instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
|---|---|
Do you list startup experience on your resume for a `normal' job search? | RiderOfGiraffes: Well, what is your startup experience? Why not put your resume online and point us at it so we can offer suggestions.Most recruiters are simple folk and just have a check-list of things they're looking for. Think about the job you want, then list the things you need for that job. Now conflate it through recruiter-think, say you have it all, and see how your experience can be distorted to sound right.But we need to know what you're looking for, what skills you think you have, and what evidence you can provide before we can really offer serious advice.And here's something to think about:http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/AnneLearnsToRecruit.html?HN |
Recommendation for Books on Startups? | Caligula: My personal favorite and one that I wish I read before I started:the four steps to the epiphany |
Recommendation for Books on Startups? | chaosmachine: You're probably already aware of it, but Founders at Work is worth a read.http://www.foundersatwork.com/ |
Recommendation for Books on Startups? | sutro: "Startup" by Jerry Kaplan. http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan... |
Recommendation for Books on Startups? | hga: Walking the High-Tech High Wire: The Technical Entrepreneur's Guide to Running a Successful Enterprise by
David Adamson, http://www.amazon.com/Walking-High-Tech-High-Wire-Entreprene...The best tech startup book I've read, by a founder of a company that came up with a unique semiconductor device. They had to create their market (it had great advantages but they had to convince EEs to do something unconventional), they had to discover what made them money (selling parts or services (consulting)), etc.If your company is going to have a lot of people and has repeatable processes (i.e. you're not developing software) The E-Myth by Michael Gerber or I suppose its revision (which I haven't read): http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...He suggests that you build up any company of this nature as if you're going to franchise it.He also has a lot of other good advice; one that comes to mind is to make sure that there's a head for every "hat", i.e. make sure every critical function is the responsibility of someone, don't let anything fall through the cracks simply because of oversight.At the other end of the spectrum, it's no accident that Robert X. Cringely's Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date is still in print: http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions-Co...Read/skim it if for nothing else but the lesson of how Intel, after it had gotten quite big almost died due to the innocent well intentioned actions of one man. He makes the point that high tech companies, even if they enter the Fortune 500, aren't like "normal" ones.There's the conceit that when a company gets big enough, no one person can kill it. His example is only one of many you can find where screwing up at the technical level can with frightening speed put a high tech company on a terminal path (see the recent "When the elves leave Middle Earth" HN item for another example of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750). |
Recommendation for Books on Startups? | csomar: I read http://www.foundersatwork.com and it was not really bad. However I prefer to read articles and discussions about startups; I think they are the best resource of information. |
LLC to c-corp? | Scott_MacGregor: Probably thousands. Most attorney things seem to always involve thousands. Why not just set it up as a corporation right off the bat. By the way, you will not set up as a C-Corp, only a corporation. The C vs. S thing is a tax treatment under IRS tax law that you can choose once the entity is formed.Since you might want to raise money, to me it seems like the most intelligent thing to do would be to set up a Delaware corporation and operate as a C-Corp. After that if you decide later that you will NEVER want to raise money then flip it to an LLC on advice from your business tax person. |
Why do you have to be an accredited investor? | Scott_MacGregor: United States individual state and also federal securities laws make a determination as to who is considered an accredited investor and who is not. (Federal Securities Laws and state Blue Sky Laws.)Accredited investors are deemed to need less protection under the law than un-accredited investors. Basically accredited investors are deemed more able to take losses and/or more able to analyze which investments are better for their money. In certain instances un-accredited investors may have rights to a return of their invested money in the event of a financial loss, where an accredited investor must take the loss.In the United States, investment is heavily regulated on both the state and the federal level. |
Your favorite tiny feature? | davi: I really like that by default OS X has basic emacs navigation and kill/yank keybindings in all text fields. (Ctl-A, -E, -P, -N, -K, -Y) |
Your favorite tiny feature? | nuclear_eclipse: re 1: `set ignorecase` in your vimrc to have Vim behave the same way.edit: why am I being downmodded for sharing info about replicating the functionality in the biggest competitor to emacs? |
Your favorite tiny feature? | gkoberger: Windows 7 had a ton of these: - Dragging to the side/top of the screen
- Being able to drag a window away from the top of the screen without minimizing it first
