brucehart

I'm surprised that admission into Computer Science PhD programs is so competitive. I would think that with the strong job market for computer scientists, there would not be as many students who would want to make the commitment to a PhD program over other job and entrepreneurial opportunities.

There is no technical limitation. You can do as many incremental backups as you want and are not forced to do a full backup after the initial one. As a practical matter though, I've found it's a good idea to occasionally do a full backup because the metadata can get out of sync (especially if something goes wrong like you lose your connection during an incremental backup).

For comparison's sake, I recently rented a 10x10x10 ft. storage unit for $90/mo. or $0.09 per cubic foot per month.

Wow! So his claim in the other indictment wasn't just a silly negotiating tactic. And he admitted his involvement to another person solely to try to save a few bitcoins when he allegedly had $80 million worth in his account! An amount so large that he would be lucky to be able to launder even a tiny fraction (even if he bought a car wash or laser tag arena).

This guy has been watching too many TV shows. He's actually lucky he got caught before he was on the receiving end of violent antics like his. The Walter Whites of the real world don't have a life full of adventures outsmarting criminals and staying one step ahead of the cops. They live desperately on edge until they make a small misstep that gets them thrown in prison or killed.

Many adjunct professors are people who have full-time jobs doing something else. A friend of mine did this one semester to make some extra money. He worked full-time as a structural engineer, but took a long lunch three days a week to teach Introduction to Statics at the university we both attended. He said it was fun to do for one semester, but he computed that he was only making about $10/hour when you included the time to prepare for lectures and grade papers.

I'm not sure how you prove that you are partially disabled for any job that is primarily mental rather than physical. For example I once worked with a guy that was a lead software engineer. Shortly after he was hired, he got into a car accident and sustained a serious concussion. He claimed that after the concussion he could write basic code, but he didn't have the ability to concentrate enough to solve difficult problems or architect complex systems. How is an insurance company supposed to determine his level of disability? They don't really have a baseline to determine how strong of an engineer he was before the accident. Are they obligated to pay the difference between the salary of a junior and senior level engineer if he gets fired?

I don't know if the rules have changed since I was in college, but I actually did have to take an online test showing I understood the nature of student loans before my loans could be approved.

Be careful about this assumption if you are working at a small startup. I recently changed jobs and was not eligible for health insurance for the first month in my new job. I thought "Oh, that's fine. I'll just pay for a month of COBRA coverage." When I went to apply I was told that COBRA only applied to companies with at least 20 employees and that I should use my state's equivalent of COBRA instead. When I went to apply for that I was told that it applies to all companies, but it is not available to people who leave their job voluntarily.

I ended up having to get a short term individual insurance plan instead. It's a bit of a risk because if a major issue related to a pre-existing condition flared up, I would probably not be covered. It's my understanding that when the new health care laws take effect next year, it will help absolve much of the risk that comes from using an individual insurance plan.

Love your sites! They are very well done. I'm curious as to how you are creating the fonts. Did you use a programming library or did you dig into the font format specifications yourself?

Also, this is just a minor suggestion, but I would love to be able to map a non-standard character (such as the copyright symbol) to my signature.

Have you tried Duplicity (http://duplicity.nongnu.org/)? I use it for backups and think it's great. You can even backup directly to Amazon S3.

You are absolutely right about the small niches. What the public hears about is a tiny fraction of the successes (and failures) that are actually out there. If you are lucky enough to find a profitable niche then you don't invite competition to take it away from you. There are several examples that I personally know about that have never been shared with the public.

One example is a personal friend of mine. He developed a B2C software product for a particular niche that you wouldn't think was very large or profitable. He doesn't talk about what he does publicly or even read entrepreneur sites like Hacker News. If someone were to show me his app and ask me how long it would take for me to develop it I would say "three weeks: two to code it and one more to make it that ugly". And yet this guy makes a ton of money (much more than a typical software engineer) essentially for just handling the occasional support or billing issue.

Another example was a guy I worked for in college in the early 2000s. He got in early in the business sending out e-mail newsletters for professional organizations. He bought a license of a high-end e-mail program for about $15k, bought about $5k in server hardware and spent about $750/mo. in co-location fees. Then he hired me and another college student to work remotely part-time at $15-$20/hr. to handle the server administration and support. Add all that up and his total costs were about $20k up front and $2500/mo. The only work he would do is go to conferences a couple times a year and do a couple of sales calls a month. He generally kept the details of his financials hidden from me, but I know that at least a couple of his clients were paying over $5000/mo. each. When you consider he had a couple dozen organizations as customers, that is very impressive for something that is almost completely passive with no technical skills required.

