andrest

Not to excuse your case but a company I work for just got funded and posted a job ad on AngelList, it's been a week and there are 50+ applications sitting in the mailbox. We produce and sell a physical product so one of the founders keeps the operations going, other does biz dev and I do tech. This year alone we need to hire about 10 more people. It's overwhelming. Especially so when hiring the first key employees for roles you don't have experience with.

Remember, software has no (or very little) marginal cost. Software businesses only become insanely profitable at scale. The kind of scale Microsoft, Google and others have. A single percentage point improvement can pay your salary.

In Europe we lack software companies of such scale. Why? Not too long ago going global from the middle of nowhere was not an option. Companies would saturate their local market and fail to grow across borders. I'd venture to say this is due to the (1) lack of international sales experience, (2) different laws / work practices elsewhere, and (3) language barriers.

I know 3 companies doing accounting software in Estonia with a population of 1.4 million. These companies know the business better then anybody else and the market is too small for any of the big players to consider. Similar patterns can be seen across industries.

The maintenance crew is still needed to keep the engines running. It's just that it can be piloted remotely. This, however, is nothing new technologically speaking. We could very well take away pilots from commercial airliners but it will never happen, or not soon enough. Because a human in control gives a nice illusion of safety.

When it comes to freighters, the cost of a captain or even a crew is negligible. It pales in comparison to the cost of the ship and the goods it carries. Also, insurance companies would not go down well with this.

Thanks for the input :)

Perhaps you can shed some light on how things work from the inside:

How much interest is there for foreign interns, what is the competition and expectations like? Were there many people like you?

In terms of compensation and cost, what is to be expected? From what I gather, one needs to pay for private health insurance. Is it reasonable to expect that the compensation from the company could cover the plane tickets, health insurance and perhaps accommodation to an extent?

Well said. I wholly agree with "learn to code" != "become a programmer".

Learning programming has helped me in many other walks of life. It has taught me that every problem can be tackled with a systematic approach, given enough time. I like to think that helps me to notice things that would have gone unnoticed without. More than anything else, it is this approach, enforced by programming, for which I hold gratitude. Critical thinking.

If you really need to get stuff done then there is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dOM3p-80HI&hd=1 Sorry for the late reply :)

I feel that Kap-Slap is too close what you hear to radio on every day.

For working there is nothing better than repeating, simple melodies and patterns. What I consider to be a good song is something that you can work along with and not even notice it. This can be classical (Arvo Part, Philip Glass), but I often find that electronical music with a baseline beat is more mellow and fluid.

Here are my recommendations (some really good stuff): http://soundcloud.com/juliengray/julien-gray-gondwana-extend... http://soundcloud.com/monca/djuma-soundsystem-les-djinns

It's definitely worth reading.

Although as a person with substantial programming experience, I would recommend you to have a look at Chapter 4 first. The first few chapters deal with code examples that are not meant to be understood (at that point), but knowing the "Ruby way" will help you to figure out most of it. The book also is more holistic about Web Development; Rails, although being the main focus, isn't all that it covers. Version Control (GIT) and Deployment are explored as well. Also, the author having beginners in mind, goes through the terminal stuff a bit slower.

You might find yourself skimming few pages along the way, but the book does an extremely good job at getting you to the point where you can and know what you want to do next.

All fair points that I agree with. Mruby is promising but it's still in its infancy. Whereas MobiRuby is interesting on its own, but lacking advantages over Obj-C for real development.

This was the case for music for a long time (still is, but to a lesser extent) before iTunes came along. Downloading music through Napster, Limewire or BitTorrent was simply easier and more effortless. Even though people were willing to pay, they didn't because that would have required more effort to do so.

I follow a similar series of steps.

But, my step 4. is slightly different. I also give them some time; and 24 hours is an excellent choice.

Now, I ask them to draw me the logo they saw the other day, and reiterate it in words. Depending on how they respond you should take action. If they can't recall it, you should start from scratch. If they can mention a few things, especially details, you should revision your work such that you make these very details even more bold and stand out. In the end, a good logo is something that is unique and well remembered.

These numbers show the point I'm trying to make here. The resources currently occupied in putting the current inefficient technology to use could be instead used in R&D to develop the next generation solutions faster. During this period of time nuclear reactors (or thorium reactors in the future) could provide a fairly clean and stable source of energy until viable renewable alternatives are found.

Don't take this the wrong way, but when the scientists or the government set an ambitious goal like this, that are 4 decades away. It usually means that currently we have no clue how to go about solving it and hopefully our successors will figure it out.

As Bill Gates explains the current renewable technology is not viable. This is because of various reasons, such as low ratio of energy invested vs energy returned, instability (eg. what you do when the wind is not blowing?), requirements for a possible site, et cetera.. I fully agree that it should be the long term goal to switch over to renewable energy, but with current technology it is out of reach. Therefore we a need a stepping stone that the nuclear energy can provide us with.

It is too early to go all in.

No mention of encrypted networks, so I'm assuming it only works on open, non-password protected network?

Throughout the whole article no mention of any specific alternatives to be used? 23% is a big amount to make up to.

A relevant TED talk by Bill Gates (Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero): http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

In short, the most viable option currently, in his opinion, is the thorium reactors. Current uranium reactors can be converted to work with thorium.

