Form Alpha

Evolution is wonderfully unpredictable. A million years ago, if you were plopped down in Africa and asked which animal would soon become the dominant species, I pretty much guarantee you wouldn't have selected the soft little hominid with the big head and funny gait. So any answer you get is going to be highly speculative.The reason we became the dominant species on Earth is this:Unlike our competitors, we started walking upright. And then we started running. By becoming the world's elite long distance runner, we ensured that we could kill and eat high protein animals that were faster than us, but that couldn't keep running as long as we could. Once we could do that, our brains got bigger as a result and the rest is history... tools, language, agriculture, and so on...So who's next? Accepting that we have no idea which evolutionary leap (like upright walking) may lead to the next dominant species, we can at least guess based on a few assumptions:1. The overall ecosystem of Earth is more complex and sophisticated now than it was when bacteria, trilobytes, or even dinosaurs were the dominant species. This means that unless there's another massive die-off, the next dominant species will likely be highly adaptable, if not extra-ordinarily intelligent (and likely self-aware).2. There are a bunch of species that are quite deeply evolved, since they evolved along side us. As such, they don't have anywhere near as far to go as we humans had to evolve. In some cases, I suspect if humans disappeared, a few candidates would just need a couple hundred thousand years and some luck to end up in a similar situation to us.3. True success and dominance at this point probably requires evolution of a means of force multiplication. That means evolving tools and/or behaviors that maximize the production/collection of food. This probably requires several or all of the following traits:Sociability - loners don't develop sophisticated social queues or tools. So most strict carnivores like big cats, even though they usually physically superior, are poor candidates for evolutionary dominance on modern Earth.Dexterity - Lack of fine motor skills makes it very hard to do the whole tool, agriculture, dominance path thing. Note: "hands" aren't required, but a highly dextrous body extension seems critical to me. Octopus arms, Elephant trunks could work. The key is a non-locomotive manipulator "hand".Access to fire - Sorry, dolphins and octopuses. While its certainly possible for smarter aquatic life to become dominant below the waves, it's hard to imagine any cetacean or cephalopod evolving to dominate outside their world. That's not to say one of them might not "rule the waves" so to speak.Decent life-span - Moreso than being stuck in saltwater, this is really why Octopi are a bad candidate. 2-3 year lifespans are not the stuff of global dominance.So we're looking for smart, adaptable, non-aquatic social animals in need of just an evolutionary jump or two to take them over the top. If they already use tools, that's a good sign. If they already use complex group-based food gathering tactics, that's another good sign.My candidates:Chimps and Bonobos - Our closest relatives are the obvious choice. Tool users. Highly social. There's a reason "Planet of the Apes" was popular. It doesn't take much imagination to envision these guys taking over the world. For every other species' sake, let's hope its the Bonobos, not the Chimps. Much like us, chimps are assholes.Baboons and Orangutans - Large, social old-world monkeys are probably next up, for similar reasons. Baboons in particular interest me because of their higher levels of environmental adaptability.Gorillas - Size may limit them to certain habitats now, but one could imagine them learning how to make their favorite foods more available over time and spring-boarding from there.Sorry, but for the short-term, I really think the next dominant species will remain close to our branch of the family tree.Maybe not next up, but down the road...Other monkeys/apes - There are a lot of smaller monkeys out there, spread over much of the Earth. It would take them longer, and the end result would probably look a lot different than us. But our more distant primate cousins like gibbons, macaques, and colobus have many of the fundamentals in place. Old-world monkeys probably have some advantages over the New-world monkeys.Wolves/Wild Dogs/Foxes - Sociability is a big plus for them. Their main problem is a lack of manual dexterity. Hard to see them evolving quickly in our general (tool using) direction. That said, with humans gone, canines would very quickly become the apex predator in much of the world.Musteloidea - This superfamily within Carnivora contains several Families with interesting candidates:Ailuridae (red pandas)Mustelidae (weasels, badgers, and otters)Procyonidae (raccoons and their relatives)Birds - As dinosaurs, they already ruled the world once. No reason to think they couldn't do it again. Some groups/species of particular interest:Pigeons (sociability, adaptability)Ravens/Crows (intelligence, problem solving, tool use)Parrots (intelligence, speech, bill as manipulator)As a completely personal preference, as someone that thinks about this sort of thing far too much, I'd love to see "civilized" red pandas or otters. They're different enough from us, while still possessing many of the traits we look for in a potentially advanced species. They're cute as hell too...