- Preview of windows when running your mouse over the task bar
- Desktop slideshow
- Progress bar in task bar (http://rurl.org/28nt)
- Functions built into the task bar (for example, you can see controls for iTunes by just mousing over it in the task bar)
- Snipping Tool
I'm sure there's a few features I missed because I take them for granted now- but I remember being amazed by the little things. |
Your favorite tiny feature? | savant: aliasWhen you can make a command and its arguments simple enough that your mother, who never uses a computer, can use it, then you've done well by the world. <3 alias |
Your favorite tiny feature? | bigbang: F12 in mac. and spaces. |
Your favorite tiny feature? | brm: Not a feature, but go to http://photojojo.com/store and add something to your cart. Always gets me. |
Recommendation for Books on Startups? | mfalcon: I think "Getting Real"(http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php) is an excellent book.I can't remember another one, but as someone previously said, articles, posts and discussions are better resources of information about it. |
Your favorite tiny feature? | safetytrick: I love textmate's subtle and predictable completion. No abnoxious popup menu, it also forces you to learn and focus on the page to predict the popup.apt-get completion in ubuntufirebug's command history |
Your favorite tiny feature? | Feynman: The various ways of taking screenshots in OS X. Something I do nearly every day and am amazed at just how much thought and refinement went into the process. |
Your favorite tiny feature? | chaosprophet: Firefox 3.7 alpha builds: Hiding the menubar till I press the alt key. |
Your favorite tiny feature? | TeHCrAzY: Google Chromes feature, whereby you can drag a tab into its own window, and then drag it back (or to another). I use this every day, and it hurts that I can't do it in other apps. |
Service that negotiates and switches between companies on your behalf. | tonystubblebine: I like the idea. It's a non-stop negotiating service. It could be outsourced. And, unlike some outsourced personal assistants, it could be done passively by monitoring your credit card statements.I think the basic economics for a specialized negotiating call center work out easily with people making $10/hour. One of the big costs of negotiating with providers is waiting on hold. But your call center software can recognize when an operator comes on the line and automatically route the call to a currently available negotiating specialist. |
Service that negotiates and switches between companies on your behalf. | answerly: It seems like a valuable service and has a built in revenue model in that users could pay a fee based on the actual savings that they realize. There are two questions/issues that come to mind:1) How wold the negotiations be facilitated? My guess is that this would have to be actual human-to-human contact, which seems expensive. One way to keep the costs down may be to develop a filtering system that only accepts users with bills that have a high likelihood of being eligible for some discount. That way your resources would only be spent on the users most likely to generate revenue for you.2) Do service providers like cell phone companies discuss account details with a third party who is not the account holder? It seems like the type of thing that a big company wouldn't want to allow for any number of reasons (i.e. privacy concerns, preventing an "agent" from negotiating on behalf of the user).Some aspects of your idea are topically similar to BillShrink.com although they aren't doing any negotiating on behalf of individual users. They are doing quite well. |
Service that negotiates and switches between companies on your behalf. | 1ts: Users would have to share their authentication details with the negotiator, which would be a security risk but would mean the negotiator would be indistinguishable from the user.The service providers certainly wouldn't like it but I'm not sure there's much they can do. |
A free "cell phone" for use within a few miles of home? | ab9rf: Assuming the US, you'll run into legal problems. None of the Part 15 (low-power unlicensed) bands would have the range you're looking for; the power levels are too low to give that much range. Part 97 (ham radio) wouldn't help; there are too many restrictions on content (no encryption, no profanity, no pecuniary interest, limits on "third party" traffic, etc.) to use ham radio for the purpose desired. And you can't send data (other than selective calling codes, and geolocation bursts only in the FRS) on the various licensed-by-rule "citizen" services in Part 95.That pretty much leaves you with having to get a business radio license ($260 per ten years minimum, plus possible additional fees), and on top of that you'll need a someone with a GROL ($60 fee plus testing fees) to maintain and operate it.The only other option would be unlicensed VLF. This you could do, but there's two problems: the antennas for VLF are huge, and the available bandwidth is tiny. Ever used a 300 baud modem? Well, that screams compared to what you can get out of a VLF connection: 5 baud is a fast data rate in this band.Those Voyager units use frequencies reserved for military use the United States. Using them in the US would be a good way to get yourself in a heap-o-trouble.The problem you have is that for the range you want you need to be able to operate over the horizon. That means your receiver is going to be in one of the transmitter's diffraction zones, which means only a fraction of the transmitter's signal will get through. We do this all the time in radio, and we accomplish by throwing enough power at the problem to have a received signal strong enough to be demodulated even with diffraction losses. For the distance your looking for, you'll need about 25 watts minimum, way more than you can get away with in Part 15. |
