Comments for techzing tech podcast

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Stanislaw Pitucha

Stanislaw Pitucha — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:46:35 +0000

The part of the Memory Hole which helps you remember things is actually very interesting for me. I was thinking for some time now about a system which could help me… not remember things, but get into a state that relates to that thing. For example a couple of shows back, you mentioned a website redesign that involved going through a lot of photos, clips, etc. to find some style and trigger some creative thinking. On my side, after listening to an episode of TZ, I feel like I want to create something / finish project I’m working on. Or after browsing HN I think about new solutions.

The problem is that all of those take a considerable amount of time. TZ is 1hour+ long even if J&J talk quickly Do we really need an experience that long to influence our moods? Is there any effect similar to spaced-learning for errrr…. experience-recall? For example if I kept my version of facebook notes that were made when I felt like searching for more information, could I get back to that research mood by getting some random old and recent facts from the list and post it to myself at 19:00 when my mind is trying to decide between doing something useful or watching House? That’s pure speculation from my side of course. The idea of keeping some distilled information and spaced-learning got me thinking though. You can find many people talking on the internet about connecting feelings to some gesture, so that you can recall it when needed by repeating the physical action – provided you train it long enough to make that connection permanent… I’m not sure if it’s based on something proven, or just tabloid science.

Did anyone else consider something like that? I think that with some self-discipline it should be fairly easy to create a personal map of connections like “this paragraph made me consider many what-ifs”, “this paragraph made me feel it’s important to finish something”, etc.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Jason

Jason — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:56:59 +0000

@Helmut Granda – Diigo looks kind of cool and actually seems quite similar to EverNote. The problem for me is that it has a lot of features that I don’t care about like sticky notes and group collaboration, but lacks the key features that I want like spaced learning via email. But for most everyone else I’m sure it would prove quite adequate.

Here’s some quick info on how to date a fossil – just in case you come across any.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/carbon-142.htm

For more on carbon dating, check out the wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Jason

Jason — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:42:24 +0000

@Steve French – Yeah, I’ve actually seen Anki before and I’ve played with a handful of similar spaced-learning apps, but none of them work the way I need them to. I’ve also attempted to use Evernote and Pinboard and Instapaper and while they all solve pieces of the puzzle, I have something a little different in mind that’s actually quite simple. While I may release it for “show and tell” purposes, but mostly this is just something I want for myself because I’m drowning in information overload, yet I can’t seem to remember the information that I should be able to remember.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Jason

Jason — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:33:33 +0000

@Paul Silver – Fair enough. I might just build something simple for myself since I need a better way of organizing and remembering the things I want to remember and nothing I’ve found works the way I want. This is really more of a “scratch my own itch” project than a “million dollar venture” concept. But your point is well taken.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Steve French

Steve French — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:59:22 +0000

Regarding Memory Hole – Anki does largely the same thing
http://ankiweb.net/

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Paul Silver

Paul Silver — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:45:21 +0000

All this is for Jason, about Memory hole:

It’s a nice little idea, but don’t bother. You’re already developing AnyFu, which has much more legs, and AppIgnite. I understand the idea of having an app to show what AppIgnite can help people create, but other than that, this is a waste of focus. If you make it, you’ve got to market it, and that is going to suck away time better spent on either marketing AnyFu or getting enough of AppIgnite finished that you can release it to a widespread beta, or in to the market.

Given that you already have a lot of consulting work on, and you have one project that’s almost ready to go – AnyFu, and another project that you should be finishing – AppIgnite (which sounds a hell of a lot cooler than Memory Hole) what the hell are you thinking of starting another project that will be very cheap and pushing on that?

I think you’ve lapsed in to a developer way of thinking about the project. You’re thinking it’s a very short term project you and Guyon can hack on. That’s fine as a project to refresh your brains and give you some motivation on AppIgnite, like going to a hack day. You’re not taking in to account the marketing side of pushing it beyond the first dozen or so users you’d get from TechZing listeners. Unless you give it a good push, it’ll die, or sit there with a few dozen or so users and you’ll be stuck maintaining it and making sure it’s up. That sounds like a big time sink when you’ve already got better projects that are further along.

With Memory Hole you’re in the same market as Evernote and it’s clones, and you’re very close to people who could hack something against Delicious or Diigo to get a similar product. So you’re going to have to market it strongly to get traction. With AnyFu, you have competition, but it’s all at the low end of the market and you’re targeting the high end, that’s going to make the marketing much easier, and the members will help do the marketing for you too.

Ack, you do what you want, but it beats me why you’re not completing your much more interesting projects and thinking about entering a market with something that’d be very easy to copy.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Helmut Granda

Helmut Granda — Tue, 15 May 2012 07:01:21 +0000

For all your bookmarking needs check out Diigo, their tagline? Collect and Highlight, Then Remember:

http://www.diigo.com/

One thing that I thought it was interesting was the mention of the “oldest” living organism, the tree that was 4,000 years old before it was cut down, if the tree was only 4,000 years old where do we get the 65m years calculated for fossils? I’m sure I could do some googling but I wanted to get your point of view.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Jason

Jason — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:40:46 +0000

@David Walz – Yep, that’s right. Good memory!

