instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
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Worst working conditions you have written code in? | nl: A hot, noisy hotel room, dial-up internet, 4:00am writing in _VB6_ to connect to some weird COM+ service that used VB calling conventions, then a C++ COM wrapper for that, then a C wrapper to connect to a Java JNI service. At 8:00pm I didn't know VB, either. And it had to work by 9:00am when some system it interfaced to started up. Oh - and I couldn't actually test it against anything but stubs. |
CSS gradient hacks - are they worth it? | dxjones: The subtle gradients on mediatemple.com are good example of gradients done right. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | markessien: When I started programming I used to work taking care of paralysed people. This was a night job, and you had to stay awake for the entire night and listen in case any noise came from the bedroom, in which case I had to go check to see that the person had not moved to a position that could be dangerous for him.Since there was nothing else to do apart from listen, I wrote code the entire night. The problem was that writing code can get very mentally taxing after a few hours in the night, and combined with the thought that spacing out can result in a persons death, it was a very demanding task, particularly in the period from 4am to 6am. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | sdp: Not so bad compared to the rest of the stories, but I still work as a developer/tech support. I have to drop whatever I'm doing to troubleshoot student tech problems, so the interruptions are frequent. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | Femur: I am a contract Oracle DBA. One month long project I spent working in a gutted out strip mall that had card tables and Ethernet cable strung about.There was free coffee though. |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | mpc: http://jobmigo.comI think this is a good idea (had something similar floating around in my head) and it looks like you guys have executed really well.- There is a number (most always 1) next to each post title, it's not totally obvious what this is for...(especially if you're not a twitter pro)- It would be nice to view all tags without leaving the main pageLooking forward to watching your app as Twitter continues its crazy growth. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | Zarathu: Coming to work from 8:30 to 5:30, sitting in a cubicle with a forced dress code, while writing in... sob PHP.Rails freelance is awesome. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | wallflower: This is not my story of course but the story that immediately popped in my memory when I read the title.Steve Wozniak's story about rewriting floppy drive low-level software the morning of a big demo:>I got it to where it was writing data on a track, reading the data on a track. Then I got it to where it was reading the data in the right byte positions. Then I got it to work with shifting tracks, and we wanted a simple program where we would say "run checkbook" or "run color math" and it would run the programs that were stored on the floppy disk. So we went off to Las Vegas, and Randy and I worked all night and we got it done to where it was working. At the very end, it was 6:00 a.m. and I said, 'We have to back up this floppy disk." We had one good disk that we prepared with the data hand-massaged to get it just right. So I stuck it in the floppy and wrote a little program, and I typed in some data and I said "read track 0," stuck in the other floppy and said "write track 0, read track 1, write track 1." There were 36 tracks—I had to switch floppies back and forth.When I got done, I'm looking at these 2 floppies that look just the same. And I decided that I might have written onto the good one from the bad, and I did. So I had lost it all. I went back to my hotel room. I slept for a while. I got up about 10:00 a.m. or so. I sat down and, out of my head and my listings, recreated everything, got it working again, and we showed it at the show. It was a huge hit. Everybody was saying, "Oh my God, Apple has a floppy!" It just looked beautiful, plugged into a slot on our computer. We were able to say "run color math," and it just runs instantly. It was a change in time.But the real eureka moment for me was the very first time I ever read data back. I wrote it on the floppy, which was easy, but read it back, got it right. I just died.I think that Steve's entire interview is probably one of the most inspiring in Founders at Work:http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | nolanbrown23: While I was in the Navy, I coded in my 2'x 6.5' rack on my ship while deployed and while the AC in my berthing was broken. It was 105 degrees inside my berthing (that I shared with 25 other guys) and the AC motor had caught fire so we were out of luck in terms of that comfort. I don't recommend doing this, it wasn't exactly a good idea to be coding in such heat and misery. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | saurabh: More views on StackOverflowhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/741581/what-are-the-worst... |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | cool-RR: Not coding, but editing video. It was for a start-up I founded, and it happened 2.5 years ago. I just moved into a new apartment and had little besides my Pentium III computer and an approaching deadline. It had a bad-quality 14-inch CRT screen that I salvaged from somewhere. I mounted the screen on the computer case, sat on the floor with keyboard on my folded legs, and started working. