin by approaching the individual responsible in a friendly manner and ask something along the lines of, "It was interesting how you decided to do XYZ. I want to understand your thinking here. Can you tell me why you decided to do that?" The basic idea is to get them to open up to you. They may have a very good reason for their idea that you aren't aware of. Maybe it will make perfect sense to you afterwards, or maybe their idea is sound but how they implemented it does not make a lot of sense, or could be improved. If the later is the case then you can work with them to help improve it, maybe start with, "That's a really interesting idea. Do you think that it would be helpful if we were to move the link over here to make it more visible to users?" or something along those lines.A good technique when you have to say something negative is to make a sandwich out of it. Start with something positive, state your negative, and finish with something positive.Shame on your manager for passing blame. IT sends a bad message to everyone. A good leader takes responsibility for their team work even if someone else screwed up. If someone is going to get fired over it, then it's a slightly different story, but for the most part a good manager is a shit shield for their employees.Passive-aggressive = bad, unhealthy attitude
It will only cause problems and you'll lose respect and friends
Being a whiner= bad, you can "complain" constructively so it doesn’t come across as whining. You'll get a lot more accomplished and gain recognition/status in the process.Decreasing team moral = bad. It's not always easy to say the right thing or be "politically correct", but if you want to be a good team member you will need to do so. You want to make change for the better, but you might be hindering the change as much as anyone else. You can be "straightforward and sincere" without bringing the team down.This book might help you in learning to be a force of change in your company while being positive at the same time:
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Factors-Project-Management-Techn... |
How can one deal with bad management? | iigs: Sorry to hear about your situation.I can't speak for the options available in your city / work pool, but it sounds like you've gone about as far as this job will take you.If you are perceived to have a bad attitude (regardless of your actual intent) it is going to make your progress at the company difficult. Forget about moving up, and expect your opinions to be ignored because you will be perceived to be submarining the company. So much for that.Brush up your resume (sad as this last year may seem) and consider what you learned here and what you'd like to see in a future role. Cast the lessons you learned in a positive light and try not to harbor any bitterness.A former manager of mine (probably borrowed but) once said: "What do you get when you don't get what you want? Experience."A lot of the things you're seeing are realities of the business world. Management doesn't outsource to overseas to argue with them, they just want something done cheap. Your management may not be doing the most they can to register their dissent, but it might be in the interest of saving their job, not in some form of ignorance. This isn't specific to overseas/outsourcing relationships, it's disappointigly common in conventional middle management, as well.If it's any consolation, not all places are like this. You may find you can transfer to a better team within a company or may have to get a different job. I was in a similar place once (twice, ugh) and it was a huge weight off of my back when I got in to my new role where dissent is appreciated. |
How can one deal with bad management? | tptacek: I have two comments:(1) Though you didn't say it, the comparison to startup life is always implied here, so let's just be clear: most of these problems do not go away at a startup. The pressure to "just get things done" instead of "doing it right" is greater when it's your own company on the line. GitHub, for instance, was apparently bootstraped by shell-out'ing to the "git" command line tool. Shudder.Yes, you can mess around with aesthetics and hack on cool things without getting yelled at your own company. But on the other hand, a lot of the time, when you do that, you're killing your company. I might rather get bitched at.(2) You seem to care about some unimportant things. For instance, the "visual appeal" of your current app versus the company standard. Or the download footprint of your Javascript libraries. Or the soundness of your company's UX hired guns.If you loved the app that you were working on, loved it for its own merits, you wouldn't care about trivia. You sound bored. It doesn't sound like a management problem. Maybe you just need to switch from payroll and pension benefits management software to Flash games? You can do that; just be prepared for the pay cut. Supply and demand, yo! |
Building Credit | anamax: (0) Did the "too clean" explanation come from the dealer or the folks who actually make the decision? If you were turned down for credit reasons in the US, you are entitled to a copy of your credit report and a written explanation. Your credit report will say something about why your score is what it is.
(1) Your decision to buy an Element in three years should not affect what car you buy/lease today. If you were getting by with something smaller, why not stay smaller for now?