Your favorite tiny feature? | vorobei: screen, a subtle feature of remote access. |
Your favorite tiny feature? | r11t: "Ctrl + r" for searching previously used commands in shell. |
What are various incentive models on the Web? | richardw: Best reference I've found:http://buildingreputation.com/doku.php |
What are various incentive models on the Web? | yannis: thesixtyone.com has a very well thought out system. |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | ScottWhigham: I'm the same way - I have probably 20-40 that I would get rid of cheap if I could find an easy, non-managed way to offload them. I've tried a few of the services through the years (like sedo) but haven't had much luck. |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | mediarosh: Think up ideas for them and launch some interesting websites. If you don't have the time, list them here and get the community to do it for you.I am a web designer and I can design the websites, if anyone's interested. |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | dem0o8: You can try selling it at http://brandstack.com/. You'll never know... someone might be interested in your domain.best of luck! |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | mediarosh: Anyone thinks its a good idea to launch a site, where people can contribute domain names. And the community can develop some cool sites, sort-of like open source web development. |
Recommendation for Books on Startups? | ScottWhigham: What are you looking for? That is, IMO, too broad of a question for me/us to give anything more than broad suggestions. Are you looking for inspirational stories? War stories? How to? Legal and "how to form a corporation"? There are great books in probably 20 different areas but you need the right ones at the right time to get the most out of them IMO. |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | neilb: Just parking it on Google will cover your domain registration costs. |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | jacquesm: Auction them off through moniker. |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | pierrefar: Try listing them on Sitepoint. You should easily get at least the reg costs. Who knows, maybe someone will see something in one of them and give you a really nice chunk of money.Don't expect to make zillions out of them. Maybe enough to take your better half for a nice meal. |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | dtby: I'm reluctant to let them become a part of some domain squatter's portfolioIn what substantive way are they not, already? |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | ohashi: I hate to rain on most of the parades around here, but chances are your domain is worthless. If you hand registered it and even you don't like it, the odds of it selling for anything above your registration fee is pretty unlikely. Domain names are some of the most illiquid assets in terms of web stuff. The only liquid aspect is the reseller market, and that is based mainly on traffic/revenue or some special cases of generic/keyword names. So, your best really is to just let them expire, perhaps your registrar has an agreement to give you some of the cash if they get snapped up at auction upon expiry (Fabulous, my registrar does). Other then that, finding them a good home, even for free, is going to be a waste of your time.The only alternative I can think of is offering them for free to whomever submits the most creative idea for each one, but you have to do it somewhere (like HN/Reddit/etc) or your own channels (if you drive decent traffic). |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | mrduncan: Not my startup, but I believe that Startuply (http://startuply.com/) was built using .NET. |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | DanielBMarkham: I'm using part of the .NET stack for my webapp.I really like .NET the language (the CLR, the libraries) and really could care less for all the overblown frameworks, like ASP.NET or WPF |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | nkohari: I was a .NET developer before launching our startup (http://agilezen.com/), so it was natural for us to use .NET.It's actually a very good technology stack if you lean on the available open source options instead of just using everything Microsoft suggests. C# is a good language, ASP.NET is very efficient and scalable, NHibernate is a passably good ORM, and ASP.NET MVC is a solid foundation to build webapps on.It hurts to have to pay license fees for hosting, but we're enrolled in BizSpark, which gives us free licenses for 3 years, and you can always look into running your app on Mono. (We are.)Not sure what you're looking to find out, but feel free to ask anything. :) |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | jswinghammer: I'm using C# and .Net 4.0 at the moment. I'm using SQL Server 2008 Express for the fairly light database load I have (it's an installable product not a public web app). I'm using Linq to interact with it. It's been a great experience for me so far. The Linq integration with SQL