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Common sense emacs tutorial that doesn't assume I'm stupid? | mnemonicsloth: You might try the elisp programming intro. You can read it online at http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/, but the right way to access it is within emacs. It should have an entry in the list of top-level nodes you'll see if you hit M-x info.Emacs also has a built-in repl, the Interactive ELisp Mode. Hit M-x (alt-x) and type ielm (your cursor will have jumped down to the minibuffer below the mode line) and hit enter. You'll find yourself in a buffer with an elisp prompt, where you can use tab completion and elisp's doc functions to do a lot of learning: (documentation FOO)
(apropos STRING)
documentation finds the docstring attached to function FOO and apropos searches for functions whose names match STRING. |
I'm way too shy, please help | warp: I used to by shy, then I fell in love.In past, I would fear what others would think of me, which made me very shy. When I fell in love I only cared about what my love interest would think. Obviously I was even more shy around her, so that relationship didn't work out. But in the meantime I didn't care anymore what others would think, this got me into a positive feedback loop and fixed my shyness enough to no longer be a problem.Not something you can easily trigger, but you need to find some way to get into that positive feedback loop. |
What do you listen to when you code? | dnsworks: Mostly I listen to a lot of reggae, ska, and punk .. Operation Ivy being a favorite that seems to help motivate me.As easily distractible as I am, a great set of noise-canceling headphones is a must. They help me control my adhd and block external interference. I really recommend the Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7's. I pretty much already have them on when I code. http://bit.ly/9FCd5e talks about them a bit more. |
What advice would you give a young technical cofounder in a "CTO" role? | Roridge: Stop being worried about having a "title" and do the job and you will pick up as much experience as you can. If other people want to call you a CTO, let them, but it's just a name.Founders who give themselves the important buzz word titles is a false positive to productivity. Like joining a gym and not working out. You get instant gratification just from joining. |
I'm way too shy, please help | j053003: Don't take life too seriously--you're not going to make it out alive anyway.Edit: or what Anonjon said |
I'm way too shy, please help | Mz: I am wondering if you have a keen sense of smell. Since it is in person but not online, I would guess there is something physiological involved. Anecdotally, my son is very strongly impacted by the feelings and reactions of people around him. He also has a keen sense of smell. I suspect the two things are related since pheromones are also picked up by the nose (olfactory).I was bedridden at one time and largely housebound for a long time. During that time, I spent a lot of time online. Getting out into the world again and around people was a headtrip. I have found that it is much easier to drop someone a polite note, send them an email, etc in order to talk about difficult subjects because it removes that physiological component. If they have a strong negative initial reaction, I am not exposed to it. They can take time to calm down and compose themselves before replying, etc. If handled properly, it can do a lot to defuse potentially highly charged situations.Yes, start a blog again and do more stuff online. You might consider planning a web-based business or project. |
I'm way too shy, please help | maxklein: Everything becomes easier the more you do it. If you're shy, there is an easy way to get over it: break it into component parts (talking to people, going new places etc). The break each part into steps that you can take. For example, talking to people an easy way to start is to talk to fruit sellers about their fruit, then asking for advice on clothes and so on. Now, everyday make it a mission to go and conquer one level of it til you are comfortable with that. Then move to the next level.The way I am advocating is slow working, but it's easy to do and it changes the very fundamentals of who you are.Also travel to other cities alone and just walk around and discover the city. Being in a new environment will open you up to being more accepting of things you don't know or understand. |
I'm way too shy, please help | stevoski: Medication worked wonders for me.I had anxiety problems that were crippling my life. Two years ago I was prescribed Paroxetin. The changes it has done me for are great. I sleep much better. I'm not so irritable. I don't worry so much about failure and what other people think. I am far more open about my life, even with strangers, as readers of my blog know.A pleasant side-effect is that I can coolly walk into a crowded room or bar. I used to be close to panic in this situation. Last Saturday night I started a random conversation with two girls in a local bar and talked to them for a couple of hours. And if they had dissed me - I wouldn't have cared.The past was not like this for me. |
I'm way too shy, please help | krmmalik: I used to be painfully shy too, but i started to get much better when i realised that were many other people who had the same problem.Some things i have learned that sometimes it can come down to self-esteem, so if you solve that problem you've got most of it covered. I dont know if you are male or female, but there is video series on youtube by David DeAngelo (its a little crude) caled "On being a man", its worth watching. Just as a "gaining insight" exercise. I wouldnt take the whole thing literally, but it helps.Other than that, i agree with the other commenter that the more you do something the better you get it. Start with the slightly easier things first and then start pushing yourself further.Also, get a pen and paper and for each thing that painfully frightens you list down a few reasons as to why it frightens you, i.e. worst case scenario, and then list why the worst case scenario itself frightens you and keep extrapolating that back as much as you can. that REALLY helps (hope it makes sense, email or skype me if you want to know more). (khuram@xs-pro.co.uk) skype: krmmalikand lastly there's a book called "Feel the fear and do it anyway" by Susan Jeffers. Its worth reading.(sorry for the information overload, just take one thing at a time) |
What advice would you give college students about starting a business? | marcamillion: Cash flow is king.People always talk about 'cash is king', but more importantly...'cash flow' is really king.If you get them to focus on generating cash flow early, then from there you can lead into getting a prototype/lean product into early customer's hands early.You can be 'profitable' and still go bankrupt. |
I'm way too shy, please help | davidw: I enjoyed learning salsa dancing a lot, and it helped my confidence, and ability to just approach people (well, girls, specifically). Plus, it's actually fun. My wife and I still go occasionally, these days:-) |
