Totally agree, I tried to prototype this but the datasets to train ML summarizations from are pretty much all from news articles. Trying to take that model and summaries chats resulted in gibberish for me. The salient take-aways from Chats and other non-factual / loosely structured text seems so dependent on what you care about, summarisation is difficult.
I've been reluctant to do a friends/family round since reading some advice about conflating friends with investors. I would prefer investors who would use their experience/contacts/etc to help encourage a return on their investment, and also to keep friends and family impartial from the success/failure of the company.
> It's like knowing you have these traps to avoid, but if you just keep one very close, that's the only one you need to consider
Love that roundup of this technique. Coincidentally enough my dad also used this same aid to quit smoking. I saw some slight sense but never enough to unpack it myself.
It sounds like you're determined and self motivated, you're off to a great start! Nice work on getting downloads with your Android apps!
Since you seem to have a lot of front end and app knowledge, personally I might suggest getting more familiar with back-end as a service technologies like Firebase, etc. You could then create apps/web-apps that scale without knowing loads of back-end architecture practices.
To get a good spot in a next company, practice explaining your accomplishments to date succinctly, meet people, apply to multiple companies and get multiple offers lined up.
> 1. If you plan on having cofounders, you need to determine how decisions will be made before starting a company together. Titles and vague “roles/responsibilities” won’t be enough. Play out scenarios to hash out decisions and set the right expectations, ask tough questions, and don’t let ego get in the way.
It got me thinking of something like the 'Co-founder compatibility test'
I wonder if anyone already has a good set of example scenarios and questions to reveal this compatibility/incompatibility between people in decision making / expectations / virtues. Many questions could come from challenging moments with co-founders and teammates in one's own experience. I can think of a few already.
If we compiled a list of these types of questions and scenarios, could they be used as a good test of compatibility, useful to at least some initial degree to assess potential partnerships in real life and over the internet.
Hi Peter, thanks for sharing info on what I feel is quite an unknown subject to an outsider. I have a general question for you:
As a skilled software developer with a relevant UK university degree (3 years BSC) and work place experience, interested in working in the US - What is the ballpark range of costs and wait time involved in getting a visa to allow me to work for a US company.
What's the general procedure, - get offer from job, then -talk to immigration lawyer, or the other way around?
(Not a lawyer, but US immigrant pretty familiar with E/F/H/J/L/O visas and Green card)
There are some exceptions but the procedure is usually : get a job offer from an employer that is willing to sponsor you, then talk to a lawyer... But a lawyer might be able to help you find ways to immigrate without a job offer, but that seems pretty unlikely to me.
The H-1B visa would normally be one of the 'classic' ways to be authorized to work in the US in your situation, the problem being that in recent years demand has far exceeded the available number (annual cap). For example this year 199,000 petitions were received during the first week, for only 85,000 H-1B available (including 20k for holders of advanced US degree).
Therefore the USCIS now holds a lottery to determine which petitions will be reviewed first, and once 85k petitions are approved, you have to wait another year to apply...
The cost for an H-1B is nil for an H-1B as the employer has to pay for it and cannot ask you to reimburse those fees. You might have to pay in order to have dependants (wife, kids) added to your petition though.
The problem used to be to find an employer willing to sponsor you for the visa (the difficulty varies greatly depending on your industry), now the H-1B visa cap makes it more of a time issue unfortunately.
Other options you might look into depending on your how long you would like to work in the US: J-1 for an internship, E-2 for a company whose 'nationality' is the same as yours, L visas for a transfer to the same company in the US, F-1 visa for studies, and the O-1 visa which I will let you research by yourself and/or discuss with an attorney (the qualifications aren't as difficult at they may seem, trust me)
It's worth considering the L-1 visa route - work in the UK office of a US-based company for 1 year and you become eligible.
One disadvantage, you are bound to the L-1 employer in the US unless you can get a H1-B, work visa or family-based visa (yes, I found myself a green card wife of nearly 10 years now).