Server has saved me a ton of time. I've had to write a few stored procedures so far and that's it.I know C# better than any other language so it was an obvious choice for me. The option of at least offering a Linux product on Mono has crossed my mind a few times so that's a plus too. |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | johns: I'm building two startups on .NET. Mine is http://snapleague.com a freemium recreational sports league web site builder. For my day job I'm working on http://screenfeed.com which is all .NET on the backend (the main APIs are ASP.NET MVC). I've got another product in the works that's ASP.NET MVC as well.I ended up here starting back when I got VB3 for a birthday present in high school (actually if you go back further, I started programming with BASIC on an Apple in middle school). When the web came around that translated in to ASP/VBScript and then around the time .NET 2.0 came out I switched to C# and haven't really looked back. So far, the framework hasn't limited what I want to accomplish. That may not always be the case, but for now I'm satisfied with it.I'll echo what nkohari said about licensing. BizSpark helps a lot, and you can easily use MySql and the like if you don't want to pay for MS SQL Server. SQL Azure might relieve some of the pricing pressure for SQL too.Speaking of Azure, I really like it. It's completely intuitive if you've done any ASP.NET development. The only problem is that it is trailing about 6-12 months behind the other cloud app hosting options in features. And since SQL Azure was announced there's been far less emphasis on Azure Table Storage which is a shame. The querying capabilities for table storage are ABYSMAL. It needs to be on par with SimpleDB before I could see myself using it (and I really, really want to use it).I was contemplating jumping ship before ASP.NET MVC came out since the previous versions of ASP.NET (known as Webforms) really hindered more complex web app development. MVC is awesome though. Almost every part of the framework is swappable so if you have a specific need, you can quickly swap in your own or an OSS implementation. ASP.NET MVC + Spark View Engine is pure hotness.There's been a shift going on inside Microsoft's DevDiv too. ASP.NET MVC is open source, jQuery is shipped with Visual Studio, MS employees are active bloggers and twitterers, etc. And speaking of Twitter, there's a strong .NET community there. |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | icey: I've written more C# than probably any other language, but I've never seriously considered it for anything outside of my day job. I like the language and the tools are nice, but for pure web applications I feel that there are far nicer options out there.Deploying applications on Windows is pretty easy, but there are far fewer hosting options for Windows; and the options that are out there will either give you a very locked down environment or require you to have a dedicated box.Beyond that, it's kind of a pain in the ass to do a quick edit of a file to fix something when you're on the road if you don't have all of your tools available. It's just not a big deal to make single file changes in Perl, Python or Ruby because most people don't use a full-featured IDE to edit that code and as a result files are often structured differently (which is to say generally broken up into smaller chunks).If you're thinking about starting up on the .Net stack, there's really no reason not to if that's the stack you prefer to use. Bizspark is a nice program which allows you to delay the purchase of most licenses for 3 years. Microsoft has a long history of providing nice tools for its developers as well.There are definitely some big sites out there that are using .Net as well (Loopt, Newegg, Woot), and there are tons of developers out there that are familiar with the stack.I would say if that's what you are the strongest with, and you like it, there's no real reason not to use .Net - as long as you don't mind using a proprietary stack. I haven't used Mono seriously, but I've heard good things about it. However, it's still a second-class citizen when compared to the canonical .Net stack. |
ASK HN: Green certification on HN | mschy: It should open you up to: http://www.co2stats.com/certpro.php?s=1138&ref=http://ne...It's a carbon offset program for websites.For what it's worth, my company is carbon-neutral, and primarily uses "green" power sources (wind, and nuclear). I do it for two reasons:1) Promotion. For my business, it's very cheap marketing, and a generator of publicity. For next to nothing, I get a few links, and can differentiate myself from competitors on a dimension that is cared about by some.2) Because until it's proven that CO2 emissions aren't an issue, I prefer to work on the assumption that they are a problem. After all, if I'm wrong, all I've done is inadvertently invest in energy independence which also strikes me as a good thing :-) |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | kogir: The majority of Loopt's back-end runs in Windows Server 2003/2008, .Net 3.5 and SQL Server 2008. We have some Ubuntu, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Ruby, etc. as well.I really enjoy the tooling, the documentation, and the libraries. There is exactly one time we've run into an issue with the built in libraries: The documentation didn't match what really happened, but Microsoft confirmed this for free and fixed the docs.Visual Studio is rather polarizing. I'd say the