What advice would you give college students about starting a business? | InclinedPlane: The single most important thing I'd tell new college graduates is to not buy a new car. Time and time again I've seen so many people acquire moderately paying entry level employment and then immediately go and yoke themselves to a huge debt that will deeply affect their finances for the next several years. Better to go without a car for a while, if practical, and then buy used. If possible pay cash, but in any event avoid anything that takes more than a year or so to pay off if you have to borrow money. |
I'm way too shy, please help | almost: Not directly related to shyness but I think this video might possibly help:http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_g...I think it's important to remember that most people are insecure in some way, it's just that different people show it differently. So maybe the loud extroverted guy is really scared to.Good luck with stuff, work on it and you will improve. This is not something you're stuck with, it's just a hard work to sort it out. |
Resources in one cubic mile of sea water | lifeisstillgood: Gold measured in Seawater in 1990 - "just 1 gram of gold for every 100 million tonnes of sea water (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol 98, p 208)."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717242.800-science-g... |
I'm way too shy, please help | tomhoward: Be careful of advice involving putting yourself in stressful situations, eg public speaking classes, improv, talking to strangers, approaching women, etc.Shyness is a generally a combination of the emotional (painful memories of embarrassing/humiliating situations) and the physiological (neurological stress & oversensitivity). These two aspects can influence each other, making the situation steadily worse as you pass through life, and can push you to breaking point if you can't work out how to escape the cycle.If you have become hypersensitive to criticism or the feeling of embarrassment, that's a real physiological condition, and deliberately invoking this sensation through "fear conquering" exercises can make the situation worse - ie, add to the pile of painful memories and exert further physiological strain on your body.There's a bunch of ways you can make your nervous system more robust, through nutrition (food+supplements), physical health & fitness, and crucially, "letting go" of painful memories (it seems wacky, but many people find "tapping" or EFT to be really effective).Over time, this can enable you to be more relaxed and confident.If you're going to do anything to challenge yourself, make sure you're taking small incremental steps. It's important to get yourself on a success trajectory, where each day or each week you're getting a little better than the last, and never suffering a major fall or setback. Minor setbacks are OK, as long as they're not too painful they'll become a way of figuring out when you're going right or wrong.I'm aware some of this stuff may sound absurd, but it's based on my own experience, which includes learning that common "wisdom" about this stuff, including conventional advice from mental health "professionals", is ineffective at best and terribly damaging at worst.The good news is you really can overcome the difficulty you find yourself in, and life can be far more enjoyable than you ever imagined possible.If you want any more advice, email me: tom.howard/gmail. |
What technologies still impress you most today? | fezzl: The world wide web, for being so relevant to many things I do. |
any successful start-ups started by non-technical founders? | ig1: Wikipedia, Xing |
Exclusive startup coverage TechCrunch vs Mashable? | mgcreed: You don't rate ReadWriteWeb or The Next Web? Read somewhere that RWW drove more traffic to a startup's website than TC. TNW has grown a ton over the last year.Anyway, i suggest email them all and see who bites first. |
What advice would you give a young technical cofounder in a "CTO" role? | hga: In a startup it's essential that every "hat" has a corresponding head it's on. Being a startup, it's likely that many heads will have many hats; to mix metaphors just make sure all the bases are covered.Drilling down, as "CTO" I'd consider myself responsible for making sure of all the following (needless to say, this isn't an exaustive list):Business continuity: if you're the only one diligent enough to make sure you're backups are happening and work, do it (in the bad old days that meant running the tape backup every day). Never be too proud to sweep the floor.As CTO, you're responsible for "what": the architecture and consistency of your systems. Visit the Joel Test and do it in reverse.Depending on the people below you, you can leave a lot of the "how" to them, ideally you'll mostly supervise there. Ideally they'll come to consensus on contentious issues, beware of playing the role of a tiebreaker.Ah, yes, the people: learn how to recruit well. There's lots of good advice to be found there (e.g. go to the Ask the Headhunter site and use it in reverse). For specific advice, I'll note that one of my best bosses would never hire someone who he had doubts about. In a startup, it's generally the case that a wrong hire is worse than no hire at all.Sales, marketing, manufacturing (if that's an issue) and technical coherence. Make sure everyone is on the same page. That's one of the things that killed Symbolics, e.g. they spent a lot of money on a factory that couldn't make what engineering was designing, not that marketing was promoting what engineering was designing or the reverse.Make sure there's a product manager for each product, his job is among other things to help make sure the above is happening.Good luck! |
I'm way too shy, please help | nonrecursive: Hi ptn, I would recommend two books for you: The Places that Scare You, by Pema Chodron, and How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. If you send me your details I can send the books your way (my email is in my profile). Alternatively, you could add those books to an amazon.com wish list and I could get them for you that way. I wish I could write more about why I'd recommend those books, but I have to get to work :)Good luck, buddy. |
Resources in one cubic mile of sea water | lifeisstillgood: cperciva, thank you for clarifying what I should have put in there in the first place.Anyway, this seems a good overview and is not wildly out with the other literature afaik.http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LbTDLa_2opsC&pg=PA26&...so, 130m tons of salt is supported, 6m tons of magnesium, but 1 ton of silver and 0.02 tons of gold, and commercial extraction seems limited to salt (obviously) magnesium and bromine. I suspect someone quoted the "boring" elements accurately and then upvoted the "fun" elements for you. |
YC interviewees coming from outside US | wheels: The canonical coffee shop answer is Red Rock:http://www.redrockcoffee.org/ |