(2) I'd recheck the numbers. With a lease, you pay for estimated depreciation, which is quite significant over the first three years, with enough margin for the leasor to be wrong and still make a profit selling the car to someone else. I mention this because if you trade, you'll not only be paying the hybrid premium, you'll be restarting the depreciation clock.You're planning to pay for at least $3k in depreciation and then pay the hybrid premium, which will probably be at least $3k.If you're set on buying a hybrid in 3 years, buy a used car today. You'll pay less in interest on the loan and the depreciation should be less. You should be able to buy a car that will last three years for less than a new element will depreciate in that time.Get a car for $2-3k and save the difference between those payments and your proposed lease payments for repairs and a bigger down payment in three years. And, if you can't save the difference, you just found out the easy way that you can't afford to buy a new hybrid. (A lot of Prius' will be coming off lease then.) |
Email website announcements - expected or spam? | noodle: opt-in.i'd delete emails like that without reading them, if they got by my filters. |
Are there any Good Movies about StartUps? | mnaganov: "Revolution OS" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_OS) --- is a great movie about Linux and FSF, and it also features a story about "Cygnus Solutions" startup. |
Concerned Citizen | noodle: why don't all the really good police officers get together to remove drugs from the country?...oh waitbut seriously, the idea is noble, but the fact is that child pornography is already widely controlled. if you actually want to obtain it, you have to be on the inside of the situation, just like drugs. you can't buy heroin at walmart. you have to know who to go to in order to buy it and jump through some serious flaming hoops to get it. we can't police things on thumb drives and encrypted emails/connections. and if we could, would we even want to? it would be hugely big brother that would be removing the rights of the law-abiding many to prosecute the few. (which i guess isn't that foreign under the current administration)but thats just my $0.02. |
Email website announcements - expected or spam? | lethain: Well, both Pownce and Twitter send these, and I pretty much ignore them. To the extent that they are expected, they are expected because we are used to being treated badly, not because they are a good thing.I'd try communicating via a blog and also via one-off messages sent to users the first time they log in after a change. Both of those provide information without being too pushy about it. |
Concerned Citizen | lethain: Well, I'm not sure if this a troll or not, but if it isn't, then it seems to hail back to the longstanding misunderstanding of what 'hacker' means. Hacker News is for people who want to a) build cool things, and b) make money. Not so much about vigilante justice. |
How can one deal with bad management? | ewoodh2o: Well I've got the viewpoint from the other side here. I work for a large company in the US that has set up an office abroad for outsourcing some of the engineering. (I'm actually planning to leave to start my own thing soon, but that's a different story.)I think points 1 through 7 you made are typical in any large company. I've found that I've had to just pick a few things, and learn to ignore the rest. It helps to have at least one higher-up who agrees with you...find that person and get them to like you. It's probably better for your career not to be the one who always complains and upsets people. This is pretty difficult when you get attached to a project and think that the contributions of others are making it worse, but you have to be diplomatic about it.Your last two points are intriguing thought. I recently had to sit through a training session on "How to work with India". It was chock full of ridiculous generalizations, mixed in with a few useful comments on the cultural differences. They have an equivalent "How to work with the US" class over there and I'd love to sit through that one too.However, the two things you mentioned echo a lot of my experience with our foreign counterparts. I rarely get a "no" or any pushback, and I really wish I did. Our management here relies on the low-level engineers to make the implementation decisions. They, after all, are closest to the problem and have the most information to base their decision upon. For some reason our management here however treats our Indian counterparts as a black box project factory - requirements go in, solution comes out, and there's little to no feedback in between. The class we sat through made this out to be a cultural difference, where it's disrespectful to disagree with a superior, and the manager is always supposed to have all the answers. Maybe that is a cultural difference, but it's not benefiting either party in the long-term. I tend to think it's really because we've treated them as cut-rate engineers for so long that it's now an ingrained behavior. Of course, if we didn't and instead genuinely expected their productivity to match ours, then we'd have to pay them a full engineer's salary and that sort of defeats the purpose. I'd love to hear some comments on how this plays out at other companies...In any case, it sounds like you're unhappy. In that sort of situation, your output will eventually decline to average, at which point you're doing neither them nor yourself a favor by staying. At a minimum you now know what to look for when finding a new job. But if you take a job at another big company, know that some of these issues will follow you there and you'll have to learn to pick your battles. But if you can at least find a boss you respect (and get him to respect you), it'll really help to mitigate the issues. |
Concerned Citizen | tdavis: Die. |
How can one deal with bad management? | known: 1. Buy shares of that company (ESOP ?).You will automatically become co-owner of the company.2. Leading, Managing, and Administering are 3 different aspects.