developers at Loopt fall into three camps: Like it, miss Eclipse, and still use Emacs. You don't have to use it. I can't type more than 20 WPM; Intellisense is so good I haven't felt the need to learn to type properly.Cost wise it's really not a problem. There's BizSpark which is great for three years, but after that you can get into their SPLA licensing program. It lets you pay per month for only what you use. See http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/licensing/default....Loopt started before BizSpark, so we know what it costs. Here's a hint: we paid more per month for Office and Exchange than we did for the software running our service. All in it was less than hiring an intern.If you're super strapped for cash, just get an MSDN subscription, and use it for everything. It's not legal, but Microsoft knows there's more money to be made by letting you become successful (at which point you pay real money for licensing) than there is in going after your initial few counts of infringement.If you like getting into the guts of things you might not like .Net, even though they've released many of the symbols and source code. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b8ttk8zy(lightweight... That said, you can't edit it. I'm ok with this though because in my experience it just works. I'd rather focus on developing my product than fixing the tools and runtime I'm using.The open source .Net scene is a little touch and go. There are some great projects out there, many by Microsoft itself, but it's simply not as robust and vibrant as the Linux open source community. This seems to be changing (slowly), but as I said earlier we've found compelling reasons to have a mixed environment.I'm not saying it's all good. ASP.Net is a valiant attempt to solve the wrong problem. Drag and Drop doesn't work for the web. .Net MVC is much better. Despite that, our website is written in Rails, and communicates with our back-end using Thrift. It works great.If you want to know more let me know. Maybe I'll write a blog post.Edit: Grammar |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | onewland: I think the trick that almost everybody uses, even if they don't realize it, is to determine what the simplest (read: least time consuming) possible task to move their project forward is. Even if you spend time thinking about this and "not getting anything done", you're really getting planning done. When you've figured out what that task is it's easy to knock it out, and you'll probably do it pretty quickly because you've been thinking the problem through.And don't read Hacker News :) |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | Zeleboba: I agree with onewland: split your big task into small ones and solve them one by one.My experience tells me that it works great, each completed task motivates me to next one and so on. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | chasingsparks: I can't force it, but sometimes I can trick myself.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | slmbrhrt: I can't think straight without my headphones and some decent music or white noise.I use awesomewm, which, like ratpoison and ion, works hard to maximize every window and minimize distractions.It's also good to designate one part of your room as the spot where you get your work done, and sit there if and only if you're going to do work, so that you pair sitting at your desk with getting work done. If you can't get into hack mode after about fifteen minutes of sitting in front of your work, get up and do something like solve a Rubik's cube, play Tetris until you lose, or just go get something to drink, but then sit down and try again. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | scottw: You might want to consider that your brain has limits:http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/12/willpower.phpI don't want to say "you can't do it" but I remember from my school days hitting the wall and there was nothing I could do about it until I'd had time to rest and recharge.Here are some interesting links about gumption I've collected over the past few months (mostly from HN):http://www.alistapart.com/articles/burnout/
http://sivers.org/dont-fight-it
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006569.htmlIn short, 10 hours of mental work might be your limit. I know that if I can squeeze in 10 solid hours of good creative mental work, I've had an extremely good day. Most good days I'll eek out 6 hours. Average days are probably around 4.You might look at options to reduce that 10 hours somehow. Some people drop out of school, some just skip a class a day, some drop a class from the schedule altogether, etc.You also don't talk about what your 11th hour is. Finding something interesting to you, especially if you're out of gumption, will be critical.When you're full of mental energy, you can do anything; when you're out mental energy, your choices of what you can do are limited to easy things that are interesting.Good luck! |
My app images are displayed for another app review. | jaddison: Clickable link: http://bit.ly/5h9nfZ |
Simple Explanation of Bayesian Logic | michael_dorfman: I think the best introduction remains http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes, by our own Eliezer. |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | csomar: My sister is building an E-commerce website with Asp.net and I should say it's really pain: A lot complicated and very slow (although her laptop is 1 year old).
