AFAIK, net neutrality has never pertained to prioritised mobile traffic. So such a deal would seem to be outside the discussion, but I would agree that it would certainly make G look hypocritical.
Thank you very much for reviewing our site and giving such helpful feedback.
The passphrase idea is explained in some detail here: http://2easyoffice.com/tour7.php
The short of it is that we wanted to offer something with more security than usernames and passwords. We can include a captcha, as well or alternatively. But we thought that, if we are going to put a bit of extra work on the login, why not make it count toward more security than just the annoyance of a captcha alone? Our perspective was that users trust us with their information. We want to treat that trust with the utmost respect by doing everything in our power to secure the login process.
As I replied to the other, the site is taking a hit right now. We are looking at ways to speed things up beyond the load balancing that we already doing. Thanks.
Thanks also for your feedback. We will definitely be getting a site redesign.
As for testing for free, do you mean a perpetually free account or a discount for 30 days or something like that?
It is taking a hit on traffic at the moment. I tried it in Chrome and, while it is slower than usual, it is coming up. We have load balancers on the site that should handle some of the traffic. But we are also looking into giving it a bit more juice for the current peak. Please persevere, and thanks for looking.
Thanks. We'll see about getting a site redesign done. I have removed the javascript alerts and put in links to copy about what will be there. I really appreciate your feedback.
"working hard throughout grad school (in math) was the great equalizer"
The trouble is that so many people don't do that. But also there is only so much that effort can overcome. I have been coding for nigh on 30 years, having started with a hand-me-down Trash 80, Model I, Level 1. I have worked in all kinds of environments and hired coders who fell variously into both camps. Almost without fail, the coders who have been coding since they were kids do better. It is almost like breathing for them. I don't know how to explain it, but they have almost a Zen-like relationship with the machine that no degree or amount of compressed effort will match. I would like it to be so, but it just isn't the case in my experience.
"most kids with rich parents don't become hackers"
That is a very good observation that I hadn't noticed before. Of the scores of rich kids I knew who had computers in their rooms, I can name on one hand the number who now code or do anything close to coding as part of their jobs.
Lucky, yes, but not privileged. The plethora of stories listed here, to which my own could be added, show that we were just lucky to get hold of computers so young.
Interesting talk. I note the caveats Ryan Dahl gives at the end of the talk about using Node.js for a high-performance site. I haven't been able to find any other stats than his on performance and stability. Does anyone use Node.js for a web service? Do you have any stats that you can share?
'it would be an understatement to say I was naïve about the concerns of "running a business."'
He missed the forest for the trees in terms of his industry. As he says at the end of the article, it is only now - 3 years later - that he has enough perspective to see some of what he did wrong.
His story reminds me a lot of Gerber's master technician who is good at his craft but not the business thereof. Fortunately for him, that industry is still quite small but has massive potential, and he could jump in again (assuming the terms of sale allow it).
This shows how little the basic Western mindset has changed from the days of imperialism, colonies, and barbarian savages. I recall, in my anthropology course of yore, encountering similar disparities between the WEIRD cultures and whatever people group we were studying. Nobody ever thought to put ourselves on the spectrum. It was always presented as 'us' vs 'them'. And 'we' were always the right way to do things, of course. That being said, I'm glad my culture didn't have such rituals for manhood.
Nice job on authentication. A question arises for me, though. I can understand the cost of Yubikey and email authentication falls to the user. But how much do you estimate the SMS will cost you as a fixed cost? Back-of-the-envelope calculation would say that the cost shouldn't be onerous, but I don't know how frequently your userbase logs in anew. Have you arranged a bundle or do you pay per message still? Pardon the questions and feel free to ignore them if I am prying. Thanks.
You may want to remove the references to AppFlows in the footer on some pages. As it is, both sites show the same diagramme. Is one an earlier version?
http://www.flowshark.com/http://appflows.com/
Where are you looking? I am drawing from positions on Jobsite.co.uk. The lowest salary I can find in the posts of the past seven days is 22k:
http://www.jobsite.co.uk/cgi-bin/advsearch?rownum=476&am...;
Even the lowest one has a range up to 50k, and the next one up has a floor of 44k. These results are ranked in order of descending salary. NB: The OP did not say what kind of development post he is seeking.
I use Python a lot for back-end processing but seldom for anything upfront. I tend to prefer PHP there. I was asked to write a book on Python last year and actually included a section on how to use PHP together with Python when doing web development. The two can live together quite nicely if you play their strengths and weaknesses off each other.
This is the case in pretty much every western country, afaik. The $250k limit is also held by Germany. Other countries have floors of (I hope you're sitting) 1 million currency units (pounds, etc.). Personally, I think they are all misguided. But try to explain that to border control. In this vein, you may find this post by Max Klein of interest: http://maxkle.in/giving-up-on-europe/
I am glad to see somebody new working this niche. The way you go about handling payments is relatively straight-forward, which is good. However, I wonder how you (plan to) handle stolen phones being used to send money to accessories to the crime. That is, Alice steals Bob's mobile and uses it to send money out of Bob's account to Carol, who is using a throwaway phone for the purpose. The texting of a four-digit pin would be in the history of the phone. So how do you mitigate against such theft?