3. Change your priorities: People First, Processes Second, and Technologies ThirdYou will automatically align with your management. |
What are the disadvantages programming? | tdavis: This... isn't a coherent question. The disadvantage of programming for the past 10 years is you haven't been programming for the past 20? I have no idea what you're asking. |
Any chance of monetizing this webapp(solarpower, price)? | trapper: Not sure, what are the search volumes & keyword prices like? Are there any big competitors using those keywords? A few hours of digging on adwords will tell you a lot. |
Any chance of monetizing this webapp(solarpower, price)? | speek: Go for it. You never know what will happen until you try. |
Any chance of monetizing this webapp(solarpower, price)? | DabAsteroid: There isn't a killer green energy price comparisment service nor a solar only one.What about Solarbuzz?http://www.solarbuzz.com |
Any chance of monetizing this webapp(solarpower, price)? | DabAsteroid: It's not like solar energy is that big (yet)Why would solar energy get much bigger? |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | andr: So what is the idea? |
Any chance of monetizing this webapp(solarpower, price)? | jacobscott: "Is X monetizeable", "can X generate enough traffic","does X have potential"imho, the answer to these questions will probably take equal effort to the technical/development aspect. There are plenty of price comparison engines around... so if a domain expert in solar thought of this idea and did all the market research (to have the answer to your question), I suspect they would be developing a competitor. |
Any chance of monetizing this webapp(solarpower, price)? | bilbo0s: Make a website that you can order solar powered gear from. Not the stuff you need to assemble yourself, the stuff that is already complete. Start with solar generators like the SolarStik, or the one at KenSolar. Actually, both, be a reseller is my point.Solar is a useful technology being handled by less than creative people right now. What they need are young, hungry young men to hawk their wares in a creative fashion. For example, it would be simple for an enterprising young man to fill a UHaul with SolarStiks and drive down to Houston an put a sign up on some well travelled intersections indicating the availability of solar generators. You would sell out in less than an hour, WITH the story on CNN about the fact that you did so. Free advertising. Everyone gets the point. The consumers are educated.Every technology needs its Henry Ford, or Bill Gates . . .Basically solar needs its Sylvester McMonkey McBean . . .By the way, I live in Houston, and my neighbors think I'm pretty forward thinking right now since there is little gas for their generators. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | mixmax: I love your very candid and honest way of explaining where you are and what you need.Good luck with finding partners - hope you succeed. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | maxklein: How about $1600 a month + 5% for 6 months instead? Sounds like that would be a better deal for both parties. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | noodle: i'd be potentially interested in talking/helping.most people get ridiculed when asking for co-founders because the tone of their requests are "hi, this is my startup and i need a developer to flesh it out for me". an actual co-founder is not simply a code money sitting down and banging out someone else's idea. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | luminousbit: This sounds really intriguing to me and I would love to get involved. Would you mind contacting me to talk more? My e-mail is drew -DOT- blas [AT] gmail |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | steveplace: I'd like to hear about it. Email is in my profile. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | presty: why not just throw the idea out to the public instead of going through an email sharing process? |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | nir: Curious to hear about it - email in profile. Cheers |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | plaggypig: I'd certainly like to hear more about it - can you contact me? Email address is in my profile. |
How can one deal with bad management? | dannyr: I'm in the same situation but only until Friday!I gave my 2-week notice last week.My morale went down while working for the company. I have always been told no on pretty much everything.I'm unhappy. I told them about my situation but they never did anything.For the past year, I hoped for things to change. But sometimes you have to be realistic. Developers can do a lot of good things but fixing the management is beyond what we can do.All I can say is that you should leave too. Your morale or spirit is down right now. Leave before you have none left. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | btw0: Please email me, address in profile. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | jaydub: See search circa 1997 |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | mrtron: I began writing this and its easier in pseduocode if you know how they are executing poorly
if you know how to execute better
you could kick ass
else how are you not going to end up doing the same?