My surname according to the passport is Madurai Ananthakrishnan. When I first visited the US, I was filling out the form they hand out on the aeroplane before you land. Since there was a fancy inflight video instructing us on how to fill the form, I was taking it very seriously. This is when I realized the boxes in the surname column ran out and I was very worried about it. The forms were not that big a deal, but that's when I seriously wished they had clubbed my middle name (Madurai) with that of the first name like how it is supposed to be. It is extremely difficult when you are trying to resolve an issue over phone. Customer services with westerners get so tired typing it out- Imagine spelling out M for Mother, A for Alpha and so on, especially on an international call.I think it is a big inconvenience in all aspects to elaborate initials and make your name horrendously complicated. A meek M.V Varadharajan could transform into a formidable Manamadurai Venkatasubramanian Varadharajan in the process of expansion. I suppose our naming schema was not meant for western life.It used to be a common practice in Tamil families to name their children after their parents which could run into a recursive loop. For example, my father's name is Ananthakrishnan Srinivasan while his father's name is Srinivasan Ananthakrishnan and so on. I broke the loop by being a girl. Now people have ridiculously complicated names that fuses in all the fashionable names that they like. Add a dab of numerology and you will end up something like "Aaaarya", "Rawi". It is very important to decide what you want to be called as and then put that in your passport. Else, you will have tiring, bloodsucking bureaucratic hassles later, if you need to change your name in your passport or visa as Ramakrishnan Krishnan has mentioned in his answer.That said, there are so many celebrities with Village Name & Father's first name as their surnames. Example: M. S. Subbulakshmi, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. Why, there is even P. Sundararajan who later came to be known as Sundar Pichai.

I raised $500,000 at 19. I was on my way to change the world. Three years later everything burned down.This post is not about how to shoot for the stars or run a company. Others are better at that.This is about what not to do.I’ve made every mistake possible. But ironically, I’m constantly meeting teams doing the exact same things that caused my first startup to implode. Everything I’m writing about I’ve experienced first hand through my own startups as well as various businesses I’ve been involved in. It’s been all my fault and this is my story.Some of you will disagree with me. Others will have things to add. I’m happy to discuss in the comments.Here’s my attempt.ZUCKERBERG SYNDROMMy girlfriend didn’t know what I was working on for nine months. I slept with a chair blocking the front door. My phone was tapped. Corporate America and Uncle Sam were listening. Someone was going to kill me to steal the idea.I really believed this. So I did everything possible (literally) to avoid getting feedback out of the fear of having our idea stolen.Ultimately, secrecy and stupidity killed us. Three years and hundreds of thousands later, we released an alpha version to a modest 30 people for the first time. Everyone hated it. Our capital was gone. Our morale: zero.I see this all the time. Startup founders hiding their ideas because of the fear that someone will steal it. Remember: no one cares about you. Your biggest issue is getting discovered. If someone steals your idea, that means you’re doing something right.Because of this syndrome, most startups are wasting their time and money building products no one wants. Why? Lack of testing. The biggest mistake a company can make (product wise) is to avoid talking to and testing with potential and current users. Every day. It’s also one of the main reasons startup’s fail.If you’re not constantly releasing and looking for feedback you’re either a) delusional (me) thinking too many people will sign up/buy your product and you won’t be able to scale b) scared that it’s not good enough (me) or c) someone will steal your idea (as I was).A. SCALING“Your priority, in short, is proving that people will use your product at all. If they won’t, then it won’t matter if you can’t scale. If they will, then you will figure out a way to scale. I’ve never seen a startup die because it couldn’t scale fast enough. I’ve seen hundreds of startups die because people refused to embrace their product.” — Guy Kawasaki [Emphasis mine]I’ve done this and I’ve experienced this in the past three startups I’ve worked in. It’s completely delusional. If five out of five people tell you that they wouldn’t use your product (before you build), quit. If eight out of ten people tell you that they hate this feature and you empirically see that they’re