west1737 | 13 years ago | on: Redesigning the CV
west1737's comments
west1737 | 13 years ago | on: I am under surveillance by Canadian agents, my computer has been backdoored
west1737 | 13 years ago | on: Dr. Dobb's 2012 Salary Survey
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Meteor (YC S11) gets $9M in funding
I don't know much about how VCs structure their portfolios, but recognizing a need in the market and betting on a badass team seems like a pretty solid strategy to me.
As for me, I'm happy for them. I hope they succeed. I hope them and their investors make a ton of money and it encourages other teams to build more awesome products.
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Meet the tireless entrepreneur who squatted at AOL
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: MYTHIC: The Story Of Gods And Men (Canceled)
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: LSD helps to treat alcoholism
I have no experience, so I can't say who's right or wrong. I just think it's sad that these type of arguments have given some drugs so much of a stigma that it set back medical research in this area for 40+ years.
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: YC and 500 Startups company Curebit caught stealing from 37 Signals
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Welcome Geoff
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus
But the thing that makes the SF area great for startups is the proximity (and thus density) of startups and tech in general. While long-distance networking has come a long way, it's still no replacement. If NYC's goal is to build a stronger tech community, I think they're better off building their own East Coast tech culture vs. trying to import a culture from SF.
Disclosure: as a Cornell grad, I'm definitely biased and psyched about it getting more involved in supporting a tech community (a $350M donation didn't hurt either)
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Should You Pay to Pitch Your Startup?
The worse part isn't that it preys on startups, it's that it prays on startups and new entrepreneurs that aren't plugged into the HN/SV scene (I was looking at angel groups in TX).
I don't think that a nominal fee (~$10 - $20) is necessarily a bad thing (but really, why bother?), but anything on the order of $100 or more is too much for a startup to be spending on that type of thing- a definite red flag. What investor would want to invest in a startup that spends all of its money looking for financing rather than creating a great product/service?
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Amazon Will Pay Shoppers $5 to Walk Out of Stores Empty-Handed
Also, when a store puts their own barcode over one, I generally don't feel any guilt about peeling it back a little and scanning the original.
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Why TechCrunch is boring, SAP is not, and the world has gone mad
On the flip side, SAP revolutionized business software and as a consequence, business organization. That's pretty interesting too. I know which side I would come down on, but simplifying the debate to profit margin misses the point by a wide margin.
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: My offer to Google Reader
That being said, I hate the new Google Reader. I used it primarily as sharing tool, and the new sharing makes that more difficult. I think two fixes would make this better:
1) Being able to share easily with different circles. While I might be okay sharing publicly something interesting, there are plenty of less-than-appropriate funny articles that I only want to share with a few friends. This is one of the strengths of Google+, and it'd be great if Reader could take advantage of this.
2) Being able to see shared articles from other people. I understand they want to increase traffic to Google+, but this was always a great feature of Reader. In effect, each friend that used reader became their own feed. It'd be great to still have this feature and even though you're decreasing traffic to plus.google.com, you'd be increasing the overall use of Google+
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine
I'm not saying this would work for every or even most kids, but if you can use the kids natural excitement to teach them important skills (not just cash flow, but money management, value of work, etc) then why wouldn't you? I think this is a great story, and I hope when I'm a parent I can engage my kids with something as creative.
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages
For companies that don't rely heavily on internet tech, understanding why you don't want to use IE6 is beyond most people.
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Please review my startup. Safe text messaging for teachers
Another idea (and you may already be doing this) would be to log all communications, and maybe even make them visible to everyone in the "class" via a web login. People are less likely to say something stupid if they know it's being recorded, and it gives teachers an easy resource to fall back on if a "he said/she said" scenario comes up with a student.
That being said, I think it's a great way to mitigate risk for the teacher, but I wouldn't let that overshadow the main benefit, which is ease of use.
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Please review my startup. Safe text messaging for teachers
Having an intermediary certainly won't eliminate risk, but it might mitigate some of it. I don't think it's a tool that all teachers will use- it's going to depend a lot of teaching style. My gut instinct says enough will use it to make it an interesting tool, and anything that adds to a teacher's box of tools sounds good to me.
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Maxing out your Dropbox referrals (how I got 16GB for less than $10)
west1737 | 14 years ago | on: Andreessen Horowitz Joins The Start Fund To Seed YC Companies