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For criminal matters, the short answer is, never. See Don't Talk to the Police. [1]. You want a defense attorney to handle this.

For civil matters, although IANAL I think similar reasons apply, so similar answer: Don't Talk to the Public. If you're truly famous enough to need to break this rule, then you need an attorney who specializes in high-profile cases like this.

Edit: By "cases like this", I mean an actor or athlete level of celebrity. Probably not John Carmack, despite how famous and awesome he may be within our circles. Really, the smartest thing is to just "shut up". Even though a false accusation is a genuine personal violation and you want to defend yourself, the best defense usually won't be DIY.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

FWIW using the Add-Ons tab's search for "tree style tabs" gives 9 results, none of which include this add-on.

But when I click "269 more results", then Tree Style Tab is the first result on that addons.mozilla.org page.

(This isn't the first time I've found add-on search to be a bit wonky. Maybe "everyone" knows to ignore the first results (?), but I don't search for and install add-ons frequently enough to have learned that, quite yet.)

Yeah this was recently in the news in Massachusetts. It appears he persuaded a Mass. Senator to ask for investigations, in order to hurt the stock price and support Ackerman's short gamble:

> In Washington, Mr. Ackman’s efforts bore fruit on Jan. 23, when Mr. Markey’s office, which Mr. Ackman had lobbied himself and which had been provided with detailed information about Herbalife by Mr. Ackman’s team, sent letters to the S.E.C. and F.T.C., calling for investigations of the company. A little more than a half-hour after the stock began trading that day its value fell by 14 percent.

You could say that Ackerman sincerely believes the company is bad and is pursuing this for the greater good. The $1 billion is just putting his money where his mouth is. And his mouth just happens to be near a Senator's ear....

Yes I got the impression his attitude about evidence-based medicine is similar to that saying about accounting -- that "accounting is the art of looking in the rear view mirror and dragging your ass into the future".

i.e. Accounting isn't worthless. It's necessary, but not sufficient.

When I hear "the perfect is the enemy of the good" it's usually in response to the sentiment, "I can't ship this yet; it's not 'perfect'".

In the context of this article: You have a patient who needs to be treated -- today. They can't wait for a hypothetical perfect treatment. Indeed, more fundamentally, the only way to discover a "perfect" treatment would be to use today's least-worst solution, with the determination to measure and improve it continually.

Also the point of the article was that it's not so much the techniques -- which all the CF centers know about and use -- but the aggressiveness of their consistent application.

This isn't about a perfect design. It's about doctors who are willing to coach/goad/persuade patients into doing consistently what they already know they need to do. (And who are willing to be sticklers for consistency to the point of being a bit of a PITA to their colleagues.)

Imagine you want to settle a dispute with someone, and agree that you won't pursue it further in court. Generally, that's a very wise thing to do, when possible. Preparing for and doing a trial is extremely expensive and disruptive. Rarely is your own case as strong as you feel emotionally, and you truly have no flipping idea if you'll win. Even if you do win, it can be appealed. When all the appeals are done, even if you still won, can you even collect all the money? And what about the years of your life gone by?

OK great. So, you're able to settle on terms both parties find awful -- but better than the alternative. Whew. But a month after you do, your opponent might go out there trash-talking. Then you do, in response. And your whole settlement has unraveled.

As a result, it is entirely normal and appropriate for two parties who aren't stupid, to agree to remain silent.

If the settlement has one party paying the other (as is often the case), you can imagine that they will pay somewhat more for a final settlement -- one that doesn't unravel -- because that's worth more.

It's nothing to do with gags or free speech. It's just the kind of painful common sense you acquire from having gone through any sort of legal dispute -- or if you haven't, that hopefully your attorney has, and hopefully you are listening to her advice that you're paying for.

I don't bother to debate it anymore. I just write "internet".

Just like I write "web", "blog", "electricity", and "debate".

(I do however capitalize "I". Because narcissism.)

Yes, but GP wasn't advocating some sort of Disneyesque intellectual property regime. On the contrary, GP is pointing out that a lot of big, rich companies and their investors have been freeloading off the volunteer work of these 2 guys. So it's a "shame" in the sense of being an unfortunate situation. It's not illegal. Maybe it's not even unethical. But it is a damn shame.

There's an old saying, "perfect is the enemy of good".

Here OP plays the role of Perfect. You are Good.

(Opinions vary about the wisdom of this old saying. See: perfect vs. good.)

Talking about ink isn't funnier than talking about digging under a foundation ("undermine"). I think we all know what both of you mean, with your non-literal, colorful expressions. :)

GP makes a good point. Google is a de facto monopoly, no less than Microsoft was. Even if you stipulate that Google got there through nicer tactics than Microsoft, the end result is a similar huge concentration of power. We can laugh at old school publishers feeling disoriented. We can feel comfortable that Google won't use their power for "evil". Maybe that's a safe assumption for the near future.