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | erlanger: 1. Hm...in the front seat of my car, waiting for the traffic officer to return for 45 minutes.2. In a dorm room for a year with 10kb/s internet, tops. FTP was impossible without net2ftp.com. SSH and most other traffic would not get anywhere either (SVN, IRC, etc.), and I was working many hours on web projects. No Windows VM, so all IE6-7 testing had to be through BrowserShots. But I had a bunch of great Mac software which eased the pain. |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | madmotive: Really like the way the skills and locations are extracted out below each tweet.I see the team is based in the UK. Would be great to have you along to the next Twitter Developer Nest: http://twitterdevelopernest.com You could do a demo in the "Show & Tweet" session.Have you seen: http://www.twitterjobsearch.com also from a UK company? |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | keopi: It does look like a good idea. I myself am a bit confused by the "1"s next to the link. Looking through the site I did find a few dead links, and there wasn't a whole lot of content. However, I still think it has a lot of potential.I think it's especially useful for some of our unemployed twitter friends who don't have the attention span for a traditional job search. |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | ejs: Is it me or does the search not work? |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | abyx: Had to write some code in a servers room, which of course was really cold. Other than that, I couldn't sit down, and had nowhere to place the keyboard on, so a pal held it up while I was typing... |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | mannicken: Working with back-open cubicles, loud sales shouting, people talking, and a goddamn "Sold!" bell ringing each time there was a sale.Seriously? You need to get me out of zone just because you have succeeded to sell another piece of software?Freelancing kicks ass. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | nirmal: -15F, fixing bugs in code that ran on a small wearable computing device strapped to a soldiers wrist. The best part was where I had to interface with the GUI to debug instead of a shell on a handheld tablet. That meant using a tiny stylus on a tiny screen while asking a soldier to stand still in 30 mph winds. |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | pxlpshr: Couple of design/usability things I see:- Using a stock font included with OSX (Marker Felt) for the logo would not have been my first choice. And, marker Felt reminds me of comic-sans.- The logo is not matted properly, I can see a square box around it of a lighter shade of gray. Could be due to color shifts with your color profiles in Photoshop, or your original file is CMYK and is being converted to RGB when you save for web. The easy fix: change the CSS background-color of the header to #1b1c1e instead of #000.- From a IA perspective, what's more important to the end-user: 1) the twitter user that submitted the job or 2) the job title and description? I believe it to be the latter, but the jobs titles are lost amongst the bright pink links used on submitters name and pagination (two items relatively unimportant, but those elements shout at me).- The [1] next to each title is also confusing. Perhaps using Tooltips throughout the site would improve usability. I could also see that number being moved to the right of the Job Title.- I can't decide how I feel about the Twitter avatars as I can almost immediately tell that the site seems to be more focused on aggregating aggregators – at which point I tend to bounce onto other job sites that offer distinctively different jobs, than the same stuff I see over and over again.- The rotating headline at the top is wasted space as it stands. That is prime real-estate that's not being utilized effectively. I would switch it to a leaderboard banner that you can rotate JobMigo announcements through until you have paying advertisers. |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | mtw: A few comments:
- the tagging tool doesn't work well, tried Senior System Administrator, didn't find category, same for CTO
- I tried "CTO at companyx, Montreal, Canada" it showed "text too short"
- you might wanna also weigh in the number of followers to rank the tweets. I think a twitter bot will have less interesting tweets (auto-generated tweets), while a company's official twitter account will have much more followers, with legitimate twitter jobs
- you should also have a navigation menu, or search function to find jobs by city or countryalso I'm ok with using the hashtag rtjobs, but #jobs is more obvious no?? |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | jsmcgd: Reminds me of my experiences at university. One of my friends referred to the labs as the 'blast furnace'. This was due to a lack of air conditioning and a great many computers being used at once in a relatively small area.Also the 'quiet room' was anything but - if only one person wasn't being quiet then you would hear every sinlge syllable they uttered. Very distracting. |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | TweedHeads: Hmm, interesting...Twitter could become a classifieds portal if they exploit user-submitted ads sending tweets like @ads @jobs @auto @love etc. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | rrhyne: Sitting in a dusty concrete building, deep in Baja, down a 180 mile road dirt that takes 4 hours to traverse at 45-55mph, in a town with the best right hand point break on the west coast.Hard to get work done with that right point firing and visible from the window. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | csomar: Ok, at home, my parents and my sisters are really kind and they don't do noise.