not using it, kill it. Don’t assume. Always be testing.More on feedback below.b. TESTINGSee point A.C. STEALING(!)No one will steal your idea. It takes time, money, skills and immorality to steal. Not everyone is born that lucky.Most importantly, no one cares about your idea.They’ll only start caring when there’s a massive amount of initial traction (50,000+ users). By then, you’ve already established a strong user/customer base and it’s too late for the others.HIRING FOR WEAKNESSOnly hire for a strength that needs to be filled in your company. Never for a weakness.Not once did any of the startups I worked in hire for a strength. I repetitively recommended hiring people purely out of loneliness, fear and scarcity repetitively. Each time it sunk us deeper.But what does that mean?Hiring for a weakness means that you attempt to fill a weakness in the fundamenetals in your company by hiring for a weakness. Example: If you’re building a product and it’s not gaining traction and your company doesn’t have inherent fundamentals, hiring Ryan Holiday to sell your product won’t help. You can’t fight weakness with weakness.However, if you have a rockstar engineering team and you want to add a marketing person to help take the product get to another level, then you’re adding a strength.Hiring for weakness also means:a. You hire a B+ player instead of a A+ player.b. You hire people so that they go through the struggle with you, so that they share your fears and paranoia. Not so they execute on what’s needed.c. Hiring someone to fill a position. Not to compliment the rest of the company.d. Hiring someone and not having any idea of what the hell you want them to do.e. It means hiring someone because you think there’s no one else. Scarcity.f. Hiring a client’s friend. Because you’re scared.It’s ultimately about the fundamentals. If the fundamentals of the product and the team aren’t there, adding someone is just adding a weakness. It won’t help, because it’s not a strength.PAINTER’S DILEMMAApproving emails? One week treks. Our first wireframes? $40K and four months. Did we have a working product after all this? No. We failed.The Painter’s Dilemma is when you’re so deep in the details of your project that you don’t even know what the idea is anymore. You’re blind. When you’re too deep you need help.How to solve it? Stop. Talk to people. Get feedback. Iterate and build. Release. Breathe.Repeat the loop.The more feedback you get the healthier you and your product are.FEEDBACK*I can’t emphasize this enough. If you don’t get feedback (everyday) you will die. I never got feedback. EVER. Well, until the cash ran out. Oops.If you’re not getting qualitiative and quantitive feedback/data everyday, the cancer will start.It’s easy: speak to people, Google Analytics, send surveys. Just don’t hide from it.*This is the crucial and worth a dedicated blog post in the future.COMMUNICATE“Don’t talk to him, he doesn’t understand. He’s out of the picture next funding round anyways.” I hid everything internally. It was easy, we were in 5 different countries! Our developers were remote (I’ll get to that) and Basecamp was our only means of communication. In other startups, I wouldn’t included people from discussions because “it isn’t necessary. That isn’t their job”New features, awful designs, conniving plans were all pushed through a funnel. I was the leader of the deceiving. Architecting a blue print to push my own delusional “never test and succeed” agenda. My style? The longer the email the less likely someone important will read it. What a strategy. As always, the CEO is the biggest idiot.I don’t care if you’re a church, a tech startup or a non-profit. If you don’t have a system of communication in place that keeps everyone aware of what everyone is doing in the company, in real-time, for every milestone, everyday, you will die very soon.Lesson: Live and breath Scrum.SCREW LAWYERSLawyers are criminals.I spent $15,000 on legal documents/fees we never used. Every entrepreneur/startup I’m involved with thinks lawyers are the first step to success. Bullshit.DOCSAll the legal documents you ever need are available online. If you’re B2B, all companies that you’ll work with have their own standard LOEs, NDAs, etc., that they anyways steal from Fortune 500 companies. Request it. Then use it. B2C? Here.BUT I NEED A TRADEMARK!Unless you have 10,000 clients you don’t need to think about copyright or even the name. Prove the concept first. Worry later. If you do have to worry, those are very nice worries to have.PATENT IT!Patenting something that isn’t validated with at least 10,000 clients is moronic. Ironically, this is the only mistake my first startup didn’t follow through with (fully, at least).DECISION MAKINGI was traumatized from taking decisions. Most startups never take decisions. In other statups I work in, decisions took weeks. People join startups