+ Hosting are quite expensive, hosting prices for dot net are enough to make you choose PHP.If you are going for a small project, choose PHP, pyhton or Ruby. If you are building a giant app for a company, you'd better give Asp.net and SQL server a try.For me, I use .NET to develop Windows application. Right now, I made a barcode software, no more and I should say it's the most advanced and coolest IDE + language (C#)I have ever used. For speed, it's Okay. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | csomar: I think none of the above understood your problem. I have the same problem and my solution was to keep in the university library and study with my peers. Today life is distracting (emails, facebook, TV...) so you won't resist it.Another solution is to sell your mobile, tv, laptop, xbox... you'll find your productive mode. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | zaphar: I've found that there are no tricks. It's mostly just sit down and start working. It'll take about 5-10 minutes of steady concentration and suddenly I'll drop into the zone. There is no substitute for "just do it" as far as my personal makeup goes. I used to try all the various hack your mind stuff that comes out every few years. But when it came down to it there was no substitute for just sheer concentration on the task at hand. |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | megamark16: The company I work for uses .NET for our hosted CRM solution (www.eSalesTrack.com), and before that I used .NET at the bank I worked for for our online banking application. I use Python/Django for all of my own personal projects, some of which I almost plugged here but since they don't have anything to do with .NET I'll refrain. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | thaumaturgy: Work in a public place (cafe, library).Alternatively, here's my trick: I have a "work" Pandora station. I turn it on when it's time to work, and I never turn it on unless I'm working. While it's on, it's time to work.When it pauses after an hour, I can choose either to take a short break -- with the music off -- or I can immediately re-start it and continue to work for the next hour.It's been a handy bit of mental conditioning. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | gkoberger: I need to make a to-do list (on paper, preferably) of the specific things that I need to get doneThen, I do them in order. Doing them in order is important- otherwise, I'll waste time procrastinate by trying to figure out what I should do next. If I do them in order, disregarding importance or difficulty, I don't spend half my time debating over whats next. |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | clistctrl: My own startup uses C# and the MVC framework. I also have a windows service (.net C# as well) for some data processing. My main reason for choosing it was development speed (it is what I know best) At my day job I work for a consulting firm that does sitecore CMS implementations for large sites. In addition we developed a CMS for displaying data visualizations for data oriented sites. The biggest benefit of .net for me is the tool set. Visual studio is very solid, intelli-sence makes me a productive programmer, and plugins such as Red Gates Profiler make me a fast debugger. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | KentBeck: Establishing a rhythm helps. Make a cup of tea every time you sit down to work. Light a candle. Turn on a certain style of music.Me I like juggling as a warm up. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | angelbob: Something that often helps me: split into smaller tasks, but also prioritize. What is the most important thing I could do to get my work a step forward?And by "forward" I mean "more usable" or "more releasable" rather than "cooler". That's important :-) |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | clistctrl: 1.) reduce distractions - this includes a clean workspace etc2.) appropriate music - I cannot work without headphones, and appropriate music on, its more of a tool to drown out the rest of the world.3.) caffine, cold - at work i drink coffee... its just not as effective. I used to drink a lot of red bull, but my heart started to feel funny so I switched to coke.4.) Interest - I need to get myself interested in what i'm working on, this is incredibly difficult to do with job work. I'm still working on solving this one. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | access_denied: I am doing Getting Things Done (GTD). One part of it is the so-called "Processing" step. That means you gather all your notes, scraps of paper and so on and work it into your GTD-system. I do this at the beginning of the workday and it helps to focus my mind on what is going on in my world. Because I have to think about my notes (What does that mean? Is it actionable?) I have to load the current "frontier" of problems into RAM. On most days this leads to automatically starting to work directly on the problem at hand and getting into the zone. |
Finding unwanted domains a good home? | colbyolson: There used to be a HN thread of domains people were willing to giveaway/sell to interested parties. Perhaps it's time for another?edit: spelling |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | tungstenfurnace: If it seems that you can't get some task done and you aren't making any progress this means that either (a) it lies beyond your present abilities, and/or (b) your heart isn't in it.>I can work for 10 straight hours if I'm at schoolThis is part of the problem IMO. Schools are inherently coercive and this messes up one's approach to instrinsically motivated learning.It is the task itself that provides the reward. If the work is noble and interesting and if it lies within your abilities then you will find sufficient vitality is available to perform it.OTOH, forcing yourself to do stuff (as if you were still at school) causes the mind to slowly shut down (starting with loss of creativity).>I find it very hard to work at least 1hIf you weren't doing the 'work', what would you be doing instead during that hour? Start with that, and do it better. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | saurabh: Do a ritual before you start working. |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | loganfrederick: The small-to-midsize companyI work for (http://callcopy.com) use .NET.Affordit.com, which received funding a few months ago from the Founders Fund, is also built on .NET. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | maqr: Adderall. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | tetha: One thing that works for me is thinking out aloud. I don't really understand why, and frequently, the spoken words turn into some foreign tongue no one really understands (especially if the train of thought goes faster), but somehow this helps with keeping the train of thought going against all kinds of obstacles and distractions. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | wensing: Headphones and a clear schedule in front of me. A cup of tea or coffee can help.As far as music goes, have an album that you can put on infinite loop. |
What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET? | vyrotek: Current project is built on ASP.Net MVC, Azure and SQL Server 2008.