Also my mother understand that I need some concentration when i'm on computer, although she don't know what the benefits of 'sitting for long hours in front of a screen with much gadgets and text!!'The worst time is at school, when my friends (tech-savvy people) ask me for questions in a very noisy way that I loose concentration. So I agree with most of you about concentration, we can class it thenConcentrationComputer bugs and speedScreen (if u sit for long hours)Mouse and Keyboard (especially for those cheap laser mouses!!!)Computer noise (if it's an old dirty one)your girl friend (if u got one!!!)Those are all factors that can affect your programming or whatever you are doing if it's mind related, like Math or Physic calculationsAlso I posted it in SOF, no the question was not closed |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | orangebanana: On a balcony overlooking Western Baghdad figuring out why our (old and pretty well tested) network code didn't see fit to push packets. Was outside because we suspected the sat terminal was causing the problem. Only ended up taking a couple hours but it was probably my least favourite coding/debugging session. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | dmillar: I had to write code in a run down house that had been converted into a make shift office. There was no AC, and my desk was fit for a kindergartner (no exaggeration). My chair was a metal folding chair and my boss was a sales guy that had no idea how to write even an Excel function. I wasn't there long. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | phugoid: Well, I nearly killed myself with a line of bad code. I made a silly change to a flight simulator's "unusual attitude" logic. Unusual attitude training consists of putting the aircraft in a very difficult orientation (45 deg nose down, 60 deg left bank, etc.) and training pilots to recover.Here's what the simulators look like:
http://blafsen.net/photos/simulator.jpgI changed the code, and brought the simulator up on motion to test it... and the machine started bucking like a horse and tossing me around the cabin. I had the instructor console right in front of me, and for a while it was physically impossible to hit the freeze button - I was being tossed around too badly.That day I learned a lesson about testing: first check it with motion OFF. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | ivanstojic: Working as a tech team-lead for a large international company, I was assigned to a team that was a year behind schedule on an 8 month project. I rallied the people, we worked for 14-16 hours every day (weekends) and managed to get the code in production in about two months.I was proud of my team, that is what got me through the days.After that my boss denied my salary raise with the suggestion that if I don't like the salary, I know where the doors are.I was insulted by the insolence. That was what got me through the door. |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | csomar: Ok, it's a good ideaDesign is simple and clean and the site seems to be working well.However no one can predict if it will be useful or not. In my opinion, for Freelance Jobs, it may be successful, but for a company, i don't think it's good to hire from twitter, as you may get a lot of responses from different people.Anyway, we shall give it a try, I tweeted it (http://twitter.com/omarabid/status/1503823559) |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | stonemetal: Industrial automation controls programming at a tire factory in Georgia. It was 90 degrees outside and you're in a large room with row after row of tire ovens that run above a few hundred degrees. We had machines with thermal sensors set to fault out at 120 and ac units on their enclosures and they still faulted regularly. They spray the tires with lube so they don't stick to the ovens so there is a layer of black crap on everything. All the machines running made around 100DB of noise. I got put on the project towards the end as it was way past due and they wanted to appear to be doing something so they decided 24hr on site was the way to go so I was working 8pm to 8am. |
Review Startup, jobmigo.com - Real Time Job Finder, Powered By Twitter | metachris: nice idea! could you somehow let a user browse them by continent or even region?btw, i am always annoyed if i meet the clearspring embedded flash thingy (due to the addthis button). dunno if that affects others as well...alternate services include:* http://sharethis.com* http://www.addtoany.comhttp://linuxuser.at/blog/why-addthis-sucks-because-of-clears... |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | npk: 80 hours a week for two months in the Antarctic "Pig Barn." The heat was turned off for about three weeks.http://stratocat.com.ar/bases/41e.htm |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | agotterer: In 2002 I was working with a startup (that later failed). The office was in the basement of a warehouse, because they got cheap rent. The office itself wasn't terrible, decent offices and equipment. Since it was a basement there were obviously no windows. We were working 80-100 hours a week, often sleeping in the office. We had a really bad flood a few weeks before our launch date. We got (most) of the water out, but the walls started molding before they could get everything fixed. I bought my own hepa-filter and eventually "took a break" because I couldn't take anymore. