Two had small youtube channels delving into details of ML papers, one had a blog with a good explanation of a specific detail on a paper I was interested, one was a recommendation by my graduate advisor (I keep in touch with the university I graduated from a thousand years ago). The undergrad had a fantastic comment on a thread somewhere, I think in Kaggle.
I've had great luck with graduate students (and sometimes even ungrads): I'll find a grad student who knows the topic, often by searching for lesser known content creators on youtube/blogs, and reach out with an offer to pay for their time to explain a particular topic. So far it's worked out great, and I've created relationships with smart up and coming people in the field - they make meaningful money, I accelerate my learning. I ended up eventually hiring one, and another did consulting for me for some time. We had a routine where I'd ask them to read and summarize / teach me ML papers that were of interest to me, which they in turn could use in their studies/thesis/youtube channels.
Tips on this: content creators tend to be more open to and better at explaining things, and you get to see their ability to explain before you pay them. If you can, overpay them - students need the money more than you do :-)
Coupa | San Diego / San Mateo / Bay area / Remote | Software Engineer, Data Platform Team | On-site with WFH days | Full Time
Join us in Coupa's (NASDAQ:COUP) data platform team to build and extend the core technologies used in analyzing customer data and providing insights. Spark and python for the backend, Django and Rails for apps and services, machine learning of all sorts (simple classifiers to deep learning). If you're a great engineer with experience or interest in data and machine learning and a good understanding of stats this would be a good match.
Job description and application:
Please reach out to me (Tony): td at coupa dot com.
> The rewards for working on new ideas are weighted by the value of the outcome. So it's worth working on something that only has a 10% chance of succeeding if it would make things more than 10x better
This is the primary point here - the "crazy idea" may (and likely does) have a low probability of being correct and succeeding, but with an outsized reward it may still be worth pursuing. This is, almost by definition, the correct way of looking at it.
Also note that he's talking about crazy ideas from "reasonable domain experts", not your run of the mill crazy.
This is not just a response to Mighty - he's been talking about this for years.
Coupa | San Diego or San Mateo / Bay area | Software Engineer, Data Platform Team | On-site with WFH days | Full Time
Join us in Coupa's (NASDAQ:COUP) data platform team to build and extend the core technologies used in analyzing customer data and providing insights. Spark and python for the backend, Django and Rails for apps and services, machine learning of all sorts (simple classifiers to deep learning). If you're a great engineer with experience or interest in data and machine learning and a good understanding of stats this would be a good match.
Coupa | San Diego, CA | Software Engineer, Data Platform Team | On-site with WFH days | Full Time
Join us in Coupa's (NASDAQ:COUP) data platform team to build and extend the core technologies used in analyzing customer data and providing insights. Spark and python for the backend, Django and Rails for apps and services, machine learning of all sorts (simple classifiers to deep learning). If you're a great engineer with experience or interest in data and machine learning and a good understanding of stats this would be a good match.
On the Python side there's Lamson and Google App Engine also has nice email handling capabilities allowing you to parse and access from your own code / app.
I had the exact opposite reaction - allowing me to play songs for free let me experience the service, so by the time they asked me to sign up I was happy to.
Great to see real world use cases, and very encouraging to see PyPy performing so well. I'll definitely be trying it on my future compute-intensive projects.
For what it's worth I'm a brown man with the occasional beard and I've never felt singled out or degraded when flying. I've been selected for pat downs and further screening surprisingly infrequently, and the TSA have been nothing but professional. I miss the pre-TSA days as well, but I'm no more hassled by it than the average non-brown guy.
Unfortunately getting a "job" will be difficult with a prison record, but consulting could be a good path. If you can find someone to sub-contract jobs to him he can get started (he might have to take a low rate to start with), and once he establishes himself he'll be able to win new deals himself.
As he establishes himself it'll probably be worthwhile to create a company that he can build a reputation around - that way his personal background becomes less visible.
Same: producing when standing, consuming when sitting. I'm actually more productive, and if feels great. I'm also much more mobile when standing - I'll walk around if I'm thinking.
I am more physically tired at the end of the day, but in a good way.
Let me add to his anecdotal evidence - of the angels I personally know (~15), the vast majority are price sensitive. If I expand that to angels I know slightly, the percentage of price sensitivity increases.
You can argue that they're irrational/stupid, or that they're not the investors you want (some of them actually are very good, you'd certainly recognize them by name), but it doesn't change the fact that they exist.
I can't comment on relative usefulness of valuation sensitive and valuation insensitive investors.
Opened a few tabs with HN items in it. Booked my trip to SF, then started browsing the tabs. Hit this tab, tried it, found a flight for about $80 less than I just booked.
Lesson learned: always read HN before doing actual work.
I'm looking for a middle ground - SQL/structured data extensible with non-structured data. The ability to extend sql tables with unspecified json-like data. The love child of mysql/postgres with Mongodb.
A few months ago I was about to get rid of my quite old Galaxy Vibrant, so with nothing to lose I installed CyanogenMod on it. It's worked so well I'm keeping it as my main phone for now - it's clean, stable, and looks much nicer than the Samsung ROM. The only downside is significantly reduced battery life, but I can live with that for now.
Will definitely be trying CM10 if it's supported for the Vibrant.
I've been impressed by Andreedsen Horowitz's approach of recognizing winners in large markets and putting large amounts of money to work. It's gutsy and smart.
However, I'm concerned about putting large amounts of money into startups that have yet to become businesses. An over-abundance of resources is often detrimental to realizing a vision and finding a market.
Anyway, I remain a fan of A16Z and suspect they've seen something compelling not yet visibile to the outside observer.
Really depends on the VC - some of them are very courteous, others downright psychopathic - but radio silence is not unusual. As much practice as most VCs have had saying no it can still be hard, particularly after lengthy discussions, so sometimes they don't say anything.