We are also in the BizSpark program and love it! |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | nostrademons: Are you trying to work for 1h on top of the 10h you've already worked in school? If so, that may be your problem.Almost nobody can work for 10h straight. I'd guess that you're taking breaks for lunch and between classes, and to hang out with friends. It could just be that you've run out of juice by the time you get home.I've found that I get about 3-4h of good, productive, cognitively demanding work done a day. My friends in grad school say this is fairly typical of them too. If there's an exciting project with a deadline, I might be able to go up to 7-8 hours in bursts, but that's paid for by a week or so of complete unproductivity afterwards.The good news is that this is enough. Those people you hear about who've built world-changing inventions? They didn't do it through working more, they did it through working more effectively. That means paying attention to what's important, doing it, and letting the busywork slide. |
Simple Explanation of Bayesian Logic | physcab: I always like to think of an application when learning new concepts. Bayesian theory is often used in machine learning, for example, where the "learning" is simply done by updating a bayesian equation. In ML you often have this:posterior probability = conditional probability * marginal probability.where,marginal prob is an initial guess (ie you have two boxes and the probability of choosing one is 5/10)conditional probability is typically an observation given the marginal (ie you look inside one of the boxes and there are 4 red balls and 2 green balls, so the probability of a red ball in box 1 is 4/6 or 2/3.)posterior is the simply the probability of those two multiplied together (ie 2/3 * 1/2 = 1/3).Now, in ML, because of a property called conjugacy...you can use this posterior probability to update the learning process. In the next iteration, you would use 1/3 as your initial marginal prob guess.If you're looking for good tutorials, I would suggest:Paul Graham's Spam Bayes filter:http://www.paulgraham.com/better.htmlAndrew Moore's Statistical learning tutorials:http://www.autonlab.org/tutorials/Christopher Bishop's Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning- Chapter 1: Probability Theoryhttp://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cmbishop/prml/... |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | Scott_MacGregor: Use coffee and a special environment like Pavlov’s Dog to trigger you to work.Put together a customized workspace for yourself. It doesn’t have to be big, just outside the regular house living space somewhere. Somewhere like the garage or basement (even a big closet). Somewhere you can be alone and not bothered by anyone but is not a bedroom.Set yourself up with a desk/table and proper office chair like you can get from Office Depot. Hook up the internet for yourself and a put in a good light source, also buy a small 1-man coffee maker from Walmart or somewhere cheap and buy some strong coffee. Keep the coffee maker and coffee in your workspace and drink coffee when you are there while focusing on getting down to work. Don’t play games there or do anything but work in there and drink coffee.Since you are in high school here are a couple of links about Pavlov’s dog in case you don’t know about him. (ps. teachers always seem to like reports about things like Pavlov’s dog for extra credit.)http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/pavlov/read...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | city41: Explore and try things. I have found listening to my favorite music is a hindrance, for example. I instead have found that listening to drum'n'bass or jazz helps a lot. I normally wouldn't listen to them, but they are more nondescript and fill the background space nicely, allowing me to concentrate.I'm there to work, not enjoy my music, so I am perfectly OK with this change. |
Does Web Traffic Always Equal Income? | kilobugs: I think hight traffic means income certainly, if you have good blogs you can generate income through Affiliate marketing, advertising, and adsense as well, but you just require to familiarize yourself with those areas and you will make good income out of it, even be able to quit your job in the couple of months. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | jsz0: I like to complete one small task to break the ice and remind myself there is a little intellectual reward waiting at the end of every completed task. If you string together a few small successes you can build some momentum. It's important to be realistic about how much time you spend working in a day to avoid burn out. Personally I think 10-12 hours is probably a natural limitation most people face. You can't neglect other parts of your life and stay productive. Gotta find the right balance or you'll burn out.If I really have trouble getting motivated about a project I will try to find a better or easier solution. I can't really grind away at something I'm not interested in. I need to figure out a way to get into the project. One of the things that helps me is making diagrams. I will spend a lot of time making sure all the fonts are right, good colors, good spacing, etc. It's silly but, in the end, I have this really nice diagram and I'm somehow more motivated to make it a reality. The other trick is to find people who are interested in what you're doing. Their excitement and interest can be infectious. It really helps to feel like what you're working on isn't a waste of time. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | hyoogle: Check out the "pomodoro technique"- I've used it when I feel like I need to build up work momentum and after a while it gets me back in the groove... http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ |
