khalidmbajwa's comments

I belong to a minority community in Pakistan target of regular state backed oppression.In addition to violence and flagrant discrimination the community representatives are also targets for abductions. The community has a rule.It never pays ransom to the kidnappers because this sets a precedent and exposes the representatives all over the country to even more kidnappings. This strategy while it may seem brutal is a necessary one and over the years kidnappings for ransom has gone down. Again, computer security is different, but the principle is same, you dont want to send out the message 'We'll give you money to make you go away' because it just goads even more to resort to such tactics.

We are building a music streaming website. Think of it as a Spotify for Pakistan and Mongo has been wonderful for the kind of Data Structure we have. Its perfect for a catalogue like structure where objects can very easily nest inside each other. Each Artist has multiple albums, and multiple artists have multiple songs. All of this nestles very neatly inside eachother, and when i want a song, i almost always need its album and artist data, so i can very easily get that. Mongo is blazing fast on such kind of nested data structures. The only slight problems is where you have playlists and need to reference songs for a certain Artist. That could be countered by Data Duplication, since the song artist data etc once entered will very rarely change. So for us it makes perfect sense. You really need to understand what your data model is, and what you want from it, and then Mongo will be your friend, other than that it will cause you a world of pain.

Wow. I always thought i was the only crazy one around . The reasons you mentioned are exactly the ones for which i have been running a story for so long (Not as long as you though, i started 5 years ago). I weave my personal frustrations, pain points and unfulfilled wishes into this universe and since i control that universe it helps me feel more in control of myself. Another very important aspect of this is that i am extremely hyper-active, and my brain is always, always thinking. Escaping into this world is the only way i know to shut out all the external thoughts and let me my brain loosen up a little.

Haha. I hope its that way, because the alternate reality is pretty cool :P

I sleep. Its going to sound really weird but over the years i have constructed this alternate reality. A whole universe over the years i have built up in my mind, and whenever i am angry, or depressed, i lie down on a bed, pretend i am in this alternate reality and it helps me relax and slip into a peaceful slumber :)

I think he means Genius the company (formerly RapGenius) which annotates the web. (http://genius.com/)

As expected, i am getting downvoted because of my pro-quora stance. You clearly haven't spent much time on the site. The beauty of it is, that you can reach people, and ask questions who you normally can only dream of reaching.Nasa's engineers, Phd Doctors, Entrepreneurs, famous bloggers, Actors, filmmakers,World class athletes, they are all there. If you have a specific question , ask away. I once needed to find out how Gana.com the biggest music startup in india operated, i asked its CEO a question, and within a day i had a response. For all this amazing value, i dont see why taking a few minutes to register is such a big deal.

And why would you do that ? I can see why the must-register roadbloack is annoying in theory but It takes a few minutes to register, and then its an absolute gold-mine of knowledge, with an extra-ordinary community, which is very positive, constructive and helpful. I find it way more engaging than HN Actually to be honest.

SEEKING WORK - Remote Front End Developer with over 10 years of experience. Primary expertise include Javascript/Angular and iOS. In addition , a UI/UX designer who obsesses over every last pixel. Love building apps that not only work great but are a complete joy for the end-user to use as well. oDesk Profile:https://www.odesk.com/users/~015a98a14e8f368860 Behance:behance.net/khalidmbajwa

Nothing will ever be the same again #HolyWow

Big fan of your books, an even bigger fan of you now. You sir, are a good man. Here, have a virtual hug !

Let's A/B Test that !

I am from Pakistan, and this damn island is all everyone is talking about. My facebook feed is flooded with people planning to go visit the island :P. Personally, i dont see what all the fuss is about. Might just be the rise of planet of the apes people :P

Hey, Yeah for the past year i have been working on a startup so i only do about 20 hours per week. I turn down all projects that demand more. Thankfully i have a few very decent clients who have given me an extraordinary amount of runway on the project, in terms of the time they need , the hours i work,and the exact scope of work. Basically the conversation is mostly like, hey i think it would be cool if we put in this feature, and the client goes 'yeah sure' and i go ahead and do it, this frees me up to bootstrap a startup and at the same time make a very decent living out of it :) But the more i dive into my own projects the less appeal freelance work holds the the point that i barely do enough to get by in terms of money i can make and not an hour or penny more :)

You are probably right but i was just trying to give a ballpark estimate of how good is a 5K USD income in pakistan.The conversion rate is a fair if not a perfect gauge.I can sustain a full family of 5 with an excellent lifestyle in about 2K here in Pakistan so its a very decent amount.

