kops

Thankfully there is this virus going around and we can all see the correlation between the wealth of the people and their propensity to break rules.

Performance and reliability is indeed terrible. It is a mystery that a word processor crashes so often and take 10s of seconds just to quit. But the fact is that they get the job done and I haven't seen any decent alternatives to word, excel and for that matter even outlook. If you know something reasonably close, then please share.

Anything Microsoft other than Office+outlook sucks. I don't know about azure though as I have not endured it yet.

Adobe wants to have you by your balls the moment you install their installer :-) I keep a separate computer for Adobe stuff just for that reason. Actually to run some MS junk too.

Seriously though with all the interview code tests bubble sort, quick sort, bloom filters, etc. Why can't companies or even websites get this right?

I have see some of the stinkiest stuff created by people who will appear smartest in any test these companies can throw at them. Some people are always gambling/gaming and winging it. They leave a trail...unfortunately.

A shoutout for duckduckgo here. I tried both qwant and duckduckgo about a couple of years ago but the quality of search results forced me back to google in a couple of days. But I gave it another shot a few weeks ago and I have been pretty happy with the search results from duckduckgo and the fact that the ads do not follow me around the web based on my searches is rather pleasant. I must admit that google hasn't done anything bad to me but their sheer size and scale is scary enough for me to look for alternatives.

Now back to the search quality, I wanted to find out when exactly world economic forum 2020 is happening and google won hands down (search term = world economic forum 2020 dates). But for now and for most of my day to day search terms duckduckgo is doing okay. I know this won't last for long as they also are looking at advertising dollars but I hope then someone else will stand up to challenge duckduckgo+google combined.

#1. Internet is no longer the source of truth. I can buy it by CPC or CPM.

#2. Within the first paragraph of the first hit on search results, a policeman is enforcing the restriction. I would be encouraged to dig in if I were in a similar situation instead of being intimidated.

#3. I am not on either side. Just watching and weighing in from far away as an indifferent observer.

(unless the beach is on a lake rather than the ocean).

And there I see why he has hopes. If it is legal on a lake then someone would wonder why not on ocean. Rather than asking the nice people on internet one might as well go to a court of law.

Why are people angry that he went to court. Where I come from people settle these kind of questions in less civilised ways. Court is better i think.

And now somehow he has people on the internet arguing that a billionaire should be allowed exclusive benefit to public land- as if of all people, the billionaire is the one that needs the public handout.

No I didn't say that. If the exclusivity is not part of the sale then it should be trivial to kick his butt. The fact it isn't is confounding to me. Perhaps because I am not an American.

Then he should be kicked out of the court in a less than 5 minutes. Why is it being discussed?

The property rights are what they are. Who the owner is should not cloud the argument. If you are a middle class person and have a lawn in front of your house, would you allow the random people to use the lawn for chilling/sleeping/picnic or whatever? Well a rich person happens to own a much bigger and luxurious version of the same front lawn. If the state or whoever owned the thing once upon time sold it, then it is his. The fact that he is stinking rich and we the normal populace would love to have access to the same property is no argument. On the other hand if his purchase did not include exclusivity to the beach then by all means go there and piss around. But just being rich and owning something that most of us can not afford is no justification to snatch it from them. It is just using the justice system/democracy as a mob intent on plunder.

P.S. 1. I don't care who khosla is. But looking at the whole debate it seems the whole opposition is based on the fact that he is a billionaire. I refuse to buy that line of argument. Tell me it is illegal for so an so reason and I will buy. But he is an asshole or he is a billionaire is just emotions doing the talking :-)

P.S. 2. Going by the comments below, I feel compelled to clarify that my comment is not informed by the local laws. I am just a little bit puzzled by the words billionaire and asshole being used synonymously. The law should be same for everyone. A billionaire can hire more lawyers is no reason to call him an asshole in this context even if he has earned the title elsewhere unequivocally.

Update: typo and added a p.s.

What is worst than being popular? Perhaps bought popularity. A team member decided to boost an instagram post(same FB platform) expecting a few tens of likes to start the virtuous cycle. We got a few thousand likes. It is our most embarrassing post ever and the worst part is that I haven't deleted that post yet. FB and instagram are black mirrors that make me wonder who am I and how low I can stoop.

I don't feel qualified enough to advise. But here is what I did after folding my startup

1. I used it as a very expensive resume. Costs me a few hundred dollars in running costs on AWS but pays back regularly by helping me win new consulting clients.

2. Mine was a travel startup so had few reusable modules e.g. booking engines for various GDSs (Sabre, Travelport and even Expedia's API). I manage to sell these with little modifications to a few companies that were building things from scratch. After initial sale and a minimal support period, further support was charged at consulting rates.

3. Initially I thought that I would be able to sell the whole development stack specially the user management, email verification, security, PCI compliance payment solution stack etc. But never found any takers for that part of the code. Don't really know why.

4. I initially folded my startup because of lack of experience in sales and marketing. But I am plugging those holes in my competence and I might resurrect this startup in a couple of years from now. I am glad that I never gave up my rights to any part of the code or technology.

