jolie

Conrad Egusa is not a VB writer. He contributed a couple guest posts in recent years, and he may have done some other writing for us, but it was more than 3 years ago.

Look, if you REALLY want to get featured on VB (or any other site), connections are almost beside the point, anyhow. It all comes down to your product (is it important? does it work?) and your story (is it interesting? are you available to talk about yourself and your company?). There's no special trick to getting press other than being press-worthy, press-ready, and respectful.

It might not be to your taste, but it's hardly the most important thing to focus on for this particular longread. =)

FYI, this quote was swiped from my article/interview on VentureBeat. You can read the whole thing (with a lot more context) here: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/05/why-parse-was-the-missing-...

This is awesome. I appreciate that it's not just another checkin/dating/blathering-with-existing-friends app, but that if used correctly, it might make one smarter. Goon on ya for that.

What other titles might you add in the future? (I'm jolie@venturebeat.com if you'd like to discuss further btw.)

That the FBI gets data about supposed criminals from mobile carriers? That they usually have something like a warrant or probable cause to do so?

I'm all about carrying a torch & pitchfork when it's necessary, but I find other government-sponsored BS (SOPA, for example) a bit more compelling & troublesome at the moment. From everything I've seen in corporate spy guides, it seems unlikely that the government is watching your every move if you're not doing something wrong or at least suspicious. It's not a perfect system, but it's not something to put Carrier IQ out of business for, either.

I've been in touch with CIQ and have written about both sides of the story.

CIQ told me that if the FBI got CIQ's data, they got it from carriers, not from CIQ. It kinda makes sense, since law enforcement work with carriers all the freakin time anyhow.

Full statement is here: http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/13/carrier-iq-fbi-rebuttal/

Good lord. This is why I universally recommend journalists writing on technology take at least 6 months of programming instruction.

As someone who spends her entire day writing and reading blog posts and has developed a love/hate relationship with blogging, I think "shut the blog up" is pretty satisfying and appropriate for Internet usage.

RMS is a delightful man (I've had the pleasure of interviewing him at length in person), and his demands are completely in line with his philosophies. His dedication to free and open-source ideals, if impractical, is also inspiring and rare.

Saying he has "a retarded way of dealing with people" is perhaps too general. I myself found him enchanting and enlightening in our interactions. Maybe you just didn't like the way he treated you.

Well, I was writing it for Mashable. ;)

In other words, I tried to make it interesting to a technical audience but still comprehensible to the average reader. I'm working on a more technical "how to get started with Node" post with code samples; that should be up in a couple weeks.

Why are we assuming that a tech conference should be anyone's sexual playground, be they male or female? Also, what's up with all the boy-girl, girl-boy heteronormative assumptions?

At the end of the day, all this site did was show me 2 sexist coders (gasp!) who will likely never have enough respect for women to be able to work with any real women in a collaborative or professional setting.

Very deft career move, Garry. You'll have more access to more people, see more fresh ideas, and have a much larger megaphone.

Y-C's gonna be awesome for you, but I really can't wait to see what comes next. =)

THIS is how you know you need to stop coding and find a girlfriend.

Good luck with your more, uh, redeeming ventures.

I had a parallel life -- childhood abuse, fundamentalist upbringing, suicide attempt at 27. I was so angry when I woke up from that attempt in a hospital three days later, but after reading this letter, I know (at least in part) why: I have a responsibility to share that part of my story, too.

The hopelessness in this letter is something I've felt acutely in my life. Heck, MY last letter said roughly the same things.

I came so close to ending up like Bill. I'm sure lots of others out there are thinking about doing the same thing.

We have to figure out a better way to help one another.

-Do something that warrants its own Wikipedia article.

It's one thing to say that the magazine has gender parity issues in its coverage, but c'mon - a huge pair of boobs on the cover isn't exactly a step in the right direction.

As someone who reads scores of pitches a week from tech startups, I can't say how much I agree with this.

Most of the pitches I get these days force me to wade through swamps of buzzwords that have become absolutely meaningless. It's enough of a turn-off that I pretty much ignore those pitches -- I figure that if the company had something really exciting to tell me, they'd figure out a way to tell me so within a couple sentences without using endless strings of empty jargon.

In pitching (to journalists, or users, or potential employees), keep in mind the most basic rule of poetry: The fewer the words, the more powerful the statement. I.e., less is more.

1) That's kind of awesome!

2) "This guy" is actually a lady. =)

Sorry I missed it -- no one in my network (or on HN, when I asked) mentioned QtCreator to me.

Sheesh, there's one in every thread...

Thanks for starting this topic, ladydude. I've been looking for the same sort of advice/extracurricular materials, myself.

This one's on my wishlist. As in, I wish I had the time/cognitive tenacity to read it: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Programming-Volumes-1-4A-Boxe...

I get what you're saying about hackers, but I don't see why you'd necessarily correlate hackers with entrepreneurs. There's a very narrow overlap in that Venn diagram, precisely because hackers (orig. definition) don't do what they do to make money or build businesses. Hacker/founder/entrepreneurs are a rare enough breed.

The movie doesn't portray him as evil at all, imo. He comes off as witty and quite good at evaluating risk.

As for his hacking abilities, I've heard stories that he's not (or is no longer) among the best; perhaps he's better at coming up with creative uses for a system than actual coding. And for what it's worth, I don't think the movie made him out to be a "genius hacker" in the coding sense -- more a genius hacker of what the Internet was intended to be.

Thanks! Good points -- I think the language-specific IDE tip is a good one for utter beginners like me.

Yeah, I've seen a TON about making Vim into an IDE: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2009/05/vim-made-e...

I <3 gEdit bigtime, and all my Mac-using friends are constantly enthusing about TextMate. Is there a Windows equivalent?

I'm actually reading "Hackers" (the Levy book) now, and I've spent a lot of time thinking/writing/educating about the term, so I dig what you're getting at. =)

And the "hackers as founders" thing is kinda what Y Combinator is all about, yes?

I call myself that because that's what I am, dude.

I don't call myself a programmer or a hacker -- I'm simply a student.

And "faking it" is despicable. How about "be what you are, and become what you want to be."

"Hacker News" is also about startups, though. And a lot of startups begin with hackers. I don't think it's at all irrelevant, especially given the number of hackers with apps who may or may not be legitimate entrepreneurs, as well.

"...and nobody can tell you differently."

Yup. Pretty much. That's ego, though, not entrepreneurship.

I downloaded Eclipse and have been trying to work with NetBeans, too.

For some reason, my prof has us using JCreator, which no one yet has recommended. Any idea why?