axiom

20 ms·

151.
by axiom 16y ago
I'm not sure what to say - I thought it was pretty clear from the article that the point was: 1. The typical student experience in higher-ed is poor 2. Students pay a lot of money for it 3. The experience is poor because incentives in highe
152.
by axiom 16y ago
Where does the article accuse professors of being lazy or incompetent? where does it say (or imply) that teaching a course isn't a huge amount of work? So I take it you disagree with the central thesis that tuition is absurdly high for the
153.
by axiom 16y ago
Oy vey. That first beta class is going to haunt us forever isn't it.
154.
by axiom 16y ago
Yeah, but the point of grad school is to do research. I understand why grad school tuition may go towards paying for research labs and publishing papers. Also, grad students have funding - so tuition is more like an overhead fee on the fund
155.
by axiom 16y ago
Can someone who has access post the original paper? http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6008/1234
156.
How I met our first investors(tophatmonocle.com)
52 points by axiom 16y ago|7 comments
157.
by axiom 16y ago
Fair enough, and that's quite likely what RIM is thinking. But do you think it's a smart strategy for RIM to try to stay relevant by blocking hot apps on their platform? would it not be a more sane strategy for them to make their devices be
158.
by axiom 16y ago
This is just painfully stupid. Finally an app on Blackberry actually garners some attention, and RIM kicks it off the market. For anyone who has ever bitched about Apple being draconian, this is just another example of what the mobile app w
159.
by axiom 16y ago
Fully agreed. App Engine is insanely cheap. We loved this fact when we were first starting out, but after we realized how much time the various limitations were costing us I really really wished they would just let us pay them a few $k per
160.
by axiom 16y ago
Well, my motivation in writing the blog was in response to the people who replied to the last HN story on App Engine saying the author was clueless and just didn't know what he was doing. For what it's worth, there are a lot of other very b
161.
Why we switched from Google App Engine to EC2(tophatmonocle.com)
128 points by axiom 16y ago|47 comments
162.
by axiom 16y ago
My startup was in the same incubator space as Kik up until 3 weeks ago (we just moved out,) and it's really amazing to see these guys finally take off. They have some amazing stuff in the pipeline that's going to blow everyone away. Funny t
163.
by axiom 16y ago
This is probably just a function of slot machines having been around for much longer. Of course all these same requirements make perfect sense to implement for voting machines.
164.
by axiom 16y ago
As with about 98% of all business advice, this falls into the category of true-but-useless. It would be impossible to find a person who actually disagreed with any of those points, or who would be able to pull anything of practical value ou
165.
by axiom 16y ago
I don't think there's a good solution to this problem without incorporating some kind of prior distribution, and a statistical model of what paws tend to look like. Heuristics will only take you so far. edit: come to think of it, something
166.
by axiom 16y ago
It's funny, the very first piece of advice I got after starting my company was that we should find a way to move to the valley. At the time, I remember thinking "I'm sure it would help, but it's not worth the hassle." How wrong I was. Grant
167.
by axiom 16y ago
"Raising an old-fashioned fixed-size equity round can take weeks" Weeks? Jesus, do things really move that much faster in the valley? Even the hot startups in our area (Waterloo, Ontario) take months at minimum to raise a round. Probably th
168.
by axiom 16y ago
Bah. Doesn't work in Google apps. Shame, it looks really useful.
169.
by axiom 16y ago
Is there some specific reason they worked so hard to make it sync with the iPhone over bluetooth? as opposed to, say, syncing with your laptop over bluetooth, or just make the thing log data and then sync to a computer via USB. Is it purely
170.
by axiom 16y ago
A corollary is when it feels like you've just wasted a bunch of time, when in fact you got a lot of work done. A common example of this is when you spend 18 hours trying a dozen solutions to a very hard problem, with none of them working. A
171.
by axiom 16y ago
Maybe I'm just totally crazy here, but my feeling is that unless you have $10 million+ cash you really should not be investing in startups. It's just way way too risky. This is probably just my own personal risk tolerance, but you should no
172.
by axiom 16y ago
"future applications include creating a new class of energetic materials or fuels, an energy storage device, super-oxidizing materials for destroying chemical and biological agents, and high-temperature superconductors." Other applications
173.
by axiom 16y ago
Honestly you would call it free of regulation? take a look at others who have tried to start payment service companies - even in the relatively free internet space it's an absolute nightmare. If you actually tried to start a new credit card
174.
by axiom 16y ago
Are you being facetious? The whole point of the article is that Visa and MasterCard are "manipulating" the market so the government has to step in to regulate it some more because clearly the free-market isn't working. The evasion is that t
175.
by axiom 16y ago
Finance is one of the most heavily regulated industries in existence. To hold it up as an example of the pitfalls of unregulated free-markets goes way beyond dishonesty and into the realm of outright stupidity.
176.
by axiom 16y ago
The best reason to continue working on the product as CEO is that you can make far better management decisions that way. Even if that 10-20% time you spend coding isn't as productive as doing sales or business development, it's essential to
177.
by axiom 16y ago
Evolutionary psychology is a cesspool. Honestly it's as if 95% of the researchers in the field have never even heard of the scientific method, or things like "proof" and "evidence".
178.
by axiom 16y ago
I've always felt that most good programmers go through 3 stages. Stage 1: Write very simple, naive code, no fancy design patterns, just kind of brute force everything. Stage 2: Discover design pattens, and fancy obscure programming construc
179.
by axiom 16y ago
We're using Python with Django. AppScale (similar project as TyphoonAE but a bit more mature) has done a decent job of writing a layer that implements all datastore functionality on top of variety of databases (some SQL, some not.) It's not
180.
by axiom 16y ago
That's a seriously phenomenal idea. Just by charging for the service and using a SQL database they could avoid 90% of the problems GAE has experienced. I would pay $1000/month without a second thought to have a quick migration away from GAE

More ›