The L-1 process was a lot of paperwork, but the sponsoring company paid. The rest we did ourselves without a lawyer. Big fan of http://www.visajourney.com - lots of folk in similar situations and howto guides.
Happy to talk more if it's helpful, either here or my username at gmail.
I followed much the same route, but I can't recommend it as a strategy for someone looking for a path to the USA, given you have to work for said employer for a year then hope they will consider sponsoring you. Unless you have hard to find skills, I don't think many employers will offer this option at interview time, given you are still not a fully known quantity until you've actually started working somewhere. Those on L1s in this industry are usually there by accidents of fate rather than a grand plan in my experience!
The H1 or entering education in the USA are probably the two main methods, but even those have gotten significantly more difficult as others have pointed out (H1 cap etc).
That’s fair. Personally I think it depends on where someone is in their career and how urgent they wish to move.
Whilst not immediate, a lot of the other visas offer a faster or more direct path to entry in the US.
If you are graduating, not necessarily sure what you want to do and you see a potential US move a few years down the road then I think the L1 route is still a very good option. In my case I had worked for a big company for a few years and applied for a new role internally, visa process was painless and I think took around 6-8 weeks total - the L is not subject to caps so once your company is willing to sponsor, things tend to move rather quickly.
I would probably talk with an immigration attorney first to understand what is even possible because sometimes, unfortunately, there are no good immigration options.
I do really like a lot of things about the styled-components approach and general CSS in JS approach.
I do though have a few concerns that stem from loosing the abstraction of ascetics vs function of a component, mainly though - ease of designer collaboration;
It seems harder to have a designer collaborate on your styles. (Maybe they are more used to CSS more than JS, or an external contractor, or just more specialised etc). You can't have somebody change your design without them having full access and knowledge of your entire component source and architecture.
I notice that styled-components can automatically generate a style sheet with nice names, it would be good if this could be a step at build time. And maybe a step that can also reverse the process? adding any changed styles back into your JS files? (syncing it with an externally edited stylesheet) Does anyone else see value to this?
Had back pain (lower back and neck) for years, mostly I think due to being tall and poor desk posture.
I used to spend a lot of money at the chiropractor/osteopath, and while they do give relief I don't see them as a long term solution. That said, I think they can be valuable for acute episodes.
What cured my back pain is Yoga. Not overnight, not over a week, but months of adding strength and flexibility to body as a whole. I'm now pain free.
This may not work for all symptoms, but I think it's important to realise (in most cases it seems) you cannot expect the medical professional to heal you, only to help you temporarily. You must heal you.
I think there are a lot of people with back problems (definitely not all of them though) particularly desk workers (and not all of them either) who have a lot of their issues down more to a lack of core strength than anything else. Yoga, from what I have been told, is pretty awesome for core strength.
It's something I'm working on in physiotherapy, because although I went to see her because I was having horrendous knee problems (now in full retreat thanks to some very simple, well-chosen exercises), she looks more holistically than that and identified some back issues as well. More exercises.
The back ones are harder to do though, and don't seem to be as effective, but I'll be bringing that up at my next visit.
Had a similar story. After having kids and carrying them around a lot, coupled with no exercise at all, I had an episode of intense lower back pain. After an xray, any structural problem was discarded, I needed exercise to keep my posture.
I then decided that I need to carry on working on a desk for decades ahead (I'm on early 30s) so I had to tackle the problem.
Was recommended by my daughter's pediatrician to look into Pilates classes. I'm now pain free and results came very early on in practice.
Also, random pain spots that appeared frequently (for instance knee pain while driving) are mostly gone too.
My thinkpad running Linux is a bit temperamental when changing displays, often enumerating an existing display port as a new one.
I use the following script to switch to dual external monitors at a standard resolution, and a counterpart script to switch back to the internal hidef monitor.
If only I could reliably fix xfce4's panel placement all of the time...and not have to restart chrome and pycharm/intelliJ on each display change!