else are you just being cynical? |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | abijlani: I don't really see how you stand out from the rest. That said, a t-shirt company in today's environment doesn't seem all that groundbreaking. What Threadless did was something groundbreaking other than that I have just seen your run of the mill t-shirts. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | tstegart: Busted prints only on American Apparel, and Snorg prints some on American Apparel, so how is the quality different?Your question is somewhat rhetorical, since entrepreneurs usually are the ones who take on industries that are sloppy, poorly run and delivering inferior products. So yes, its been done before. You just have to figure out where all the unsatisfied customers are, or where the cost savings are, or how to run things better. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | timcederman: What, like Google did?http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/09/googles_first_s... |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | thorax: These companies are heavily advertised, too. (At least I know their names, and besides Threadless, I don't know many clothing companies.)I think it might be difficult to beat them without coming up with a way to get your brand out there better than they do.Another key thought: I worry that a lot of the t-shirt market isn't really about quality, but about the type of cleverness appreciated by the demographic that likes T-shirts. The risk is that it's a little like selling "high quality bumper stickers"-- people might not be looking for quality there. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | evgen: The real question you should be asking yourself is this: how hard will it be for the competition to change direction or spin-off a new line to solve the same problems we have identified but which can leverage their existing market presence?If it is easy for your competition to copy any successful niche you identify then you are probably in trouble. This is not to say that the venture is doomed, because there are lots of good examples out there of entrepreneurs who have followed this route (e.g identify problem in market, introduce solution, profit) but unless you can build your brand identity quickly or tie your competition's brands to the problems you are solving then you may have trouble.Seriously, how hard would it be for either of the big players to offer a new line from a different shirt supplier? Given their existing market presence they might even be able to convince people to pay a larger markup on the upsale to the quality goods than you can get by only offering the good stuff. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | unalone: How is Busted Tees low-quality? It churns out constantly-amusing shirts that manage to hit every trend that youth cares about. And they do a pretty good job at it, too.They print on American Apparel, so you're basically the exact same there.And you have competition from sites like Threadless, Veer, TurnNocturnal (my personal favorite), so I would find it a bit insulting that you think your designs are better than those of the other companies. One of your shirts rips off a 4chan meme: hardly original. Some of yours look nice, but if I saw them in Busted I wouldn't think they were particularly better than the ones already in the store.In short: if you've got a truly new product, you've got a chance. But - all due respect - it doesn't look like you do. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | halo: Being very successful in a saturated market is definitely possible, especially if you have a product that's much superior to your competitors. However, I don't believe that you do, especially as fashion is quite subjective and you'll struggle to have an empirically better product.The t-shirt space is very crowded - it sometimes feels like everyone in the world now owns a t-shirt company - so there really is a hell of a lot of competition.I don't see how your company differentiates itself from the others and its branding, something I perceive as quite important in the fashion industry, seems quite weak, despite the quite catchy name, especially when you're competing with bigger long-established names in the area that advertise heavily.You'll likely be a modest success, but your designs are, in my view, largely quite forgettable. I think the high-quality arty designer t-shirt angle is a better, more profitable, higher-margin long-term direction than the more passé low-end "cartoony" or "humour t-shirt" market that you're focusing on since they both utterly sewn up by big names, overly saturated and a completely cliché. I do quite like the zombie t-shirt though. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | edw519: 2 things: Know Your Market & Find Your Niche.My guess is that you haven't done either yet.The apparel industry in incredibly brutal and very often without logic. (Comfort is probably not enough of a competitive advantage in this marketplace.)You look like you have some cool stuff. Find your place and stay under the radar of the big boys. But don't think you're selling clothes. You're selling something else. You could make a very nice living there. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | vikram: I'm curious. Could you email me? Email in profile. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | gnikides: As a former journalist I'd like to hear more. Please email me (profile). |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | maxklein: There is a chance, and you know what - there is a market! A huge market that just keeps growing! So why would it fail?Let me give you an example: There are restaurants everywhere. EVERYWHERE! So is the restaurant business saturated? No, it's just mature. Some come, some go. It's all a matter of financing and marketing. People need to eat, people need to buy t-shirts.So if you are well capitalized, there is no reason why you cannot capture a significant share of the market. If you have no capital at all, you will fail.Pick your competitive advantage (slightly cheaper T-Shirts, more mainstream stuff, etc), then create your business based off advertisments. Think of ways to innovate and improve, and there is no reason why you should fail. The market is there, it's certainly not a winner-take-all business. |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | veritas: Curious, as always. My email is in my profile :) |
