_dps

31 ms·

361.
by _dps 15y ago
I think "libertarian" is close but not quite right (unless you are coming from Chomsky's viewpoint, which is a niche within a niche, at least as far as US libertarian thinking is concerned). If you take libertarianism to mean "allow anythin
362.
by _dps 15y ago
In hindsight I can see how one could read it that way. It was poorly phrased. Sometimes it's hard to see your own text as others will see it :-) It was certainly not my aim to slight the talent of people originating from anywhere else; I m
363.
by _dps 15y ago
I apologize if I gave that impression; it was not my intention. I'm merely suggesting that the amount of money in the US for technical research and development is vastly larger than in any other country (as evidenced both by its research un
364.
by _dps 15y ago
The median probably matters more to individual founders. The average matters to rational portfolio managers. As far as I know there is no portfolio strategy that rewards you proportional to your median investment. So, saying that one summar
365.
by _dps 15y ago
I don't doubt what you're saying but I think that sounds in-line with my previous claim that the telecommuting problems are separate from the "rest of the world" problems. If I understand you correctly, those companies don't want to hire te
366.
by _dps 15y ago
The telecommuting issue is separate from the "rest of the world" issue; the former is primarily a communication and culture problem, but the latter is all about concentration of talent around leading technical companies (primarily in the US
367.
by _dps 15y ago
Then you may need to consider the possibility of a "100x" programmer in your scale. The "best of the best" that I know are, say, 10x better at embedded C code than they are at CRUD web apps. The best CRUD programmers I know can't hold a can
368.
by _dps 15y ago
What is "fairly substantial" here? $10k? $20k? $100k? I certainly know people willing to risk the first two but not the third (primarily early 30s professionals). $20k is plenty to participate in the seed round of a software startup. It see
369.
by _dps 15y ago
I think we are in agreement but coming at it from different viewpoints. As you say, designers do not have magical powers to predict the future. In a situation where you can't predict the future you have to make your best guess (designers he
370.
by _dps 15y ago
I think this is largely unfalsifiable. I have not seen evidence that designers, on average, know what people will want in advance. You absolutely need a designer to interpret what people tell you about their experiences with a prototype,
371.
by _dps 15y ago
I think a large source of the UX quality gap for volunteer -driven Open Source products is the grossly underestimated cost of getting good UX. I submit (without proof) that volunteer Open Source efforts are great at competing on easily q
372.
by _dps 15y ago
As just one anecdote: many mediterranean cultures tend to eat one very large meal late in the day (~5pm) and almost nothing before that. I usually have little other than coffee and maybe a piece of fruit before 5pm. Consequently, lunch-at-w
373.
by _dps 15y ago
I did a PhD in applied math, was a professor for a bit, and then dove into the startup world working on mathematical software. I'm happy to chat directly if you want (ping me by email, address in profile). If I were currently a math PhD, I'
374.
by _dps 15y ago
I'm not sure how you can "safely say ... [he] knows precisely what he's talking about" while admitting "not knowing the meaning." I think perceiving it as "breeding confidence" is precisely the reason why many business situations where expe
375.
by _dps 15y ago
Even the most graduate-school-inspired businesses are about 5% pre-existing research and 95% solving a problem people will pay for. Academic research is, almost by definition, solving problems that people will not yet pay for (I say this ha
376.
by _dps 15y ago
Er. Well. Ok. So who's going to build Intel? Lockheed? IBM? Apple? Google? These all started as startups. There is real value to society to having people trying to do this. "Value to society while doing something risky" is actually not a ba
377.
by _dps 15y ago
There is a shorthand and implied understanding in mathematical word problems (else they would be formulas!). As soon as you ask "what is the probability" you are implying either a sampling/generative process, or a subjective (e.g. Bayesian)
378.
by _dps 15y ago
If you generalize "born on Tuesday" to a generic attribute, with probability p (equal for boys and girls) it becomes easier to see what's going on. For brevity, let's say people with the attribute are positive and people without are negati
379.
by _dps 15y ago
I second your snark, and also find "data scientist" to be analogous to "food cooker", but I've also come to realize that there is a need for branding whatever-it-is as separate from "business analyst" because otherwise expectations from n
380.
by _dps 15y ago
I suspect it boils down to two things: the number of ways in which things can compete and the perceived level of normal consumption. Starting with the latter: people who drink coffee mostly see it as near-daily consumption. If they're think
381.
by _dps 15y ago
According to http://esa.un.org/wup2009/unup/index.asp?panel=2 (cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP#America.2... ), Los Angeles is behind only New York in GDP, and San Francisco isn't even in the top five. Sure, yo
382.
by _dps 15y ago
Ah, web development. I see. Well, that's actually 90+% the same on Windows for most use-cases. For example, if I were starting a small web app in Linux I'd probably use Python and Bottle. I'd do the same on Windows. To be clear: I'm not rec
383.
by _dps 15y ago
There are a few different things that fall into "Linux Development". 1) Comfort/facility with something like the bash or zsh shells, including scripting (as a kid I wrote complex .bat files for DOS, and bash scripting was a revelation). If
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by _dps 15y ago
This sounds suspiciously close to "dot.com CEOs don't need to know about software, they just need to hire programmers." It's a tricky idea because, in one very technical sense, it's actually true. The larger and more important truth it conc
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by _dps 15y ago
I occasionally run into this "I'm suspicious of Ph.D.s in industry" phenomenon and frankly it's baffling. (disclosure: I am obviously biased by having a Ph.D. and no longer being an academic) Ph.Ds. in industry create lots of amazing things
386.
by _dps 15y ago
It's possible that's what he meant, but I find it unlikely. He specifically suggested searching for keywords, and, as you point out, the content network is known as AdSense, not AdWords (both officially and in common parlance). I would agre
387.
by _dps 15y ago
I don't know how to get any good data on this, but I think saying "Google's bread is buttered by <undesirables> ..." is at least accidentally misleading. Google supports a tremendously diverse ad ecosystem, some of which is question
388.
by _dps 15y ago
I agree with the reduction in expected value, and on its effect in reducing investment in risky-but-lucrative industries, but I think even as a simplified calculation you should consider the tax deduction from the capital loss which can usu
389.
by _dps 15y ago
I have a slightly different view on small/mid-size companies: it's not exactly that they can't afford an in-house math/stats person, but rather that there isn't enough work to occupy one full time (i.e. it's not a budget problem but an ROI
390.
by _dps 15y ago
I've been doing this successfully for a few years now and come from a very similar background (scientific computing, had one foot in academia, initially had mixed feelings about a startup). It's not that hard to find the work if you know wh

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