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | SingAlong: I'm still yet to graduate and feeling the goodness of working freelance at home.oh my! you guys scare me off. I've always dreamed of an office for my startup where we work in a really nice garden full of trees and green grass, sitting on bean bags and chairs (freedom of posture :P) Maybe I should just do this. It's going to be really cheap and comfortable considering the temperature in my location is around 20c-24c during normal days.I hate air-conditioned rooms. there's nothing better than the smell of green grass and evening wind blowing your nose. And listening to soft music in such an environment is really cool. But I would have to opt for a silent area for the office (which is far away from traffic jams) which would mean compromising the utilities/accessibility of the city center. When you have sounds of sparrows and pigeons in place on that soft-music, it sounds even more cooler.I'll also have a huge hall to run for shelter incase it rains :)And also I'll plant an umbrella kinda thing above every fella working, coz I don't want them to waste time washing them or their notebooks of crow/pigeon shit :DP.S: anyway it's a dream office for my startup and sounds a do-able task :) |
How to promote the truth? | pclark: i think the closest thing you can do is show all sides of a story and let the community make a collective decision. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | memorius: By far the worst: on site doing commissioning / systems integration testing of warehouse automation systems - cranes moving pallets around, boxes trundling on conveyors, etc.The automated equipment we were debugging (and volume testing with things moving around continuously) was the least of it... the huge site was still under construction. All around me there was racking being cut and welded, electricians installing stuff, aromatic concrete floor sealant being applied, various random drilling and banging.I had to write large amounts of new code on the spot as we found problems (missing features, mostly) during testing, while the automation engineers stood around annoyed and waiting.When I first got to the site, I didn't even have a laptop - had to lug a desktop PC and CRT monitor there and back every day (carrying it across half the site and the loading dock) for the first couple of weeks. For part of the time, this involved carrying it across iced concrete, since it had been snowing.Oh, and there was the engineer from one of the third-party equipment suppliers, an Italian company - nice chap but he didn't speak very good English; the noise level didn't help the already poor communication, and when we started our testing, we discovered he had developed his control software from an interface specification three versions old and half a year out of date. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | ojbyrne: 8' x 8' glass walled room - 6 developers (2 facing each of three walls), the fourth wall had the door. |
Why is "exploiting" a website illegal? | pclark: doing anything on someone else's account without them aware (or in control) has to be illegal ... ?my concern is that its myspace one day, my bank the next. Stemming this in the bud is of value for everyone. |
Why is "exploiting" a website illegal? | acro: That last sentence is a bit troubling, are you serious? Think about a situation for example where all of your income comes from a website you publish and someone else does (without your permission) something to change/destroy the content, how that can be legal? If a car has unlocked doors and the keys are in ignition is it legal to take that car? |
Why is "exploiting" a website illegal? | mechanical_fish: Three observations.One: There are specific laws against unauthorized access to computer systems:http://www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/CIP/hacklaw.htmThese acts are generally considered illegal because... they contravene laws!Two: "What defines the line between legal and not?" The answer, ultimately, is judges and juries. These people have a wide range of discretion and are often surprisingly reasonable. (Although certainly not always. And they cost a lot to convince, and they can be randomly unreasonable, which is why there are a lot of jury-trial horror stories and why lawyers prefer to avoid jury trials whenever possible.)If I leave a loaded gun lying around and you pick it up and shoot me dead, the legality of your action is going to depend crucially on what you can make the prosecutor and the jury believe. If you convince them that you did it by accident -- that you were honestly just playing around with the gun on the assumption that nobody would be dumb enough to leave a loaded gun around -- you might be found innocent. If you had a documented motive for killing me, or were arguing with me at the time in front of witnesses, or if there were no witnesses... well, good luck.Finally, when you say:It doesn't harm any end-users... at worst it only modifies their profile page.You are making a lot of unwarranted assumptions. For one thing: If you publicly deface a website you advertise the existence of an exploit which someone else might then use for evil purposes. But, more importantly: Who says that an edit to a user profile is always harmless? People have lost relationships, job leads, careers, and reputations over such "trivial" things. Remember the poor teacher whose Windows box got infected by a virus and spewed porn links all over the screen in front of the students? The woman who lost her job and narrowly missed being convicted as a sex offender by a crazy prosecutor?http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10107743-83.htmlIf I were a teacher and someone defaced my online profile with a porn link I'd consider it a direct threat to my family's life. |
How to promote the truth? | slater: maybe what's needed is a digg-style site that tracks headlines & the body of a news article, and rates the truth of said articles according to what the users vote. |