for the reason of avoiding bureaucracy but everyone still does it. Why? Lack of trust and overview of the team, so they choke the process (have I suggested Scrum?).The board should decide on the vision and the group should decide what to execute on by creating a backlog for the week. The team should then have the power to execute it. With a great communication process in place, teammates should be able to take decisions without reporting to anyone while keeping everyone updated with everything’s that going on, live. Have a flat structure to achieve this by using Scrum.Let people do their jobs. Trust them. Don’t have a tedious review process as most startups do. Don’t suffocate the system. Empower your people.Read Scrum by Jeff Sutherland on how to manage your team. Then read Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal for how to organize the information flow. Both books compliment each other perfectly.THE BOARDThe ideal board is 3–5 people maximum if you’re a startup. Anything above that means that either no decisions will ever be taken (my first company) or someone has a hidden agenda and profits from a discombobulated board.A business is not a democracy. Unanimous decisions don’t work and will never work.Who’s should I put on the Board?Only investors/shareholders who hold a large stake and are extremely active in the success of your venture.INVESTORSSmart Money vs Still MoneyJust because someone is offering you cash almost always means you shouldn’t accept it.Your investor can have the greatest contacts in the pharmecutical industry. She can be CEO of Merck. If she doesn’t have a massive network in whatever industry you’re in, it’s worthless. The money will be worth nothing. This is true 100% of the time.Always onboard investors that can help you in your niche industry.MEETINGSThis is my top 3 favorites. Most won’t agree with me on this.I’ve never been to a meeting that has made me money/funded my venture. I don’t think anyone has. Has anyone ever handed you a check at a meeting? I doubt it. Today, it usually happens by wire-transfer.Meetings are pointless. Every team I meet, consult for/work with all think that going to meetings is the most crucial part of business. Most importantly, the whole team should be there. Pick up the fucking phone. Travel is time and money expensive. Even if you’re taking a cab.I would fly 10,000 miles for a 3 hour meeting and then fly back to Europe that same day. $30K. Gone.“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: ‘meetings.’” - Dave BarryMost of the discussion can be ironed out over email and FaceTime.Ok yes, I agree. Meeting in person is important. But not until it’s necessary. Most of the time, it’s unecessary. And even when it is, it shouldn’t always be an excuse to leave work for a business lunch or to Shanghai for the day.Avoid meetings. Get more done.It’s a waste of time 99% of the time.FOUNDING PARTNERS = YOUR SPOUSEYou will be married to your partners and investors for the next 7–10 years. Choose wisely.Know your team. Speak to your investor’s enemies. Get references for everyone.Don’t be a deceiver. Use Scrum.WORKING HOURSWe worked 16 hour days. Yey! Startup life!No. Work 8–10 hours and you’ll get more done than working 18 hours a day. Don’t believe me. It’s proven.Working 18 hour days leads to a burn out, which leads to painter’s dilemma, then delusion, then deceiving others around you, then depression. Then it’s too late.Ultimately, the more you work the more mistakes you’re prone to make. Mistakes made are mistakes that need to be corrected. Mistakes that aren’t correct can take up to 24x longer to correct than if they were corrected immediately.But you can’t see that. You’re burned out. You’re in Painter.PRODUCT / MARKET VALIDATIONAnother reason I refused to test in the three product startups I was involved in was because “the ideas work successfully elsewhere. They will also work here.” Doesn’t work like that.Just because you’re making a mishmash of several products that have product/market validation elsewhere doesn’t mean people are willing to use your product. I have yet to meet a new founder who hasn’t claimed this.In order for someone to switch to your product, your product needs to be at least 8x better.*Is your product really 8x better than your biggest competitor? If the answer isn’t a clear yes, quit.