melvinmt

> the Udacity "Self-Driving Car Engineer" nanodegree

That looks like a great course by the way, thanks for sharing.

Great post, I bookmarked it (and your website as well). I'm also looking for more success stories / use cases.

I'm personally not very convinced about automated conversational interfaces, but Messenger does provide a great opportunity (1bn users) and platform (ios/android/web) to create and grow new kinds of applications with very little effort, if only we can figure out how to get people using it :)

Have you tried the recently announced Newsfeed Ads for Messenger to drive traffic to your bot?

https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2016/09/12/new-mes...

> When is the appropriate time to intervene to ask if everything is ok?

Where I grew up (The Netherlands) this simply does not exist. If you need something you ask the waiter and only then they'll come to you. Likewise for the check, the check only comes when you ask for it. It is considered extremely rude to get the check before you've asked for it.

Of course, after living in the US for 5 years I've become accustomed to all kinds of weird things (like the insistence of having salad before the entree, and entree not being an appetizer, simply blows my mind).

> Starting salaries of seven figures are not unheard-of

Seven figures? For grad students?

1 year later: "When you told me about your side-project, you didn't tell me it was going to be successful. Thus, I must change my mind and sue you."

*than

> The part that looks like BS in Hollywood hacking to me is the green "matrix" text.

Wait, you don't use green "matrix" text?

> Now your site and your monitoring is down. Much better to outsource to people who obsess over doing this right and making sure they are properly redundant.

You make valid points about redundancy and levels of reliability but keep in mind that even Pingdom can go down: http://royal.pingdom.com/2016/10/24/ddos-attack-affects-ping...

"My extension that blocks website content seems to block website content…"

That's how I interpret complaints by adblock users.

> Uber collects your location data from the time of trip request through five minutes after ends trip ends, including when the app is in the background. We do this to improve pickups, drop-offs, customer service, and to enhance safety.

Meh, sounds reasonable as long as they don't collect data outside this window (although they should not make it all-or-nothing, a third option of "While in use" would be better).

This was actually one of the more insightful comments on this page…

You should look into improving your Single User Utility.

Here are some links to get started:

http://avc.com/2012/12/single-user-utility-in-a-social-syste...

http://andrewchen.co/social-products-win-with-utility-not-in...

http://platformed.info/seeding-platform-standalone-square-op...

There are also countless examples of successful two-sided marketplaces who started out by "nurturing" (aka faking) one side of the market until they reached their critical mass.

Thanks for the quote. Just found the entire transcript: http://newfilmkritik.de/archiv/2005-03/los-angeles-plays-its...

It's a good read :)

> But you'd still need to translate for the sake of biological clocks

I fail to see what you mean. Do you mean your biological clock needs to see it's 12pm to believe that it's the middle of the day? Why can't your biological clock just settle on any arbitrary number?

This. The withdrawal symptoms of coffee usually last for about a week. The thing that is perhaps most surprising is that after that week you'll also feel less tired. Turns out that while most people consider coffee as a remedy to tiredness, it's the coffee itself that actually makes you more tired, so you need more and more of it, just like any other addictive drug.

Wag Labs, Inc. | https://wagwalking.com | Los Angeles, CA | Full Time | Onsite

Wag is the fast-growing on-demand dog walking startup and we're currently offering our dog walking service in 12 major cities in the US. Our HQ is conveniently located on the Sunset Strip (West Hollywood) and we're backed by several top VCs.

We're looking for code/technology agnostic Full Stack Engineers who, besides being an expert in 1 backend language (preferably PHP) and having experience with at least 1 modern JS framework (preferably Angular or React), are not afraid to pick up and learn new languages and technologies. Experience level: mid-senior-lead (4+ years experience).

We try to keep our interview process straight forward: online code challenge (<1 hr), 1-2 phone screens (< 1.5hr) and an on-site interview (<3 hrs).

This is still a small engineering team in a fast-growing company, so it's a great opportunity to have a lot of impact and ownership while we continue to grow.

Our tech stack consists of: backend API (PHP/Laravel), iOS apps (Obj-C), Android apps (Java/Javascript), web app (Angular) and internal tools that use React/Redux. As Full Stack Engineer you will be working with the technologies you are most familiar with and/or most interested in.