Exclusive startup coverage TechCrunch vs Mashable? | alain94040: Techcrunch has the most power today. Actually, they pretty much have a monopoly on covering launching startups before anyone else.So go with TC coverage as exclusive, and then go with more substantial repeat coverage from other places.[I have been through that discussion with many CEOs who launched with many different strategies - I'm giving you a quick summary of what could be hours of discussions] |
Does anyone have a reference for a mid-sized clojure project for study? | hga: You might try asking the Clojure Google Group (forgive me if you did and I missed it). |
Is a SQL Library Application a useful idea ? | michael_dorfman: What is SQL specific about your idea? Wouldn't it work just as well for any type of code snippets?And, wouldn't most developers want their code-snippet add-in to be integrated into their IDE? |
YC interviewees coming from outside US | iamelgringo: Crap, interviews are this weekend? Sigh. I'm flying out to NYC to visit the Hackers and Founders NYC this Thursday night, otherwise, I'd schedule something this Thursday for you guys. If you're around, there's a Hackers and Founders meetup Monday night in Mountain view: www.hackersandfounders.com.Otherwise, any place on Castro Street in Mountain View is a decent bet, especially the Red Rock cafe. Any place on University Ave in Palo Alto is also a pretty safe bet.And, if you're just visiting for a couple of days, I always suggest visiting the Computer History Museum. They give great 1.5 hour tours, and it's pretty amazing to see the history of computing, and realize that a great bit of it happened in the neighborhood. At times, you can hang out with some of the original engineers that build machines like the PDP 10 as they restore one to get it working. Did I mention tha they have a working Difference Engine? It's amazing.Aside from that, as to event lists, email Chris of Brendan over at the Startup Digest: http://thestartupdigest.com/ keep good tabs on what's going on. It would be worth pinging them and letting them know what you're doing. I'm sure they could make a great bunch of suggestions.There's always a bunch of stuff going on in San Francisco, as well. Pick a coffee shop or pub, and you're bound to run in to someone working in the biz.Also, I'd suggest you put your email in your profile so people can ping you. Offering to take people out for a pint will often get you quality time with other founders. :) |
I'm way too shy, please help | jpatte: The mind works with automatisms and reflexes. They condition the way you interpret any situation, and the emotion you feel because of this interpretation.
The key is to become aware of these mechanisms: don't let them control you.In your daily-life, inevitably you will interact with other people. At this moment, there might be a little voice in your head (litteraly) saying "Don't do this. It's dangerous. Remember that time..." + flash images of painful past situations. It's your instinct, acting to protect you. The problem is the association you made between people interaction and pain (probably because of a difficult childhood). You need to fix this.Actually there might be several broken mechanisms acting in different situations.: don't try to fix them all at the same time. Focus on each one independently, then "force" it as much as possible to replace the bad behavior by the behavior you want. It will be hard at the beginning, then easier.A psychologist might help you identify these broken mechanisms in your daily life. But the key is to gain awareness of them, acting in your head. Some of them could be:- taboo: being shy or feeling uncomfortable is not a taboo. Talk about it. Everyone enjoy talking about what they are concerned about. This is your life, so talk about it. People will actually appreciate knowing you better, and you might be amazed to see how many people feel the same.- judgment: people are not judging you all the time. Most of the time, they don't care about you. Don't think anything you do will be evaluated, judged, and blamed.- perfection: nobody is perfect. Why would you? People learn from failures. If they don't fail, they don't evolve. Don't feel shameful to ask for help. It's very positive.- right: you have the right to exist. You have to right to make suggestions. You have the right to decline others' suggestions.It's a long road, but it's worth it. Hang on! |
Exclusive startup coverage TechCrunch vs Mashable? | DanBlake: Having been first on both sites, I can offer a bit of clarity.Go with Techcrunch if you want to have VC's and other business's take notice of you. Go with Mashable if you want lots of users to read about your product and actually use it. Techcrunch is written for people in the biz. Mashable is written for people who enjoy using the tools biz guys make.Also, Readwriteweb is a great blog and will likely still write about you even if they dont get the exclusive. Just make sure you save some info thats "just for them", So dont give the whole kaboodle to mashable/tc. |
YC interviewees coming from outside US | Cmccann7: if your in palo alto
coffee shops - university cafe, coupa cafe, cafe del doge, satura cakes
couch/chill/work - hit me up chris@thestartupdigest.com might be able to help
meetups - sign up for thestartupdigest.com! if you miss the issue this monday email me and I will fwd it to you |
YC interviewees coming from outside US | jkaljundi: Same for me, flying there from Estonia in a few days, most probably staying March 26-31 (interview on 29th). In addition to above, would love to meet other teams during those days. Our project is http://Emp.ly/ (still in very early prototype phase, just starting serious development). My e-mail is on my HN profile page. |
What do you listen to when you code? | michaelcampbell: Pandora.Sometimes classic Coltrane era Jazz, sometimes 70'-80's-90's rock amalgam, sometimes acoustic guitar (Kaki King, Doyle Dykes, other non-alliteratively named artists), sometimes trance/electronica. I like to kid myself I play bass guitar, so sometimes a custom-built bass guitar heavy station.As someone else mentioned though, mostly nothing. I find it easier to concentrate. |
What do you listen to when you code? | fierarul: Whatever the Coffee-shop or Lounge I'm into has, usually some form of lounge or ambient music.When at home I don't have a particular style. If it's quiet, I'm OK with that.When it's noisy (usually some neighbor's dogs or own music) I just pick the album I'm currently into and loop that. Nowadays, for some reason, I'm listening to the the Twin Peaks sound track by Angelo Badalamenti. |
I'm way too shy, please help | jasonneal: I used to be pretty shy myself. I would say to some degree I still am, but when necessary I am able to overcome that.I can say a few things that helped me a long the way. First off though, on the computer you feel "shielded" from reality. Even if you showed me your blog, and I told you it was horrible, I still have no clue who you are, so you feel a little more safe. So having the blog and showing it to people that do actually know you might help a bit, but I think this all starts in "public."I took a speech class in college. I was absolutely terrified that I was going to have to take this class, because all throughout high school I had to do speeches for certain classes and it was always a headache. However, college was far more different. They allowed me to give speeches on topics that I was already interested in. Being interested in the topic made things a lot easier. I would say that speech class didn't help immediately, but in the long run it was a big help.I also had a bunch of customer service style jobs early in life that required me to interact with the public...I think these early face-to-face jobs helped a lot.Good luck to you! |
