littlegiantcap

This is a little off topic, but here goes. Shameless self promotion incoming.

I'm working on a startup called http://APIXchange.co

Think 99 designs but for API integration. Basically, freelancers with experience with various APIs do integration for people wanting to use specific technologies.

Feel free to shoot me any questions you may have. apixchange@gmail.com

Awesome team building something really cool. Congrats!

Wise from the perspective of attracting investors? Maybe. Wise from the perspective of running a functional business? No. Fudging metrics to make yourself feel better is crazy. How are you expected to know the actual health of your business without having a clear view of metrics as simple as revenue, marketing, and returns.

It seems as though it's not really what you know, but what you're willing to do/learn. I was the business founder in my last startup, and I picked up technical skills to help when needed and coached my co-founders on sales when they needed to step in. IMHO if you're founding a startup there is nothing that isn't in your job description.

Couldn't these things just be increasingly safe car designs? When I started driving in 2005 side curtain airbags weren't even that common much less all the safety features we have today.

For situational depression it can. Clinical depression is an entire other beats, but regular exercise increases the levels of serotonin in your brain and releases more endorphins that elevate your mood.

As someone who is finally starting to get out of being depressed don't do it. The important thing here is to tell yourself it will get better. There are 2 things that really helped me.

1. Is changing your perspective. You don't care about life anymore? What an absolutely fantastic opportunity to break every single societal norm and do the things you've always dreamed of doing but were too scared to. Go skydiving, get a classic car, whatever. Make the kind of fun/dumb decisions that people do when they're in high school. Wear your depression like a coat of armor to do whatever the fuck you want.

2. Exercise and sunlight. I'm serious man, I was (still am obese), but working out, eating right, and getting outside has effectively cured me. Especially the sunlight thing. Vitamin D deficiency can cause depression. Want some statistics to back it up? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra... Look at the countries near the bottom of the list. Sunshine. They're all in the Middle East or the Caribbean. Getting outdoors can do wonders.

Those are the 2 things that helped me, but there's many more ways to get better. Talk to someone, a therapist, a friend, whatever. The fact that you're reaching out right now tells me you probably have doubts about what you're thinking about doing. There really is so much to live for. The fact that a stranger took the time to type up their experience and share it with you should be proof of that. Besides, you obviously haven't always felt like this. You can get back to the way you were. There is hope, it's just hard to see right now.

P.S. don't drink. I made that mistake and drowned myself in whiskey for a couple of months. It will make it worse not better. Trust me.

Exactly. Just like getting a job you have to pay your dues in a lower position before you get to be the CEO.

Not a bad idea. The design needs work. I can tell you right now that I'll never use your service though. I'm a pretty big bro, but honestly your entire tone is incredibly condescending. Just because I wear polos and was in a fraternity doesn't mean that I deserve to be talked to or treated like a child.

That's incredibly interesting. I'm actually working on a startup with my SO too. It's been a trip so far. I really feel like we're growing closer because of it. Plus she doesn't bother me about working odd hours because she's next to me :)

Any advice for someone starting down this path?

In the Adria Richards trial there are 2 upstanding people. Jim Frankiln (CEO of Sendgrid) Who offered not only a pertinent, but fair fair reaction to this entire thing, but also The Pycon staff members. Who, without ego or vendetta, enforced the rules as described. I salute both of these people.

All I'll say is this, and really it's what it boils down to. Regardless of if you think she was in the right or the wrong, she is a developer evangelist. That means she goes around and tries to get companies to pick up her product. After all this, I wouldn't get near her with a 40 foot pole. God forbid I slip and say something that get's misconstrued and I or my company gets dragged through the mud. With that being said, I feel like she's lost the ability to do her job. If she's an evangelist and the people she's supposed to be evangelizing don't want to be around her, where does that leave her or Sendgrid?

She works for Sendgrid.

