eterpstra

“If you have one shot of whiskey on Thanksgiving and one on the Fourth of July, it’s not going to make any difference. But if you have whiskey every night, 365 days a year, your liver’s gone. It’s the same thing.”

Obviously this beekeeper is not from Tennessee.

It's not too simplistic, you hit the nail on the head. My knee-jerk reaction to this post was to roll my eyes (mainly because of the title), because it seems like the OP is just stating the obvious - you have a lofty goal, and you reach that goal by breaking it down into bite size problems that you know how to solve.

It's easy to forget, though, that my job as a software developer is to solve small problems all day in order to tackle a larger problem, and that not everyone has this day-to-day experience. So outside of our tribe, this article may not be as 'common sensical' as I first presumed.

I'm sorry, but this is one of the most link-baitish titles to a blog post I've seen in a while. It's a nice little chunk of wisdom about problem-solving and motivation, but it's certainly not showing me how to do 'anything'. The problem of me not being the starting quarterback for the Patriots is not going to be solved by following this advice, sadly.

Spending so much time on sites like HN and TechCrunch, it's easy to forget that there are over half a million businesses started in the U.S. per year, with only a tiny smattering of those being VC funded tech startups.

Determined entrepreneurs get money however they can, but mostly pay out of their own pocket or borrow from local banks or credit unions. VC funded businesses are few and far between (except in SF), but seem to get a lion's share of the attention.

Source: http://web.sba.gov/faqs/faqindex.cfm

For those who are now pondering a weekend project...

http://twitter.github.com/flight/demo/

Thank you for this. I see this as a perfect companion to Freemind. Sometimes I want to jot stuff down, and firing up freemind is too cumbersome, or I'm on my laptop and haven't sync'd recently. I've been using Evernote for this purpose, and it's just not quite as graceful as a mindmap.

For getting ideas out quickly, and sharing mindmaps without installing software or paying for an one of the (many) web-based services, this looks pretty ideal.

Also, +1 for folding.

I was nodding my head in agreement up until that last bit. How is it more dangerous to pull off the interstate and park (assuming you are using an offramp and not just the shoulder) than making a phone call?

Exactly. I could build a program to play checkers, and have it beat me at checkers every time I play it.

Breakthrough after breakthrough already happens today, and happens more and more often due to growing economies around the world, along with more people doing more reasearch with faster computers.

Also, academic research and writing software is significantly less resource-intensive than building a space station or flying car.

Whenever I see these Kurzweil naysayer articles, I always feel like they are overly pessimistic, or short-sighted. Just because problems seem insurmountable now, doesn't mean that they will be in a few years. People always seem to forget about the exponential growth of information technology. If you look at an insurmountable problem in the context of today's technology and speed of discover, then yeah, it will be tough to believe that we'll have sentient machines any time soon. But please do not forget that tomorrows technology will be exponentially better, faster, stronger than what we have today. In five years, the problems outlined in the article may seem like child's play.

Side note: I would really like to see an infographic on the average number of comments it takes for a thread on YouTube to degenerate into nothing but name calling and racial slurs. Maybe separated by category, and adjusted for number of views.

This is pretty cool! Not only is Angular my fav. js framework, but there are no comments underneath the videos. Sometimes while watching a video on YouTube I'll catch a glimpse of the user comments by accident and I'll feel dirty for the rest of the day. Bravo, sir.

+1 for web based interface. I grabbed Epic Win when it was first released, but was put off by the fact that every task had to be typed in with the iPhone keyboard. This is a huge pain if you have a lot to do in one day :D

Plus, it doesn't look like EW gets many significant updates any longer. Glad to see someone else taking a crack at this.

A little colorful drama never hurts. You can only read so many articles about Lisp...

Does anyone see the irony here? The whole point of the BetaPunch service is to elicit critical feedback.

I kid you not, the quote below is taken directly from their site as instructions for site testers:

"Be as critical as possible when reviewing a website. It's ok to be positive but don't just talk about how great you think their site is. These websites sign up for BetaPunch because they know they have things that can be improved upon. They want you to be as honest as possible with them as to your feelings about their website. Figure out what makes sense to you and what doesn't. And be sure to VOICE your opinions as you navigate the site."

I think you work for the wrong company. This may be true at MegaCorp, Inc. but in my experience working with small groups of programmers & engineers, when a meeting is called everyone makes damn sure that the purpose is to get together and be awesome.

I don't quite understand the 'polluting the html' argument. How is this worse than using a templating package like Moustache? Plus, it's Angular's mission to extend html with the framework. Says so right on the homepage.

This just seems like an ad for the bContext app. There's a link to an article about cold-emailing prospects that had a lot more meat, imo. http://life-longlearner.com/how-to-cold-email-prospects/