Comment on 183: TZ Interview – Jason Cohen / WP Engine by Jason

Jason — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:31:12 +0000

@Keith Alderman – It’s true, I talk too much and it’s unfair to Justin. We’ve actually discussed the issue in depth and have decided to take turns doing interview shows because it’s just too difficult to have both of us interviewing a guest at the same time.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by David Walz

David Walz — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:24:02 +0000

Jason, I was thinking about that tree guy right before you brought it up. Haha. I believe he was taking a core sample when the drill bit got lodged in the trunk. So he cut the tree down to get the expensive bit back. I feel sorry for that guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_%28tree%29

Comment on 183: TZ Interview – Jason Cohen / WP Engine by Keith Alderman

Keith Alderman — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:15:27 +0000

Great content, a lot of fun listening to Jason Cohen. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the other Jason on this podcast. I don’t know if you realize it, but you have a tendency to bully your way through an interview without giving Justin a chance to speak or ask questions. I can imagine it’d be quite overwhelming having to co-host an interview episode with you. Jason, you asked some really good questions, but please please please let Justin also participate. Even at the sign off, you essentially cut Justin off as he was thanking Jason for his time! It’s okay to sit back and listen and let others do the talking once in a while…yes, even if it is your co-host.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Peter Goldsmith

Peter Goldsmith — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:47:21 +0000

+1 for Memory Hole

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Riyad Kalla

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:30:14 +0000

“How much is Automattic worth”? – $300-500 million approx, http://www.quora.com/Whats-a-ballpark-valuation-for-Automattic-or-Wordpress-currently?redirected_qid=396381

I will also voice my opinion that generate code client-side that will eventually run server-side in a protected environment is not a good idea.

Technically cool, fun thought project, etc. etc… but a lot like leaning over with a sign saying “Kick me in the butthole eventually” on your rear. I forgot the last show I posted my entire argument against it, but it was around the issue of validating the uploaded code when you cannot trust the client generating it.

Disclaimer: Just my 2 cents, carry on. Opinions are like ___ and all that good stuff.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Paul Silver

Paul Silver — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:16:41 +0000

Regards the Lanyrd/HackerEvents – you should have Simon Willison & Natalie Downes on the show to tell the Lanyrd & their story. They’ve both got speaking experience and are entertaining, and it’d be great to hear some more British accents on the show. They’re active on Twitter as @simonw and @natbat.

My personal take is HackerEvents could be useful as a curated aggregator as much as a service you have to sign up for direct. This would make it a useful discovery tool, and could use Lanyrd as one of it’s sources so easily building on the effort of people adding events there.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Spark n Launch

Spark n Launch — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:54:56 +0000

+1 for memory hole.

Found ever note too complicated.

Current workaround is buffer (sorry Justin) and twitter. Because buffer integrates into phone and browser, you can just buffer a website with the necessary tweet. Then you just review your tweets to recap on past entries. Essentially your tweet stream is your memory hole.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by Spark n Launch

Spark n Launch — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:57:10 +0000

Thanks for the MicroConf recap. Pool party sounded great.

Justin’s comments on focus and actionable tasks resonated with us. We set weekly achievable tasks. We find not setting any tasks or setting unachievable/big tasks usually means you achieve nothing.

We wanted to know your views on strategic portfolio analysis. You guys manage multiple projects. Have you ever looked at growth share matrix or similar approach to determining your focus? Eg if you sold or closed down pluggio, and gave 100% to any fu would you be in a better or worse position?

On lean methodology Jason should get Appignite out. Using the hacker news app as an example would mean your time is not wasted. Also think the hacker news events has more legs than you think, just consider the niche and USP.

Liked Any Hoy advice on starting a business on pain point, not idea.

Congrats to Colby. Future astronaut in the making?

Kick starter is a serious option. Now you don’t even need a tangible offer. You don’t give up equity. Kick strapping already being used. Was doubtful in the beginning but gaining popularity. Kick starter takes time and effort, but so does any funding.

The baseball reference is called Steve Blass Disease and was recently featured on a this American life podcast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blass
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/462/transcript

Good episode!

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by steve reynolds

steve reynolds — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:20:27 +0000

(I should add, I do get the whole “do as an academic” thing and I did hear Justin (rightfully) state that you should not give up if there are competitors… but…… 10 bucks. do you really want to spend months on this (it will be months) for 10 bucks a lifetime sale?)

There are other fish in the sea.

Comment on 184: TZ Discussion – Down the Memory Hole by steve reynolds

steve reynolds — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:15:27 +0000

I love you guys but Jason’s idea of MemoryHole should not be done as it would be a waste of your valuable time IMO.

This is just one of the similar services already out there:

http://pinboard.in/

Quick bookmarking with notes (desc)
Email bookmarking
API
Page download and archiving (for an extra cost)
Tags
3rd party iOS apps
Option to make bookmarks private.

10 bucks. (one time fee)

Run by a cool solo developer as well.

Back to Any-Fu!

Comment on 183: TZ Interview – Jason Cohen / WP Engine by Spark N Launch

Spark N Launch — Sun, 13 May 2012 18:17:12 +0000

I only found Jason Cohen a few days ago on another podcast and was really impressed by his insight into startups. Was really excited when I saw you had him on the show!

I have written up a quick blog post on the interview.

The reason I wrote the post is because we like how Jason Cohen takes the startup concepts and tells you how he applied them. His whole approach to customer interviews is impressive – a customer willing to handover money before the product is even built is a strong sign you’re on to the right idea!

Would fully support your philosophers panel show!

Comment on 183: TZ Interview – Jason Cohen / WP Engine by A Smart Bear – Jason Cohen on Startups « Spark n Launch: Biz Startup Tech Blog

Sun, 13 May 2012 18:10:53 +0000

[...] have just finished listening to an interview with Jason Cohen on Techzing. We first heard Jason on an interview on The Startup Success Podcast. Jason writes a very popular [...]

Comment on 183: TZ Interview – Jason Cohen / WP Engine by Philippe Monnet

Philippe Monnet — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:15:06 +0000

I really enjoyed the interview, with the focus on storytelling, peppered with probing questions (the usual quest to bust the “magic function”).
I found the following segments quite interesting:
– Jason Cohen’s approach to find people to talk to via LinkedIn and to solicit paid feedback to show he was really serious
– The discovery of the unserved need
– The comments on what a “business guy” should be doing
– The benefit of having Automatic as an investor
– Getting only 2 signups from a blog post even with 30,000 subscribers
– When Freemium is beneficial:
a) to increase network effect if the product requires network effect,
b) when upgrading to a premium plan is obvious
c) when the cost of adding customers is essentially free

Comment on 183: TZ Interview – Jason Cohen / WP Engine by Dan

Dan — Sun, 13 May 2012 08:54:57 +0000

When it comes to choosing a Web hosting provider, one of the most important factors to consider is the level of customer service provided. While you should obviously make sure you get the features you need, and of course a great price, you also need to be assured that the company you select will partner with you for the long haul and be there whenever you have questions or concerns—be it midday or midnight.

