HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

zeit_geist

464 karma · joined February 8, 2011

submissionscomments
zeit_geist··on Ask HN: Urgent request for work in Munich, or anywhere in Germany
adding to the previous commenters: https://www.google.de/search?q=startup+jobs+munich
zeit_geist··on Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?
That's true.
zeit_geist··on Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?
I agree but only due to my lack of knowledge in both areas -- and I only have second knowledge by attending a talk of a former D-Wave user and "programmer". That is, and contrasting Mill Computing, D-Wave has implementations in the field.
zeit_geist··on Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?
In Berlin, there is the 'Social Impact Hub'

http://socialimpact.eu/

of which I am not affiliated with nor won't endorse here in any way. Sadly, in Germany at least, startups that aim for maximum positive impact and less so profit, are called 'social startups' which outside of Germany probably has a completely different connotation.

The news websites I usually frequent, are not very full of news; they are rather SV & VC company theory megaphones. Avoiding those websites sometimes leads one to people with a bit different entrepreneurial mindset.

This having said, would you work for such a company? And which compromises would you accept (on the ethics-, but also wage-scale)?

zeit_geist··on Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?
A super incomplete list:

Databases:

- PipelineDB

- Snowflake (Computing)

Internet of Things / Communications:

- Helium

Robotics:

- Pneubotics

- Kuka, namely the research department

Autonomous Systems / "Self Driving Car" et al.:

- Kiva

- Anki

Computer-Vision / VR based:

- Jaunt

- Oculus VR (especially the 'research' department)

Agriculture:

- Blueriver http://www.bluerivert.com

(there are many more super-interesting companies in this area!)

Computing:

- Mill Computing; though quite dubious

- D-Wave

and than there is Microsoft Research working on super interesting stuff in programming languages, computer architecture (FPGAs).

Additionally, I believe really challenging problems will alwyas be coming from creative people, companies in that area; such as Pixar, architecture, and design (keywords, just to give a start: generative {design, art, ...}).

Hope this helps!

zeit_geist··on Why Berlin should not look up to the Valley
> Germany, despite being technologically strong, is not very inovative. At least not in the sense of new, scaling products.

That's the result of a tech-centric worldview (read startups, sw). Quite the opposite is true, for instance in the area of 'Green Tech'.

> While that indeed is one of the cornerstones of the german economy, these companies are most of the time too small for an interessting tech IPO.

I don't your argument here. You mean success == IPO here? There are plenty of highly profitable Mittelstand companies with a profit and revenue much higher than e.g. LinkedIn. What does that mean here, that LinkedIn is unsuccessful or that the other Mittelstand'ish company is? IPO is not a value of its own as some reports might indicate. Looking at Mittelstand, as the author wants us to, is about the values surrounding a company, for instance to re-invest money in a sustainable way, that it is not about growth for growth's sake (which seems to be an inevitable by-product of going public!) but making better products.

> Finally, what in my opinion makes it very unlikely that a company has a sucessfull tech IPO in germany anytime soon is people. There's education, focusing on producing people for the existing technologies and, even worse, companies.

For University-level education, this definitely and absolutely does not apply.

zeit_geist··on NoSQL – Back to the Future or Yet Another DB Feature?
Yes, and fragmentation of your data. Resulting in e.g. data quality problems. It's not just choice, it's choice with downsides that many seem to not really care about at all.
zeit_geist··on NoSQL – Back to the Future or Yet Another DB Feature?
You are right. In the talk I gave I briefly referred to Hierarchical Database for instance. It's not in the slides because of the timeframe for the talk.
zeit_geist··on NoSQL – Back to the Future or Yet Another DB Feature?
(re that Tandem paper: it's IMS / a hierarchical DB that they describe though)
zeit_geist··on NoSQL – Back to the Future or Yet Another DB Feature?
for your reading pleasure, please take a look at this paper: http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.6.pdf

what they describe there basically is the current state of affairs: different database technology for different purposes (in-memory, hierarchical and journal). I love the paper for it shows how things do actually not change.