What do you listen to when you code? | fogus: I listen to music without words since with them I tend to try and listen too closely. However, music with indecipherable words or repetitive phrases are OK. Right now I'm listening to mostly:Grouper, Burial, Ricardo Villalobos, Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans, some classical sprinkled in, Ben Frost, Julianna Barwick, Black to Comm, Eno's Ambient stuff, Stars of the Lid, Magma, Boards of Canada, Gas, Leyland Kirby, Rachmininov, Zelienople, Belbury Poly, Mt. Vernon Arts Lab, Basic Channel, Eno-Moebius-Roedelius, Fursaxa, Jannick Top, Philip Glass, Wouter Veldhuis, and Montauk |
What advice would you give college students about starting a business? | wevans: Get Organized: I found that in college you can get away with being un-organized, with a business you really can't. Dropbox, Google Docs, Zoho, various Chrome extensions, and other Task MGMT software have saved my life.Workout in the morning:I found this is a great way to start the day, make time to workout regardless. Morning if you can |
Exclusive startup coverage TechCrunch vs Mashable? | shareme: Mashable is the obvious choice:-unbiased coverage
-nice people
-fairTechcrunch going by visitor counts has no power anymore. |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | danielh: 1) Trying to solve any hard problem bears the risk of failure. But as you already mentioned, if you succeed, you might have a competitive advantage, because it can't be easily duplicated. I think the risk of Google entering your market affects every internet-related venture. But at the same time, the fear is often unjustified. How often has that happened? Orkut did not kill Facebook, Buzz did not kill Twitter, etc.2) I would build the technology and a cool showcase, but I would not directly target the consumer, but rather someone who can use your technology to make money.Your technology might be interesting for advertisers to ensure that ads are only displayed next to articles with a positive sentiment towards to product. E.g. to avoid Toyota ad next to the latest news on stuck gas pedals. Maybe show a Volvo ad instead. I don't know if something like this is done at present. |
YC interviewees coming from outside US | rgrieselhuber: I'm flying in from Japan, would love to meetup. Just sent you an email.Also, I found a place to stay on CouchSurfing.com if you're still looking for somewhere to crash. |
The health care reform will create more jobs? | Diogenes: Only IRS jobs. Expect the nursing shortage to get worse and doctors close to retirement to start closing their practices in droves. No, I'm not going to go into the details for you, the bill language can be found here: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3590/show |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | Zak: We got rocket science pretty much right 50 years ago. Don't let the fact that it sounds hard discourage you. Somebody's going to get this right eventually - why not you?There have been a great many successes in the AI field. It's easy for people to forget though; once something works, nobody calls it AI anymore. |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | simon_: Certainly they're not futile to pursue in limited domains.There's a paper I'm trying to find for you about analyzing affect in news articles for the purpose of trading stocks - I think they got things working fairly well. |
What do you listen to when you code? | pkirk: I go with SomaFM.com's Groove Salad, as most of the music is without words, so no distraction. |
Exclusive startup coverage TechCrunch vs Mashable? | petervandijck: If I could choose, Techcrunch, for sure. |
What do you listen to when you code? | mping: Checkout Shpongle. It's great chillout.
I hear anything that goes in the mood, from Heavy Metal like Gojira to Pop/Rock like K's Choice. |
Exclusive startup coverage TechCrunch vs Mashable? | fabiandesimone: We tried to get coverage on TC and Mashable for Twitalbums.com but none listened to us (I lost count how many times I wrote them). I also wrote to The Next Web and nothing. Jolie O'Dell from ReadWriteWeb.com picked up on the story and she did a wonderful job reviewing our startup. The review sent a ton of traffic and gave us a good initial boost. Needles to say we love RWW :-) |
I'm way too shy, please help | jvictor118: I heard somewhere that people's #1 fear is public speaking (#2 being death). So I certainly don't think your alone.Simply put, I'd like to emphasize that the problem is entirely within you. This can all change without the action (or awareness) of _any_ other people. You simply have to ask yourself -- why is it that I allow other people's opinion of me to influence what I think about myself? Why is my self-image tied up in the opinion of others?I used to struggle with this (in middle school) until I realized that other people's behavior is governed entirely by their own problems, their own insecurities and concerns -- so their reaction to you has _very_ little to do with you, and a whole LOT to do with them. So not only is it not healthy, it is ILLOGICAL to allow others' opinions to sway you at all!Meditate on this when these feelings start to paralyze you. Remember that plenty of great work was ridiculed and derided when it was first accepted -- think about Galileo! No matter how bad the publicly responds to whatever you show it, it will likely not be as bad as it was for Galileo. :) |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | chasingsparks: Cupitor impossibilium.I've been working on alternative pricing algorithms for 8 years. Most people call this a waste of time. Recently, one of my algorithms started showing great promise. (I'll know within two months.) Do what fascinates you. |
What do you listen to when you code? | Sukotto: I load up all of DJ River's Ambient Chillout mixes and his Colored room series (Blue room, Green room, etc) and hit "random".He was an excellent mixer and I feel sad that he (apparently) has quit. He recently let his site djriver.com lapse but you can still get his stuff through iTunes or torrent. |
What do you listen to when you code? | damontal: nature stuff for the space. i like listening to recordings of thunderstorms. |
What do you listen to when you code? | Gertm: www.bassdrive.comWorks great for me. |
I'm way too shy, please help | petervandijck: It'll get better.1. Yes, practice little things.2. Yes, you'll die, so don't focus only on the shyness.3. Don't worry, it'll get better with age (age brings practice and confidence), and although you'll likely always have some level of shyness, it will get to the level where your shyness is charming, and just an aspect of your personality. Nothing wrong with that. |