Comment on 183: TZ Interview – Jason Cohen / WP Engine by Alex Gemmell

Alex Gemmell — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:40:34 +0000

I like how Jason Cohen talked about his assumptions, how he wrote them down and tested them directly. The “Lean Startup” movement have jumped on that and have made it critical to their whole process. I’m recognising more and more that the lean startup thing is a pretty good collection of advice!

Comment on 182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security by isoftwaremaker

isoftwaremaker — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:33:35 +0000

the people are getting restless if you don’t publish a new show soon you might have mutiny on your hands

Comment on 182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security by James Robert

James Robert — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:55:34 +0000

Hey guys,

I came across this “planimal” at the museum of natural history in New York. Thought Jason would get a kick out of it:

http://esploded.s3.amazonaws.com/anon_data/2012/ygA1-photo.JPG

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Andrea

Andrea — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:23:34 +0000

MicroConf 2012 was so good the guys are still recovering

Comment on 182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security by Philippe Monnet

Philippe Monnet — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:58:20 +0000

Great show! For easy reference: - OWASP - OWASP Top 10 Note: OWASP has a couple screencast-tutorials too.

Comment on 182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security by Jason

Jason — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:01:00 +0000

Here’s a recorded stream of the Builders Vs Breakers talk Matt did at Chicago BSides:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/22195794

Comment on 182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security by Tom Eastmond

Tom Eastmond — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:49:14 +0000

For SSH, I always disable root login. I also recommend using a non-standard port – this alleviates almost all automated script attacks. If you’re really concerned about securing SSH consider port knocking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_knocking

Comment on 182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security by Ben Boyter

Ben Boyter — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:23:44 +0000

On the subject of captcha’s someone may find this article I wrote a while ago about them http://www.wausita.com/captcha/ its just a simple guide to breaking them.

Comment on 182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security by passy

passy — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:41:02 +0000

I’m confused that on the topic of SSH there was no mention of disallowing password authentication. This is generally considered to be the number one hardening practice for SSH. Instead of using a hard password on your users on the server, use it on your SSH key. This completely disables the risk of practical bruteforce attacks.

Comment on 182: TZ Interview – Matt Konda / Application Security by Spark n Launch

Spark n Launch — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:11:22 +0000

Interesting podcast.

Pretty scary that your server is constantly under attack. Any vulnerabilities and you could lose data and revenue.

Can’t remember if you spoke about it, but would like to know more about smartphone and tablet vulnerabilities. This feels like a massive gap and opportunity for hackers.

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Spark n Launch

Spark n Launch — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:04:14 +0000

Good episode guys. Congrats to @Justin on his super yelp letter.

Yelp has a tough business model. They want businesses to pay for listing and customers to vote art no cost which creates a bias rating system. Another bias is voters typically being customers who had a bad experience.

Unfortunately the moving company model is not uncommon. Many businesses act as an agent for sub contractors. It usually means you have no idea on the quality. When something breaks, it seriously goes bad. A good company would do all they can to compensate and manage customer expectations.

Another rating system that may be broken is google. We picked a cleaning company that had 20+ 5 star ratings. No negative feedback or low ratings. Our experience wad absolutely terrible. We posted a 1 star review. Our review never appeared! We believe the company owner could control and moderate the Google page!

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by James Robert

James Robert — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:57:20 +0000

Hey guys,

Thanks for the critique!

just a few notes:

– We don’t charge for crawler traffic, what you see in google analytics should be pretty close to what you see on your bill.

– We’re planning to have tiered pricing a la Amazon (so $0.0025/pageview will be for the first X thousand page views, then a lower price until the next threshold, etc)

– We’re going to start A/B testing traditional pricing plans like Justin is talking about to see how it affects conversion rates.

@Christoph An aside about being expensive: I think the tiered pricing we’re putting together right now should alleviate that, but it’s also worth considering that it’s not just hosting, it’s also a Saas product that is constantly being updated.

I think the pricing strategy we’re working on right now is pretty competitive with the Average CPM our beta users would expect to pay for the kind of targeted keywords that Q&A software naturally ranks for in search engines.

Thanks for the awesome show guys!

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:48:19 +0000

@Jason
I usually put the words for an acronym as well the first time but figured it would be an easy search if it was not known.

Amazing how your kids are easy to understand when to others it sounds like sounds

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Jason

Jason — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:29:04 +0000

@Christoph – You may be right that the pricing is too high, but I still think that pricing by the view is the right model.

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Jason

Jason — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:27:27 +0000

@Andrew – Thanks, that’s interesting.

In retrospect, I probably should have avoided even answering Justin’s question on the subject due to the fact that it’s a politically charged minefield that I haven’t really kept up with.

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Jason

Jason — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:18:37 +0000

@Andrea – I just had to look up ROFLMAO:

“This Awesome Accumulation of letters means Rolling on Floor Laughing My Ass Off”

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=roflmao

That’s funny, I didn’t realize it was that unclear what my daughters Izzy and Ari were saying, which for the record is:

“This show is distributed by SoundCloud dot com.”

But I’m glad we got that all cleared up.

BTW, the inspiration for that intro was the “I made this” spoken at the end of the X-Files closing credits for Chris Carter’s Ten Thirteen production company:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6va9B9DNX5I

X-Files is my all-time favorite show.

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:13:33 +0000

@Christoph
All will be revealed at MicroConf. Are you going?

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Christoph

Christoph — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:00:34 +0000

@Andrea

You forgot to mention the really important fact: Are you male or female?

——————-

IMHO the RootBuzz.com pricing is waaaayyyyy too high. 1/4 cent per pageview means 10$ / month with only 4000 pageviews.
Users will probably generate 5-10 pageviews per visit on average.
To me this seems very expensive.

