al1x

Many of these things are covered by elance's Independent Contractor Services Agreement, found here: https://www.elance.com/p/legal/Independent-Contractor-Servic...

IANAL but supplemental agreements may not even be necessary.

Nice. I had quite a thrift-store clothing collection in high school. Wish I hadn't given them back to good will. My favorite was an official Waste Management t-shirt, worn by some WM employee. That and a shirt that said "hugs not drugs". I'll make a fun hour or two of it tomorrow with my iPhone, seeing if I can spot any 10x arbitrages.

Being text-only helps immensely.

What's wrong with Buzzfeed?

I think what he's suggesting is that a topic-based filtering system would be more ideal than a key work based one. I don't want to have to spell out "block yankee's, tigers, indians, pirates, and giants". I just want to say "block all baseball", or "block all sports", and have the system know that posts about the yankee's, tigeers, indians, pirates, or giants are inclusive in these categories.

There are social consequences of unfriending someone, regardless of how annoying their posts are. De-friending someone is the digital equivalent of saying "I don't want to be your friend anymore". If you don't want to come off as abrasive, simply block the user from your feed.

It has nothing to do with being "edgy". It has everything to do with not wanting to be flooded with Bible verses, prayer requests, and mindless proselytizing. It's obnoxious.

If you really are an atheist you've taken this whole idea of "open-mindedness" way too far and let a slough of nonsense overwhelm your rational sensibilities. Stop trying to be "ok" with everyone and everything. It's foolishness. There are truly fucked up people in this world with truly fucked up beliefs. You don't need to be "ok" with them. You need to confront them and help educate them. Fight ignorance, don't condone it. Help make the world a better place. If you have nothing to say in response to divinedefault, fine. But there's no reason to storm off in a huff and refuse further dialogue because he questions the authenticity of some of your claims. I doubted them too. Be a man. Deal with it. Get over it. Continue the dialogue if you can. If you can't, keep processing what he's said. He took a lot of time and spent a lot of effort replying to your blog post. You owe him more than this "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU ANYMORE" nonsense.

> 1) You say "religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very future of humanity." This seems, at best, blowing something way out of proportion.

You must not live in the US, must not be aware of how religion influences scientific research, and must not pay much attention to the news.

> In fact, you make a whole shitload of biased, uncited claims in your first paragraph. ...fearmongering.

This is so typical of HN. Disagree? No problem. Dismiss everything said with a "citation needed". Your entire blog post was an uncited claim. But I'm not going to even bother making that a point of contention. This game is juvenile, especially on matters of common knowledge. Only a jackass walks around saying "citation needed" to every claim someone makes. Re: fearmongering, is this some kind of joke? Are you really questioning that the religious majority controls politically the United States? Are you really questioning that religion shapes public policy in ways detrimental to scientific advancement and societal progress? Do you really think the ideas behind the second coming of Christ encourage self reliance as opposed to say extreme apathy, since their Lord and Savior will soon descend from heaven to judge, condemn, and then magically fix all the problems of the world for us, creating an eternal paradise for all believers? Are you really unaware of the common objection to climate change among Christians in America that climate change is bogus because "God wouldn't let that happen"? Do you really contest my assertion that religion lacks empirical evidence? Have you yourself seen signs, wonders, and miracles on the order of Biblical proportions? Do you often see water turned to wine, great waters parted on command, the sick healed and the dead raised? Because those are the claims of Christianity.

> If you don't see the power of a community, I cannot help you

I never said community wasn't a great thing, I only said, in so many words, that a community based on ignorance and nonsense is not a net "good". Do you argue that the "community" created around Hitler's ideologies was a net "good"? That's absurd. Not everything that unites is good.

> I would argue that it was another war fought for the same reason that every war has ever been fought: for power

Right. Except, of course, that you're wrong.

> How many people died during the crusades? Was it less than 40 million? I did a little bit of googling, and it seems to be way less than 40 million, so it still pales in comparison to Mao or Genghis Kahn.

Do you really think it somehow makes what happened during the Crusades any better? Your point is completely irrelevant. If religion did not exist those tens of millions of people would not have been killed. That's the only thing that matters.

What do you do to mitigate DDoS attacks? Prolexic? Cloudflare? Other?