Your favorite tiny feature? | dnsworks: Auto-save on web forms. |
Hacker News Clone/Social News software? | cperciva: The code which runs HN is shipped with ARC. |
Private Domain Name Registration | kngspook: While I, personally, have no experience trying these thresholds, NearlyFreeSpeech.net seems to be committed to giving their customers the widest possible range of legal freedoms and playing everything by the book legally, including giving you and opportunity to respond to legal papers filed against you, etc. And they seem to value your right to privacy quite highly.Added perks: fairly reasonable prices and at least a decent level of technical competence. |
Hacker News Clone/Social News software? | alanthonyc: I'll be there if you set it up. |
What will be the bigggest technology story of 2010? | anigbrowl: Tablets, tablets everywhere. |
Where can you find hardware hackers in Houston? | joe_bleau: I know one...I'll point him at this topic. Are you looking for full-time help, or more of a consultant/part-timer? |
What will be the bigggest technology story of 2010? | DanielBMarkham: Real-time web starts being much more a part of the average user's browser experience. |
What will be the bigggest technology story of 2010? | gry: Cell networks as dumb pipes.EDIT: "becoming" to "as" |
What will be the bigggest technology story of 2010? | weaksauce: The Apple tablet revolutionizes modern medicine as a simple checklist app tailor made for doctors reduces hospital mistakes by 50%. |
Can you use twilio to create a tech support call center? | jaddison: I've heard that FreeSWITCH vastly outperforms Asterisk (sorry, no experience with it myself), although feature-wise it's a little bit lacking in comparison at the moment.http://www.freeswitch.org/ |
Simple Explanation of Bayesian Logic | raffi: Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segarin is a gentle introduction to many ML topics include Bayesian classifiers. |
What will be the bigggest technology story of 2010? | portman: The rebirth of the technology IPO. Two of the following five will IPO: Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype. |
How do you get in your "productive" mode? | known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_syndrome |
What will be the bigggest technology story of 2010? | teuobk: I'm going to be a contrarian and predict that tablets fail to gain traction outside of a small niche market. The Apple tablet will be an amazing piece of technology, sure, but I don't think that people are going to want to carry around a device of that size without having a physical keyboard for input. |
What will be the bigggest technology story of 2010? | adam_feldman: A huge step forward towards real broadband ubiquitous Internet access (A larger clearwire wimax rollout perhaps?) |
Which Scheme book to read? | dragonquest: From my own personal experiences, try "How to Design Programs" (HTDP) by Felleisen et al as an introduction to Scheme. Its a great educational book which really prepares you for SICP.Also if you want to give Common Lisp a try, I'd highly recommend "Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation" by David S. Touretzky. Its an old book but well worth its price in gold. It is the simplest way to really get Common Lisp and its concepts. |
Which Scheme book to read? | prakash: +1 for HtDP, after which the schemer series, followed by SICP.Also, read this: http://norvig.com/21-days.html |
Which Scheme book to read? | samdk: I have not read SICP, but I have read The Little Schemer. It's my favorite programming book.If does a very good job of getting you comfortable with thinking recursively. It not meant to impart immediate 'practical' knowledge, and it really uses Scheme as a vehicle for teaching recursion, not the other way around. You can do the exercises in any Lisp dialect easily enough, and even in JavaScript (http://javascript.crockford.com/little.html).My recommendation would be to use The Little Schemer as well as another, more practically focused book on Scheme or Lisp and work through them concurrently.Also, if you're just getting started and are going to be using Scheme, the DrScheme mini-IDE makes it very easy to get started quickly. It's part of the PLT-Scheme package: http://www.plt-scheme.org/. |
Which Scheme book to read? | Kaizyn: I would recommend you start with The Little Schemer and follow up with The Seasoned Schemer (the sequel to the other book). These two will give you a good feel for some aspects of Scheme programming, but they will not go into the same depth about the fundamentals of computer science you'll get from SICP. After reading them, then you should advance to either How To Design Programs as suggested before SICP or if you're feeling really ambitious jump right to SICP. |
Which Scheme book to read? | elbenshira: If you have little programming experience, I'd start with The Little Schemer. It's short and concise. Plus, I think you'll have more fun with The Little Schemer.Disclaimer: I've never read SICP. |
Which Scheme book to read? | Mathnerd314: I suggest Practical Common Lisp. (considering that it's both online and in book form) |
Which Scheme book to read? | garply: Just for an alternate opinion:I find programming books relatively valueless. Just start reading code and programming. Google when you don't understand a piece of code.Approximately how to get started on an Ubuntu system: $ sudo apt-get install mzscheme
$ mzscheme
> (print "hello world")
Then Google for increasingly complex programs. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.