viennacoder

I don't think it's really possible for a market to be "too crowded" or "too competitive" if you can create a unique and superior product.

Joining a commodity market with a me-too clone, however, would be ill advised. But it doesn't seem like that is the case here.

I do think that the education market is tough. There's so much out there that's free.

Further commentary here http://pointsandfigures.com

Sure, that's fine. Don't do a wholesale copy of he execution though -- you'll never win if you're always a step behind.

It's almost impossible to do. You're better off leaving.

Depends who wants to buy it.

I recently installed linux mint 15. It has been a bit problematic.

One problem is that it wouldn't shut down. I had to edit the grub2 config to get it to shut down.

Also, at one point the sound randomly stopped working. Would only see the dummy output. Had to reboot to get the sound back. So I don't think I fully fixed that issue.

I was using xubuntu before, and it's really hard to resize the windows. There's a weirdly small area to click on, which is frustrating. There was also a problem with the right mouse click which needed to be fixed with a config change.

It's just buggy, where I would expect things to work.

This post is sort of defeatist. Definitely, self awareness is important, but I think that the vast majority of talent is from practice and study as opposed to something innate.

It's funny because it's true.

I would think you use a combination of IP address, browser fingerprint, and machine fingerprint.

Much better than cookies, because the user can't delete anything. Plus the fingerprints would still work across browsers (I think).

Thank you! You are making the community a better place.

I am sorry you are getting death threats for standing up for us. That's horrible :(

Well, he said he rarely goes grocery shopping. I assume that means he has someone else to do the shopping and cooking. So he is probably not as savvy as someone who shops and cooks regularly.

He may not have many bean soup / bean salad / crockpot recipes.

Tell the founder. If the culprits aren't immediately fired, then quit.

If you stay it will damage your reputation.

I would do a mobile app that focused on privacy and photo rights. Kind of similar to apple's photo stream, but something that works on android too.

If you can include some sort of messaging functionality (like whatsapp) that would be good. The integration of photos and messages would need to be elegant though.

Mobile is facebook's Achilles heel.

It's a really hard space to break into. The odds are against you.

“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”- voltaire

Really useful post. Wish I had read this 4 years ago!

Maybe this would work better if it came after a phone screen or in person interview, so there's less chance of wasted work. I think the general idea is good though.

I am afraid that the assumptions made in the article (regarding the distribution) are invalid.

One very long (say 2 days) visit will skew the average. And you can't infer the standard deviation from the average.

For an easy alternative, you could calculate the median time on site ex ante -- let's say it's 1 minute. Then for your ab test, see what percent leave within the first minute. Use that percent and determine if difference is statistically significant.

It doesn't even seem like Sheryl knew about this internship/volunteer position.

The video is good, but I would strongly suggest changing your brand to something whose domain you can buy. Hopefully you can get washio.com, because to be honest getwashio.com is really not a good domain. It's arguably worse than thefacebook.com.

Nice tutorial

If you are spying on people with their phones, that sounds creepy. It may not be really different from online tracking, but there's a public backlash against offline tracking that doesn't exist for online tracking.

So I think you gotta address that issue somehow.

Sure, as long as you can deliver a quality product within the timeframe expected of the client. That's the way you learn.

It would also help to build up a network of devs with a variety of expertise, so that you can ask for help/tips/review as you take on new stuff.

I think it also depends on how big a step the new project is for you. Wordpress sites, fine. Build me a new operating system? Probably not :)

Check out obtvse2 on github. It's got several themes with a clean look.

I would suggest that, even if someone copies your front end code, don't worry about it. Run your own race. A business who just copies (instead of innovating) wont last long.

I would worry about a google penalty for duplicate content across the two sites. If they are really copying your code wholesale you can screw them over by defining the canonical urls for various pages (as your own domains).

No. As a user I would never sign an NDA.

You want virality and promotions, not secrecy.

What is his track record? Past successes?

If he doesn't have any serious wins already (e.g., ran a successful division or business), run.

Be sure to check his references.

If he is a proven former CEO, though, 50/50 sounds plenty fair.

You can set an iPhone to auto wipe after 10 wrong tries. Probably a prudent safeguard.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really see what's wrong with this.

The angel paid for his shares with cash. If he's also working for the business -- and driving significant value, it sounds like -- he has a right to ask for compensation for his work. And the founders have a right to say no.

Now if he's threatening to torpedo the current deal, that's just childish and stupid.

If you're going to learn digitally, there are a lot of great free resources out there.

Check out Startup Engineering on coursera. There is a session going on now.

But, to answer the question, yes you can learn in 12 weeks from your couch.

IMHO, this is a great step towards democratizing education. No way should it cost $200,000 for a bachelor's degree.