The tech may be new, but the market dynamics and psychology of market actors stays the same. As new participants join the cryptocurrency and ICO markets, it will be valuable to refresh yourself on hundreds of years of experience and research in market dynamics. If you aren’t familiar with terms like bear trap and bull trap, you still might recognize them. Cryptocurrencies and sure to be a high-volatility rollercoaster ride, as ups and downs in Bitcoin and Ethereum have recently demonstrated, but they’re not immune to the laws of nature.

Hiring top-notch engineers is imperative in today's fast-moving, complex startup world. While full-stack development once required knowledge of 1–2 programming languages, it now requires expertise in no less than 5 (Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL/NOSQL, server-language of choice) in addition to a cadre of tools, utilities, patterns and practices. Screening candidates…

The US Department of Homeland Security is looking to find more uses of blockchain technology to assist with Identity Management and Analytics challenges. Through the Federal SBIR Program, DHS has posted two R&D funding opportunities for US small businesses to develop specific applications for blockchain technology unrelated to bitcoin. Each…

Enterprise sales is difficult, expensive and time-consuming for early-stage startups. Unless your founding team includes a VP Sales/Marketing with an existing rolodex and experience selling to enterprises similar to your primary target, it is likely your early-stage startup will struggle to (time & cost)-effectively identify your target customer segments, establish…

There will be a massive market for self-driving vehicles for both commercial and consumer use. For the average car owner, the experience might be a little like this: After your daily commute to work in your all-electric Tesla SUV, you'll stop at the front door of your office and hit…

Jeff Atwood over at CodingHorror wrote an expansive post about optimizing user registration, login and related website functionality for ideal user experience. …

I believe Docker is 2 steps forward for the world of DevOps and that the principles it promotes are forward-thinking and largely on-target for the future of a more secure, performant, and easy-to-manage cloud future. …

App developers spend a lot of time implementing and doing battle with a babylon of config file formats when Ruby can provide a dynamic, concise, standardized alternative — Problems with Config Files Too many file formats: Config files for applications are built using a menagerie of standard (INI, YAML, XML, JSON, TOML) and non-standard (mutant-xml for fluentd) file formats. Static Files, Dynamic Environments: Whether you know it or not, your devops team spends a tremendous amount of time creating variant config files…

Run Delayed Job in threads to eliminate dedicated dynos for background jobs on Heroku. — 2019 UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, there are more preferable options to the guidance provided here. Specifically, to alleviate the need for worker dynos on Heroku with Rails 5+, you can utilize the async adapter or if you want a little more configurability utilize SuckerPunch. Both utilize background threads…