monkeyspaw

Gutenberg looks awesome! I have a special interest in tools that help programmers build documentation while they code. Part of the reason is that I struggle with it constantly.

A shameless self-promotion here: in the last 2 days, my coworkers and I built a web app that can take markdown files and display them in a nice webpage. I just tried it out with the README file in this repo, and thought others might be interested in the result: http://www.onlinemarkdowneditor.com/docs/somu/gutenberg/READ...

There are quite a few similar projects out there, but we wanted to eliminate the extra steps of hosting and "building" documentation. However, I think something like Gutenberg looks like a very powerful way to build documentation, and it fits in nicely with the project I just worked on.

This is Travis from the team doing the live hackathon. We'd love to have people stop by the chat room and offer feedback. We'll also check this page somewhat regularly.

Right now, it just views markdown documentation, pulling from GitHub. We'd like to add a tie in with Github's issue tracker (issues / questions about the documentation), some customizable styling, and an inline editor (so you can edit your documentation inline, and it'll push the changes back to your repo).

We're planning to open source the whole thing once we add issues, inline editing, and fix a few bugs.

Clickable links: Project Description - http://www.onlinemarkdowneditor.com/docs/tbrianjones/ome-doc...

Feature Ideas - http://www.onlinemarkdowneditor.com/docs/tbrianjones/ome-doc...

Live Hackathon Chat - http://tlk.io/ii_hackathon

Looking forward to hearing the community's feedback.

What if they just ran their calculations something like this?

Suppose a 10MB youtube video is watched 100x. That's 1GB traffic. The NSA could record the video (10MB), then simply record who watched it (maybe a few dozen MB in http headers, etc -- call it 40MB)

They could report they only monitored 50MB of 1,000 MB, or 5%.

If the video was watched 1,000x, they're "monitoring" around .5%. 10k views, they're monitoring .05%.

Pretty easy to see how they can report a true number that also doesn't reveal the extent of their wiretapping.

It seems to me that it is because the hiring process is a short-term one. The rationale for firing someone can happen over hundreds of hours. Sometimes you don't know that someone will be a bad coworker until they've been a bad coworker.

Hiring processes optimize for people who are good at getting hired. Working with someone (if you're willing to prune the bad coworkers) optimizes for people who are good colleagues.

I dunno, I could see that really resonating with parents who want complete knowledge of their child's location at all times. And what they were doing.

That type of technology satisfies every parent: those who want to be helicoptering, can see where their child is at this very moment. The parents who don't care, can do nothing.

I applaud your general cynical outlook. However, I tend to think schools can only control 1 thing: parents being upset. Politicians / standardized scores / etc., all are generally outside of the individual school (staff, admin, teachers) control.

So schools optimize to minimize parental complaints and staff time, because it's one of the few knobs they can turn.

Numbers are from 2012 b/c I didn't want to spend more time looking for more recent #s. But according the MS Q3 2012 numbers, their Business division revenue was $5.81 billion, up 9 percent from $5.33 billion a year earlier.

I don't think I disagree with you, but the term set up to fail suggests to me that someone who set up the city did so with the intention that it fail.

One danger is the categorization of Detroit as an exception, that it couldn't happen elsewhere. I am not saying it will, but I try to avoid that label unless there is strong evidence to prove (rather than an explanation after the fact) a situation is unique.

I think he may be referring to machine overlords. If the automated processes are what replace humans as the dominant life form, who will watch the automation?

I think the "dominant life form" thing is a bit of semantics. But I have found this entire thread very interesting.

It will be interesting to see what happens when humanity lacks scarcity. Research indicates that humans tend towards heirarchies, which are defined relative to neighbors. The "keeping up with the joneses" disease might be part of our core programming.

In a surplus society, I wonder what will substitute for status. Probably something much like our current system, I suppose.

According to popular mechanics (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/forensics/432...):

'No studies have proved definitively that fingerprints are unique. Likewise, it is unclear if prints change over time or vary depending on the amount of pressure applied. Statistical models and pattern-recognition software could go a long way toward answering these questions. Additionally, research is needed to expose error rates. The ACE-V method depends on two or more examiners reaching the same subjective conclusion, but doesn't require them to reach it the same way. In one recent experiment, veteran examiners looking twice at the same print came to different conclusions each time. "

Facts are not copyrightable. Collections of facts might be. I think collecting products and prices for sale @ WF is allowable, in the same sense that it is OK to distribute baseball box scores.

As long as you aren't directly republishing without modification a collection of facts, you aren't violating c.r.

You could still be liable, depending whether your efforts create a negative business affect (torturious interference).

IANAL.

Zero sum games, taking prized possessions from your friends... you can do what you will.

I don't regret any of my money spent on my MTG cards, but not because it taught me skills to become a stock broker.

I would consider saying "please reply to this message to unsubscribe" easily accessible, legitimate, and free.

I think spam is more complex than just saying "spam is spam". Especially in b2b (see the other comment about pharmaceutical reps).

There is a factor that includes relevance (negative correlation with spam). Another factor is automation versus doing it by hand. Another factor is the intent of the person who publishes their email. Another factor is whether the sender stops sending messages once requested. Another factor is the existence of a previous relationship.

Anyhow, I have one more question: can any message that is sent without automation (i.e., I type the message specifically to a recipient) be considered spam?

How do you measure success? Is it number of viewers, awards won, etc.?

My cynical side says that success is (advertising_dollars_per_episode * #_episodes) / (cost_per_episode). So the more ads they can sell for more money divided by the cost to produce.

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.

I agree with you on the email personalization, btw -- response rates skyrocket when an email is personally written, even if it has common snippets.