How to promote the truth? | zitterbewegung: Put postings on hacker news saying that the online media is full if it? What you did here is probably the best. |
How to promote the truth? | domnit: If you figure out the answer to this, politicians, PR people, and journalists will be knocking down your door. Once misinformation is publicized, it is very hard to correct. This can only be assuaged by making the public, through education or experience, less naïve and more likely to seek out the truth. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | zandorg: Compared to my cosy abode with a Linux/Windows laptop, I'd have to say writing Java on a Sun workstation at University in 2003... |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | mahmud: Having my server in California crash while I was in Siem Reap Cambodia, and the only way I could get to work was turn off the AC in my room to get a better signal coming from the WiFi at fancy-hotel next door and opening the window.It was 3AM and I had sweat dripping down my palms and wrists that I had to lay toilet paper over the keyboard and mosquitoes buzzed at my ear and neck nonstop. I had to fight with an aggressive postfix filter that kept sending mail to a lisp process and did no error checking to see if Lisp ran and processed the mail. I had to remove the filter, and manually rebuild stuff later after I had the system running around 12PM the next day.It was one day in hell, taught me that the unix errno and process exit status can be a fucked thing to debug if you're forking multiple process from a script.[Edit: right now I'm coding sitting on the toilet seat, with my pants on, because I'm a moody SOB and like to move around the house as the day passes :-] |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | joshu: Committing code changes to a production trading system while passing a kidney stone.I had been out for a week waiting for the stone to pass, I hadn't slept more than 15 minutes in a row in more than a week -- and those 15 mins were from sheer exhaustion and vicodin. I was hallucinating continuously and vigorously. Hadn't been eating either.Good times. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | quoderat: I use PadMapper.http://www.padmapper.com |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | amastilovic: I underwent surgical procedure and removed a pilonidal cyst located at my lower back. Because of the surgery I was under heavy dose of pain killers, and could not sit, stand or lie on my back.So I had to implement a "will take only 15 minutes but is extremely important" feature, lying on my stomach with laptop on the floor, with my head dizzy because of the pain killers and a bloody butt. |
How to promote the truth? | TomOfTTB: I can tell you how to do it. I don't think it's that complex an answer. But first you have to understand the one caveat which is this: most people don’t want to hear the truth.The current "Twitter Worm" story is a perfect example. The worm really doesn’t cause any damage. It doesn’t hurt anything. But you have all these terrifying claims coming out of the tech media.Why?Because people like a crisis. It gets their heart pumping a little faster and they vicariously make themselves a part of it by following the coverage. That’s why news agencies devote every moment they can during things like hurricanes. Because they know people will watch.This exists in pretty much all things. Truth is complex and by its nature contains both sides of the story. While most people want to react to things as Good or Bad, Dangerous or Safe, and so on.That said, promoting the truth to those who want to hear it is pretty simple. Just put up a web site, publish only when you know you’re being accurate, and wait. You’ll probably have to wait years for people to stumble upon your site but if you dedicate yourself to telling the truth and then do it consistently for a period of time you’ll eventually amass an audience. |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | IgorCarron: I had to change some code on some of our data acquisition system while we were flying on NASA's KC-135 (also known as the vomit comet) back in the early 90's. Some water condensation was dripping from the ceiling on the keyboard while the other experimenters nearby were barfing their brains out. I've been in more optimal situations. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | lbolognini: Trulia |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | andrewljohnson: I wrote a map mash-up of CraigsList ads recently: http://www.trailbehind.com/housing_map |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | mhp: streeteasy.com in NYC |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | replicatorblog: If you are looking for short term housing Air Bed & Breakfast works pretty well. (www.airbnb.com) It is also a YCombinator company. |
How to promote the truth? | Aeon: We can Collaborate. I have a platform I will open for you to promote the truth. Contact me at aeonpi.com |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | jerryji: euwyn.com ? (via http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=544074 ) |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | mattstein: housingmaps.com |
Worst working conditions you have written code in? | ygcfububyuf: Half a mile underground in a gold mine. While sitting on top of a lift cage, little stones bouncing off my hard hat while somebody leaned over the laptop to keep the water from dripping on it. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | smileplease: globrix.com in UK |