What do you listen to when you code? | greglu: I listen to post-rock (instrumental) most of the time, and Dragonforce when I really need a boost. |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | noelwelsh: Don't worry about the technology risk. People already do this, so it isn't impossible. They probably don't do it well, but you only have to do better than random to provide benefit.Market risk is more of a concern to me. If you're presenting results directly to users they'll probably care greatly about the quality of your algorithm. If you're just using aggregated data to drive, for example, marketing campaigns then the noise will be washed out given enough data. |
What advice would you give college students about starting a business? | petervandijck: My nr 1 advice: don't forget to make money. |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | arethuza: You need a catchy application that lets people understand the benefits of this technique, why not use it to rank the in real-time what things celebrities on Twitter are talking about... or something like that. |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | JamieEi: I'd start by trying to validate your business model.1) You need to find out who the paying customers are in this space and what features they really want. It seems very possible that average consumers would have no interest in your service but that power users, marketers or some other segment might. Once you know where the interest is you can make better feature decisions. For example, you might find that reporting, not AI, is what drives marketing sales.2) Fundemental improvements in AI are really hard. Look at the results of the first Netflix prize. Lots of world class teams worked on that problem and the winning solution only produced something like a 10% improvement in the results. If that's the only edge your business has over the competition I doubt consumers would even notice. On the other hand, AI has matured to the point where it's pretty easy to produce good results. I'd rather bet my business on predicatble, good results and treat it as a pleasant surprise if we make a fundemental breakthrough.Good luck! |
Exclusive startup coverage TechCrunch vs Mashable? | covercash: In 2008 we sent an email to TechCrunch asking if they wanted an exclusive on our launch. After 2 weeks with no response, we emailed Mashable who promptly responded and wrote an article. The same day the article ran we received a snarky email from TC stating that they expected exclusive coverage and that because Mashable ran us first, TC wasn't going to touch the story. We politely referred them to our original email, they said oops and we all went on with our lives. |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | aufreak3: "We are worried that we would hit a dead-end and not be able to build what we set out to build."Listen attentively to your intuition. Your "worry" can stop you faster than any statistical or third opinion about whether AI is a hard problem. Doesn't mean you should stop worrying and continue. Spend time imagining your ideal solution in great detail --- touch, smell and taste it if you can. Judge based on how you feel about that end point.I heard someone said "AI is what hasn't been done yet." You don't need to prove your worthiness to anyone or any community by "solving a hard problem". Instead, as chasingsparks put it, "do what fascinates you". |
I'm way too shy, please help | rajat: Either you are too shy, and the usual prescription of go out there and overcome it isn't going to work. I was painfully shy when I was younger, and it took determined and sustained effort to overcome it. Even today, after years of this, it often takes a moment of deliberate effort for me to talk to a stranger. At parties, I am often one of the people holding up the wall.It's clear, however, that that will not work for a small number of people, and if you are one of them, then you must consider counselling/therapy. For a really small number, drugs are called for. If you find that a determined effort to be outgoing is not possible/helpful, then I seriously encourage you to seek out the right type of counsellor. |
What do you listen to when you code? | dmly: Bach bay (or Batch!) |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | zackattack: This sounds like a really neat product and you sound really smart. I would love to chat with you because I have some (hopefully) unique ideas about how to tackle this problem, and would love to share. My email is zackster@gmåil.com |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | pguerin: No, it's not futile! Finding ways to get good information fast with the data explosion is one of the challenges we face in computer science. Anyway, the good folks at GATE are building a great set of tools for NLP for several years. The tools are similar to what you are doing. You are not crazy and we need more people like you to advance computer science! http://gate.ac.uk/ |
YC interviewees coming from outside US | dschobel: I don't know if it even needs to be said but if you don't have any luck finding a free couch/floor, check http://www.airbnb.com/Plenty of couches on there for $20/night in SF |
I'm way too shy, please help | CaptainZapp: It was mentioned already and I'd like to re-emphasize :Talk to a good psychologist or psychiatrist and consider medication for a limited time at least.I was the same. No problems with friends, colleagues or on the internet, but walking into a bar or into a party would frighten the holy crap out of me.Cognitive therapy in combination with Effexor (Efexor herearound) helped me a hell of a lot. It's basically an antidepressant, which is also indicated for Social Anxiety Disorder in a relatively low dosis and in the extended release version. There may be others, but this worked pretty good for me.A major disclaimer :Although I seem to recognize a lot of the symptoms that I had (sometimes have, but this is much rarer now) I am not a physician or even a psychologist. Anecdotal experience may be valid in my case, but each person is different and what works for one, may be a side effect ladden horror for others. Before you even consider altering your brain chemistry (which I don't think is inherently wrong and meds are pretty subtle nowadays) you must discuss this with a professional, period.In any case: I _guarantee_ that you can do something about it. it may need work and a professional to get there, but you can do it.Good luck on your journey |