*Read Hooked by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover for how to build habit forming products.RECREATING THE WHEEL“God gave you eyes, so plagarize.” -Michael LewisNo need to re-create the wheel. Everything is out there already for a reason. Use APIs, read books (many books), steal functions, designs, ideas, marketing slogans, branding, on boarding processes, software, colors, clients, everything from other people/companies who are successful.This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t test it in your own environment. You must validate every single function that you put out there. Use the Lean Startup KanBan by Ash Maurya for this.DILUTIONWe gave away 51% for our first funding round. How much did we plan to keep when we “exited?” Think about that. It doesn’t make sense.Startups do this all the time. If you retain 51% after the seed round, how much does the founding team plan to keep by Series B? 20%? If you take the average of what you got paid for equity after the exit + your salary you’ll be paying more in taxes with a minimum wage paycheck for the past 8 years it took you to exit. Might as well work in a shoe store.If you don’t have the bargaining power (a validated product) to raise money with, quit.GUYS IN SUITSOur tech partners wore suits. That made us comfortable. They ended up quoting $100k. We ended up with nothing.If you see tech people in suits, run.OUTSOURCINGI lost well over $100,000 for our first version that was outsourced. We were smart enough to not learn from our mistakes so we found another team to outsource with. Another hefty sum gone. Only myself to blame.I’ve had terrible experiences with outsourcing and great experiences with in-house development.However, many products (we all use everyday) have found great success in outsourcing. I also know many entrepreneurs who outsource and are extremely succesful. While there are massive benefits, there are also downfalls. If you plan to, find a free consulting company that has pre-screened teams.Either way, using Scrum increases your chances of success in-house or out.YOUR TEAMEntrepreneurs read about Steve Jobs’ management style and think he was a tyrant. So they curse at their employees and tell everyone that they are “shit.” They think that’s how a company should be run and that’s how teammates should be treated. Wrong. Treat your team like shit and you’ll get shit.Either way, that’s not how Steve Jobs did it. Steve Jobs empowered his team. He told them that what they’re outputting is shit because he knew that they could do better. Because they are the best in the industry. He made them feel good. He challenged them and today Apple is Apple because of that.On the other hand, I lied. Didn’t speak about the hard things and repressed whatever fear or worry we had. We were scared that someone would quit or that we would look bad if we showed our emotions in front of our investors.You should always be able to tell your teammates all the fears and worries you have. Chances are, if you’re worried about something, everyone is worried about the same thing. Bring it up. Talk about it. I keep mentioning Scrum* because it encourages team members telling each other what’s bothering them and what’s impending the growth progress. This is key to not failing.Not once, in any of the startups I was in, did I or others get credit for great work or for their ideas that ended up being implemented. Not once did anyone congratualte a teammate on a engineering triumph, a beautiful design or a new lead. Startups think “business is business. This isn’t a cute place to pat each other on the backs.”BUT THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT A BUSINESS SHOULD BE. You should be holding each other up, helping one another and listening to the problems in the team. Because ultimately, you’re on the same mission.The second the negativity flows in people become scared. They stop raising issues, telling you how they feel and how to improve the business. When that happens you start to slowly die because you’ve fell into dillusion that everything is working. Six months later, you’re on the street.Empower your team. Congratulate people. Love each other. When someone screws up, tell them that. But also tell them how to improve and ask them why they think they screwed up and how to make their job easier.You’re a team. Be one.*Believe it or not, I’m not affiliated with Scrum in anyway. I’m not even a Scrum Master.—When I reflect on all the stupidity I’ve personally done and the startups I’ve been involved in, I realize that the only thing I ever followed up through and executed with absolute perfection, were the things that eventually ended up killing us: not telling a soul what our idea was. Talking to lawyers. Partnering with bad teams. Hiring out of weakness. Going to too many meetings. No decision making system. Not using Scrum. Hiring people out of fear. Hiding from reality.Mistakes are simple to make but hard to correct. They’re usually the first option that pops up. But as entrepreneurs we do thing because they’re hard, not because they’re easy.Hard choices take a long time to get right. It takes guts, intuition, experience and lots of luck. But never settle. Never accept your situation.Life can always be better.…..This was originally posted on the NY Observer and our blog on Penta.Follow me @lukaivicev or contact me directly at luka@getpenta.com.