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by JaanusSiim

JaanusSiim — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:02:35 +0000

Maybe it’s me listening podcasts at 2x. Or maybe it’s something else. But as long as the intro has been there, I have always heard ‘This show is so stupid’

I remember someone sending in a clip of their kid saying something like this and did put these two together. I never understood why you would use something like this, but found it very amusing

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 04:53:13 +0000

Check out the findings of Richard Mueller regarding global warming. He’s a physicist and a (former) global warming skeptic. He spent two years investigating the subject quite thoroughly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/opinion/dr-mullers-findings-on-global-warming.html

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:23:21 +0000

@Eoin
I just listened to the bit about the “intro” and all I can say is ROFLMAO !!!!

The question I asked was this:

What part of the show is the “beginnign of a show” ?

If you read the quoted part carefully, you will see the typo that I was too subtly referring to. It is on the donation page. When the guys went on the tangent I was close to tears in laughter!

P.S. I thought that the intro talk was some cute gibberish but now that I know, I can hear it clearly as well

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by jordy

jordy — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:37:20 +0000

Justin, i’m just looking at the Pluggio redesign – it looks fantastic. Awesome job!

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Justin

Justin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:20:58 +0000

@Mohammed – I don’t think it would be prudent to be linked to them in google search results for various obvious reasons.

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Jason

Jason — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:07:46 +0000

@Sam Howley – You’re absolutely right about inflation. Sometimes when we meander into subjects that I haven’t thought about recently, I end up stumbling all over place and do a poor job of explaining things. I guess that’s why teachers need to review lesson material and prepare examples before they teach a class.

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Eoin

Eoin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:59:43 +0000

That’s kind of funny about the intro. I couldn’t figure out for a long time what Jason’s daughter was saying at the end of the intro. After a few episodes I thought I succeeded in guessing that she’s saying “Beckham!”. I guess this was in the context that you also speak about soccer sometimes in your family life. So it’s “Soundcloud dot com”.

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Sam Howley

Sam Howley — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:56:59 +0000

The simple traditional argument as to why a small amount of inflation is a good thing is that it encourages people to spend their money. It encourages trade. Because the money you have today will be worth slightly less tomorrow.

With no inflation or deflation people hoard money.

An interesting point is that inflation doesn’t refer to prices but the money supply. People often say that the Fed printing more money will lead to inflation. The Fed printing more money is inflation. The money supply has “inflated”, the rising of prices is an effect of inflation.

But I agree with the sentiment quotes by Jason on the podcast, economics is “the dismal science”. This is because (like psychology and the social “sciences” in general) it focuses far too much emphasis on elegant description and far too little emphasis on accurate prediction.

Cheers
Sam

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Mohammed Firdaus

Mohammed Firdaus — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:37:06 +0000

I see that in an early version of the article you actually mentioned the name of the company but I guess in the final version you removed it.

Wouldn’t it do more damage to them if you put their company name in the text and get your SEO buddies to help get it ranked as close as possible to the Yelp page?

I wouldn’t let my worst enemies use them.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by John Humphrey

John Humphrey — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:42:55 +0000

I think I found the moving company in N. Hollywood. There were 2-5 star reviews and 12 scathing, lengthy, detailed, 1 star reviews that were only surfaced after I made it past the Captcha (took me 3 tries as well!).
I think we should also consider the possibility that this is part of Yelp’s business model…

“The plaintiff claims that Yelp sales staff then began calling the hospital frequently with “high-pressure” tactics promising to move or delete negative reviews in exchange for purchasing a one-year advertising contract.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/yelp-sued-for-alleged-extortion/

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Helmut Granda

Helmut Granda — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:41:00 +0000

I need to make a correction on my last link, here is the right link:

A very well written post (IMO) about the subject
The Yelp Review Filter
-What is the Yelp Review Filter and why should you care?

http://www.searchinfluence.com/articles/yelp-review-filter/

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Helmut Granda

Helmut Granda — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:35:19 +0000

Justin,

Unfortunately I don’t think Yelp needs help fixing their system but rather they have learned how to make money out of their filtering system. Not only that but a quick search on the internet you can find different people facing issues with Yelp, their “sales” representatives, and their review system.

Understanding Yelp, The Review Filter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqi-jjbEKcs

“Yelp Hit With Class Action Lawsuit For Running An “Extortion Scheme”"

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/24/yelp-class-action-lawsuit/

“A Yelp sales rep promised he could remove bad reviews for a $500 membership fee. Then threatened that bad reviews would be highlighted and good ones would disappear. That’s exactly what happened. Yelp.com Stands Accused of Acting Like a “Modern-Day Mafia”"

http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Default.aspx?tabid=266&ID=3285

“How You Can Get Around Yelp’s Pesky Review Filter”

http://www.servicemagicproconnection.com/how-you-can-get-around-yelp%E2%80%99s-pesky-review-filter/

Own Yelp “filter” twiiter account:

https://twitter.com/#!/fightyelpfilter

“Yelp filter system hurts small business owners.”

http://www.yelp.com/topic/seal-beach-yelp-filter-system-hurts-small-business-owners

A very well written post (IMO) about the subject
“Yelp Review Filter Explained (How do I spam that?)”
http://www.searchinfluence.com/2010/03/yelp-review-filter-explained/

As you can see time after time people have posted their own bad experience with the service. Will Yelp listen? Well, lets say the video linked above was first published in YouTube in March 18, 2010. A little over 2 years ago and things have not changed.

It would be nice to see what kind of impact your experience will do to the Yelp community as a whole but in the end I would not be surprised if you just got a call or an email expressing how sorry they are for the bad experience and hope that everyone moves on. After all, how many man hours can you really dedicate to fix this issue?

Comment on 181: TZ Discussion – When a Model is Just a Model by Jamal Osman

Jamal Osman — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:24:32 +0000

@Justin Wow your post blew up on Hacker News! Good job

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Lance Jones

Lance Jones — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:11:51 +0000

Nice post on HN, Justin!