zeit_geist··on NoSQL – Back to the Future or Yet Another DB Feature?
Yes, several slides require more context. The talk was recorded and, hopefully, will be available online at http://www.nosql-matters.org/ soon.
zeit_geist··on NoSQL – Back to the Future or Yet Another DB Feature?
The paper describes a system that is a library which adds distributed transactions to effectively every data store available (distributed and non-distributed). I see no reason why this technology should not be available really soon given the broad applicability.
zeit_geist··on MongoGate — or let's have a serious NoSQL discussion
I took "MongoGate" (sorry, I just fell in love with that term) as an example of what happens when overly positive expectations hit the hard ground. Removing the hype from NoSQL ("it's innovative", "it scales", "the cool guys use it", yada yada) is what I like to do.

I surely do not uncover any secret there. But I haven't stumbled upon a "what NoSQL lacks" blog post recently either. You can read my post in many ways, but the latter one is actually one possible way imho.

zeit_geist··on MongoGate — or let's have a serious NoSQL discussion
True. The author forgot to add "scalable" there -- but that is actually mean there.

I am studying Multi-Dimensional Indexing for more than 3y now and have implemented many of the state-of-the-art indexes. They are all not sufficient as especially MongoDB's implemention is insufficient in especially the scalability-domain.

zeit_geist··on MongoGate — or let's have a serious NoSQL discussion
I have taken a short look at your approach only. I still think KV-stores are Assembler-like constructs and as such I would apply my criticism to your approach equally -- please correct me if I (mis-)judge your project! But in general, I think your approach is a good one.

Regarding comments at my blog: I don't understand what you mean with "subscribing". According to the settings page, you do not have to register. You are free to comment there anonymously. That being said, your comment at HN is highly appreciated. Thank you for taking your time!

zeit_geist··on Ask HN: Would you pay for privacy in a social network like Facebook?
correct, but somebody else has put a stamp on it already.
zeit_geist··on Ask HN: Any good Macbook Air alternatives?
An iPad.
zeit_geist··on Crash-Only Software
Should be part of the standard CS curriculum.
zeit_geist··on How GitHub Works: Hours are Bullshit
I like the idea, but I don't know how it could be applied to people working part-time; say students or folks busy with their PhD.
zeit_geist··on Poll: Your preferred method for coding on a remote server?
X exported via NX -- works awesomely fast especially over slow links, tethered smartphones, etc.
zeit_geist··on Ask HN:Should I get the new Macbook Air to replace my 3yr old MBP?
That's easy: buy it. It's the perfect machine to get code done.

I wouldn't use it for stress tests though. IMHO it's a task for dedicated machines anyways.

zeit_geist··on C++ or Java, which is faster for high frequency trading?
It's armchair HFT arguments all over.
zeit_geist··on Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?
yes, it is a failure.
zeit_geist··on [dead]
I enjoyed the service although I was wondering about the business model for quite a long time. Sad.
zeit_geist··on Amazon's next billion-dollar business eyed
How I could I miss AWS for so long?! ;p
zeit_geist··on Erlang's Tail Recursion is Not a Silver Bullet
a nice blog post, very detailed and I think the methodology somewhat holds. Therefore +1 from me.
zeit_geist··on A Call for an Honest and Sustainable OpenSource License
I understand it's quite early for you now. I can assure oyu, we have looked at all the licenses you mentioned. They all care about the business of sharing code and not the business of making money. This more of a general problem or merely lack of alternatives, is what the blog post is all about.
zeit_geist··on A Call for an Honest and Sustainable OpenSource License
Actually the proposed license model doesn't waive any author's commercial rights whatsoever. Every author would still have the right to do with his code whatever he/she likes. However, there is restriction about the process of creating a profit derived from the software. At that point, it is about to give a "fair share", which is another problem domain still unsolved.
zeit_geist··on Skip the MBA if Entrepreneur is Your Lifestyle
Interesting post, but mixes 2 really interesting topics up. I would have loved to learn more about that 2 different thinking styles mentioned.
zeit_geist··on Please help! Anonymous Survey on Real-Time Analytics
Po, thank you for your great hints. They are all highly appreciated. We will rework our survey accordingly and repost it in some days.
Page 1 of 2Next →