This post is absurd. People attack religion "to feel superior than others and therefore feel better about themselves"? What about the fact that religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very future of humanity? What about the "minor" fact that the religious majority control politically the largest superpower in the world? What about the fact that religion shapes public policy in ways detrimental to scientific advancement and societal progress? What about the fact that religion encourages ignorance and complacency and opposes the idea of self reliance? What about the fact that it lacks any form of empirical evidence despite making claims to?

But I'm supposed to forget about all of that because of "community". It's somehow a GOOD thing that ignorant birds of a feather flock together? It's somehow a GOOD thing that the scientifically illiterate majority control the public policy of the largest superpower in the world?

But I'm supposed to forget all of that because it "makes them happy"? That their ignorance is bliss? That simpleminded people don't suffer existential angst? That having a book that makes up answers to all of life's questions instead of providing anything remotely approaching anything empirical is somehow "comforting"?

But I'm supposed to forget all of that because religion has been around since all of recorded human history.. and that that is somehow significant?

Go ahead max, dismiss the critics by forgetting that the Crusades was entirely motivated by religion, dismiss the philosophical problem of evil because you think you've found a satisfactory answer to it, dismiss the fact that the Bible is riddled with factual and historical inaccuracies, dismiss religion's blatant disregard for Science Fact because "people are inconsistent about their beliefs all the time" (because that's such a good reason). ...and by all means, continue making spectacularly ignorant blog posts and don't both enabling comments because, heaven forbid, someone might call you out on your nonsense and set you straight.

Stay in school, Max, and keep thinking through these things. You've got a ways to go.

It's really annoying that 25% of the page is taken up by the "Join Now" "Learn More" banner at the top and that there's no way of hiding it. Why ruin the user experience for people just because they don't want to sign up for your site? As someone else mentioned below: having to click through twice to get to the article is obnoxious as well. Other than that nice job.

Uber is a startup, and HN is a site about startups. FTFY.

That's kind of the point of this article though. He's pointing out the flaw in the "code first" approach. He started out that way and wound up wasting years of his life. The "hackers" of news.ycombinator.com are (or should be) business-minded hackers (it's kind of the point of ycombinator). This kind of reminder is always helpful.

What does it matter?

Under "Hide Your Origin", how does one ensure that "IP only accepts packets from the [DDoS] service"?

I started a thread where I was hoping to get a discussion of DDOS mitigation techniques, tools, and providers. Something that should be useful and highly relevant to web-based small business owners. It's here if anyone's interested -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6587640

Thanks for the summary. Reading articles is so 5 years ago.

From what I've read it seems that Reddit is unprofitable more by choice than by anything else though. They refuse any serious attempt to monetize with ads, thinking (foolishly, I would say) that it would scare their audience away. The types of ads they do run are silly and light-hearted. An Amazon affiliate ad for the book "Crafting With Cat Hair" was a personal favorite. So while you do have a valid point -- they're not (or barely) profitable, I think it should be framed in this context for understanding: they're not profitable by choice. I personally don't think making a switch and putting "real" ads up on their site would make a damn bit of difference. Why should anyone care? They're a business, they should make money. People are used to ads. They're No Big Deal at all. Besides, where else would be people go? It's not like there's a better alternative.

Your involvement could be as little or as great as you'd like it to be. It's all up to you. An hour or two per week?

Ideas may be easy, but good ideas are incredibly hard to find.

If implementation is so difficult, outsource to me! Give me your executive summary, 20 grand, and a 20% stake, and my team and I can have your project implemented in under 6 months. I'll call it the HN 20/20/6 deal. (I'll do it for 10 grand if I think the idea really has potential.)

I wouldn't just give away everything. Use the executive summaries as a sales tool. Make a note that for any of these startup ideas you're willing to serve as a minor stakeholder (say, 10%). That would 1. allow you to gain something from someone executing on your idea, and 2. allow the people who executed on your idea the benefit of having your brain involved in the development process. The ideas are yours and you know them better than anyone else. You've had them longer than anyone else, and you've thought about them longer than anyone else. It makes sense for you to be involved to some degree because you have far more to contribute than just a few sentence concept overview. It would be a win/win for all. If they are truly good ideas, it would be a shame to just give them away. They are your children and you their parent (that's how I feel about my ideas, at least!). Stay around. Stay involved. Watch them grow. Be a part of it!

Tragic. What kind of cancer did he die of?

What was your startup? What was your business model?

Average salary for a software developer in India is ~10k US. You're paying him 4.4x that. You should shop around. Contract out some small pieces of work to other developers in the $5-$10/hr range and see what quality of work they deliver. I suspect you'll find you're overpaying. (I pay my contractors $5/hr)

> ..they support each other when they are in position of power and therefore raise the status of their communities.