How to promote the truth? | Sephr: It makes no sense that they double-escape < and >. They also replace every instance of < with > (wtf?) |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | vaksel: If I was looking now, I'd only use Craigslist |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | wmli: http://www.booli.se in Sweden. Pretty good UI. |
Feedback for new virtual worlds tech web magazine | jlees: First: I can't really tell from an immediate glance, design-wise, what the subject matter is. The design, pictures, etc, don't scream 'virtual world technologies' to me at all, and it takes a fair while of staring at the palm tree pic to figure out what's going on.Second: A few things stand out after I get over that hurdle. The text on "Adventures on the New Frontier" is tiny, I can't read it. "Technology feature"/"Business feature" etc; do they really need the word "feature"? Looks repetitive when it's laid out like that.Now in no particular order:Why is 'The Sandbox' black and why am I told to register before I find out what it even is?I really like the idea of 'get started' being immediately clickable from the intro text and I assume it'll be a detailed HOWTO when finished. Personally that's the first thing I'd read. I'd probably also link first occurrences of terms like OpenSim to the HOWTO - well maybe that's too basic for your expected readers, but to engage new ones who might not understand what any of the articles on the front page are about.Generally, though, I think I'd like to see more pictures and possibly better use of the pictures you do have (http://www.maxping.org/virtual-life/avatars/projecting-the-v... - the images are so untidy). Images are one of the best ways to lead people into content. Excerpts are also good, and I don't really think you're making the most of them. For example the excerpt on your 'business feature' assumes I've read the headline thoroughly. I haven't, I've skim-read it, so interrupting my reading to go back and re-read it to figure out what "the answer" refers to is painful.(Disclaimer: I'm a MMO blogger & techie, but have no experience with open source virtual worlds, only commercial ones. So I might not be your perfect audience in terms of wanting pretty pictures and the like.) |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | kierank: http://www.rightmove.co.uk |
how would you protect a URL redirection service from spam? | sdgsfhg: they are probably done almost solely by bots, institute sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org on your service and rate limit. |
In this situation, what's a fair equity share? | jojoleflaire: You are a minor player. Not being harsh, but it's just a job for you. Don't worry about the corporate details, if you believe in the vision. If the company is successful, you will be too. But make sure that as the company grows, you grow (career wise) too. You might get rich some day from it. |
Why is "exploiting" a website illegal? | GrandMasterBirt: The same exact argument as the OP holds for CSS... When is playing a DVD considered illegal? What if I just put it into an unlicensed player? What if the decryption algorithm is so simple a 14 year old can crack it? What if the algorithm has been cracked for 14 years?DCMA says that breaking ANY encryption even if the encryption says take my data, treat it as binary and invert all the digits, and the first line contains those instructions, it is illegal to break the encryption because of DCMA.So yea if its a 1 digit password its illegal to guess it. |
In this situation, what's a fair equity share? | vaksel: What exactly do the other founders stand to gain by giving you even more equity now?If you thought the original deal was unfair, you shouldn't have signed. |
In this situation, what's a fair equity share? | khangtoh: Whatever it is, you agreed to the original offer and technically the other founders do not have to re-negotiate the offer with you.Since you accepted the offer with salary although deferred. I think it is fair, assuming the other founders did not get salary, in lieu of the low equity you are receiving. |
How to promote the truth? | nickfox: The best way to promote the truth is to always tell the truth yourself. |
In this situation, what's a fair equity share? | bayareaguy: These things are never simple but a fair distribution should take into account the risk each person took and the value of their contribution. For example if they worked twice as long as you and they took twice the risk you did then it would be difficult for you to justify more than a 1/9 stake.If they were stuck before you got there and you played an important part in getting a 3-person company to some measure of profitability then you probably deserve closer to a double-digit percentage.A board seat is probably out of the question at this point but I'd recommend you negotiate for the same class of shares and vesting/acceleration options that your co-founders get. |
In this situation, what's a fair equity share? | jack: First, read pg's essay on the subject, if you haven't already: http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html.Although it's tough to revisit this question after you've already established a deal (it would easy be perceived as opportunistic), it can't hurt to ask.At worst, the other founders should be able to justify the allocation you've been given and their reasons for not upping your share; at best, they might revisit their decision given how much value you've delivered over the past 7 months.Just make sure raising the question doesn't come across as blackmail. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | drp: I work at (and and found my current apartment using) HotPads - http://hotpads.com We list about 300k rental houses and apartments all over the US |
