physcab

Deeplinking is pretty forward thinking. I routinely work with 20-30 different mobile advertisers and you'd be surprised how difficult it is to get traffic bought on just a device and country level, let alone product level.

I met my girlfriend on an online dating site and being able to send messages was essential. I know it's a drag for guys to constantly send messages without a response, but for women it's a critical safety filter. Tinder strikes a good balance where you get to message only of there is a match, but if there were no chat, then I'm positive no one would use it for dating.

How would tracking all this be useful to you? Why would you pay for it? The reason why tracking is more common in business is that knowing the metrics gives you guidance on how to be profitable. Therefore you can optimize all your metrics to paint that picture. With personal analytics, there isn't one thing that delivers that kind of ROI, even if we're talking about the investment from inputing the data alone.

Competitors with lots of money and who have most to gain from squashing competition, won't be affected by Reddit or bad reviews. They can just buy more traffic (we're talking studios with tens to hundreds of thousands in ad budgets per week).

Their game is inextricably linked to how well it teaches people to code. Lets consider that their "game engine" is their competitive advantage. If they open-source their game, they are giving away that edge leaving another company with more money easily able to take it and run.

That said, I'm not sure how many gaming companies would actually do that, since they are not in the recruitment business.

Let me make one counter-point here though.

> Gamers may be fickle, but they are loud and they are loyal.

Zynga. Zynga has made a fortune profiting off of other smaller outfits, just merely by studying and copying. They didn't have source-code (to my best knowledge), but they knew how to make a game mass-appeal. This happens more often in gaming than you'd like to think.

My advice (I work at a gaming company) is to hold all your IP close as possible. Game design, art assets, source code, whatever. You have a right to own it so why not hold on to it for a while until you establish a solid competitive advantage.

On the otherhand, your IP is very closely tied to how well you can integrate teaching. This is something others cannot do easily, so you have atleast that protecting you.

I'm curious to know more about how you got your domain name. How did you find out who the owner was? It couldn't have been as simple as looking at the WHOIS and picking up a phone right?

If this is the true intention of the question, then why don't they just ask "Tell us about a time when you iterated quickly." I'm still not convinced code velocity is a good metric.

But we also know overnight successes don't really happen overnight. So I imagine you also don't want to be the person creating new apps every month because you're misguided about how hard it is to achieve success. So again, it doesn't seem like a useful metric.

> Although, they also want to see how quickly you can execute. 2 years to build an iPhone app is too long.

Why would they care about how quickly you can build something? If you took 2 years to build an iPhone app in your spare time, but that iPhone app ended up being Candy Crush, wouldn't that make that metric pretty meaningless?

Let me put on my armchair psychologist hat and say:

I think it's due to the fact that in our society, men aren't socialized to think about feelings, and in fact, men are socialized to not have them. So it's not a surprise that these professions that require some form of feeling caring for one another lack men. For example teaching (sympathizing and empathizing with students and caring about their future), nursing (caring about patients well being and health), and PR (caring about the success of your customers) all require feeling.

These technologies aren't useful just for storing data. Yes, you can do that on your MacBook. These are useful for when you need answers quickly or need to perform complex analysis. For example, spark (the engine behind shark) allows you to run things like logistic regressions at scale in just a few seconds. As far as I know, you can't load 150GB of data into memory in R on your MacBook and then run a logistic regression a few seconds later.

> they will have to rent out at least 2BR apartments Or they stay with a friend, a significant other, a cheaper apartment outside the city, their parent's house, etc.

> Additionally, it raises rates for apartments. $150/night is nothing for a nice AirBnb place, but it makes for some pretty expensive rent.

Yes, this is my issue. People who rent out apartments with the intention of running them like a hotel, will inflate rent for everyone else bc anyone who doesn't have the intention of running their apartment like a hotel won't be able to afford the market price. There are more of them than you might think, I know of atleast two.