"Harley’s evolution is part of longer-term shift in American manufacturing..."
This is standard operating procedure for more than American companies. Anymore, I think it is a central part of the Acme Corporate Handbook anywhere and everywhere to make redundant the lower tiers of staff and farm it out to cheaper labour. This is why there is such a rise in small businesses, consultancies in particular, in recent years. The US is certainly leading the way, but the strategy is being deployed by companies around the globe. If they can't get profits from their customers, they get profits by reducing their operational costs. Before anyone slings mud at the executives, remember that they are legally bound to do what is best for the company and necessary to turn a profit for the shareholders. In certain jurisdictions, they can, in fact, be convicted criminally if they do not take reasonable steps to ensure the safety and prosperity of the investors' moneys. But they are not legally bound to ensure the workers have a job in the process.
I have worked at various levels of several different kinds of companies - everything from epoxies to hospices to ship management to pure software houses to educational institutions. I never learned so much about running a company as I did after reading Gerber's "E-Myth Revisited" and then starting out on my own company. Rather than go corporate, I recommend poring over the org charts and business models of several different kinds of businesses and follow the money. Figure out why they have hired the people they do and what function they serve in the nitty-gritty to serve the overall vision of the company. How do they make a customer? How do they deliver? When you can map each of these out on paper in the nitty-gritty, then you are ready to think about your own company, I say. But working in the corporate world will not necessarily help you with that. It will, however, give you contacts and a network that you can leverage. In addition to Gerber's book, I encourage you to take to heart Felix Dennis' "How to Get Rich", wherein he takes up the matter of working for someone else only enough to learn the business inside out so you can compete with them.
I can't speak to the different parts of the US, but developers in Europe get wildly different salaries, and the differences are not wholly based on the location, size or stage of the company. In the past six months, I have seen UK junior positions that start as low as £22k (approx $33 USD). Most webdevs that I have seen go for £35-40k (approx $52-60k). In Germany, junior devs start around €40k in the north and €45k in the south. I note these are all lower than US salaries listed on glassdoor.com, but this is in part because of the extensive social welfare net provided by most countries in Europe (and that extends even to foreigners over here), for which employers have to pay a larger part than in the US.
What the OP is doing is similar to a fatal flaw that messes up many companies. If everyone is your customer/market, then nobody is your customer/market.
You can't market to everyone, and you can't focus on everything at the same time. You must say 'yes' to some and 'no' to others, working a niche in order to have a successful business. Similarly, in programming and pretty much all of life, you must say 'no' to most things and be selective about the domains for which you say 'yes'. I have more degrees and certifications than any human being should ever have, but I know what I can do and stay away from what is just plain beyond me - kernel dev, embedded s/w, and the like. Those guys are rocket scientists to me, and I respect them for it. But I would be deluding myself and them if I tried to hang with them as one of their ilk. There are different clans. You have to figure out what yours is/are and say 'no' to the rest. And that 'no' should not be a completely exclusory 'no' but rather a moving of that topic to the fringe of your focus. Like a dart board, you pick what you're about and focus on that as the middle. The priority of everything else should be relative to that.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and this certainly is extreme. Unfortunately, his path is not easily replicated, and he recognises this. I have heard of others who move to India to take the job that they would have in the US because that is where their company moved it. But finding a job in a downturn is often a matter of being resourceful and thinking outside the box, not of wholesale relocation. I would be surprised if 1% of those who read this article are able to put in practice what this guy did.
Absolutely. I agree 110%, but there is so much intertia going into this that it seems irredeemable. It isn't. I keep telling myself that it isn't, but I see no way the US can pull out of this both personally and on a state level. The amount of retrenchment needed is inconceivable. I've lost the link, but someone posted on HN a few weeks back about the economy going double-dip, and the slideshow ended with a link to Niall Ferguson accepting an award. In that speech, he demonstrated that the US will soon need to spend more money to service its debt than it does on its military (which is a humongous percentage of the budget), and that is an historic sign of imperial decline. The current policies of both the US and the UK mean that by 2040, their debts will equal some 450% of their respective GDPs - they will out-Greece Greece.
Very true. I have worked in 15 languages and each one colours the world differently. It does become a bit of a chicken-and-egg (or nature vs nurture) question, though.
I definitely agree on Chomsky. Common structures and dynamics don't necessitate a quasi-Platonic unity.
Excellent stats. Thanks for posting this. The picture is pretty bleak. According to CIA's World Book, 1 in 8 Americans live at or below the poverty level. Only 6.24% of the working population older than 25 make $100k+. The average income for the same demographic is around $32k. So, yes, all the data says the same thing: there is a massive economic polarisation going on in the US.