I think it's also very pertinent to point out that they in fact aren't employees of Uber. They aren't being denied work or fired, they're being denied from using Uber's service. This is absolutely no different than hell banning a troublesome user on a site.

Interestingly enough it's often the industry in question often arguing for limits on itself. Less supply means they get to jack up their prices.

I'd like to second what you're saying. The ability to play with my friends in our own private regions is an awesome one, and one I'm glad they included. Frankly, I would have no problem with anything they're doing if it just worked. The big mistake here, imho,is that EA is a huge company, they should have set aside the resources to make this experience great.

It's been fun while I've actually been able to connect to EA's servers. (which is rare). I'm not going to beat the anti-drm drum, but I will say this. If EA is going to go this route they had better have the resources available to make it happen. I for one actually don't mind it, if it was able to work.

Dwolla's entire network is based on pushing the transaction rather than pulling. You can send request, but ultimately the money doesn't move until send it with your pin.

I'm originally from Illinois (Non chicago) and I would agree with that sentiment. In fact, where I'm from, everyone called it the People's Republic of Chicago and the rest of the state as Kentucky proper . (As a joke of course) On a more serious note though it is frustrating from a political perspective when Chicago dominates stae politics so much. For example, the city of Chicago sued my town, because there was an obscure provision on our books that allowed a certain tract of land to be Section 8 housing. So the state jacked up our taxes to build cheap apartments and then literally bused people from Caprini Green (A project) to our sleepy little town. This was all done in the name of lowering Chicago's crime, not by fixing it, but simply moving it outside the city. I'm sure it had something to do with their failed olympic bid. (Another issue our town had to deal with)

Provide evidence. I hate hearing this claim without any quantifiable proof being provided at all.

I'd say that in a pure numbers game. i.e. 1 mil to 500k troops you may be right. The military as an idea is undergoing a dramatic transformation that's been happening since the dawn of the nuclear weapon. The challenges we face now are quite different than the ones we faced throughout any other time in history. We need to look at the military like a startup of sorts. How do we tear down the big bloated corporate structure and enable to act quickly and derisively in a global battlefield where a small group of determined individuals has the ability to inflict the same amount of damage that used to take tanks and a large standing force. I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do think it's important that we acknowledge that the danger has changed not simply gone away.

Points 2 and 4 are frankly just wrong. I know the idea of a peace loving utopia is a fun one, but claiming that there is no need for a military and just out of hand dismissing the US as "corrupt" without any quantifiable evidence is frankly just lazy and ignorant.

Even where we are now I know several people who are going back to school to get their comp sci degrees that were previously anything from teachers to law school graduates. I would argue that 1. This market is elastic and that 2. labor is slower to shift than capital.

The pope has said condoms can be used to help stop the spread of aids in some circumstances. I wouldn't really classify homosexual marriage as "science" but the catholic prohibition on it deals more with natural law and sex having to have both the dual purposes of procreation and the loving aspect as well. We're quickly wading into the philosophical belief side of things. My entire point was essentially that while some catholic beliefs may conflict with what you believe they don't reject scientific evidence out of hand like people seemed to be suggesting.

Yeah, well if we want to split hairs Evolution is theory. Granted a pretty good one, but still. Another thing is you're assuming Catholics are biblical literalist (hint: we aren't). Think of some things in the bible (part of the book of genesis for instance) as more of fables or stories intended to teach us lessons.

Catholics believe in evolution. With the catholic interpretation of the bible, science is generally seen as the how and the religious side as the why.

Which of course is the reason that the Vatican keeps teams of scientist on hand that includes over 5 Nobel laurites. It's almost like painting us religious people with broad strokes is as backwards and ignorant as making general statements about "blacks" or "homosexuals".

It's interesting, but not particularly surprising. There's only so much that can be done with a fine arts degree. My girlfriend started off school as a Art history major because she loved art, but quickly changed once she realized there was essentially no future in the field unless you wanted to stay in academia.

The best thing the tech industry can do for gun safety is to provide better education through the internet.