I think ultimately the most reassuring thing isn't Google's intentions, but the inevitability that they too will hand the reins to someone new. Maybe Amazon. Maybe a company that most of us have never heard of yet. (And during that transition the world will become more uncertain and more interesting again, for awhile.) But meanwhile Google has a huge amount of power, and healthy skepticism is fair.

Or one can always make a mother*ucking web site [^1], which works perfectly in every browser. Zero issues with font size, layout and scrolling. Just-works.

[1]: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

Although he makes some good points -- it can be tricky to hire people with more experience than you, especially in the areas where you're weakest -- the title is pretty awful.

"When to hire 'old people'?" <-- is a ridiculous question.

"Should you take asshat advice?" <-- see Betteridge's Law.

Edit: Depersonalized the target of "asshat" because I'm not in a position to judge the person, just this particular post.

When you think about it, Comcast NBC Universal is doing the same stuff with Aereo.

Broadcasters get a government monopoly on a finite resource. Broadcasters don't provide a good signal to all customers. Some customers want to use Aereo (that's not the only reason, but a real reason) instead of paying for cable.

But no, the broadcasters want to be paid for not-providing a signal to those customers. Instead of investing to improve their infrastructure, they want to be paid for not improving it. With a straight face.

Of course it's especially ridiculous in the case where it's Comcast NBC, and they are also an ISP. If Aereo wins at SCOTUS, and grows big enough, Comcast NBC can get their pound of flesh as an ISP like they do with Netflix.

It is all well and truly fscked.

Although it's nowhere close to 75%, probably more like 33%, I agree with the spirit of what you're saying.

Let's say the total settlement is for, say, $3 billion. The lawyers get $1 billion. That is a _lot_ of money for the work performed. More importantly it's money that the alleged victims are not getting.

You could argue that the victims wouldn't get anything except for the great public good performed by these valiant legal heroes.

I got the sense that the employee was being paid for the 3 months, and spending time mostly to look for a new job -- not to do actual work for the company.

As a result, the CEO probably thought it was reasonable to ask him to help out with an emergency. Although it was after hours, it was hardly "overtime" in the sense of being hour 41+ of work he did for the company. Probably more like hour 2+, in her mind.

I'm not saying her expectation was realistic, I just don't think it was a "caricature". I suppose I think you're not understanding her point of view, much as she didn't understand the employee's point of view.

> What surprises me is that I can't find any pages in English. So good luck navigating if you don't understand danish.

The American expat community hasn't grown large enough to form an effective separatist group and demand that the Danish government translate everything into English? How awful. /s

On the other hand, the article implies that the broadcasters are not very good at... broadcasting. A big challenge for Aereo was finding a location that gets all the signals:

> "It's striking to me," Lipowski said, describing missing signals at many places around the city, no more than a few miles from the current broadcast center on the Empire State Building. "You would not get the channels that the FCC said you should be able to receive. ... It was just gone, you could no longer receive television signals, you had to do something different. That's not fair."

Some Aereo customers use it because they can't receive signals from the broadcasters. The broadcasters seem to feel that these customers shouldn't use Aereo. Instead, the customers should pay ComastTimeWarnerMegaCorp, who can then pay the broadcasters.

i.e. Not only do the broadcasters not want to spend money improving their infrastructure -- they want to get money for not broadcasting well.

The sense of lazy entitlement among broadcast and cable operators is pretty stunning.

Exactly, it's about walking the walk -- non-self-consciously and without artifice. It's a product of negative verbal space: The actual values/culture are communicated by what isn't said, because they're presumed to be self-evident.

Therefore, not to be flippant but a great way to fuck up the culture is to write a memo about not fucking up the culture.

I understand your reaction but:

> Your pay is not tied to how many hours you work as we are overwelmingly talking about sallried profesionals on HN.

Maybe not hours. But definitely some unit. There is always a pay rate, whether the denominator is "hour" or "month" or "year".

PTO is a way to diddle the denominator -- a way of saying that a "year" isn't 52 weeks, it's 50 (or 46 or whatever) -- without changing the numerator. It increases the rate, but not how much money you get.

UTO just keeps the rate fixed.

Admittedly PTO is better HR "marketing" or "optics" -- the company and/or politician can say they're "paying you even when you're not working", which sounds wonderful. Yet people burn time worrying about how it works, and is it fair. And the economic reality is you're only getting paid for working.

Admittedly I don't know if UTO would actually help. It may be the case that people inclined to agonize over HR stuff or game the system will still find a way.