My personal hope is that we're entering an era where bulk and unsolicited email has such a low response rate compared to sending personalized emails that people will realize this and go for what's more profitable.

My cynical side says there will always be bottom feeders who take the easy route, even if they make less money.

Would you consider it spam if someone manually went to a site, found their contact information, and sent them an email by hand? It appears to fit the same definition as "unsolicited", and yet, that is one of the purposes of a business placing their email address on their website.

I work in b2b software, where it's common for sales and marketing people to use publicly posted contact information for outreach (both buying and selling products). IMO, the formal definition of spam as "unsolicited commercial email" is somewhat broken in b2b spheres -- it feels a lot like "it's spam if I publish my information and you send me something that I don't want." The problem is the "something I don't want" is only determined after the fact.

Anyone know the source of the 35-50% increased fuel efficiency numbers? I'm curious if it's a point-to-point estimate, or what. It'd be pretty amazing if the efficiency was such to overcome the reduced drag from flying at higher altitudes.

This sounds pretty much exactly the opposite of what I hear from pricing experts. Charge based on the value you provide to the person using your service, not based on your costs.

An easy system to post ebooks and charge for them is probably worth more to a person selling $200 ebooks rather than $100 ebooks.

no, that was only when Bush Light was in office.

I also agree that this is coincidental. There is no reason to connect what a politician says they represent with what they actually represent.

A more innocent website would involve a random slogan generator.

It's unlikely there was intent to cover something up regarding Obama's whistleblower promises because it's unlikely there was ever any connection between his promises and his actions.

I think one point of the article was that recurring revenue is more complex than that. It all depends on pricing, time to recoup customer acquisition cost, and a few other things.

If it takes 18 months to become a "jacket" (ie break even), then whether or not it's worth it depends on factors such as churn, cost of account servicing, cost of IT, etc.

Some food for thought in here. But I'm not sure it's necessarily a problem with SaaS businesses. His conclusions depend on the arbitrary numbers in the example analysis.

It seems to me that his criticism is with the pricing rather than the actual model. If you could have charged $100k up front plus 20% maintenance fees, and are only charging $5k per month, your pricing probably has issues.

You could also charge setup fees for customers who need high touch introduction / initial setup to help recoup those costs.

And the sliding pricing scale (eg Salesforce, where you pay more as you have more success with their software) can help you grow customer revenue per customer, over time.

Still, some good points to think about. I just don't think it dooms the SaaS space to crash. It just depends on the value you offer, and how you structure your pricing.

From the end of the article:

>It’s like the old Jackie Mason joke — A man is selling jackets at cost. The customer asks “how can you sell at cost, how do you make any money?” Answer: “I sell a lot of jackets!”'

There are also issues with using IQ as a proxy for... anything. Especially when we're talking about topics with strong racial components.

My company runs a large dataset that includes construction companies and government contractors. Contact me via my profile email if you're interested in talking more about this.

I can't pretend to speak for Patrick, but I'm guessing that a lot of people asked him for more and more advice. I bet a lot of people wanted to pay him to help them.

I don't find it strange at all. Given his success with his first video series, I bet he makes a mint on it.

Patrick, if you read this, I very much appreciate your podcasts and articles. I've been working all year to switch from consulting to a product, so your advice is unbelievably well timed.

Cheers, Travis

100 calories of oatmeal is 26g. 100g of quinoa is 83g. Research [0] shows that portion size is important in controlling obesity.

[0] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/76/6/1207.full (note - this was just a quick google, I'm no expert in this area)

Maybe I'm going cross eyed from a long day, but looking at that result... how can Quaker oatmeal have 2g of protein and be 5% USRDA, while quinoa has 4g of protein yet 7% USRDA? Shouldn't that be 10% USRDA for quinoa?

> The problem is that half the population is below average in terms of mental ability and education.

Isn't this a problem everywhere, though? Why do we only hear this issue WRT the U.S.? (I freely admit it could just be because I live in the states)

First, take a deep breath. You're going to be OK, even if it doesn't feel like it right now.

Next, take a look at today's Zen Habits -- http://zenhabits.net/failed/. It can help you set perspective regarding what you've gone through. Money quote: "Someone once said there isn’t failure, only feedback. That means the failure is just a point of information, a part of the learning process. I like to say, it’s not a failure of me as a person, just a failure of my method. Which means I need to change my method."

Take some time (minutes, hours, or days) to identify the intersection of what you like and what you've excelled at. I find I like what I'm good at, so beware that bias.

Are you good at translating tech -> normal people speak? Possibly look to work in consulting.

Were you good at making sales, but bad at the paperwork? Try to develop your own system to get better at the paperwork.

Try to look objectively (meaning without judgement) at your past. What have you learned from your experience? I can promise you, you're not the first person to barely pass a tough CS program, nor will you be the last to get fired for sloppy paperwork. You'll be OK -- in fact, now is the perfect time for you to take your first step in your new direction.

If you need a job right away, I would suggest trying to get a position in any industry that will pay you. Learn the ropes in that industry for a little time while you get stability. You will be a technical wizard in whatever you do, if it involves technology. Once you learn an industry, and gain a little confidence in your capabilities, take a shot at combining your technical abilities with the industry.

Manufacturing, as a for example, relies entirely on technology that is run by people who have very little idea about how to use technology.

And relax. You have a world of options in front of you; they're hard to see because of all the pressure, but they exist.

Be well, monkeyspaw

Apple's store does the same stuff and takes a 30% cut. They aren't directly comparable, but they are charging the 30% for similar services (streaming/downloading, platform support, browsing/discovery, and they add payment and distribution on top of that...)