What is your evidence for this factual assertion? (I have done a huge amount of research on IQ testing, and I have never seen a trace of a finding like this in any of the research literature.)
Have you found evidence contrary to this? Or are you taking issue with the parent's use of the term "higher IQ" rather than "higher perceived intelligence" or something similar? I'm asking out of genuine interest because the statement seems plausible to me (a layman) based on anecdotal evidence.
The value of the round-robin stage is to establish team rankings before the single-elimination stage.
You have some alternatives, but no silver bullets:
* Establish rank before the tournament (in which case you're just moving the problem)
* Eliminate rank and seed teams randomly (which makes it much less likely to see the best teams medal)
* Use random seeding and a double-elimination structure (as a fan, I dislike double-elimination, but I'm not sure what the consensus is on this)
* Try to mitigate the problem by playing matches consecutively (you'll need lots of courts), hiding the actual seeding until the single-elimination round (people will assume you're corrupt), or other creative methods (you probably won't catch all the edge cases, so throw in a rule that says "you must try your hardest")
Design is something almost everyone feels qualified to criticize, so a post like this lends itself to all kinds of bikeshedding.
Fortunately, we live in the age of A/B testing. Rather than listening to any of the speculation in this thread, the thoughtful businessperson can actually quantify just how good or bad a design is at achieving its goal.
Doesn't match my experience: I have several small clients who pay within a couple of hours of receiving a bill. However they are profitable small clients (and very nice people).
I stopped making websites for friends or 2-person companies for this reason. Besides the pain on their faces when I estimate them how much its going to cost, these are the same people who get an idea in the middle of the project and want to add a dancing and singing cat to the home page.
- I agree, I've had bad experience with both. Be wary of individual/companies who work for clients and outsource their technology to you. Often the specifications will be very vague, and even if you manage to communicate a better level of understanding what THEIR CLIENT actually wants (which takes time and effort..) - you might end up not getting paid, because their client doesn't accept the solution, and doesn't want to pay the guy who hired you.
- Always have signed agreements, ALWAYS, can't stress that enough. Unless you have very good reasons of trust. Chat logs, e-mail conversations, all cool, all legal, but you will always get a yes-no story. Signed agreements are often very clear cut.
= Never agree on doing a revenue share with individuals or smaller companies. They probably won't have a clue what they're doing.
- If you don't believe in the product when you get your first impression on it, you never will. Don't let 'em fool you and convince you otherwise.
This is a good rule of thumb, but the best client I ever had was in the general area of legal services. No more than 6 employees, or at least that's how many email accounts I set up, but paid well, without complaint, and always immediately.
I think it comes down to, looking out for clients that focus on cost instead of value.
It took me a while to make the jump. I started by earning my dues working too hard for two little pay with some small-time clients early on. I built up a decent portfolio that I could show off and started using that to market myself. I sent it as a link to adds I saw on craigslist. I did a couple projects on spec that I worked really really hard on and sent links to the company offering it for free. You'd think that would be a huge risk, and frankly, it is. But in fact, both of the times I did it, I got major clients. Kept building myself from there.
Yes I did. It was very hard work. I combed through hundreds of adds, sent custom replies to several dozen of the most promising and made it clear that I was offering high quality, with the unstated caveat that I was not offering the lowest price. I replied only to adds local to Boston (where I live) and said that I would be happy to come to their location at their convenience. When I did in person interview I dressed very well, and read up extensively on their companies beforehand. I did not even entertain anyone that seemed like a cheapskate or wanted to offer equity.
Advice sometimes isn't worth the (web) paper it's printed on.
But take a long, hard look at the clients you are most successful with. Identify the larger market that fits that criteria. Then, how are you going to compete with the people already in that space?
I think of it the same whether doing a startup, consulting, or pivoting a business.
We total up the cash available and our runway, say $60k for 2 founders and 12 months. Total equity is of course 100%.
So at one extreme, one founder gets $60K over the year in wages and 0% equity while the other gets 100% equity and no wage packet. At the other end, its $30K each for 50% equity each. Somewhere inbetween is a sweet spot.
The core concept is get the cash now, or potentially more later.
Start with the equal split, then begin negotiating for the value per equity point. Eventually you'll reach a point where you both agree on equity/wage split.
The added bonus is you've also technically valued your startup in the process (value per equity point*100) and have an indication of how much your relative belief in the success of the startup.
Since I tend to keep my expenses down and as an example of the last one I took 55% equity for a $7k drop in monthly cash. Cofounder gets a 7K bonus over the year (he was starting a family at the time) and was happy with his 45%.
Voting rights are equal. Always. Do not fuck with these in the startup phase as they give a sense of ownership and control that founders need to commit.
Anything based on the AVR USB series can be configured to auto-detect as a keyboard/joystick/misc (see http://www.fourwalledcubicle.com/LUFA.php), so that would simplify your comm layer. However, I'm not aware of a good off-the-shelf board that wouldn't require some microcontroller development.
I am actually working on a simplified AVR USB board for just this purpose, I'll post it to HN when I'm done.
Interesting to hear. I imagined simple IO interfaces would be popular, but every project focuses on programmable, self-powered boards (maybe because they are so cheap anyway?). Wish you success.
This is not a solved problem by any means. I finished in the top ten, and most competitive teams used a combination of image processing for chad suggestion and brute force. It required hundreds of man hours to reassemble just a handful of documents under controlled conditions.
Imagining a real-life scenario of dozens or hundreds of documents mixed together in a shredder bin makes my head hurt.
So, I wouldn't worry too much about your shredded docs just yet.
One team used a crowd sourced "game" method with some success. They had thousands of people register, and were able to solve the first few problems quickly, but they began to stall on the more complex puzzles.
I was surprised to find that this method doesn't scale well when the puzzle reaches a certain size.
Have you found evidence contrary to this? Or are you taking issue with the parent's use of the term "higher IQ" rather than "higher perceived intelligence" or something similar? I'm asking out of genuine interest because the statement seems plausible to me (a layman) based on anecdotal evidence.