I use a technique like this when I am stuck trying to write code and can't figure out how to do it efficiently. I ask myself "what is the worst possible way to implement this function?" and start writing that. Sure enough, that gets my mind going almost immediately and I start thinking of the improvements needed to turn it into good code.

I had a similar experience when I was 14 years old. At the time I was running a very popular trivia web site that had been featured on Yahoo and in a few magazines. A guy e-mailed me and said he liked my site. He asked if he could pay me a small fee to run a banner ad for his new business. I told him I appreciated the offer, but I didn't think it was allowed under the Geocities terms of service.

I was really into discovering new web sites at the time and had not heard of this company. I looked at the guy's site to see what it was about. I remember thinking it was ugly design and a stupid idea. Not much longer after that, the company began to take off. The guy that had e-mailed me was Pierre Omidyar and the site was EBay. I've tried to look at new businesses with an open mind since then.

The Navy has an SBIR solicitation out for this topic, but it does not necessarily mean that it is going to put up $1MM. Phase I funding is small (less than $100k per award) and sometimes no Phase II contracts are awarded for a topic. Of course, the Navy could also spend much more than $1MM if they decide to fund multiple Phase IIs (also not uncommon). It really depends on the results they see during Phase I and the importance of the topic compared to other funding opportunities.

No, Vimeo is owned by IAC (Interactive Corp.).

I've long given up on expecting a reply when I send in a resume. What amazes me is how rude some people are after you've taken the time to interview with them. Like you mentioned, some will not even dignify you with a quick reply to let you know that you didn't get the job. I think some of this behavior comes from the flawed mindset that some people have. They think "important people are too busy for things like simple courtesies, so if I neglect those, it must mean I'm too busy and therefore important".

I read another article about this acquisition that linked to this Gizmodo article from 2010 that was openly mocking him after naming his app "worst app of the week": http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-deve...

Nice to see he got the last laugh. It's inspiring to think that his company went from a joke to some people to a $30MM acquisition in a little over 2 years.

And don't bother registering because you will get a ton of e-mail newsletters you don't want. Trying to unsubscribe from them is like playing whack-a-mole because they subscribe you to so many different lists.

I think their "mini mall" strategy is interesting, but I have my doubts if it will work beyond being a novelty to buyers in the short term. If a brand is strong enough to support having its own store, why wouldn't they just open up a store in the adjacent regular mall and cut out the middle man?

Yes, that's it!

I can't remember the name of it, but there is a company that does something similar for shipping delays with UPS and FedEx. A company that ships a lot of packages can get thousands in rebates since a percentage of those deliveries will probably be late. Are there any other industries where rebates often go unclaimed?

What are some empowering innovations that we can expect to see developed in the next few years? The only one that immediately came to mind for me was 3D printing.

Has there been any research on average miles driven vs. the day of the month? I would speculate that people who live paycheck to paycheck might drive more at the beginning of the month (after payday when they can afford to fill up on gas and run errands like buying groceries) than at the end of the month. I'm not sure if this would have a significant impact on the data.

I have never understood this either. These procedures must be a relic from a time when most people did not have access to laser printers.

Similarly when I went to renew my drivers license, they required proof of my social security number. My old license (with a picture of me, holograms, etc.) wasn't acceptable, but a health insurance card that could have been printed by anyone with access to a laminating machine was perfectly fine.

I think they are just using this as a way to advertise the NFL video product (which seems like it is not selling very well). When you tell a bunch of armchair football experts "This is for experts only. You may not be able to handle it.", many people immediately look to prove them wrong.

This article reminds me of the time I went car shopping and wanted to test drive a 6 cylinder version of a car after driving the 4 cylinder. The salesman gave me this really phony pitch saying "I have to warn you, many people can't handle a car this fast. But once you experience the power of the 6 cylinder engine, there's no going back!". In reality, I didn't see a huge difference between the two models (I didn't buy either one), but I can see how this technique makes it easier for him to sell the more expensive car.

Not only that but I believe JSTOR has settled with Aaron Swartz and is not pressing for further prosecution.

Congratulations on your success! I wouldn't sell RollRover short. I don't have an iPhone to try it, but from the video trailer it looks like a fun and well-made game.

My first thought is that it would do the opposite: increase political pressure on Bitcoin so that it may become more difficult to use (legally). This would drive down the price since many buyers are speculating on Bitcoin becoming more mainstream one day.

Google must have read my mind. I was just looking for this feature earlier in the week. It surprised me that I couldn't add a comment to a spreadsheet like I could in a Google Doc.

The tool that I like to use for Gmail backups is a Python script called BaGoMa: http://sourceforge.net/p/bagoma/home/BaGoMa/