Umm, no not really. I charge around 60$/hr on oDesk.Have closed to 5000 hours and can easily pull in upwards of 5K USD a month, which is an extra ordinary sum for someone sitting in a country in Pakistan where the conversion rate i 104 PKR to a USD.You can easily get well paying clients if you spend a little time building up your history, and are really good at what you do.

I am a long time contractor on oDesk and owe a great deal to this site.I wanted to talk a little about the hate the hourly model with screenshots is getting. Here's the primary reason the video thing won't work. Most of the providers are from third world countries where internet while decent is rarely good enough to support uploads in such massive volume. I have a 4 Mbps DSL connection and while i get great downstream, the upstream maxes out at 20 KB/s. So yeah, that's out of the window. However, screenshots work extremely effectively. I have close to 5000 hours logged on oDesk and barring a one off incident where i forgot to shut the logging software down and ended up logging extra hours( I refunded the client) i have never had a buyer dispute my hours. Here's the thing, as an employer you have to be smart about it. When you post a job, only interview candidates with a good oDesk history,look at their past jobs, the buyer's feedback, their portfolio etc. Then talk to them over Skype, ask for code samples etc. If you reach out for the bottom of the pool ofcourse you will get burned, but a contractor with a good history (who might be charging higher)will never ever endanger his feedback history in such a cut throat marketplace where even a single 4.99 out of 5 can knock you off the first page of search results and costing you big time, all for a few extra bucks. This alone will weed out 99% of the dishonest providers. But you can still go and initially, for a week or so, monitor the contractor's work logs closely, you will know instantly if they are padding their hours since oDesk uploads around 5 to 6 screenshots per hour, along with mouse and keyboard activity reports. Just monitor them closely initially and then semi regularly afterwards and you will know what type of contractor you are dealing with. Once you have built trust and seen the contractor's work you can ease up. Finally,set tight milestones and demand regular daily updates and you will know what's going on. So yeah, don' be lazy, be a little more vigilant and you can find some really good contractors at great prices .All the top contractors i know only work hourly and IMHO Its a great model for the employer and for the contractor, a simple win win.

The actionscript programmers may be getting paid higher (Mostly because the Flex enterprise hangover is still lingering), but in my experience the actual number of actionscript jobs available is sharply falling. I have been doing Flash/Flex dev for about 8 years now, and while my evidence is certainly anecdotal,i have gone from having tons of contract offers swamping my inbox to once every few months.Make no mistake, Flash and Flex IS dying. Javascript meanwhile is maturing remarkably, and it will soon be in a position where enterprise will seriously start considering it as a viable platform.

It is because of Adobe AIR.Which is a cross platform runtime. Contrary to popular public opinion, Flash and Flex is actually a stunningly beautiful platform to code in. It's a very very mature platform, with an excellent community, and amazing libraries. (As a matter of fact, the creator of Angular JS wrote a blog post citing some of Flex's features as his inspiration). It's just that Adobe keeps screwing up their Runtimes. Flash and AIR both have performance issues which is why they are starting to get left behind now. For enterprise softwares,its cheaper and more optimal to have a single codebase that can work across platforms and in return take a slight hit on the performance.

That's because she wanted you to get a feel of the process she went through. The frustrations that she felt and how exactly the AHA moment happened. Even the 'Staring at the stars' story you scoffed at has a message. When you are stuck and having trouble figuring things out, stop for a moment, get a change of scenery, that just might do the trick. Clearing out your head like this, as cliched as it sounds, is a remarkably effective way of figuring out the tangled web of choices ahead of you. I guess you just got bored and missed the point entirely. Pity !