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Will it ever be possible to know all the variables involving a specific chaotic event, like the lottery numbers?
IANAP (I Am Not A Physicist) but my understanding of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is that it is impossible to know both the exact position and the exact momentum of a particle at the same time. So no.
[... 62 words]What are good topics for panel discussions?
Anything that’s controversial in your industry, especially if it’s a recent debate. Just make sure that your panelists disagree—there’s nothing more boring than a panel where everyone has exactly the same opinion.
[... 99 words]What design techniques does Apple use in the introduction page of iPad Air?
Apple used the same technique on their Apple—Mac Pro page. I first saw this trick used on the BeerCamp at SXSW 2011 page.
[... 91 words]Are there more annual TED and TED-related conferences than there are days in the year?
According to http://www.ted.com/TEDx there were 245 community-run TEDx events in 61 countries in just the last month, so yes it’s safe to say there are considerably more annually than there are days in the year.
[... 57 words]Do you need the feature in Dropbox mobile app that allows using the chosen files in offline mode? Why?
I use this all the time. It’s especially useful for travelling (when you’re abroad you often don’t have inexpensive cellular data or access to WiFi). I use it for:
[... 117 words]Why doesn’t Yelp require a login? Is there evidence that suggests that acquiring users at the engagement stage versus initial landing is effective in specific markets?
Unnecessarily requiring a login to browse is (in my opinion) dumb. It discourages people from sharing links to content on the surface and can prevent search engines from indexing content, both of which are terrible for SEO. It also puts a pointless barrier in front of people who are trying to figure out if your service is any use, and encourages fake signups which pointlessly pollute your user database.
[... 101 words]What are some of the best offbeat attractions in London?
Camden Passage antiques market in Islington (near Angel tube) should be right up your street. It’s full of fascinating characters and intriguing shops, including bits and pieces of WWII memorabilia.
[... 46 words]Which event gave you a real happiness?
The Maker Faire in California, and the Mini Maker Faire in Brighton, UK. The enthusiasm for making things for the sake of making things is delightful and infectious.
[... 41 words]What are movie scenes where the hero hurtles from high-up to Earth and nearly dies, but is saved somehow?
You may find http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwik... relevant.
[... 31 words]Why didn’t Apple release a gold (champagne) iPad?
According to John Gruber: http://daringfireball.net/2013/1...
[... 65 words]What exactly the error meaning client closed prematurely connection while sending to client from upstream in nginx?
I think it means that the connection to the user’s browser was lost before the request had been fully transferred—for example due to the user hitting the stop button in their browser or switching off their wifi connection.
[... 63 words]What are the most “New Yorkers” experiences you can do in London?
There’s a Shake Shack (legendary NY burger chain) in Covent Garden now.
[... 30 words]What kind of website can be run on AWS for 10, 100, 1 thousand, 10 thousand, 100 thousand, 1 million dollars per month?
“But is there a simple way to say that for 10$ per month you can run website on AWS, that has X unique users and Y data transfer...”
[... 166 words]Would you test your web app against simulated infrastructure failure?
I think this is a pretty interesting idea—simulating these kind of conditions isn’t easy so I imagine many teams don’t bother. If it was good (really easy to get started with, great control and reporting tools, maybe helped set up the actual tests to replay) and I trusted the service I would definitely consider paying for it.
[... 125 words]Does y combinator review applications in the order they were received? If you apply just right before the deadline should you not expect your app to be reviewed before next week?
Appslications are reviewed in random order.
[... 43 words]What company or service sends the most beautifuly designed emails?
Litmus (who provide an excellent email testing tool) send out the most attractive newsletter in my inbox.
[... 36 words]How do I explain my patchy job history to a VC when pitching investment?
I wouldn’t worry about it. Entrepreneurs often have patchy job histories. A VC is much more likely to understand “I took a few months off to work on a startup idea” than a regular employer.
[... 55 words]What is the role of angel investors? Do they help people who find themselves in financial difficulty relating to a business failure?
I’m afraid you are misinterpreting the word “angel” in the term “angel investor”.
[... 139 words]Y Combinator: I want to apply to YC and I have 5 people on my team. we have two founders one technical and one designer but on our application I want to only include our three programmers one being a founder. Is this frowned upon at YC and does it hu...
YC are fine with three founders—no need to limit it to two.
[... 143 words]Why is it important to expand/upgrade my professional network?
There are plenty of reasons, but the most obvious is for finding a better job. Next time you are job hunting having a high quality, wide ranging network can make a huge difference.
[... 148 words]Why did Facebook remove their hamburger navigation and go back to docked tabs in their mobile app?
Probably because the swipe-to-see-menu gesture conflicts with the iOS 7 standard swipe-to-go-back gesture.
[... 36 words]If you’re starting a website as a product, what are the important things to consider for the domain and how important are they? Ex: effect of being .com, .net or .io etc., and is it okay to have a hyphen in the name?
Get the .com. If you don’t, you’ll find that a surprisingly large number of press mentions etc will link to the wrong place—and you may end up having to pay a fortune later to buy the .com from a domain squatter (the price goes way up once your site starts to gain traction).
[... 104 words]What is way that android connect to Oracle database?
As a general rule it’s not a good idea to allow mobile devices to connect directly to a server-side database, as it’s an invitation to hackers to figure out what’s going on and then connect to the database themselves for nefarious reasons.
[... 105 words]It is posible to send an RSS feed to Twitter geolocalized?
Yes, this is possible using the Twitter API. A competent web programmer should be ale to build this for you in a few hours.
[... 41 words]What do you do when you passionately believe in what you’re doing and have been seeing strong customer validation, but people around you constantly diss it? How do you persevere without a support system?
This is one of the reasons it’s a good idea to build a circle if trust with other entrepreneurs—or potentially even move to a “startup hub” region where more people are doing startups.
[... 110 words]Who would like to help set up a Wordpress site that is event focused?
Eventbrite (my employer) recently worked with WordPress.com to provide an integration between the two services which you may find relevant—it makes it very easy to set up a WordPress.com hosted site which ties in to the Eventbrite API to promote and enable ticket sales: WordPress.com Integrations for Eventbrite
[... 73 words]Why can’t Twitter Web Intent pages be loaded into an iframe?
I imagine this is to discourage clickjacking: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
[... 26 words]What email marketing tool does Goop, InsideHook and other popular newsletters use?
You might be able to tell by viewing the full email headers on one of the emails they have sent you.
[... 39 words]What should the CEO’s salary be in a startup seeking seed capital? Is there an average number?
If you haven’t yet raised any capital, how can you pay a CEO salary at all?
[... 133 words]How can one become a masterful Rails developer (and still have a life)?
Don’t sacrifice your social life. Sacrifice TV.
[... 79 words]