I'm way too shy, please help | martin_valiente: Try acting or locution classes. Actors do silly exercises to take away the scenic fear. If you have been a dog or a tree in front of several people, then being human seem a lot easier. |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | terra_t: I don't think NLP and AI are dead-ends, however, I agree with you that sentiment analysis is a crowded area.Personally I find I need sophisticated domain-specific heuristics to evaluate consumer reviews in particular spaces. For instance, when I buy a lens for my camera, I'm going to look at reviews, but it's tricky because there are always good and bad reviews for any lens. Some of the people who get bad reviews had a camera with a screwed up AF or they never really understood how to use the lens or what its limitations were. Then you look at say, a Sigma lens for the Canon platform and you'll see that different people are having wildly different results and you'd better just forget about it.Dashboards and stuff like that is a waste of time. What I really want is something that creates a super-expert opinion that's maybe 3 sentences to a paragraph wrong. A bit beyond the state of the art.----More generally, I think Doug Lenat had the right idea with Cyc, but he went about it the wrong way. Had Doug not been able to make a comfortable living doing work for the government, he would have been forced to produce a revolutionary product, but he wasn't.I think that the linked data space around the semantic web is going to explode and ultimately produce the "commonsense" knowledgebase that it takes to build real NLP systems.Most of the people I know in the knowledge-management space are trying to develop expensive projects for government, pharma, legal discovery and such. I think, however, they are in the "pay a lot, get a little" businesses that are going to be disrupted by the next wave. On one hand you've got Google, Microsoft and a few biggies that are going to develop large-scale but low-margin products. The other side is going to be a vast, largely low-margin market of operators who pull from and add to the great linked data pool... which is going to grow like a Katamari ball until we reach the Singularity, maybe around 2025 or so. |
I'm way too shy, please help | pasbesoin: Exercise. Heavily.The best time of my life was the fall after a summer of cycling every day. I gained several (real) new friends. I started participating in intra-mural sports, at which I was actually good. (Some quite negative "jock attitudes" had kept me away from organized sports in primary and secondary school.) I reconsidered my education and began to see past all the "don't do that" advice towards a course of pursuing what actually interested me.There's a lot more to this, especially as researchers look at and measure various biological changes and effects, than just a one liner. But to summarize: When you feel better, you feel better about yourself, and, feeling better about yourself, you approach others on a more equal footing.I was cycling 2 - 3 hours a day. It may not require this much activity, but I am talking about more than a 15 or 30 minute workout. (Well, maybe a heavy 30 minute routine would suffice. Others might have more to contribute in the way of details.)P.S. I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall some good threads on this (both shyness and exercise, and the union of the two topics) back in the "early days" of HN. Unfortunately, I don't have references at hand, but a look throughhttp://searchyc.com/http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archivemight turn some up. |
I will work for free ... | niczar: You'd be better off contributing to a Free/Open Source Software project. |
I'm way too shy, please help | oscarduignan: Haven't read the article, I just like the picture...http://plpatterns.com/post/307982918/its-hard-to-change-a-li... |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | chegra84: The fundamental problem with AI is the lack of parallelization. There are more connections in the human brain than there are atoms in the universe.I am sure someone can write an AI program that is comparable with human intelligence on paper at this moment in time. But, the complexity of the algorithm would probably be exponential, hence massive parallelization is necessary.I think the ibm blue brain project has the right approach for AI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project |
What do you listen to when you code? | ieure: I have a wide array of taste, but when working, I primarily listen to metal. The key here is something with a fast and steady beat, which really gets me into the groove.It's hard to automatically classify this kind of music, so I have a half-dozen or so hand-made playlists, each around an hour long.The music is for when I know what needs to be done and just have to sit down and do it. When I'm thinking about a problem, silence is what I need. |
Does anyone have a reference for a mid-sized clojure project for study? | raju: I am not sure if this helps you, but lab-repl by Relevance just came on GitHub. It's the training course Stuart Halloway and Rich Hickey are doing with the Pragmatic Studio. I haven't dug in the source code myself, but it seems pretty interesting ...http://github.com/relevance/labrepl |
Why no Kindle app for Android? | Readmore: I'm sure it's possible that there is one in the works but it is lower in priority than an iPad app. iPhone users spend more money on apps, and ebooks, than Android users. You've got to go where the money is. |
YC interviewees coming from outside US | dannyr: Several teams who were interviewed for the Winter 2010 Session stopped by at the HackerDojo. A meetup can actually be held there. |
What do you listen to when you code? | TrevorBurnham: If it's something I need to focus on and think all the way through, either silence or light classical.If it's a trivial but time-consuming let's-wire-A-to-B-to-C kind of task, then I'll put on an interview podcast (e.g. NPR's Fresh Air or something techy like The Changelog). Those don't require the same level of attention as an audiobook or an information-dense podcast like Radiolab. |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | trevelyan: I work on NLP for Chinese text with the Adso project (http://popupchinese.com/tools/downloads). This is a natural language processing engine that handles segmentation, sense analysis and semantic regexp for Chinese text.In my experience, the complexity of most NLP applications work against them in the sense that they're competing with simpler approaches that are less computationally intensive. Good technology will let you do things other people can't do, but if you want to make it a business you'll need to know how to compete against Google doing 80% of what you can do with simple pattern matching. Your results will need to be orders of magnitude better before you have something people will use, let alone for which they'll pay. And be careful not to get trapped in a field where you'll be competing against companies paying serious cash for commercial databases to which you do not have access.I'm personally skeptical there is much of a market for sentiment analysis incidentally, but the same tools are pretty useful for search (preprocessing, etc.). I think you'll find it difficult to get third-party adoption unless your product drives direct revenue for someone or can very visibly improve their product. But the problems are important and worth solving! |