"I was here in the Valley for the original Bubble, and the situation now is nothing like that was. Back then people were saying there was a "new economy" driven by the Internet, and that productivity was going to go up like a step function, which justified higher p/e ratios for any company that could claim to be a participant. If you had money to invest you felt like you had to have most of it in the stock market, because money parked in bonds would miss out on all this growth that was coming. Back in the 90s I was sure there was a bubble happening, and was notorious for telling everyone to sell. And yet I remember that even I thought it was dangerous to have money sitting in bonds. I don't think that now, and I don't think anyone else does either. What's happening now is a lot more localized. A few professional investors are paying higher valuations for startups than they were a few years ago. But the number of participants and the amounts of money moving around are both very small compared to the 90s. Plus the companies are better. In the 90s, it was the dumb leading the dumb: smooth-talking MBAs were raising money from hapless LPs and investing it in startups run by other smooth-talking MBAs. Now it's Yuri Milner investing in a company run by Mark Zuckerberg."

-pg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2231352

Good lord, what is with all the Crossfit hate? I've been an avid crossfiter for over 3 years and I've never once had an injury. As with all workouts, you need to listen to your body. It doesn't matter who prescribes them - whether it be Crossfit, Men's Health or GQ Magazine, your general practitioner, Tony Robbins, or your best friend BodyBuilder Bob. Listen to your body. If something hurts, stop. If you're too sore to move, rest. If you're hungry, eat.

All this talk about Crossfit being the problem is b.s. You have a choice.

I was just up there for the first time a couple weeks ago and I was surprised by how many bikers I saw. Its one of those streets where locals (in cars) just barrel down the hill bc they are so familiar, while bikers and runners love the area bc its beautiful and provides a challenging workout. Just a reminder that there needs to be a balance. This is really sad news.

Uber makes absurd amounts of money. I've had many conversations with drivers and they claim to be pulling in $35-$45 per hour after uber's 30% cut. I've talked to drivers who have quit their full time jobs and love it. Some have said that because the service is so convenient that people have started using it as a walking replacement, often opting to catch a cab for 5 blocks. Lastly, many companies have enterprise uber accounts and will happily pay their employee's $200 cab rides to the airport or even 45 minute drive home.

It sounds like you got burnt out. When you "code until the sun comes up" you neglect basic human necessities like sleep and human contact. When you think only about the company and the product vision, you lose your sense of self. Your sense of self becomes your work.

I used to work at a startup where this was the case, but I've since changed. I love my work and my co-workers and I think they all work extremely hard, but I go home every night at 6:30. I cook for myself. I take salsa lessons. I read. And I work on my own projects.

Interesting work at companies comes with ebb and flows. Sometimes you work on things you don't like, sometimes you get bored, but if you keep your mind fresh and sane you'll come up with things to work on that are meaningful and interesting.

I disagree with this. When I was a poor grad student, laundry was the greatest time sink of my life. I spent many Sundays trucking loads of laundry between my apartment and my laundromat a mile away. $20 was definitely a reasonable sum to have that time given back to me. And I'm sure many of the other people I met there (often mothers who were disciplining unruly children) would have said the same thing. If you think this is purely an entitled tech worker problem, you've never spent significant amounts of time in run-down laundromats.

I would have loved this service when I was in grad school. I lived a mile from the nearest laundromat, and I would have to put a load in my backpack and truck it over on my bike. Laundry took literally all day to do. Add in bad Florida weather and the experience was downright miserable.

I wonder if it would be cheaper to crowdsource laundry service, like an airbnb for laundry. My washer is unused all day and it would be awesome if I could rent it out. My roommate tends to be at home too during odds times of the day and probably would be willing to do loads if it meant getting paid a nice fee.

> Do you want to give the government free reign on all your data?

For some reason, I just don't feel passionately about this issue. I could be in the minority, but to me, our society has become very desensitized by sharing with Facebook leading the charge. This is a new reality and I don't think it's such a bad thing that warrants a protest, though I respect those who feel differently. Our government having the ability to track me has only led to benefits in my life including:

* Being able to retrieve a stolen car

* Not being blown up by terrorists

* Practice any religion I choose

* Fly safely between 5 states and 5 different countries

* Drive hundreds even thousands of miles safely

* Buy and sell what I please, without fear of jail

So yes, if it means I am kept safe and if it means society as a whole can operate more openly, then the government can do what they want with my call data, car location and speed records, buying history, surfing history, etc

The big secret to programming is that all you need to begin is curiosity. 4 years ago, I didn't know how to program either. In school, I majored in a completely different discipline. You don't need to have a CS degree, unless you plan on being a software engineer for a large software company.

