Ask HN: What sort of startup talk is allowed at work?

I was talking to some business friends of mine, and they were very dumbfounded about the claims that companies make about employee side projects.

To what degree am I allowed to focus on my startup at work? I never write code, but I do ask technical questions on freenode about setups and favorites ycombinator articles.

Am I being paranoid? I'm just worried, because I run a blog under the same nick (not this one), and any competent googler will show me asking questions at work pertinent to my startup.

Probably a stupid question, but I'd really appreciate any links/knowledge drops. I think I'm being paranoid, but I don't know.