jaytee_clone

I'm very grateful for this work. However, saying that this contribution alone brings the tipping-point closer is rather pompous.

First of all, since gene expressions are such upstream information, knowing it won't give us the whole picture (or even come close to it.)

It's like knowing the code of a program, which has syntax you have never seen before, and you have no idea what the compiler does, not to mention the machine code describes an astronomical non-linear computation.

Second of all, gene expression dependents on age, environment, behavior, and probably things we don't even know. I haven't look at the data, but I assume it's just the mouse's brain in one instant. Otherwise it will be a VERY resource intensive job. Not to mention that you have to freeze the brain in order to slice it and map the gene (unless they got better technology now), so even if you get a different instant of the brain it won't be the same mouse.

However, a step towards the goal is a step towards the goal. And that's what this project was. Great work.

Kudos. I'm not in Chicago, but I applaud your effort.

Agree. I make sure I dance once a week too (salsa).

Unfortunately. (or fortunately depending on the perspective) I still don't have the time for the second one.

Cool site, but my intent for this post was more for non-romantic socialization.

Kudos. That's the model I'm going for, except that I'm trying to skip the first part. (Low on cash)

I like your roll-your-own approach. We are entrepreneurs after all.

I used to roll my own weekly salsa dance social. I was surprised how many hackers showed up regularly.

Now that I moved to Berkeley, I have to start from scratch again.

I used to play in a band too.

Now that I'm working on a start-up I stopped playing music.

Hopefully I will get to the position you're at now.

Cool. Where do I find out about these parties?

I never heard of that dance before. It does look quite eclectic.

I usually go out and salsa dance once a week.

I know a few hackers who are also rock climbers.

I'm seriously considering taking it on.

How about a check immunity system?

For example, competent people who knows their own weaknesses well and often check their decisions with others should be immune to checks

Good programmers often let other good programmers check their codes. Good writers often let other good writers proof read. Good managers often discuss his decisions with his employees before deploy them. They should be check immune.

You can even pass out check-immune badges to encourage non-check-immune people to be more critical of themselves :)

Of course, this system itself is a check. Who decides who will get check-immunity? What's the successful-decision-ratio threshold? I think it's possible to implement a light-weight system little cost.

Though it's fun to sneak into places (I had my share), it's better in the long run to use participatory strategies (e.g. what the author listed: volunteer, blog, speak, party)

Or better, organize and start your own conference. We are entrepreneurs after all.

Domains are pretty cheap anyway, doesn't matter which one you use.

The cost of the it is probably a few orders of magnitude less than the time you need to spend to come up with a good domain name. Thus, it's really not worth it to consider domain price as a decision factor.

Now, as far as functionality goes, namecheap.com is pretty good.

Ha. The Virtuozzo Lorem ipsum is pretty hilarious. Didn't notice that before.

True, they have horrible presentation. They should definitely focus on that more than lowering their price.

However, their services (the server itself or the customer service) so far has been great, so I have nothing to complain.

Start one.

I use Tektonic.

http://www.tektonic.net/vps.php

I haven't done any performance comparison. (since I don't use other hosting services.)

But as far as raw resources per dollar, Tektonic has both Slicehost and Linode beaten.

My first thought was - the rating system itself creates a ceiling to the accuracy of the prediction. And it seems that every one knows that. (Netflix or the 30,000 hackers.)

Then why spend so much resource to improve 10% of the existing rating system instead of experiment with new kinds of rating system. (I'm sure someone can come up with something clever yet simple.) Yes it's costly to change the infrastructure. But if you don't do it, some startup will come out and beat them to it.

The worst part is that Netflix is paying people to think inside-of-the-box (the rating system).

I read about Bertoni a while ago and was inspired by his out-of-the-box approach (Behavioral Economics). Wouldn't that give Netflix a hint - "Yo Netflix, here's this dude who's getting the fastest-growing result by extracting more qualitative information out of the quantitative rating system. Maybe you should just design a new rating system that better orgnizes these qualitative information? Just Maybe."

Or maybe I'm missing the point here?

-Video game is a waste of your time.

-Practice something everyday.

Tom, that was very inspiring.

Coincidentally, I decided to roll my own blog a week ago.

It's written in Lisp.

http://jamrides.com/blog/s/20081114004158.html

1. Go out and talk to a stranger. Write down your interaction later. Take notes of your body language. You goal is to have them ask for your number or email before the conversation ends.

2. Learn something you have never learned before and device a way to practice it every day. (You don't have to do it of course.) This is practicing your meta-practice skills.

3. Teach/explain something you know very well to someone who doesn't know anything about it.

4. Pick something randomly (daily utilities or routines), and make it better, or at least think about how you would do it. (You want to focus on a specific quality for at least a week. e.g. this week is user-friendly week, next week is durability.)