Not sure if any of above is relevant to your particular case except #1 which could be useful if you decide to do consulting/freelancing in future.

Edit: formatting / typo

Instagram and WhatsApp are the bought step kids of facebook and by all indications(ok just hearsay) are more relevant(read popular) than the original product i.e. the facebook. A sound investment but I can imagine how it feels for Zuckerberg. While recently trying to advertise on Instagram it became evident how desperately facebook wants to put itself in front of these products and brands. I kind of understand at a personal level but at the business level it doesn't make so much sense. I almost feel sorry for Zuckerberg. Actually I don't ;-)

Google: Says "Don't be evil"

I : yippee.

20 years later

Google: This is what being evil means....okay....

I : ok. But do I have a choice....

Google: well.....if you did, we'll buy it anyway. So please fall in line....

Should I be worried about the branding? Or the fact this behemoth of a company is buying it's way into every corner of my life. Close your eyes and imagine a few drones trying to see everything you do in your apartment. That's what it is. This ain't the internet I ordered :-(

Behind a paywall. Unfortunately I don't pay people/organisations to tell me what their opinion is. They can very well keep it to themselves.

Well done Google. So now you won't spy on me only when I am typing something on a computer or phone but also when I breath or when my heart beats. *uck FitBit. There it is in the dustbin and everyone else I see wearing it is an idiot or is an idiot. I hope insurance companies don't make it mandatory to provide my google account details while signing up. But who am I fooling.... So much for "Don't be Evil"....RIP

This made my day. On my startup ideas TODO list there is one PredictiveBullshitMeter that one day will warn you before clicking on a link if the target is full of bullshit. My motivation was terrible news article that appear regularly on Indian newspaper websites where they rehash the same pile of junk again and again to make it look like a full page length article/report. I was hoping for a quick number like a ratio of facts vs garbage but even before clicking on a link. I wanted my computer to do the job of prefetching the content and parsing it for facts. Anyways thanks for making this thing. Feels nice to know there are other people who suffer from the same pain :-) but thankfully are more proactive to do something about it.

You shouldn't. Remember her for all that she did for you and the person she was. RIP.

The interesting bit is found in an animation[1] embedded on the how it works page[2].

1.https://www.loopwheels.com/wp-content/themes/meat/library/im...

2. https://www.loopwheels.com/technical/how-does-it-work/

[edit] formatting

I agree with he sentiment as an outsider, but let's build 5 bar charts and talk about this stuff again :-)

No idea about Portugal, but in some countries you don't need to register a company or any other legal stuff unless you do more business than a certain threshold. Find out in your country what this amount is. Later on, if you cross this threshold then hire an accountant to setup the business as a proper legal entity. If you make enough money you can hire an army of people to help you out. If you don't and assuming the service is cheap, and if a customer goes nuts then just refund. Set aside a small amount as the risk you are willing to take and do not cross it i.e. do not sell more than this amount. Check out how you will accept the money, and if your payment processor imposes any restrictions w.r.t. legal status of the business. Good luck and congratulations for making something that you are confident that people will pay for.

If you don't want something online, don't put it online.

I agree with your point regarding applications being dynamic and SEO only for the content heavy stuff. My site is a mix of both where the content is sprinkled with pieces of data that is dynamic.

Well said.

Although the learning curve was steep and painful but AngularJS saved me from the terrible spaghetti soup of javascript + jQuery. The UI I work on is a bit complex and AngularJS makes it a piece of cake to keep it all-together. Code reuse and stability is awesome. But on the downside I still get caught off guard by "$apply already in progress" and despite all the PhantomJS trickery I am yet to recover from the SEO mess that migrating to AngularJS created for me. Overall the benefits far outweigh the cons though. It was only due to AngularJS that I could add multi-currency support on my site in less than half a day.

As an Indian undergraduate who is looking forward to a job, I find this very intimidating.

Please don't. Because those of us who have good experiences do not find it particularly necessary to be vocal about it. There are good places and there are bad places i.e. you have a choice. Even if you start with a bad place, then don't think twice and quit the job the day it starts to suck. As for the culture, I worked for all sorts of managers and never experienced any cultural bias.

Oh man!!!! How will you sleep tonight ;-?

making the average investment smaller and the average investor more conservative and wary

X Million dollars are worth the same regardless of the owner (US vs EU). On the other hand a smaller average investment size should make the deals so much more lucrative and a turf worth defending.

Edit : on second thoughts it may have more to do with the cultural issues(as you pointed it out) combined with the regulatory boundaries e.g. amazon.de can't deliver half the things to Switzerland.

I wonder what european VCs make of the fact that the VCs from US are talking about european startup scene as a virgin land, ready to be conquered.

So far I see only 3 parties in this discussion 1) US startups 2) European startups 3) American VCs.

Would be nice to hear the views of the 4th party conspicuously missing from the discussion.

And this is exactly how it starts :-)

For a girl in India, studying computer science is one of the best options. Jobs are abound, pay relatively well and work environment is thousand times better and safer when compared to other industries. This I guess, explains what you observed on your trip.