What do you listen to when you code? | ashleyw: BBC Radio 1/2/4, set at a lowish volume. I used to listen to podcasts, but I never actually listened to them, I'd not even realise they'd ended, it was just background noise. I now save the podcasts for design sessions, where I don't tend to zone out as much. |
What advice would you give college students about starting a business? | pathik: Read Paul Graham's essays. |
Rate my startup - www.plupper.com | petrchech: I love Jabber. |
How does a Jr. to Mid-Level programmer find work? | djb_hackernews: I've had luck applying to positions that were looking for more senior devs but was something I was interested in. My current job came that way. Looking for someone with 7 years, I had 3, but I also had built projects in the same space and was actually a really good fit. Fresh out of school I got an interview the same way for a small company looking for 10+ years experience.Just say "hey, this is me, this is what I've worked on that you'd be interested in, I'd like to interview. If not, hold on to my resume" |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | syntience: Hi,I have decades of experience with old style AI and a decade of the new kind :-). I specialize in language understanding algorithms and near-pefect sentiment analysis is something I expect we'll be able to do eventually using the methods I've invented.The top level bit to worry about is whether you are attempting to re-do something that is already known not to work. Litmus tests: Are you using models of language such as grammars that are explicitly programmed in? Is your system specific to a single language so that switching to another would require complete re-coding? Do you employ linguists? If you answer yes to these, then you are in trouble.I discussed how to get a modern AI education in an early blog entry at http://monicasmind.comI propose a shift in direction of AI research in the second video at http://videos.syntience.com and explain why that's needed in the first one. Three more videos discuss details.I have a theory/motivational site (6 pages or so) at http://artificial-intuition.comI'm available for high level consultation on these issues. I worked at Google (I quit 2006) and although I cannot talk about what they do, I certainly will have an idea about what will be required to outperform them, both short term and long term.If anyone wants to support Syntience Inc. in our effort to get true understanding to computers, please get in touch. - Monica Anderson
http://syntience.com |
the risks of blocking IPs | barredo: I always ban IPs. If they are bots, they are highly unlikely to be real visitors too sharing those ip addresses.Ban the IPs temporarily, say, a month, and put a message in your '403 forbidden access error page' saying sorry: "your ip is blocked because of weird-things-happening-from-your-ip, if you are a customer you should check for trojans or virus on your computer and send us an email" |
Rate my startup - www.plupper.com | jolan: Kind of neat, but I could create my own version quickly with open source (http://code.stanziq.com/speeqe/). |
What do you listen to when you code? | zpoley: http://di.fm usually the trance channel |
the risks of blocking IPs | Rust: If you block IPs, try to be as specific as possible. There was a popular site I couldn't reach for months from my home connection, but full of info I liked. I finally emailed the owner from work and found out that he had blocked my entire class B (xxx.xxx) range due to spamming. This has happened more than once, unfortunately.My rule of thumb is to block small first, then wider based on the registrant of that IP. Russia and China seem to have the most spam-bots running (or at least the most aggressive), but as long as you block at the xxx.xxx.xxx level, you shouldn't impact actual users very much.Like barredo said though, include some information on your 403 page. |
Could Google effectively go to a shadow "war" with China? | CWuestefeld: would they be breaking any international laws?This is a nebulous concept, since there's really no higher authority to act as judge for something like this.There exist international treaties, but those are pacts between governments. They're not enforceable in the way this would require -- if you break them, the worst that's going to happen is "sanctions".But more importantly, Google is a private entity. They don't have any treaty with the Chinese government. So what is it that would constrain them? |
the risks of blocking IPs | bluesmoon: here are a few things you can do:1. instead of blocking, throttle the IPs. Rate limit them to making no more than 1 request every 30 seconds or so. Most script kiddies get fed up if their attack gets painfully slow.2. if you see a high rate of traffic coming from an IP, quarantine it for say 2-5 minutes (ie, block all traffic from it) and after that time throttle it.3. If you notice patterns in the IPs, eg, they all come from the same block, then redirect those IPs to a different box (you can set up a VIP to do this). You can do what you want on this box (eg: don't bother opening database connections here), but the main thing is that your primary web server has all its resources available to serving legitimate customers.4. Never give an attacker any indication that you've noticed their attack. It only makes it more fun for them and they'll persist longer. So, if you see abusive traffic, don't return a 404 or a 403. Just return a regular 200 with a cached version of your regular page. |
Could Google effectively go to a shadow "war" with China? | garply: How would you prevent the Chinese authorities from learning of the proxy IP addresses and filtering them when you have to tell the general population your IP addresses in order for them to be able to access them.I think you'd need some sort of software on the end users' computers to make use of distributed search (or at the very least, distributed proxy IP identification). |
Is artificial intelligence/natural language processing a futile pursuit? | msbmsb: I think it's more than quite a leap to go from worrying about the marketability of your specific idea to asking about the futility of two very broad fields of research.I work in NLP, my company has a sentiment analysis product. It's a very small part of what we do, and it's focused on a particular application. NLP itself has a very wide range of applications, some theoretical, some practical, some already in use all day long at very popular websites. Two months is a very short time for complex problems in NLP, believe me.Regarding tech risk, I think you're taking your particular product niche and casting it to something unnecessarily broad. Polarity detection is just one possible task in NLP, which is itself a sub-domain of AI. It can be done reasonably well without using any real NLP techniques even (hence the crowded social media monitoring scene). That paragraph made it sound to me like you are stressing yourself out unnecessarily about 'solving AI'. It's sentiment analysis (which can be a challenge to get right), focus on that.Regarding market risk, marketing new technology is a challenge for any new technology, and any given startup will have the same questions that must be asked and answered. The application of your idea may be marketable or it may not be, that has little bearing on the viability of AI/NLP. The best you can do is make sure the company has done due diligence and has a plan, hopefully with some market research to back it up. |