In this situation, what's a fair equity share? | webwright: "salary offered (deferred until funding)..."I'm assuming you don't mean that you get paid back for salary you didn't get paid before funding. FWIW, investors are REALLY not keen to give $ to a startup and have a big slice of it go to to back-earnings.Onto the question/situation, though. How long did they work on it before you? Do you all work the same amount?Depending on the answer to those questions, I think you're entitled to a close to even share, assuming you all vest.A way to get around the inevitable response is to vest. If you want to own 25% of the company, suggest that it vest over 3 years (you should ALL be vesting anyways). A good way to pitch it is this: "You guys have been working on this for 12 months. I've been working on it for 7. By the time I vest, the difference will be 41 months versus 36 months of time in. What do you think a reasonable percentage of my contribution will be at that point?" If time is the only facture, that's a fair point. If they poured cash in, have amazing connections, or had higher paying careers they set aside, they might be entitled to more.Regarding board seats, those get re-assigned if you get funding oftentimes. Board meetings aren't particularly fun-- I'd avoid it unless you think your board will do something screwy. Only thing I'd offer is that you want founders to have control of the board-- if not, the board can fire the founders. If you are the odd-man-out, the board can fire you whether you are on it or not. So being on it offers little protection unless you have unanimity clauses written in. You can always ask to have regular optional attendance for the board meetings. |
How to share equity and talk to a potential partner ? | DenisM: Timeless piece: The Founders’ Pie Calculatorhttp://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fd0n/35%20Founders%27%20Pie%2... |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | charlesju: The Linux distribution isn't the big bottleneck, but yes, I'd probably go with the 64-bit Ubuntu Server.I think Engine Yard, which is where I'm hosting right now, uses Gentoo, it seems to work fine. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | tialys: Debian. It's what Ubuntu is based on, but it's less crufty. I use Debian for everything I do, and I've never had a problem. Take my advice with a grain of salt however, as I've never really had to scale anything.One other thing, make sure you build everything from the source. Get exactly what you want/need, and nothing more as well as the latest packages. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | cstejerean: Gentoo if you have a lot of time to customize everything and don't mind rehacking on the kernel configuration with every release. Ubuntu if you want something that just works and has available commercial support if you need it down the road. Debian if you like Ubuntu but somehow feel that Debian is more "pure". I wouldn't use anything else. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | dejb: www.realestate.com.au - they have some annoying problems but they are the dominant force with the most listings. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | spkthed: Gentoo is based more for the tinkerer and full-time sysadmin. If you're prepared to spend time nursing the system, compiling everything, tweaking packages/the OS itself for every bit of performance possible, the Gentoo is a good solution. Until you're talking about really big scaling though, it's probably more time effective to use another distro.As far as the rest goes, it would be better to use Debian before Ubuntu, but there's a lot of other distros as well. RHEL powers many of the webs servers as does SuSE and Debian and Gentoo. Once you get past that, it's mostly personal preference.Also, big plugs for nginx. It's definitely a very impressive software package. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | ori_b: Whatever you're comfortable with. The distro really won't be the thing that limits scaling. In fact, I'd be surprised if there was a consistently measurable difference between them. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | rsayers: I have no stats in front of me, but I have always been made to understand that BSD's (namely FreeBSD) handle high traffic better than linux.I personally use Debian for everything. I can't imagine the distro making a huge difference really. I've used Debian as a desktop os for some time, so when I needed a server os, it was easy to get going quickly.Switching from Apache to Nginx made more of a difference in my case than anything else I could have done I believe. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | michaelbuckbee: Linux distribution is probably the least important item in terms of scalability.If you're talking about switching to nginx from Apache, that makes me think that you are still proxying to a collection of mongrels? I'd recommend switching to Phusion (aka mod_rails) as it seems to handle high loads much better. |
Active Common Lisp communities? | ilkhd2: comp.lang.lisp? |
In this situation, what's a fair equity share? | enjo: As to what is "fair" that's between you and the founders.You do need to be ready for some serious shock come tax time if you do take on additional equity. Equity (from the IRS perspective) is income, and is taxed as such. If the valuation of the company is high (not the cash value, the fair market valuation) then taxes are going to be through the roof even though you haven't received any cash. |