NOOOOOOO. You are talking to a military romance scammer. I received an email from the US Army that directly answers your question that is pasted below please keep reading.I believe you are the victim of a military Romance Scam whereas the person you are talking to is a foreign national posing as an American Soldier claiming to be stationed overseas on a peacekeeping mission. That's the key to the scam they always claim to be on a peacekeeping mission.Part of their scam is saying that they have no access to their money that their mission is highly dangerous.If your boyfriend girlfriend/future husband/wife is asking you to do the following or has exhibited this behavior, it is a most likely a scam:Moves to private messaging site immediately after meeting you on Facebook or SnapChat or Instagram or some dating or social media site. Often times they delete the site you met them on right after they asked you to move to a more private messaging siteProfesses love to you very quickly & seems to quote poems and song lyrics along with using their own sort of broken language, as they profess their love and devotion quickly. They also showed concern for your health and love for your family.Promises marriage as soon as he/she gets to state for leave that they asked you to pay for.They Requests money (wire transfers) and Amazon, iTune ,Verizon, etc gift cards, for medicine, religious practices, and leaves to come home, internet access, complete job assignments, help sick friend, get him out of trouble, or anything that sounds fishy.The military does provide all the soldier needs including food medical Care and transportation for leave. Trust me, I lived it, you are probably being scammed. I am just trying to show you examples that you are most likely being connned.Below is an email response I received after I sent an inquiry to the US government when I discovered I was scammed. I received this wonderful response back with lots of useful links on how to find and report your scammer. And how to learn more about Romance Scams.Right now you can also copy the picture he gave you and do a google image search and you will hopefully see the pictures of the real person he is impersonating. this doesn't always work and take some digging. if you find the real person you can direct message them and alert them that their image is being used for scamming.Good Luck to you and I'm sorry this may be happening to you. please continue reading the government response I received below it's very informative.   You have contacted an email that is monitored by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Unfortunately, this is a common concern. We assure you there is never any reason to send money to anyone claiming to be a Soldier online. If you have only spoken with this person online, it is likely they are not a U.S. Soldier at all. If this is a suspected imposter social media profile, we urge you to report it to that platform as soon as possible. Please continue reading for more resources and answers to other frequently asked questions:  How to report an imposter Facebook profile: Caution-https://www.facebook.com/help/16... < Caution-https://www.facebook.com/help/16... >   Answers to frequently asked questions:  - Soldiers and their loved ones are not charged money so that the Soldier can go on leave.  - Soldiers are not charged money for secure communications or leave.  - Soldiers do not need permission to get married.  - Soldiers emails are in this format: john.doe.mil@mail.mil < Caution-mailto: john.doe.mil@mail.mil > anything ending in .us or .com is not an official email account.  - Soldiers have medical insurance, which pays for their medical costs when treated at civilian health care facilities worldwide – family and friends do not need to pay their medical expenses.  - Military aircraft are not used to transport Privately Owned Vehicles.  - Army financial offices are not used to help Soldiers buy or sell items of any kind.  - Soldiers deployed to Combat Zones do not need to solicit money from the public to feed or house themselves or their troops.  - Deployed Soldiers do not find large unclaimed sums of money and need your help to get that money out of the country.  Anyone who tells you one of the above-listed conditions/circumstances is true is likely posing as a Soldier and trying to steal money from you.  We would urge you to immediately cease all contact with this individual.  