5. Find something (or concept, habit) you don't need and get rid of it.

6. Grab a friend/stranger, ask about something he want to change about his life. Analyze it and find the root cause. (of course, solution will be even better)

7. Grab a friend, tell them about something your want to change. Analyze it and find the root cause.

8. Meditation (the sitting kind, but also try to be aware of your thoughts at all time of the day.)

9. Make 10 people laugh.

10. Pick a newspaper/blog article and rewrite it.

11. Smile at everyone you see, and find something about them that you like.

I can keep going with the list.

The principle here is what you already know, which is putting in 10,000 hours.

However, I think it's far important to focus on the specific and push yourself just a little bit every day.

You don't get better at playing chess by playing in the same rank for 10,000 hours. You get better by playing with someone who's better than you until you can beat him consistently, then play with someone who's even better until you can beat him.

This works because your brain is design to adapt to harder and harder tasks. Hence the old saying, "if it's not hard, you're not learning."

I'm sorry if you feel insulted by my comment. I was merely approving these bargain techniques with my real life experience. And in no way would I ever compare myself to Gandhi. You must have miss-read my writing.

Sure, it's technically stealing, in the same way that downloading music is. I don't deny it.

If you could take a second to forgive my misdeed, and maybe even consider calling it "selective stealing"?

Selective because I only sneak into shows that charges $50+ by musicians who are already rich. On the other hand, I often donate money to smaller independent bands as they come through the non-profit venue I used to help at.

I hope my act will balance out (even just a little bit) the heavily screwed music industry. And if I have to endure being called a thief, so be it.

In my book:

sneak into == not paying

The best story is the one that is not explanatory. The whole point is to take the focus off you. So I would usually start with asking the person how his job is going, or if the band found fix their PA, or just borrow a cigarette, etc.

If he asks directly "who are you", depend on who this person is, I'd tell him I'm with the band, with the stage crew, with the press, or a promoter.

But really, if you do it right you shouldn't need to explain anything to anyone.

I have sneaked into many concerts using the same techniques:

1. Dress nicely. (It works the best when you look nicer than anyone else in the concert, especially the artists.)

2. Immediately chat up and possibly be friend with someone who looks important. (e.g. host, venue owner, the person that would most likely to kick you out.)

3. Have your story ready, just in case.

True. It's nothing special.

However, I do like the simple design, especially the filter options that reflect the interests of the students.

Targeting niche audience might actually get them somewhere.

Digging on the site a little bit deeper, I realize all of the jobs are from big companies. This is hardly helping start-ups or students who want to start one.

Why don't they just build a student entrepreneur networking site? I see a lot more potential in that.

Yes, we definitely have bigger issues to worry about, such as resource shortage and overpopulation. That's exactly my point. And I wish I would have better content to provide for the day, but the ad was blatantly everywhere on the web, I just could not ignore.

In fact, ignoring it actually benefit the people who do try to spam our culture with such pointless issues.

You may be smart enough to see through the bullshit, but not everyone else have that kind of rationale.

Sorry for promoting myself a little bit here.

I just implemented this new feature last night. Good idea? Bad idea?

I know carpool is good, voting is good, so it's gotta be good.

I just wish I have done it earlier.

Forum was my first love too.

I agree that individualism web appeals to a lot more people. And yes, most people still use internet for recreation purposes only. But that's changing. My understanding of individualism and collectivism is that they are not two separate entities. In fact, they feed on each other. For example, let's look at this "evolution"

1. Lots of people experiment with individual expression on live journal (or whatever was popular back then)

2. Good writers get more attention, bad writers drop out

3. Some of the better writers get so many traffic that they decide to open independent blogs

4. The best of the blogs always serve critical functionality for the community (consciously or not). Either by delivering valuable information, e.g. news, or by (virtual) bringing people together, e.g. comic strips.

When I look at this evolutionarily, it just makes sense to me. Humans are collective animals. We know that one of the main reasons that collectivism works so well is because of Divisions of Labor. Interestingly, at the core of Division of Labor is the requirement that everyone takes on a specialized and often unique role, which is very individualistic.

Thus it is important to work towards the "few but better blogs" kind of collectivism-individualism system.

I'm pretty confident that on a larger time-scale, the internet is going in that direction. At least for myself, I enjoy a well organized forum a lot more than having 400+ facebook friends.

Very insightful social analysis of the web (though a small part of the web). Maybe rewrite it so it's more succinct? I'm picky about writing because I'm a bad writer.

In any case, I feel you.

However, I think "individualism web" will deflate if it's not deflating already. And "collectivism web" is making its comeback. Many community-oriented people are working on this, myself included.

Not saying that either one will die out. Individualism and collectivism are evolutionarily inter-dependent traits that we've all inherited. I just wish we can address these issues more as suppose to always talking about getting more user, more traffic, and more buzz. (Not that they don't matter.)

I thought the application instructions said YC will finish reading the application by 29th, and after which they will contact the applicants.

If i read it wrong, I'm grateful for not living in constant anxiety for two weeks.

Also, it's kinda hard to see how JamRides is different than other service from the homepage. You guys should really check out the about section too. (Specifically the section explaining the difference.)

http://jamrides.com/about.html