I often found it discouraging to contemplate how much time and energy is spent thinking and arguing about PTO (paid time off) policies. It turns everyone into a FlyerTalk forum member. Worrying about how to game the system, or prevent it from being gamed. Worrying that someone else is getting a better deal. It's a huge time and morale suck.

Sometimes I wonder how much of the problem is the "P" in PTO. When you're paid not to work, you're effectively getting a bonus -- being paid more for the time you do work. This also makes it a hot button for labor law -- if you leave with unused PTO, you need to be paid for it. Because it was never really about the time off. It was about the money.

Instead, what about simply having "UTO" -- unpaid time off? Take as much time as you need or want. Everyone will understand you're not getting something "extra" they're not getting. You're simply choosing to work somewhat less and to be paid somewhat less.

And to be clear, if an organization switched from PTO to UTO, they should give a one-time equivalent raise to make people whole.

I definitely don't claim this will resolve all the issues (humans in an organization will always find something upsetting). But wouldn't it eliminate a very big chunk of the ill will?

Yes, and it's especially frustrating when you are a newer user and trying to "learn the rules" and contribute constructively. Although I understand HN is cautious about welcoming new users in general, it probably ought to welcome more warmly new users who are trying to be constructive.

Also: A couple times I have accidentally hit the down arrow. There is no undo. How does this relate to comment quality? The only remedy is to add a "Sorry, I downvoted you accidentally" comment, which I've seen people do. Although it's good etiquette that's a relatively low-quality comment.

It's a problem with unnecessarily monolithic SaaS, where everyone reinvents e.g. the storage piece of it.

You should be able to tell XYZ service to work with your photos as stored on Amazon S3. Or stored on, what's that other company, starts with a D...?

I keep trying to read the 2014 item, but the page keeps refreshing to the 2011 item full-frame.

This on Firefox.

Seems to be OK on Chrome.

Is this a "requires Chrome" site, like Google+ Photos? I think such sites should show little logos, like back in the good old days of IE. /s

Looks like library.linode.com has the same format, and is still the same fantastic resource.

I'm embarrassed to say that once upon a time I used library.linode.com to help walk me through my first Linux server setup... running on Digital Ocean. Yes, I felt like a complete douchebag. I wanted to use Linode but I was one of those $5/month people.

However it left me with a sense of obligation to give Linode business someday when I could justify/afford doing so. It looks like Linode just gave me the opportunity to do that.

We had software engineers help 1 hour a day on support, myself included. It started out of necessity (tiny startup), but survived many years. Gave people great perspective.

Google has (had?) "20% time". This was more like "12% time".

Although developers' time is valuable, they're not "in the zone" all day; this came out of that not-in-the-zone time.

I'm not sure I understand this language:

> I will promptly disclose In writing to the Company all discoveries, developments, designs, ideas ...yada yada... made, conceived, reduced to practice, or learned by me (either alone or jointly with others) during the term of the Independent Contractor Agreement between the Company and me and within 12 months thereafter....

Let's I work for you, then quit -- or you fire me. Eleven months later, I'm taking a shower, and have an idea related to your business. I am supposed to disclose that to you, and you own it. Do I understand that correctly?

Edit: I wasn't the person who downvoted you. I'm genuinely asking.

People have strong feelings about this on all sides (and I think there are more than two sides).

However hopefully everyone on that whole spectrum will agree -- and never forget -- how OkCupid and Sam Yagan decided to step into it and act like opportunistic hypocrites.

And hopefully everyone on that spectrum will give their support to Mozilla now, because it makes the internet a better place for all of us.

Although I understand how you feel, I think OP's point was a bit more meaningful: Calling it "sanitizing" leads some programmers to try to "clean up" the input -- but instead they should contain it.

And when they try to "clean it up", they enter the realm of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About X.

e.g. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

Although not a quick read, the go-to analysis of this is "Entrepreneurs Are the New Labor" [^1].

On this theory, the balance of power has shifted to investors, who prefer founders from an institution. And perhaps a certain generation of young adults welcomes this sort of structure more than others might.

Which isn't to say that incubators don't have great value for many people. They do. But they're not the only way to go about starting many businesses, you're correct.

[^1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...

Your question and many of the comments so far tend to focus on the CTO. I'd like to focus on your co-founder, the "CEO".

If he wanted to start with a less-experienced technical person, and jettison them early on -- he could have hired an employee and paid them.

Instead he co-founded with you, as a partner. He was happy to take your money -- you have skin in the game. He doesn't get to shoo you out the door now like a temp.

He also doesn't get to do it via the CTO. He owes you a frank conversation. Also you need a lawyer.

tl;dr: From hearing your side of the story, although the CTO is handling this like a tool, the CEO is the biggest schmuck.