subelsky

Joined 16 years ago

Karma

599

Submissions

70

Member since

May 6

Ruby hacker and entrepreneur. Cofounder of Staq.com, OtherInbox.com, and IgniteBaltimore.com. [ my public key: https://keybase.io/subelsky; my proof: https://keybase.io/subelsky/sigs/BovqY-UW9E1dSmnDi3p0fpwHzcmI5v6zh56J4_Z7XJs ]

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Recent submissions

Comment · 12 years ago

yes! that's who I'm thinking of! A great inspiration.

Comment · 12 years ago

I know an awesome Node developer here in Baltimore with no prior experience, who had gone to a bootcamp for six months, and who was offered an intermediate-level position. Talking with her I felt like she was more of a colleague than a brand-new dev.

Engineers irrationally hate advertising tech cogmap.com

8 subelsky 14 years ago 12 comments

Comment · 15 years ago

I had the same thought about somehow using AI to make this completely automatic and increase the quality of the story. Turk does have the ability to allow workers to upload files so producing binary data like images or videos is definitely possible.

As for the cost, I was following ProPublica's advice. Apparently workers assume that less expensive jobs can be done more quickly, and if you make them too expensive the process can actually take longer:

http://www.propublica.org/article/propublicas-guide-to-mecha...

Using Mechanical Turk to write a short story subelsky.com

11 subelsky 15 years ago 2 comments

Comment · 15 years ago

We haven't locked down the space yet but are hoping for a spot in Fells Point. I actually also live in Charles Village, let's meet up for coffee sometime! ([email protected])

Comment · 15 years ago

The ETC is great but does not provide funding, and you have to pay rent for the office space (though the leases are on startup-friendly terms, graduated rates, etc). The ETC will actually be providing their services (consulting, introductions, etc) to our portfolio

Comment · 15 years ago

who's trying to rationalize it? There's not much I can do about it; it's still an awesome place to live. Good luck buying a house in a nice part of Boston or NYC as a working-class or middle-class person. Meanwhile I'm hacking code, running a startup, and I live in a super nice house in a walkable neighborhood that's very different than the one narrow slice you saw in that show.

Comment · 15 years ago

So, that's one of the main reasons for doing this, to create that virtuous cycle, but at this stage I don't think we can require it.

Comment · 15 years ago

you should definitely apply as a team. We would love to back a company targeting Russia! It's a global economy, right? Also there's a large Russian population in Baltimore FWIW

Comment · 15 years ago

just a splash page for now, designed by Mark Armbruster. The site is http://thestartupcity.com (the guy who owns startupcity.com wants a lot of $$$ for it)

Comment · 15 years ago

glad to hear it! But this is just one small facet of the tech scene in Baltimore...Please check out my response to kovar for a list of other resources you should check out.

Comment · 15 years ago

I actually don't mind The Wire reputation, because I loved that show so much. Lest anyone think I don't have a sense of humor about it, here's a tour I wrote up for seeing all the sites from the show, for people coming to RailsConf:

http://www.subelsky.com/2008/12/wire-tour-of-baltimore.html

Comment · 15 years ago

it was. We're probably going to do something like Capital Factory. The video part is just to help get an initial screening done of the applicants.

Comment · 15 years ago

I don't want us to be a city that tries to be something it's not. We shouldn't even try to replicate what you have out there, but, I think it's a very creative place where it is possible to do great things with technology, especially if you want to avoid any possible "echo chamber" effects, and especially if you want to bootstrap or do things your own way.