To begin, think of a fun problem. You said you don't think you have a chance of creating the next Twitter, but why don't you try replicating some small portion of Twitter? What makes Twitter complicated is the scale, but you can create a very simple post-to-feed app and learn how to deploy it to a server just by using Google and StackOverflow. Creating working prototypes of even the simplest ideas gives you the courage to pick up more ambitious projects. The cool thing about code is that you can always re-use (read: even straight copy/paste is ok) what you've done before to further yourself in future projects.

It sounds like you see yourself limited by time, not ability or even money. Since you're a programmer you probably have the intuition to seek out other good programmers. So what you can do is search for a technical partner to create some type of lifestyle business where you can split the profits. I'm sure with all your client relationships you might be able to come up with a few good ideas that solve some niche problems, and you'll even have a starting base of customers if your solution caters to their problems. From my own perspective, I would love to work with someone technical albeit with little time to jump on a side project with me. Even if I was the primary contributor, knowing that my partner can bring money, connections, and technical ability is an enticing proposition.

I did my undergraduate in Engineering Physics then went on to do a PhD in Materials Science. After a couple years of graduate coursework and research and passing exams, it was time to pick a dissertation topic. We then had to defend it before our committee and get their approval.

Well, I failed my first attempt (you were allowed 2). The reason the committee gave me for not passing was that my topic of choice was not a "significant improvement of basic science". This perplexed me. My committee was made up of members who were all 60+ years in age and had been the founding fathers of metallurgy. Collectively, they invented a completely new field called opto-electronics. When they gave me that response, I thought to myself, how the fuck do they expect me to improve basic science?!

It turns out the solution was much more nuanced. In the months that followed, my advisor would have thought experiments with me. He essentially helped me brainstorm problems that needed solving, but he always started our sessions with the question, "what is something that you always wanted to exist, but doesn't? What are you most curious about?" He then gave me the keys to his shop and told me to "tinker around". Take apart his vacuum tubes. Screw around with his argon laser and sputtering machine.

Innovation in the physical world comes from the same curious people that are inventing fun software programs. But we absolutely need to cultivate it, because that is what is dying. Put a workbench in every home, make it easier for people to take apart things they buy, encourage people to be creative without fear of punishment.

I hadn't thought about the "people from all walks of life" aspect missing from SF before. I find that true as well. I haven't been to many other big cities but I'm curious how SF relates on that aspect to cities such as Seattle, New York, and LA. I wonder if SF actually does have quite a lot of diversity if you expand your definition of SF from anything within 10 minutes of Civic Center to everything from Outer Sunset to South San Francisco.

San Francisco truly is a wonderful city, all things considered. I'm currently traveling throughout Europe and while I'm having a blast seeing how another portion of the world lives, I'm more thankful than ever I can call my home SF. It has temperate weather, is relatively clean, Napa, Stinson Beach, and Pt Reyes to the North, Pacifica, Santa Cruz, Monterey to the South. Tahoe for skiing and summer fun is 4 hours away. And if you are craving more warmth, just have to cross over a bridge or two. There are awesome dog parks complete with doggie ice cream. There are endless amazing restaurants. There are enough singles to keep your dating life occupied for months. And there are fun festivals nearly every weekend. Every neighborhood has something different and unique to offer if you keep an open mind. I've also found that people are incredibly family oriented, not because they have families of their own, but because their families live 20-30 minutes away. You also experience different cultures and homelessness -- something which many people go to great lengths to hide. But IMO it keeps the city grounded and humble. Yes, SF is expensive. It has cost overruns and mismanagement. But I have yet to meet people (in person) who seriously dislike where they live.

I imagine there will be more people who will buy this because they want to be more connected to their dog (as silly as that sounds) than interested in their health in a fit-bity way. I can see my whole family having this app for our dog.

You can live as comfortably as you want (I do) but the catch is that you'll probably have to be without children. Anecdotally, everyone I know with families tends to move outside of SF because for the price of a 2 br apartment, you can get a mortgage on a nice house.

There are affordable areas to live ($800-$1200 / br) but you'll have to be quite patient in your search and be open about where you'd like to live.

You don't have to be so snarky. Of course I'm aware of issues outside of SF or even within SF for that matter. My point is that getting around in cabs has been made a lot easier. Sure, there are still problems with public transit and whatnot (I ride the bus everyday) but the increased attention on lowering costs via ride sharing is having a net positive effect.