"The main point of using thorium, in addition to the proliferation issues with uranium, is that there is 10 fold amount of it available compared to Uranium. If you take into account also the fact that we only use uranium-235 in our nuclear reactors, and this consitutes only 0.7% of the total amount of uranium, the increase is 100 fold.

Thorium reactors also operate by burning uranium. This is created from thorium by bombarding it with neutrons. This forms uranium 232, which is highly radioactive and is hence hard to deal. This is why U232 can't be used for nuclear weapons, it's hard to handle."

In the States, a black person has a much higher probability landing in a jail. Does this mean we should say that all the black are criminals and the rest are law-abiding citizens? The world isn't black & white. On another note, corruption in the West just works differently. In the developing countries it's the average Joe who gives the bribe to an official. In developed countries it's the lobbyist who invites a congressman for a steak.

How did they come up with the estimate? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eixjRLlvtk (full documentary can be found on YouTube)

Having had some business interests in the same region I can tell you from first-hand experience that people like the Russian gentleman living in France are VERY common.

Lots of criminals with business interests are considered to be businessmen.

The rule?

With all due respect, if you truly believe what you're saying you don't know what you're talking about.

A good counter example would be Estonia. But what's a good argument without data, right?

http://www.heritage.org/index/country/estonia Ranks 14th on the Economic Freedom Index? Well, what about other European countries: Italy 87th (ALL the figures are more negative for Italy, including corruption, property rights, business freedom), Japan 20th, Austria 21th, Portugal 69th.

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/... The Corruption Perception Index puts Estonia above Portugal and Spain. Just for comparison, Russia has a score 2.1 out of 10, Estonia has 6.5.

I would've thought that on HN people give their arguments more thought, especially if it makes such strong accusations. These countries are advancing rapidly, the Post-Soviet countries have been independent for under 20 years. Yet they already surpass older EU members.

Works in FF and Chrome

A bit off-topic, but I find it interesting how motivated people are to post stuff on HN. It took just under 2 minutes for the person to find the post, 'digest' it and submit it. The video is 50 minutes long.

I might not be the best solution in the long-term, but it's certainly a start in the right direction.

Teaching is roughly the same as it was 50 years ago. We're yet to harness the power of computational revolution and Khan Academy shows the way.

Wont work out :)

This or that questions wont help. You might ask: blue or white? I say depends; you might ask: smart or casual? I say depends.

There are no questions that can 'solve' my style preferences and even if they do, the items I buy will not always follow them (maybe found some really cool green shoes that go with my blue shirt, which I wouldn't have bought if I didn't already have the shirt). I like moccasins for summer and oxford shoes for winter, seasons vary.

Even if you can somehow compile a perfect profile, then how the hell are you going to find items that match it? Very few retailers list things such as colour, season and material separately in a manner they can be easily gathered.

I sincerely suggest you to look elsewhere.

Macbook Pro.

-THE strongest and most rigid case I've put my hands on (the unibody alumnium)

-UNIX kernel

-OSX and iOS development

-More options for OSs

-No major issues with current models

Sure, you might not get the most processing power for your money, but all things considered, the overall product is much more better than competitors'.

Well, depends on a few factors:

a) What languages do you currently know b) What do you want to program

These 2 factors are different for everybody, as such, there is no one answer for your question.

What my local operator is offering is this:

ZTE S202

Specs: http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/products/mobile/mobile_detail_291...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CClXKPRDzLI&feature=playe...

The price is 70 euros. The buttons have nice a tactile feedback, it has a screen and even looks okay.

Sure, this thing has a better branding, nicer website but the product itself is inferior and costs more.

The way a product cycle works at Apple is that first Jobs comes up with an idea (or approves a one, doesn't matter), designers draw it, engineers build it and Cook is responsible for the supply-side (he optimizes the production to keep the costs minimal and supply stable).

Now if we were to take Jobs out of the cycle, the designers would still have the ideas and engineers could build them. This is great and I'm sure they could still come up with excellent products like a new macbook pro with improved battery life. Jobs is responsible for the vision (direction of the company), if it weren't for him nobody would have dared to invest such vast amounts of resources and time into building something like an iPad.

It's in my opinion that Cook can do excellent work in the short-term making the company grow on paper by optimizing the supply side, but in the long-term he lacks the vision to conquer new fronts.

Money is a side-effect of great ideas (at least in this industry) :)

That's what I meant by saying that Apple and Google are similar. At Apple the small projects are combined into a single solution (hence lots of 'features'), whereas Google launches their applications independently and only later integration might take place.

Jobs is man with a vision and Apple is built around his vision. Apple is still fresh and needs to make good strategical decisions to further establish itself. This wont happen if the new CEO will try to continue where Jobs left off. Why? Because 'proceed as before' will not lead to innovation. The new CEO has to be a man who will be willing to invest big in new technologies and fight for his vision.

I'm sure there are lots of good people at Apple, who can come up with great ideas, same goes for Google. The difference between the 2 is that where Google has lots of separate small projects going on, Apple delivers one big product with lots of features and that's what makes it so great. Integration and simplicity.

Apple needs a strong leader with a vision in order to be as successful as it has been in the past.