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yarek

111 karma · joined September 28, 2007

email at Google's public service with a 'cyber' prefix before my user name.
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yarek··on Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
Comes from French "herbe" meaning "grass/plant". "Herbe" is also source for English "herb".
yarek··on The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax
Is your doc Sydney based? Mind sharing the contact info?
yarek··on Don't Talk to Corp Dev
"- that is why" would have been better than ", that is why".
yarek··on How You Know
Fascinating. A corollary would be: be careful what you read and be critical of what you read. There is danger of manipulation, particularly by others. The plus is that you could manipulate yourself, change personal perceptions and mode of thinking.
yarek··on The insanely confusing path to legal immigration, in one chart
TN visa cannot be used to start the immigration process. You have to convert to H1B or L1 visa, etc.
yarek··on My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant
I'm so very sorry to hear this story. It reminds me of another one about Indian engineers looking for brides back home - I heard on NPR a few years back. It was heart breaking to hear that the order of preference for the potential brides was citizen, h1b applying for green card, green card holders. You see, if you are on h1b your spouse can stay with you (but cannot work), and if you get a green card while already married, she gets one too. But, if you already have a green card, you are in worst possible case from family point of view, as explained above. It really, really sucks.
yarek··on What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Startups 4 Years Ago
This is a gem of an advice.
yarek··on A zombie keyboard, an app-store rejection, a call from Steve Jobs
Chalk it up for First Encounters of the Third Kind with the "reality distortion zone".

Seriously, a conversation can go a long way to assuage an otherwise difficult situation without actually resolving it.

yarek··on Ask HN: Has anyone hacked their homes?
I moved the kitchen and removed some walls.
yarek··on Notifo (YC W10) Launches New Site and Mac Growl Client
Every time I try the site on my iPhone, safari crashes immediately. I can share details by email.
yarek··on Ask HN: please give feedback on Fashionista Pals
Hack: search for an empty string.
yarek··on Ask HN: please give feedback on Fashionista Pals
Thanks for the feedback. I am sorry that the experience was sub par due to problems on port 443. Try again.

Your other points are well taken. Design needs polish, and it needs content from a wider audience of users.

Interesting thought "wordrobe reddit". That's a one sentnce pitch right there.

Any thoughts on the name?

yarek··on Ask HN: please give feedback on Fashionista Pals
The intended way to make money at first is through affiliates program at Amazon. We did wanted to expand selection to other sites and even for items freely created by the user. That's in the future, there was enough to do just getting the Amazon content.

The idea is that as a login user you can create your own outfit. Other users can suggest better items either in lieu of existing ones or additional ones. As a set owner you can choose to show the suggested items.

Some of the features are not visible until you log in. I'm thinking that this should change, and instead make the non-logged user conted ephemeral, with a reasonable TTL.

Regarding the cross hair cursor, it was intended to make the user think the area was actionable, but perhaps that is a turnoff. It's hard to add a link to the set there without making the display more crowded and clutter the display.

yarek··on Ask HN: please give feedback on Fashionista Pals
The server on port 443 was down, which affected the experience ( broken links). Try that again if you can.
yarek··on Ask HN: please give feedback on Fashionista Pals
Awesome feedback. Had a problem with port 443, and so the experience was broken. Would you mind trying again and re-evaluate?
yarek··on Technical cofounder wanted for disrupting the wedding industry
Have you considered using 3d printers to generate the press template on demand?
yarek··on Fake femme fatale shows social network risks
On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog.
yarek··on High Ground Maneuver (Scott Adams on the iPhone 4 press conference)
No, I think the perceived question in the media and in the largely non-owners of iPhone was exactly whether iPhone 4 was a dud. If Jobs didn't defuse that question, the iPhone sales had a potential of peaking much, much sooner than it will now because new customers would be willing to sit and wait.
yarek··on Ask HN: where do you get your SSL certificates?
Note: Used RapidSSL, paid $10.95. Best lunch's worth of money ever spent. Beats GoDaddy, as no cert chains are not required.
yarek··on Ask HN: where do you get your SSL certificates?
Thanks for the info - sounds reasonable. Now I have to figure out how to make that work for hunchentoot.
yarek··on Ask HN: where do you get your SSL certificates?
Because different browsers have different set of root certificates/authorities to authenticate the certificate.
yarek··on Amazon's Universal Wish List button: add anything on the web to your wish list
Correct. At least three years as a concept.
yarek··on Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage
I think one of the points of the article was that companies are not willing to take someone not fully qualified AND train them proves there is no shortage. If there was shortage, a company will be willing to go out of the way to hire someone. It's much cheaper to hire someone with the just the right skills, and since a company can do that (even with some work for the hiring manager) and get someone further supports the argument.
yarek··on The Y Combinator in Arc and Java
Oops, messed my linux instance somehow. Works fine on the fresh instance of SBCL-x86-64 1.20.