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Justin Vincent — Yelp, You Cost Me $2000 by Suppressing Genuine Reviews, Here’s How You Fix It

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:53:21 +0000

[...] Some folks have asked me to mention that I originally discussed this issue in a bit more detail here (6 mins in). Check out my latest project, AnyFu, a site that makes it easy to hire proven [...]

Comment on 178: TZ Discussion – The Hacker News Slap by Jeff Whelpley

Jeff Whelpley — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:10:41 +0000

Jason, regarding you comment about the red light cameras being such a money maker, I think you are making one major miscalculation. You are assuming that 1) they are able to send that fine to someone and 2) when someone sees it, they will actually pay it. Neither of these assumptions hold up well in a “sanctuary city”. Now, for that one camera you mentioned that pulls in a theoretical 8 million, I would not be surprised if total revenue was a quarter that. Still significant, so your point is still valid for that one instance, but I doubt all the cameras get someone every 15 minutes.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jonathan Wheat

Jonathan Wheat — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:46:13 +0000

Another great show

@Jason – How about combining all the simulator comments and simulate the effects of a zombie apocalypses on the economy / stock market I like the idea of choosing your settings. Maybe pick a year and some other settings giving the user options on how to defend, etc. It starts by simulating the current economic state for that year, and then let loose the apocalypse. Call it Zombie Tycoon Post a leader board listing the economic state at the end of the simulation, maybe get Kaggle involved. ok I’ll stop.

@Justin – as a user of ez-SQL – I took offense that she did this without working with you or at least letting you know. If this gets rolled back, you’re going to have to support it. If someone has a problem, they’re going to come to you for help. Being the past recipient of your immediate attention when I had a problem you (later that night) posted a new fixed version specifically for me. That response was amazing and prompted me to tell my friends about it/you. I’d hate for you to start getting nailed with problems relating to the new code and having to debug it. I think Jason once said in a far-away episode (and I agree) there’s nothing worse than going through someone else’s code, especially if you have to fix a bug.

I also think you should be able to cancel your moving contract. Did they ever tell you how long it would take to get your stuff? That’s nuts. That alone should be grounds for legal action. $2k for me is a lot of money, so I think its definitely worth finding a lawyer over. Good luck

Comment on 179: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / Blowing Up DuckDuckGo by Jonathan Wheat

Jonathan Wheat — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:17:35 +0000

Great interview. It was nice to hear from someone on the east coast become such a success in the tech world. Especially the way he did it – with a family, a baby, skyping across country with VCs, single founder, and staying small.

Made me laugh, thinking what was going on in the mind of some big wig VC possibly hearing the baby in the bounce seat in the background during the call.

Great show.

-Jon

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Justin

Justin — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:06:05 +0000

@Phillippe – Thank you so much that was exactly the advice I was looking for

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Philippe Monnet

Philippe Monnet — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:21:31 +0000

Wow! The amount of comments related to the zombie simulator tells me that if you created a simulation and wrote a blog post about the process it would go viral. You could even you use that as a fun campaign tied to AnyFu: “AnyFu, we even have experts in Zombie behavior simulation!” LOL

I would echo @Tim’s feedback on the ezSQL project. What is strange is that she did not contact you while she was making major structural changes. In my OSS experience, it’s ok to send pull requests for small changes or very narrow and well-explained but narrow new features. But if you start making radical changes, the etiquette would be to contact the author(s) and engage in a discussion about what you have in mind. And then based on their feedback you can either go forward or decide that to create a completely different product. So if she did not do that this might be due to a lack of experience with OSS.
I can totally see why it would be a ton of work to go through the new code base. Maybe you can suggest to her that to accept her branch, she would need to demonstrate compatibility between 2.0 and 3.0 using a series of unit tests for BOTH versions.
I am assuming the APIs are 100% identical with your version. Otherwise I think she should remove her fork and create a brand new framework with a different name. Otherwise this will create too much confusion and mislead people into thinking that her version has the same “mileage” and level of use as the version used in WordPress.

Comment on 176: TZ Discussion – Why Favors Don’t Scale by Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:29:52 +0000

Thanks for a great series of podcasts!

I’m a fellow Aussie from Adelaide in South Australia. I’ve been meaning to post for a while, and it was to comment on the pronunciation that finally did it.

Keep up the great work! The two of you inspire and motivate me every time I listen to you. Great job!

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Justin

Justin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:45:18 +0000

@Jason @Lance – Way ahead of both of you, I already have that blog post mostly written. Just waiting for the furniture to get here so that they don’t have any leverage or recourse once I release it.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jason

Jason — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:39:52 +0000

@Lance Jones – Yeah, I think I’ve come around to that position as well. Guyon convinced me in an offline conversation that the best way for Justin to seek justice in this situation would be to write a critique of the Yelp review system that details the costs of an inaccurate filtering algorithm and uses his specific experience as a case in point. As an aside, Guyon also convinced me that it’s in Yelp’s best interest to have an accurate review system rather than one that’s upwardly biased as I was positing, but we’ll discuss that some more on the next show. You see, there’s a reason I work with Guyon.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Lance Jones

Lance Jones — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:05:51 +0000

Justin, I feel badly for you and your situation with the moving dickheads.

But if someone ripped off your mom for $2K, wouldn’t you try to do something about it?

Or if someone mugged you for $2K, would you honestly blame yourself for carrying around ‘that kind of money’? Wouldn’t you at least report the crime? (Which is basically what this is — a scam, that surely they repeat over and over.)

Like us Canadians, I’ve found that Brits tend to be too polite. But now that I’m in my forties, I tend not to take shit from people (wish I could have learned that sooner).

You don’t have to be vindictive, but please don’t roll over. Doing that takes a toll on your psyche/soul.

You’re a smart guy and come up with somewhere to tell your story — but at least put it out there, dude.

Lance

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Ben Boyter

Ben Boyter — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:16:52 +0000

@Jason That’s one of the reason I mentioned it to you. I figured you should know enough to actually get it started reasonably. Then again you have enough on your plate, but if you could do it in a weekend that would be pretty awesome.