For more information on avoiding online scams and to report this crime, please see the following sites and articles:   This article may help clarify some of the tricks social media scammers try to use to take advantage of people: Caution-https://www.army.mil/article/61432/< Caution-https://www.army.mil/article/61432/>   CID advises vigilance against 'romance scams,' scammers impersonating Soldiers  Caution-https://www.army.mil/article/180749 < Caution-https://www.army.mil/article/180749 >   FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center: Caution-http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx< Caution-http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx>   U.S. Army investigators warn public against romance scams: Caution-https://www.army.mil/article/130...< Caution-https://www.army.mil/article/130...>   DOD warns troops, families to be cybercrime smart -Caution-http://www.army.mil/article/1450...< Caution-http://www.army.mil/article/1450...>   Use caution with social networking  Caution-https://www.army.mil/article/146...< Caution-https://www.army.mil/article/146...>    Please see our frequently asked questions section under scams and legal issues. Caution-http://www.army.mil/faq/ < Caution-http://www.army.mil/faq/ > or visit Caution-http://www.cid.army.mil/ < Caution-http://www.cid.army.mil/ >.  The challenge with most scams is determining if an individual is a legitimate member of the US Army. Based on the Privacy Act of 1974, we cannot provide this information. If concerned about a scam you may contact the Better Business Bureau (if it involves a solicitation for money), or local law enforcement. If you're involved in a Facebook or dating site scam, you are free to contact us direct; (571) 305-4056.   If you have a social security number, you can find information about Soldiers online at Caution-https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/sc... < Caution-https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/sc... > . While this is a free search, it does not help you locate a retiree, but it can tell you if the Soldier is active duty or not.  If more information is needed such as current duty station or location, you can contact the Commander Soldier's Records Data Center (SRDC) by phone or mail and they will help you locate individuals on active duty only, not retirees. There is a fee of $3.50 for businesses to use this service. The check or money order must be made out to the U.S. Treasury. It is not refundable. The address is:  Commander Soldier's Records Data Center (SRDC) 8899 East 56th Street Indianapolis, IN 46249-5301 Phone: 1-866-771-6357  In addition, it is not possible to remove social networking site profiles without legitimate proof of identity theft or a scam. If you suspect fraud on this site, take a screenshot of any advances for money or impersonations and report the account on the social networking platform immediately.  Please submit all information you have on this incident to Caution-www.ic3.gov < Caution-http://www.ic3.gov > (FBI website, Internet Criminal Complaint Center), immediately stop contact with the scammer (you are potentially providing them more information which can be used to scam you), and learn how to protect yourself against these scams at Caution-http://www.ftc.gov < Caution-http://www.ftc.gov > (Federal Trade Commission's website)

I'm a nuclear physicist, so I will answer this from a nuclear perspective and then go from there, cause strings are fun to think about, but are as of yet unproven, and quantum field theory gives me headaches.So, personally, I like to think of individual nucleons (protons and neutrons) like little droplets of water. A simplified model says that they have 3 quarks in them, but a more realistic model shows that that's just the net result after adding up all the mess of crap that is popping into and out of existence at any given time inside them :up, down, anti-up, anti-down, gluons attaching to the quarks, gluons attaching to other gluons, the list goes on and on. They aren't triangular, as a 3 quark model might lead one to believe, they're somewhat spherical over all, but they are undulating and have waves traveling through them and along their surface. Sometimes mesons go flying out of them. This video of astronauts playing with water drops in space is a great demonstration of how I like to think of them.Now when we get to larger scales, like nuclei, or otherwise thought of as collections of nucleons, we see funny things happening. The nucleons like to bunch up in groups of 4 with two protons and two neutrons. These are basically helium nuclei, and nuclear physicists call them alpha particles (because historically they were the first particle ever discovered in radioactive materials, along with the second which are beta particles or electrons, and the third which are gamma particles or photons).You know how electrons form orbital shells around atoms, well nucleons can do it too. The alpha particles can actually group together in orbitals just like electrons, and can form halos orbiting around