Help For Clojure Addiction | DennisP: Use Clojure to generate your Java code. As far as anyone else is concerned you're writing Java.I've used code generation at work quite a bit, whenever I've had somewhat repetitive code to write that I couldn't factor away. It makes my job a lot less tedious and more fun. |
Could Google effectively go to a shadow "war" with China? | bilbo0s: Uhh...Garply is making some pretty good points. Cyber war on that scale is not for good or even great computer hackers. It is for hackers no one has ever heard of. The people you would need don't work for Google, and are very hard to find.Best to do all this on the up and up. Although I think it will turn out to be nothing more than Google pissing in the wind.Actually, here in Ningbo I've noticed that the Chinese companies are not as anxious to work with American firms anymore. (I have a shop that makes Flash Games). Especially since it was reported a few weeks ago that Google's partners will probably be left in the lurch. No one wants to bet his money on an unreliable horse. I think if there are tech companies or entrepreneurs out there that are still looking to get into the Chinese market, you should find your partners quickly. I'm starting to suspect that there will be a lot of companies with no seats when the music stops. The climate is definitely cooling. |
I'm way too shy, please help | Tycho: I divide activities into two categories: those I'm supposed to be good at, and those I'm not. For instance, I'm fairly articulate and knowledgeable about certain subjects, so I should be able to get up and explain/present them to other people. Whereas, I'm a poor guitar player, lack 'rock star looks' and have got a weak singing voice, so performing music is probably not my forte. I find I continually grow in confidence with the former activity, and just don't attempt the latter activity (or have need to attempt it).Of course there will be some things I need to do but am still bad at. Still working on that one! (acquiring more skills would always help though. don't think of 'social skills,' think of things like 'sense of humour' that you can improve). |
Help For Clojure Addiction | dusklight: You can sneak a lot of functional style programming into Java/C++. It's easier with C++ because they have first class functions, but you can do a lot even with Java. I think it's not optimal to do a 100% functional style, even though you can, because all the syntax junk gets in the way, but just by thinking in terms of higher order functions instead of objects it will make a lot of the pain go away. |
Grails hosting (or is 100mbit enough?) | hnkevin: linode or slicehost or rackspacecloud isn't cheap enough? |
Can your website be different than your LLC name? | drawkbox: You can simply make the website a 'product' and if you want trademark the name. If it is for the LLC legally the url and product are property of the LLC. Lots of companies have many products under one company. You can trademark it if you feel it needs extra protection. If it takes off you can make it it's own LLC or corp. |
Can your website be different than your LLC name? | dalke: Why in the world would this be a concern? Just pulling an example from semi-random searches, "VJM Metal Craftsman LLC" has their web site at http://www.historicbridgerestoration.com/ . I know an LLC where $NAME.com was already taken, so they had to come up with something else.The LLC owns the domain, but one question is if you push the domain name more or less than the company name. After all, you don't go to Reckitt Benckiser’s web site to find out more about Calgon, Woolite, Clearasil, or Lysol. |
YC interviewees coming from outside US | iamelgringo: I forgot to mention in my earlier comment about Hacker Dojo: http://wiki.hackerdojo.com/. The people there are really cool, and it's just a couple of blocks away from the YC office. |
finding partners for hobby/experimentation projects | hnkevin: I'm in the same boat. There is programmermeetdesigner.com but it doesn't seem to be used much. I'd love to have a co-designer/entrepreneur type cohort and bang out a couple projects. |
I'm way too shy, please help | CraigBuchek: I used to be a lot like that, and I worked on changing it. So that's my number 1 piece of advice -- work on changing what you want to change. Work on the big things as well as the little things.I used to put my head down when passing people, to avoid eye contact. Silly as it sounds, I was able to help with that by humming the Argent song "Hold Your Head Up" in my head when passing people.Another thing I did was to put myself in situations where I HAD to interact with other people. Sometimes this worked, and sometimes it didn't. I found that bars didn't work -- I'd mostly just stand there by myself. Then I'd go home and feel like a failure. (Note that I felt like a failure for NOT putting myself out there and talking to people. To me, that's more regrettable than anything stupid I might have done.)Joining some clubs where I had an interest helped a lot. At first I just took it in. Then I started offering input during discussions. Eventually, I got to the point where I gave presentations in front of the group, and even larger groups. Now I also run the group (a local LUG). I wrote myself some tips on giving presentations, as well as for others, to share what I learned. My best tip to stop being nervous in this situation is: "Remember that the audience members are just like you, and are interested in what you have to say."Leverage what you're good at to improve the things that you're not good at. For example, as I said, I was terrible at bars. But I'm good at writing -- and conversation once I know people. So I found that online dating worked really well for me. I got to meet people, but only after I got them interested in me from our written exchanges. At this point, I'd be more comfortable talking to them in person.Another thing you can do is latch onto a friend that's more outgoing. Make sure it's someone who won't push you out of your comfort zone too far too fast. But have them take you places where you can meet people. They can introduce you and get the conversation started.Eventually, you'll get to a tipping point where you realize that "failing" isn't so bad, and that "failures" are just learning experiences. Then you'll be able to say "what the heck" and not care so much about what other people think.Good luck! |
Grails hosting (or is 100mbit enough?) | HowardRoark: 1. Google App Engine is free to begin with, but you known the cons.
2. Rackspace Cloud Servers (21$ for 512 MB. Pay for BW separately)
3. Slicehost (Same as Rackspace Cloud Server, but 40$ for 512 MB. But you get 100 GB BW I think)I am using 512Mb Slice, with Nginx and Jetty and MySQL on the same slice and its been working pretty well so far. |
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