Something like that would be very interesting if you do do things like “Lets dump a truck load of fish onto the market” or “Lets start a famine” or “A rich neighbor just moved in”. Something like that would be found to get some attention if well done. Like I said, I would do it, but I don’t know enough about economic theory beyond a simple labor market.

From a game point I could see it becoming something similar to Notch’s (guy who made Minecraft) new game where you program 16 bit CPU’s in space. The idea of writing trading algorithms for a game could be fun.

Thankfully someone has answered a lot of those random questions, EG Neo vs Robocop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcnd206fyaU

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jason

Jason — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 23:42:28 +0000

@Ben Boyter – Yeah, after doing a little research, and when I say “research” what I really mean is that I asked the Google, it turns out that simulating a zombie apocalypse is about as original as a to-do list web app. See my links in the show description.

My first startup, Renaissance Research Group, LLC (fancy name, huh?), actually built and sold a simulated trading system as a training tool for option traders, so it’s definitely possible to build things like that. It was called the Edge System and it actually worked pretty well.

But what would be really cool (and this is sort of what you were getting at I think) would be to simulate a simple economy in order to better understand how things like inflation, deflation and monetary policy work. I’ve also been thinking about how to model economic corruption and it’s corrosive effect on trust and efficiency effect things like GDP and related measures. Anyway, the zombie idea was just meant to be a proof of concept simulation, even though it’s obviously pure silliness.

But Batman vs Spiderman, … that’s a tough call, actually.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Rick Measham

Rick Measham — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:56:43 +0000

Moving companies and the Yelp algorithm

I’m betting the algorithm says: don’t trust a review from someone in Savanah for a business in North Hollywood. after all, almost EVERY legitimate review is for a local business.

Cheers!
Rick

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Ben Boyter

Ben Boyter — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:34:29 +0000

@Jason Sorry. Didn’t want to be “that guy”. Truth is I have spent more then a healthy amount of time discussing this with people over campfires, along with other intellectual pursuits such as who would win in a fight Batman or Spider-man etc…

The robot uprising sounds more likely to me though. No idea how you would simulate it though so I cant help with that or even your zombie one.

Something that might be fun for you which I have never bothered doing but would be a good candidate for node.js would be a high frequency stock market simulator game. I always thought that would be something cool to hack on but I don’t know anywhere near enough about the stock market to even begin doing so.

Heck make it a weekend project, a simple labour market where people trade at the marketplace for fish and berries etc…. would be an interesting simulation all by itself. Populate the residents with interesting functions dictating how much they like to eat/buy/save and you could watch the prices of goods rise and fall.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Tim High

Tim High — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:22:16 +0000

Justin,
About ezSQL:
I think the right thing to do first of all is to get in touch with the lady that wrote “version 3″ and ask her what her intentions are/were. It’s a little strange of her to fork and rewrite without contacting you at some time during the process, but I would contact her in a friendly manner and say that I think it’s “interesting” and want to learn more.

* What’s “new” or different in ezSQL 3 that’s not in the version you wrote?
* What is she planning to do with it now that she wrote it? Would she like to fold it back in to the “official” repository? (if so, you’re probably going to have some work in order to make that happen)

If she doesn’t have any interest in folding it back, I would think it reasonable to ask her to give her project another name. Any open source project that I know of that has been forked has been given a different name in the process (Hudson –> Jenkins, OpenOffice –> LibreOffice, InnoDB and your friends at Percona, and all the different flavors of Unix). Even if you don’t care about copyright/trademark/IANAL, it’s just confusing for the community to hijack the name.

That being said, more power to her for taking the time and effort to revitalize your project!

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jason

Jason — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:33:05 +0000

@Ben Boyter – While you make great points that I do in fact agree with, you’ve just taken all the fun out of it, damnit! It’s like watching Lost with someone who suddenly starts pointing out that magic and time travel are complete bullshit. Like no shit, but just allow me this brief suspension of disbelief so that I can enjoy the stupid show.

Okay, fine – on to the robot apocalypse! Anyone, got any good ideas about how to simulate Skynet?

Comment on 179: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / Blowing Up DuckDuckGo by Jian

Jian — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:50:19 +0000

So duckduckgo is kind of like a meta search engine then. Similar to dogpile.com etc.

It takes a massive amount of resources (servers, etc) to scale a search engine, but the other side of it is that, most stuff on the web are just junk and not worthwhile to store anyway. I imagine that 90% of what Google stores in their giant data centers are just blackhat seo junk content.

So given this insight, I am building a search engine differently as an experiment from the small. Search is definitely one of the most interesting and useful application these days. Worthwhile for people to explore.

BTW, I saw the debacle of the volunia search engine hype. It seems to me that social data is just full of noise to be truly useful as data source.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Ben Boyter

Ben Boyter — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:40:24 +0000

My take on the zombie apocalypse was always that it could never happen. The reasons being,

1. The zombies primary enemy is also its main food source. This is like having to tackle a Lion every time you feel like eating a sandwich. You are going to get mauled.

2. The zombies only method of reproducing is also biting its primary enemy. Again, every time you feel randy go tackle a Lion which has the intent to maul you. Keep in mind in order to be effective each zombie needs to bite at least 2 humans, which leads us nicely to…

3. Humans are bloody good at killing things. This includes a great number of creatures which have far more effective killing implements then we were given by nature (Lions, Tigers, Bears, oh my!) I don’t know about you, but im pretty sure I could take out 20 zombies in a car without too many issues. Quite a few people have cars. Certainly more then 1 in 20 people in a first world country do. Even if they only take out 2 zombies each we are ahead.

Add in all the gun nuts looking for something to shoot, people with medieval suits of armour (bite that zombie!), wannabe ninjas with swords, kungfu experts, bomb nuts and the fact that a tank or even lightly armored vehicle is totally impervious to a zombie and I can’t see them lasting too long. Heck a mob armed with rocks only has to take out one zombie each to be effective as each zombie still needs to bite two before being stoned. You can see the numbers are clearly on our side. Even armed with sticks I can see humans winning this one.

