Starting an IT company in LA?

We’re not all about the beach and sun – although we enjoy that, too.  We have started to build initiatives like Launchpad LA to help bring this community together and make it easier for first time entrepreneurs.  I will talk more about LaunchPad in my next post.  Basically, it doesn’t suck living and working in LA.  Come join us.  And for those that are here – let’s stop comparing ourselves to Silicon Valley.  In Brad’s words, “Get over it.”  We have much to be proud of in our own right.  And still much work to be done.

via bothsidesofthetable.com

Mark rocks again. This is an awesome post about how LA is different from other places, but still provides all tools to build high tech company here. Go for it.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Moving the domain name to Posterous

Finally I came to the point that I do not see much sense in keeping up my Blogger account any longer.  

Posterous became a great replacement, I found myself using only it, with broadcasting everything to all other points of presence, so why keep it secondary, while it's the deal maker.  And it keeps much more history in it, comparing to Blogger, which keeps only its own story.

I would keep my Blogger (prokhorenko.blogspot.com) account anyways, but it's not going to be serving my live.prokhorenko.us domain name anymore.

Have fun and don't be angry of some posts reappearing again in the feed - shit happens.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Flickr pushes HEAD into production

Flickr is somewhat unique in that it uses a code repository with no branches; everything is checked into head, and head is pushed to production several times a day. This works well for bug fixes that we want to go out immediately, but presents a problem when we’re working on a new feature that takes several months to complete. How do we solve that problem? With flags and flippers!

via code.flickr.com

I really like this approach. It's definitely far from perfect, but gives a feeling of tech importance and value that is live. Every single moment.

Conclusion: worth considering for your project.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Scalability at Facebook

Facebook has grown into one of the largest sites on the Internet today serving over 200 billion pages per month. The nature of social data makes engineering a site for this level of scale a particularly challenging proposition. In this presentation, I will discuss the aspects of social data that present challenges for scalability and will describe the the core architectural components and design principles that Facebook has used to address these challenges. In addition, I will discuss emerging technologies that offer new opportunities for building cost-effective high performance web architectures.

via cns.ucsd.edu

Jeff Rothschild (VP of Technology at Facebook) talks about scalability at Facebook. Jeff has a long history in IT and was founder of Veritas. Click on "click here for webcast" to see the recorded video from the lecture.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

New names for common things

Okay, so now the Problem Solving chapter at Kaplan's wastebook. Once again, not impressed.

Picking Numbers -- while there is no doubt substituting numbers is a useful technique on GMAT exam, why does every single book published get its own name for it? This drives me mad.

In four examples on using Picking Numbers, I found only two of them (50% if you wish :) appropriate for that technique. I was able to quickly solve the other two with tricking and substituting numbers, but with plain old math.

Backsolving -- I don't know how trustful is that, but sounds intriguing. If it works, I guess this is the first valuable tip so far from this book. Unfortunately, out of 2 examples, I should say only one was appropriate choice. (Still 50% :) The other one could be easily be solved with just "thinking in numbers". Very easy. I'll try Backsolving on some real questions though -- interesting to see how good is that in real life.

Guessing. Damn, while I will guess if I'm stuck -- and this is pretty intuitive -- I would prefer to see some really hardcore question as an example for that, instead of simple proportion of alcohol & water question. What can stuck you there?? The only thing is well stated was Don't guess blindly. I second that.

Basically, that's all you can get from this chapter. Nothing more. You need a separate book to "wake up" your math knowledge. This is one does not give you anything.

I've run the sample 50 questions quiz, scored about 86% correct, I think I will do better with a few tries more and reading the correct answers (which suck by the way! in Kaplan's book). Had a few guesses though (wrong ones :), so need some more concepts to work one.

Next one is Data Sufficiency and I already waiting for the clueless theory part with moderate level of questions coming after it. Good practice anyway, but don't buy, if you ask.

On the other note, I won one of the free tickets to TechCrunch50 2009 that will take place on September 14-15th 2009. I mean, I didn't really get it in my hands, yet, but I don't think that there are any doubts after the confirmation. :)

I don't think I will be make it on Tuesday (and if so, I'll have to leave early, and maybe back afternoon), but I'll be there for Monday. And I would be happy to meet all of you, who're also coming, have some beer or whatever they serve. (Yes, I'm a beer-man.)

Interview with Olexiy and Alexander Prokhorenko, Atomkeep.com | socalTECH.com

Interview with Olexiy and Alexander Prokhorenko, Atomkeep.com | socalTECH.com

Thank you, Ben. ;)


However, my name is spelled wrong again because of that crazy spelling. My name is really Alexander, however, my international passport spells my name turned into Olexandr, because it first translates into Ukrainian (orig.: Александр - Олександр - Olexandr).

I was born in Soviet Union, everybody spoken Russian, my name is Alexander. However, when the Soviet Union crashed, I've appeared to be the citizen of independent Ukraine, and became Olexandr.

P.S. However, I'm lucky enough to name my son Ivan. His name is pretty universal ;) (orig.: Иван - Iван - Ivan).