As to Lisp-2, dude that's a debate that I don't want to get into. :) I'm just happy I can use any kind of Lisp -- the rest is just details.

Yarek

yarek··on The Y Combinator in Arc and Java
I've tried to create Y combinator in common-lisp, but I get errors with this:

-----------------

(defun Y (r) (funcall #'(lambda (f) (funcall f f)) #'(lambda (f) (funcall r #'(lambda (x) (funcall (funcall f f) x))))))

(defun fact-gen (fact-in) #'(lambda (n) (if (eq n 0) 1 (* n (funcall fact-in (- n 1))))))

(funcall (Y #'fact-gen) 1)

----------------- Any suggestions? Thanks!

yarek··on Ask YC: Immigration (wrt entrepreneurs) conditions in Canada?
I never heard anyone not shipping to Quebec. I have heard of American vendors not shipping to Canada from the USA.
yarek··on Ask YC: Immigration (wrt entrepreneurs) conditions in Canada?
Toronto is the center of the business world in Canada, and most major companies are based there. It's a sprawling metropolis, reminds me of silicon valley: Between Hamilton and Oshawa it feels like a single continous city. Toroto has lots of ethnic flavour, and strong communities, and its share of big city problems. It's close to the US border -- crossing US borders at the airport is a breeze since all US border guards are well versed in the business travel routine. In fact, most likely most business dealings from Toronto to anywhere in US is probably better/easier than anywhere else in Canada.

Vancouver is on the west coast, and influenced by the mindset frequently found in US west-coast states and cities (Seattle and SF in particular). Its own mindset is somewhere between SF and Toronto.

Ottawa has strong software community, but it's not nearly as big as the above cities (it's located 2 hrs driving from Montreal, and 4 hrs from Toronto). It's got a heavy load of federal government agencies and money.

Montreal is more affordable than Toronto or Vancouver. In my opinion, it's one of the best places to live in Canada, though being located in a francophone province with a strong independent (some say chauvinist) streak, may add extra hassle for you as a business owner (due to legal language requirements, etc). Anglophones in Montreal have a love/hate relationship with the city/province -- all rooted in history and politics. But, guaranteed, if you embrace the experience living in this de-facto bilingual city, you won't regret living there.

yarek··on Ask YC: Immigration (wrt entrepreneurs) conditions in Canada?
WRT ownership: not normally, no, unless you're starting a business that requires security clearance with the government.

(Any advice given is a well-grounded conjecture. Please consult a business lawyer!)

yarek··on Ask HN: what tunes are you working to at the moment?
Ditto on Air. Others: Radiohead, Tea Party, Wheezer, Andreas Scholl, Yo-yo Ma, Cesaria Evora, Coldplay, Miles Davis (especially Kind of Blue), Bossa Nova (Antônio Carlos Jobim), etc. Very eclectic.
yarek··on Amazon Moving To Frustration-Free Packaging
The "frustration-free packaging" is incidental. The whole point is that Amazon will be saving a lot of money by not shipping empty air around. If you can send the same thing in a smaller package, this means you can fit more packages in a singe shipment to the warehouse, ship more things from a warehose to the distributor, and also send more things in a delivery truck at the end of the delivery process. Everyone saves along the way, meanwhile the customer gets a "furstration free" package, which truthfully, is probably easier to open, incidentally.
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