I think the real question to ask then is what is religious breakdown of the various Nobel committee's?

These statistics make me curious about the religious breakdown of the various Nobel committee's.

How does the war on drugs have anything to do with DPR hiring a hit on the hacker who broke into his website and threatened to dump his user database, an act that would presumably shake customer confidence and lose him business?

> I'd really rather have one top-notch guy than 5 ok guys

1. Your one top-notch guy who getting in a car crash would put your business on hold for months until you could find a replacement. My 5 "ok" guys are fault tolerant, providing constant development regardless of what life throws at them.

2. My 2 developers aren't just "ok", they're rock stars. 1st class all the way. I pay them $5/hr. Don't underestimate India or the Philippines because they're low cost. Don't overestimate the difficulty of programming. It may seem hard to you but to someone who knows how to program it's incredibly simple. To a fluent developer, writing code is like writing an essay.

> The need has really been driven by the VCs

Do you really need VC money? I mean really need it. Most projects I've come across can be bootstrapped.

> they all insist on it

Did you counter them with "I have 3 contractors at my disposal on-call, round-the-clock"?

> I can't afford to hire someone on good money

£30k is a lot of money. Nearly $50,000 USD. How much do you have left? How much are you paying your Russian developer? (too much, I'd bet). $50,000 is 5 developers salaries, full-time, from India, for a year.

> I'd rather find someone who is passionate about the idea and with whom I could work well.

If that's the direction you want to take it, I wish you all the best of luck. I personally would go a different route.

> I am working with a great contractor.

It's entirely plausible that a business run by 1 technical contractor will fall apart (life happens... I've had contractors break contract several times due to personal issues that arose). It is, however, much less likely that a business run by 5, competent, well managed developers will fall apart.

Just sharing what's worked for me. Best of luck whichever direction you go.

Everyone knows Java. It's the first programming language taught to every freshman Computer Science undergrad, everywhere in the world. Even most die hard Rubyists know how to write Java. They may hate it, but they know it. Who in the world teaches PHP?

Do you really need a co-founder? I think co-founders are over-rated.

> You need to have someone in the team that can fix a crashed server at 3am, or burn the midnight oil to hit a new feature deadline.

Almost every contractor I've worked with on elance has been willing to work whatever hours were required. For $5 an hour. Why give up precious equity for something you could hire out for a few dollars an hour?

> To date I have been using a contractor to build Satago, and whilst he is very good (one of the best developers I’ve worked with to be honest, but sadly based very far away from me in Russia) the fear is that without the large chunk of equity that a co-founder would be working towards, he could just down tools, and then Satago would grind to a halt.

If I were you I would find a few other good developers to work with. Elance has them in abundance and they'll be more than happy to work for you at $5-$10/hr. (I prefer fixed-budget projects, personally.)

Here's how I get projects done: I take a few INDEPENDENT features from the product roadmap, set clear expectations with the developers, hand off the code, iterate, finalize, then pay my main developer to integrate their code into the main code-base. In my case I'm the lead developer so I do the code integration, in your case maybe it would be your contractor from Russia.

If the developers I've hired write good code and deliver as promised I keep them. If they don't I move on to someone else. In one year I've gone through 6 developers and kept 2 of them. 2 competent, hard working, reliable developers.

When I said "set clear expectations", some expectations I've found useful to establish with a contractor are: clearly define the project specifications (you need to be able to tell them exactly what needs to be done), clearly define the project deadlines (first iteration due in 2 weeks), clearly define the budget ($300 for features X, Y, and Z), and clearly define the communication requirements (respond to emails within 24 hours, provide constant work status updates). It's also a good idea to let them know that you're looking for developers with whom you can establish a long-term relationship and that this small project they're about to work on is a test. If they meet your expectations you will keep working with them, if they don't you won't be repeating business.

I also make sure to tell them that the code needs to be thoroughly documented. It helps the other developers who have to work with their code and it could help you get an idea of what's going on under the hood.

In summary, I think technical co-founders are over-rated. I see no reason to give up equity for something that can be easily contracted out. Ok, finding good contractors isn't "easy". It takes a lot of time -- it's taken me 9 months to find 2 solid ones. But the ones I've found can reliably get the job done, on time, within budget, guaranteed. I own 100% of my company.