Anyway that’s my thinking on this. What I find more scary is that there are people prepared for the zombie apocalypse and even worse is that quite a few of them would be hoping it will occur.

BTW Justin, that company are just douchbags. Once you get your stuff, name and shame them and im sure the TechZing army should be able to post enough negative feedback and cause issues that nobody will get bitten like you did.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Spark N Launch

Spark N Launch — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:29:42 +0000

I can’t believe you guys are setting us homework now?!

I was curious to know the answer myself, so here goes…

Pre-Flat:
Screens have a big flat light at the back that’s always on. If a pixel wants to show you white it lets all the light through. If it wants to show you black it blocks all the light. Either way, the light behind is still on and still consuming the same power.
http://blog.stevemould.com/phone-battery-save-black-wallpaper/

LCD – Blocks Light:
It must also be noted that LCD pixels do not produce there own light.
If the pixels are off, they don’t let the backlight through, when they are on, they let the backlight through.
http://hometheater.about.com/od/hometheatervideobasics/qt/tvtechoverview.htm

AMOLED – Turns Off:
Because the black pixels actually turn off, AMOLED also has contrast ratios that are significantly better than LCD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMOLED

Because of LED technology, you can save your battery by displaying black.

http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/long-live-your-mobile-battery/2010/06/07/color-makes-a-difference

http://blog.stevemould.com/phone-battery-save-black-wallpaper/

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Abe

Abe — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:38:15 +0000

Zombie Apocalypse idea – allow viewers to add their own zombie definition. Paste a snippit of a custom zombie javascript into a textarea and run. See who can create the most successful zombie. … maybe allow custom humans too. On the topic of computer simulations, this is a must listen: http://www.radiolab.org/2010/dec/14/one-good-deed-deserves-another/ (the full episode is worth listening too … oh, and donate!)

Quantum Entanglement – faster-than-light communication is impossible according to humanity’s current understanding of physics: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=612 The first half of The Elegant Universe is a review of Newtonian physics and I found it fascinating. It covers “instant” communication in more detail. Once the chapters started into superstring theory, however, it lost my interest.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jesse Lyons

Jesse Lyons — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:37:57 +0000

Instead of making assumptions about ease of spread and zombie starvation time allow those to be set by the user before running the simulation.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Alfie John

Alfie John — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:16:39 +0000

You could simulate the Zombie Apocalypse using a Finite State Machine or a Petri Net

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by aListener

aListener — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:19:55 +0000

- Moving Company -

@Mohammed – I think the company name was repeated multiple times and fairly clearly.

I would first phone them and tell them not to ship your stuff. Then I would email and BCC another account (gmail?) with a message including that you phoned them to say X and that this was a followup in writing so that there was no miscommunication. Then, once you have your stuff, I would look into how to get satisfaction. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, contractors must be registered with the State. This allows a consumer to go to the State arbiter if they would like to challenge a company. California is more regulated in my opinion so I would think there is a similar system there. After all of that I would put a small “fact-based” review in Yelp, Kudzu, etc. Mentioning the hidden reviews might be helpful too.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Steve French

Steve French — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:57:04 +0000

@Justin – might I suggest moving to Atlanta? It’s a much larger city, has the nation’s largest airport, and SCAD is here too (I’m not sure why, but it is). Far easier than moving back to California.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Stewart Robinson @stewsnooze

Stewart Robinson @stewsnooze — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:30:16 +0000

@Stanislaw Pitucha Thanks for that. I agree. I have php servers that run some sites that regularly happily churn out pages during peaks running at over 60 avg for a while.

The response generation time does not suffer a lot during this time.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by James Robert

James Robert — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:19:40 +0000

Had a couple ideas for blog posts you could write to help build interest in anyfu:

1. Point out the problems with the status quo (the problem anyfu is going to solve)

“The problem with ODesk”

or alternatively:

“Why ODesk isn’t cutting it”

2. “How to become an Expert in anything”

Basically just make a list of the kinds of things you look for, and detail it. Then at the end you can say something like, “Already did all that? Send us an email!”

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Stanislaw Pitucha

Stanislaw Pitucha — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:00:22 +0000

@stewsnooze
To be even more precise, load is based on the averaged number of active processes on the system, period. Active may mean that they’re already handled or that they’re queued, so that doesn’t really change with the number of available processors.

It’s just the perception of what’s the optimal value for smooth operation that changes. load==number of processors is the conventional wisdom. Which can be misleading too – if you have lots of threads scheduling minimal work at very short intervals you may be happy with load ~50. Even load over 1000 may not stop the system from being very responsive.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Sam Howley

Sam Howley — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:34:27 +0000

Hi Guys,

I am enjoying your discussions and look forward to anyfu taking off.

You should ask Scott Aaronson from http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ to be a guest.

He is a quantum computing and computer science expert, he has an outgoing personality and can explain complex stuff in an accessible way.

There are some youtube talks by him if you want to get a sense of what he’s about :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bLXHvH9s1A

Cheers
Sam

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Stewart Robinson @stewsnooze

Stewart Robinson @stewsnooze — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:44:50 +0000

@Justin

I don’t think you explained the Load average thing correctly. Your explanation only works on single core systems. If you have 4 cores or 4 single core processors then in your terms the perfect metric becomes 4.

The load average is the average number of processes that are waiting or need to be serviced by the processor.

If you have 4 processors or cores then having 4 in the queue is essentially, not exactly, the same as having 1 on a single core/processor.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Mohammed Firdaus

Mohammed Firdaus — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:50:48 +0000

Okay, I couldn’t help but grind my teeth and look for something to break during that part of the podcast….

Thanks,

Mohammed Firdaus

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Justin

Justin — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 05:27:53 +0000

@Mohammed – Perhaps, but only AFTER I get my stuff delivered…!

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Mohammed Firdaus

Mohammed Firdaus — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 03:55:11 +0000

Justin,

You mumble over the name of the transportation company. Could you put it in the shownotes.