Compensation: $1xx,xxx/yr with equity. We offer catered lunch daily, weekly office exercise, health benefits.

Please submit resume and a short intro about yourself to melvin@wagwalking.com

I have the same hair "problem" (it runs in the family on my mother's side), I'm early 30s as well with significant gray hair showing and refusing to dye my hair, and... for me it has always been pretty much an advantage to get senior / management positions relatively fast since I was about 25 (I always tell anyone who asks/mocks about my hair that "at least they take me more seriously") and it has worked out pretty well so far.

My resume never goes back more than 5-7 yrs because it's not meant to be a history report but should be a strong 1-pager with just the highlights of your career, relative and relevant to the position you're applying for (for example, I started leaving out my education because it's not relevant to my experience anymore and it's not been a problem at all). I hope, for my own sake, that I don't owe everything to my hair, but it's definitely not been an obstacle to my progress.

I think confidence and attitude signal more than whatever you think people think about your hair (for starters, stop worrying/thinking about what other people may or may not perceive about you, simply project the self that you want to be) and if you worry about the gap in age perception so much, why not just put your birth date on your resume?

You should first start reading these great slides from Carl de Macken (ITA Software co-founder, the thing that now powers Google Flights) http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...

…and then decide if you still want to pursue this.

This may be an obvious question but what's a JV call?

Yep, not sure where this perception of "nobody's using it" comes from but I have been using it in 2 different companies in the last 3 years as well with nothing but love. In fact, if it were the case that "nobody's using it for good reasons", maybe we should ought to know the reasons?

Ah, I thought they only renamed the original company (Snapchat, Inc.), didn't know about a new parent company.

From Shippo's homepage:

"Shyp uses Shippo to automatically get rates from multiple carriers, and create shipping labels at the lowest prices.

Shyp accepts orders from their app, and sends shipment information directly to their fulfillment center to be processed, same-day. Weight, dimensions, and other information about the item are then sent to the Shippo API and a shipping label is generated.

Shippo helps power Shyp by providing them with a way to automatically generate discounted shipping labels."

So.. what Parent is meant in the title?

> We’re excited that the members of our engineering team will be joining Stripe

So is this one of Stripe's BYOT hires?

Wag Labs, Inc. | wagwalking.com | Los Angeles, CA | Full Time | Onsite | No VISA sponsorship (except Canadian/Australian citizens)

Wag is the fast-growing on-demand dog walking startup and we're currently offering our dog walking service in 10 major cities in the US. Our HQ is conveniently located on the Sunset Strip (West Hollywood) and we're backed by several top VCs.

Our tech stack consists of: backend API (PHP/Laravel), iOS apps (Obj-C), Android apps (Java/Javascript), web app (Angular) and internal tools that use React/Redux.

We know you are busy so we aim not to take too much of your time, our interview process is: online code challenge (1-3 hrs), 1-2 phone screens if not local (< 1.5hr) and an on-site interview (<3 hrs).

We are looking for:

Full Stack Engineer - proficient in at least 1 backend language (php/python/ruby/go/etc) and in javascript (angular/react), devops experience a plus

Mobile Engineer - iOS and/or Android, experience w/ working in a mobile development team, releasing multiple versions of the same app and at least 1 app in the app store

Product Designer - experience w/ mobile app design, DTP, vector art, portfolio required

QA/Test Engineer - experience w/ automated software testing, regression testing, stress testing, assist unit testing with writing test frameworks, misc. functional/nonfunctional testing.

Please submit resume, a short intro abt yourself, and the role you're applying for to melvin@wagwalking.com

And here's another quote: (oil) markets can stay irrational longer than (Tesla) can stay solvent.

> Always be invested in the market.

I'm glad you don't adhere to the defeatist approach of Efficient Market Hypothesis proponents. Always be in the market, yes. Always follow the market, no.

> Uber logs as many miles in 24 minutes as Google’s autonomous cars have logged in their existence

Hmm… Let's try comparing 24 minutes of miles logged in Google Maps (and Waze) with Uber's data and see where they stand then…

It's not as if you would move your money out of Europe they suddenly can't hit you with taxes anymore. If you want to keep doing business in the EU, you'll need to comply with EU rules (and yes, pay taxes).