the central nucleus. If the protons and the neutrons are close to the magic numbers, and their shells are filled, they tend to be more stable, and don't want to decay. So the nuclei with shells on and around these magic numbers will form lots of halos similar to what we see electrons doing for atoms.If the nuclei have excess energy, like if a nucleus was just impacted with a neutron or a high energy photon, they can also take on nonspherical shapes, undulating with excess energy as waves move throughout the body and along the surface of the nucleus, again similar to the water droplets in the video above.Moving further out into the atomic scale, we see beautiful patterns in electron orbital that follow the various patterns of the spherical bessel functions. We see interesting overlaps when orbitals hybridize, such as in the case with carbon, taking on a tetrahedral shape with it's four SP-3 electron orbitals. We can actually look at methane molecules and see this tetrahedral shape. But atoms tend to gravitate toward spherical shapes as you start to overlap all of the orbital patterns on top of each other. And the larger the atom gets, the more orbitals you stack, the more those begin to fill out a generally spherical shape.To answer your question, how do we know they're spherical? They're not, at least technically most of the time. There is structure to them, and there are oscillations to consider that travel through the center and along the surface if you want to really think about how one would actually look and behave. But like the water droplets, they tend to have a generally spherical shape. In the case of water, it's because of surface tension and van der Waals forces. With atoms, it's the Electromagnetic force. With nuclei and nucleons, it's the strong and weak forces. They tend to fall into spherical shapes because the sphere is the shape that minimizes the potential energy in the system.In regards to your question, its kind of similar to how most of the time, we don't need to consider special relativity when checking the time. We are moving so much slower than the speed of light that the difference in your time versus my time is basically zero. Most of the time the excess energy that causes the deformations in the surface isn't really worth considering unless you're doing really really precise calculations and these imperfections become relevant. For most things though, it's easier to just start with a simpler system, and get a good enough answer to continue on to other things.Hope this answered your question!

I was selected for a summer internship 2016.I tried to be very open while filling the preference form: I choose many products as my favorite products and I said I'm open about the team I want to join.I even was very open in the  location and start date to get host matching interviews (I negotiated the start date in the interview until both me and my host were happy.) You could ask your recruiter to review your form (there are very cool and could help you a lot since they have a bigger experience).Do a search on the potential team.Before the interviews,  try to find smart question that you are going to ask for the potential host (do a search on the team  to find nice and deep questions to impress your host). Prepare well your resume.You are very likely not going to get algorithm/data structure questions like in the first round. It's going to be just some friendly chat if you are lucky. If your potential team is working on something like machine learning, expect that  they are going to ask you questions about machine learning, courses related to machine learning you have and relevant experience (projects, internship). Of course you have to study that before the interview. Take as long time as you need if you feel rusty. It takes some time to get ready for the host matching (it's less than the technical interview)  but it's worth it of course.

Just register on the admission portal and during registration you will get an option for the entrance based course. Just register there. There is no separate form for DU CIC.

Assuming that you are talking about 1099-MISC.  Note that there are other 1099s.check this post - Form 1099 MISC Rules & RegulationsQuick answer - A Form 1099 MISC must be filed for each person to whom payment is made of:$600 or more for services performed for a trade or business by people not treated as employees;Rent or prizes and awards that are not for service ($600 or more) and royalties ($10 or more);any fishing boat proceeds,gross proceeds of $600, or more paid to an attorney during the year, orWithheld any federal income tax under the backup withholding rules regardless of the amount of the payment, etc.

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