Interested in news? Network bureau chief just described a service he wants... | brandnewlow: Please send inquiries directly to me. My e-mail is in my profile. Thanks for all your interest. It sounds like it might even be possible to pull a few minds together to bash this out pretty quickly and see if it'll fly or not. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | acro: Three basic competitive strategies: cost, differentiation, focus. All these seem identical to your competitors when looking at your site. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | petercooper: we only print our shirts on American Apparel shirts (regarded as the most comfortable tees you'll ever get your hands on).Really? I thought they were so common just because they were giving printers a good deal or something - they feel average. They're certainly not up to the feel of, say, bamboo t-shirts. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | lacker: There's plenty of opportunity there, but I think you're asking the wrong question. I'm concerned that you don't really understand your customers well enough. It's not obvious to me how Snorg Tees and BustedTees are "insultingly low-quality", and I am part of your target market since I buy the occasional t-shirt on Threadless.Personally, I don't care that much about the feel of a t-shirt with a joke on it. I care if the joke is funny. In fact, I never even try on t-shirts before buying them, so the feel of the t-shirt really doesn't matter. I suspect a lot of your target market agrees with me.So, are you sure that your competition is poorly run? Or do they actually understand better what their customers care about. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | vaksel: You need some sort of gimmick to stand out from the rest of the competition. And no design itself won't work.As an example of a gimmick look at http://200nipples.com (the founder posts on here). His approach will get him the necessary exposure and get people talking about it, and once he gains traction he can put up more designs and expand it. |
What are those "other complex financial derivatives?" | noodle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligations |
What are those "other complex financial derivatives?" | tstegart: Can anyone explain this: "The market for credit derivatives is now so large, in many instances the amount of credit derivatives outstanding for an individual name are vastly greater than the bonds outstanding. For instance, company X may have $1 billion of outstanding debt and $10 billion of CDS contracts outstanding. If such a company were to default, and recovery is 40 cents on the dollar, then the loss to investors holding the bonds would be $600 million. However the loss to credit default swap sellers would be $6 billion."My understanding was, if you have $1 billion in outstanding debt, and that defaults, then the people providing the credit default swap would have to pony up $1 billion. So who are they giving the other $5 Billion to? |
What are those "other complex financial derivatives?" | rms: Does anyone trade in second and third derivatives?For example, the value of the risk of a credit derivative. Or the risk of the risk of a credit derivative. |
Any chance of monetizing this webapp(solarpower, price)? | ld50: turn it into a social network! |
Building Credit | ld50: open up a few more credit cards with as big of a limit as they'll let you.. put $10-$20/month on them and pay them off when they're due. you'll boost your credit score in no time. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | comatose_kid: I'd focus my energy on making a deal with a large bricks and mortar retailer for the top n shirts, possibly as a loss-leader just to advertise my site (on the clothing tag) to drive traffic there. Basically something different than what your competitors are doing (focusing on design and t-shirt quality). |
ASK HN: mobile phone start-ups | qhoxie: I would not say that 99% of the people here are excluding mobile phones. Platforms like Android and the iphone are pretty hot right now for applications. There is a lot of debate surrounding how stable they are as exclusive deployment platforms, but there have definitely been large scale successes. |
Entering a saturated market full of low quality competition? | wheels: Some questions to think about:- Are the customers genuinely frustrated with the low quality of the products currently on the market? How do you know? How can you convince them you're better?- Will you create new markets? If not, can you differentiate yourself enough that you're not competing purely on costs? Can you beat your competitors on costs? How long can you sustain that? (i.e. as your costs rise can you stay competitive)The typical books here are:http://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Indust......about competing in markets, and...http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Uncontested-Compet......on creating new markets. (At this point I've only read the latter. The other one is on my queue. :-) ) |
ASK HN: mobile phone start-ups | meredydd: Mobile phones are definitely worth thinking about. There's quite a web-app skew round here, with associated bias towards the big shiny featureful platforms like Android and the iPhone, but don't discount the other 90% of phone users. There's a lot of life in ordinary J2ME, mobile web, and even SMS applications yet.The one big caveat for mobile development is that it's a pain in the arse to monetise. If you do premium SMS billing (so it shows out of their phone bill), expect the carrier to take at least half of the gross price. If you don't, good luck getting someone to enter a credit card number on a 1-inch screen.In more locked-down environments, there's also the issue of getting "on deck", which is to have your site or application endorsed by the mobile operator. This greatly increases your exposure, but it's a long, fraught, gruelling process of direct negotiations with operators, and I wake up every morning saying a little prayer of thanks that it's not my job. Accomplishing this, so fast and so well, is one of the biggest pieces of evidence that Sam Altman is in fact a genetically enhanced superbeing.Like any sort of development, though, mobile development isn't a what, it's a how. But if you have something you reckon people want, and you can fulfil that desire through their mobile phone, go for it! |
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