Is .org ok for a startup? | mkyc: Find some concrete data that compares the two. HN probably isn't a sufficient sample. What sort of startup is it?It might be easier to make up a new name than to settle for .org. A site like boingboing.net does well enough - though I often forget the URL because the .net isn't part of the brand. I've seen links to boingboing.org/com, which might have an effect on search rankings. If you do choose .org, make the .org memorable. |
How to share equity and talk to a potential partner ? | tptacek: My take: don't divide the revenue; that's like dividing equity. If he's unreasonable, anything else you do in the future is going to infringe on his perceived royalty rights.Think about coming up with a conservative estimate of what you'll do with this product quarterly, and offer him a flat $N, based on a generous share of that estimate, for any quarter in which (a) he has in that quarter contributed code to the most recent significant version released as of that quarter and (b) you made at least $N. You take the risk in weak quarters, and you retain all the ownership. |
What do you use when searching for houses or apartments online? | joshwa: Using my own search organization tool called FlowThing:http://i44.tinypic.com/erei4g.jpgEmail me for an invite code... in a very private alpha right now. |
Is .org ok for a startup? | pg: Probably not. The "next best" is likely to be found by traversing the space of available names, not the space of available extensions. |
What do you think of our site? | mkyc: Looks crowded and confusing.Read and apply this: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/good-call-to-action-buttons/The nav bar, the log in button, and the two red links are all too prominent, so nothing jumps out. Topright signin, large login, red sign up for free, bottom left sign up - redundant. How it works in navbar, Help, red See how it works, What is Txtms - redundant. Every extra option is one less reason to choose ANY option.I have no idea what your site does. However, when I read the "tip", everything became clear: "To start sharing your profile, have any mobile user text your User ID to x@txtms.com." Reword that and put it on the front page. You also might want to explain why this isn't just a business myspace for mobile phones. |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | zaius: Use whatever you know your way around best. If you're comfortable with openbsd and it can do everything you need, then go with that. |
How to share equity and talk to a potential partner ? | js3309: 50-50 or else the project will never get done! |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | knowtheory: It's also worth noting that at least around christmas of last year, it was brought to light that the Ruby 1.8 package in apt-get on ubuntu is TWICE as slow as building 1.8 from source.make sure you build from source.http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/12/09/the-great-ruby-shootou... |
Is .org ok for a startup? | rms: My best luck with generating domain names has been sitting down with my cofounder at instantdomainsearch with us simultaneously brainstorming.That didn't work for my most recent domain. Try http://www.bustaname.com/ or code your own for increased speed/flexibility. |
Is .org ok for a startup? | SwellJoe: Appending "get" to the front seems a popular alternative. getdropbox.com, getballpark.com, getclicky.com, etc. It is pretty easy to remember (I pulled three off the top of my head just now without thinking hard, and I don't use any of those services). |
What do you think of our site? | Zev: But what does it do? I get that it lets me create and share a profile, but then what? How do people view/save it on their phones — Do you just send a text message with a blob of information to pick through? What to they do with my profile beyond receiving it? Why do they need to create their own profile? |
What Linux distro for a Rails app that needs to scale? | amitshah: Definitely Red Hat for anything serious that's worth the support costs. Else you can settle for CentOS, which is Red Hat minus the support. |
What do you think of our site? | bf: "We might have a job opening for you, but only if you submit your business profile IN THE NEXT THIRTY SECONDS."No, just kidding, I like the site. It has a nice minimalism feel like most good sites.. |
How to share equity and talk to a potential partner ? | bf: Did anyone else read the headline as a request for spousal advice? |
What do you think of our site? | kiwidrew: Like the other posters have already said, it wasn't immediately apparent to me what service is actually being offered. The 'tip' which is buried on the how it works page definitely needs to be prominently shown as it does (somewhat) help to explain the service.But that still doesn't tell me what happens when someone texts my user ID to x@txtms.com. (And they're probably doing this in response to me telling them to 'text kiwidrew to x@txtms.com for my contact details'.) Questions that immediately come to mind: Do they get a text message in response which has my details? Do they have to sign up to txtms.com first? Will this somehow automatically add my number to their phonebook? Is it actually any faster to give them my user ID and the x@txtms.com address? Why not just give them my phone number and email address, which is probably about the same length and easier to remember?After examining the Help page in detail, it sounds as though the person sending a message to x@txtms.com (to get my details) won't get a response until I log in to the txtms.com website and approve their request. But if I'm out and about (away from web access) and tell someone to text x@txtms.com for my details, _nothing happens_ for several hours -- and if something went wrong (like the text being sent to the wrong address), neither of us will know until it's too late to do anything about it! |
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