walesmd's comments

walesmd | 4 years ago | on: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

We are not, knowingly, providing this data to Equifax; but sure enough, there it is. I'm going to guess it's tied up within the mountain of agreements with our HRIS or payroll provider.

walesmd | 7 years ago | on: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

And making it free, at least initially, for businesses removes the requirement of having to have a conversation about it or get permission. It's the same way Dropbox gained so much traction (arguably, the first to execute this model).

You let all of the employees use something for free, come to rely on it, and then all of a sudden it's become entrenched in the workflow/culture/whatever. At that point, it's easier to just pay for the service than to switch.

See Slack.

walesmd | 7 years ago | on: Magic Lantern

Why the hell are they capturing keyboard inputs of the q, v, m, l, and p keys and updating the URI w/ navigational things? Makes CMD+L useless...

Looks like the are supposedly emulating some of the camera's functions? I don't know enough about this camera for it to make any sense to me.

walesmd | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2018)

Moonrise | Chicago, IL | Full-time | ONSITE (2x/wk + WFH) | $70-100k + Performance bonuses every 6 months | Fortune 500 backed spin-out

Moonrise is seeking a NodeJS Platform Engineer. In this role, you will be responsible for maintaining the current infrastructure our prototype service runs on, establishing plans for future expansion and separating the application out into microservices, monitoring system health, and advising leadership on platform investments. Additionally, you will maintain current microservices (authored in NodeJS) and develop new microservices as required.

See the full job description here: https://goo.gl/igrYuf

Learn more about our company: https://www.moonrise.works/landingpages/videos/pilot.mp4

Chicago, IL area required. We're work from home friendly, but trying to build a new, core/foundational team, so want everyone in the office twice per week. We're not currently sponsoring visas.

walesmd | 8 years ago | on: Comma.ai launches an $88 universal car interface called Panda

It's a Lincoln MKZ. A number of partners helped us with the conversion, including AutonomouStuff and NVidia.

And yes - we're running student code on the car, around a test track, and we'll send you the results (I think a video feed as well). It's your final project in the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree program.

I can't wait to watch the first time a student's code drives it around the track.

walesmd | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Are Udactiy, Coursera, Udemy taking advantage of students?

Absolutely not and I'm sorry you feel that way. Graduate success (either moving into a new career or moving up in their current career) is one of our company OKRs that we measure, track the data on, and one of the ways we determine if we're doing a good job or not.

If you're one of our students, and not seeing that success, we have a lot of services to help you. I encourage you to take advantage of our resume reviews, the alumni community, the mentors, and the mock interviews we offer. It definitely takes practice and hard work to land these jobs, they are very competitive, but we're here to make sure you're a top notch candidate when applying and interviewing.

walesmd | 8 years ago | on: Coursera raises Series D

Udacity person here (Director of Content Development - but this is my own personal commentary)! You are exactly right - Sebastian has gone pretty public on record in explaining the initial rollout of Udacity (competing with colleges) wasn't right for us.

We absolutely value the college experience. I, personally, didn't complete college; but I consider it a lot like my military experience. It helps develop the "whole person concept" - there's more than just the skills/tasks for the job that helps develop someone into a productive member of society.

But, once that person is a productive member of society, once they've established that maturity; that's where products like our Nanodegree program fall in to place. We're uniquely positioned to offer educational opportunities in that skills-gap between college and career, between life events (like stay-at home mothers) and re-entering the career field, between your current level/position in your company and the next.

These fields move so quickly... a 4yr degree and completely taking over your life - when you have other commitments (children, a career, etc) - is unreasonable. We are life-long learning and firmly believe every X years (3-5 maybe? society will define this), you're going to need to get yourself back on track given your goals. That's where we fit in - we have no intent to replace college.

walesmd | 11 years ago | on: 6.0 Northern California earthquake

California is a big place and Silicon Valley occupies a very small portion of it. Today's earthquake has had very little, if any, effect here; so that's not the reason your traffic is being rerouted. I didn't even feel the quake, trains are still running, it's life as normal unless you live in Napa Valley (north of Silicon Valley).

walesmd | 11 years ago | on: Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge

On most military bases, and therefore in military heavy towns like San Antonio, the zipper merge is used to great effect. I've even seen it used at T-intersections (where the perpendicular road must stop) - on almost every military base, when traffic is backed up, you'll see drivers immediately implement the zipper - one car from right of way, one from the intersecting road.

walesmd | 11 years ago | on: Terminal – Virtual computers that start, resize, and scale in seconds

I participated in a user study for terminal, although it was a modified version marketed toward a specific use case. We came away quite disappointed in the product, primarily because it didn't include most of the community-provided features/functionality provided here on their full site.

Needless to say, we all walked away from the meeting, hit terminal.com and were puzzled as to why they didn't show us this version of the site. Our opinions/feedback would have been drastically different.

I'm looking forward to giving this version of terminal a proper run through. The overall concept I found very interesting.

walesmd | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Open Courses vs. Master degrees value in the IT market

Nice catch! I'm going to assume, since GT really does handle all of the admissions stuff, that their page is the correct one. It does look like, on our page, we are displaying GT's "preferred prereqs" but labeling them as "required prereqs".

I've emailed the guy running that program and will post a reply if I'm told there's a different reasoning behind it (and hopefully we'll get our page updated too).

walesmd | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Open Courses vs. Master degrees value in the IT market

Hey there! I actually work at Udacity and can (or will find the person that can) answer any questions you may have. You specifically mentioned our MS Computer Science program with Georgia Tech (https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech), also the FAQ (https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech/faq). The price sits right around $6,600 I believe and the admissions process is entirely handled by Georgia Tech. I don't believe you would meet their prerequisites for students (must have a BS in Computer Science or a BS in Science), but I very well may be wrong (I'm not on the GT team). I do know, unfortunately, that regardless it would be awhile before you could start. We just started our summer session a week or two ago.

The good news is - you're free to take any of the other courses we have available (seriously it's all still free and I believe we're still planning to get our Georgia Tech courses out there publicly as well)! If you're interested in having the assistance of a coach/mentor while completing a course, along with a validated certification and graded course project assignment (good for the portfolio!) we also offer our Premium experience at the flat rate of $150/mo.

Ok - done with the Udacity pitch; now my personal comments. I never finished my degree and I've been a developer for over 16 years. Don't let some piece of paper stop you or make you doubt yourself. In this industry, at least as a developer, projects, projects, projects, projects - that's what really counts.

Before I joined Udacity I worked for Gov Contracting firms, I've with the NSA, DIA, VA and the Air Force. Projects, projects, projects - that's how I was offered those positions (and how the recruiters found me).

I say take a couple of online courses to gain the knowledge/skillset you think you require, then come up with a fun project, something that excites you, and build it!

walesmd | 11 years ago | on: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

I do something very similar to this, using Wintersmith and shell scripts. It essentially boils down to using two repositories for my site: the first being the raw/ungenerated files including the shell scripts, the second being the generated files that are served by GitHub pages.
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