Thanks,

Mohammed Firdaus

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jason

Jason — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:38:48 +0000

@Joe – It looks like you and I are correct about what 28 days stands for and Amos and I think Justin are in fact wrong. Here’s a snippet about the movie from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later

“Twenty-eight days later, a bicycle courier named Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakens from a coma in the deserted St Thomas’ Hospital…”

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Joe

Joe — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:12:14 +0000

I always assumed ’28 days later’ was how long he was in the coma. I really don’t think it’s some kind of measurement of their life expectancy without food.

Also, next episode talk about this hacknews article – concert with hologram of tupac! How nuts!
http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3847928

Have a good one guys!

Joe

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jason

Jason — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:51:48 +0000

@Jamal Osman – Thanks!

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jason

Jason — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:47:21 +0000

@Stanislaw Pitucha – To answer your question about AnyFu – yes, we’re going to limit the number of experts per specialty so that the experts are happy with the amount of work they’re getting, but have enough experts so that clients are able to book a session without any trouble.

In fact, I’ve recently come to the conclusion that AnyFu is really just a talent agency like CAA, but in the areas of technology and business as opposed to sports and entertainment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Artists_Agency

Hopefully, one day AnyFu will reach that level of quality and name brand recognition.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Stanislaw Pitucha

Stanislaw Pitucha — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:33:07 +0000

Thanks for the show, discussion is good as usual… kept me awake today on M4/UK. In return maybe some of may be useful:

Regarding the barcode/qrcode scanners – it seems there are two kinds – scanners and imagers (basically cameras). Instead of using reflections (although I saw some qrcode readers which produced rotating red stripes… no idea how those work) they do 2D image processing. It seems to be pretty reliable – I used them without issues at some UK airports as well as Brussels and Amsterdam… They’re also supported on trains in Belgium/Netherlands – which is extremely useful if you don’t travel with a printer

Regarding zombie simulation, that sounds similar to the standard predator-prey (shark-fish) simulators, for example http://dovsherman.deviantart.com/art/Wa-Tor-An-Ecosimulation-25692206 People wouldn’t reproduce fast enough to include it in the model of course.

Slightly unrelated: I was wondering about something related to Anyfu today – when the magic moment comes when you have lots of experts available, are you planning to limit the experts per skill somehow? Did you consider a situation where you have so many experts available for (for example) Rail that there’s not enough Rails-related work to distribute to them and any new person just spreads the load even thinner, making it less worthwhile for everyone? I expect there’s a limited number of people who actually need experts…

Finally, thanks for the DDG episode. I tried DDG search months ago and didn’t think it was good enough, but after the interview I decided to try again… this time I reset my default search and I’m happy so for.

Comment on 180: TZ Discussion – Simulating the Zombie Apocalypse by Jamal Osman

Jamal Osman — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:35:44 +0000

Thanks guys, this show is the best part of Monday!

Comment on 178: TZ Discussion – The Hacker News Slap by Martin Baker

Martin Baker — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:28:26 +0000

Another enjoyable show. And it was great to be nosey and look at Justin’s photos! Looks great.

I completely agree with Jason’s focus on positioning AnyFu at the high end rather than diluting it and allowing anyone in. However I’d worry that you’re not taking a large enough cut at 10% if it’s going to be a relatively small select group of experts who get personal service.

Comment on 179: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / Blowing Up DuckDuckGo by Philippe Monnet

Philippe Monnet — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:21:14 +0000

The visual image of the Gabriel’s baby bouncing in the chair while skyping with VCs is going to be a classic!!! Thanks for sharing
This show demonstrates that there is no single path for startups to grow and be successful. Gabriel was talking very methodical steps and controlling the growth very conservatively but ultimately recognized he was “starving” DDG’s success and decided to take action, get funding to get into the next phase.
All around great story!

Comment on 178: TZ Discussion – The Hacker News Slap by Philippe Monnet

Philippe Monnet — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:14:49 +0000

@Steve Jacobs, at my day-time job (for a financial services company), all critical external interfaces use queuing systems with audit tables. When processing messages we only peek the message, try to process it, and remove it if successful. Otherwise the message will be attempted again at the next cycle. In addition we synchronize messages that must be executed in a strict sequence so that a failure blocks all related messages. Then we have monitoring to check for depth of queues and age of messages so we can be alerted on abnormal situations (e.g. failures due to a prolonged downtime for an external partner). Hope that helps. If you want more details ping me.

Comment on 179: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / Blowing Up DuckDuckGo by Jason

Jason — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:09:21 +0000

@Ian Drake – Thanks, I’m glad you liked the show. Gabriel is not only a smart guy and a great entrepreneur, but he’s just plain fun to talk to, so it’s always a blast to have him on the show.

Comment on 179: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / Blowing Up DuckDuckGo by Ian Drake

Ian Drake — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:18:25 +0000

I don’t get a chance to comment often because I listen on the road, but this was another great episode.

I’ve been using DDG for over a year now and the best part about it is that I can quickly jump into other search engines when I’m not seeing the results I’m looking for.

Keep up the good work.

Comment on 177: TZ Interview – Dan Southworth / Divergence by Simon

Simon — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:00:05 +0000

I enjoyed this episode, as it shows that there are some of the same difficulties with getting other types of projects started (in industries that you don’t have much experience in).

Comment on 179: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / Blowing Up DuckDuckGo by Ben Reyes

Ben Reyes — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:15:23 +0000

This could have been the first time Gabriel mentioned the actual size of the round being $3M. I’ve just updated (pending approval) the DuckDuckGo CrunchBase page (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/duck-duck-go). Which I’ve referenced this page and an SEC filing http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1532263/000153226311000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml

Comment on 179: TZ Interview – Gabriel Weinberg / Blowing Up DuckDuckGo by Spark N Launch

Spark N Launch — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:43:14 +0000

Do you guys ever rest? Great episode. Gabriel’s approach to his business is so refreshing to hear – more relaxed than others.

Really like the duck duck go site, especially the bubble and don’t track landing pages.