freestockoption

A lot of the answers read like a lot of the spam I see on Facebook! :) Most of the schemes seem to be around reselling stuff on ebay/amazon or blogging to make adsense/affiliate money.

I prefer to use layer2 bridging in OpenVPN with a separate hardware device (openwrt on a wallwart router, rackmount atom board). This way my client machines have no idea they are on a VPN and everything gets tunneled though the VPN (no DNS leaks unless my router is misconfigured).

In OpenWRT, it's basically:

-setup OpenVPN with a TAP device

-create a VLAN, assign some ports on the switch (optionally, a wifi SSID for VPNed wifi)

-bridge VLAN with TAP device

Which PSU are you using? Do you have a graphics card?

It works decently for me. I had to get on the Windows Insider for beta Windows builds because the stable only has Ubuntu 14. Beta has 16.

I use afraid.org for my dynamicdns.

I used it when they were beta around 1.5-2 years ago. The pricing was great back then. $50/mo for a pool of storage, cpu, and memory you could use to construct VMs of different sizes.

However, there were hiccups in the beta. Namely, the block storage kept flaking out and causing kernel panics. The downtime from that caused me to stop using it after experiencing this issue in the span of a month. Their customer support was good, though.

I hope they resolved their glitches. Because other than the flaky storage, I really liked the feature set. Their networking stack was really nice too.

I love Cloud9 for the web based dev environment. I mostly use the noncloud version on my own dev box (which I can only get into with VPN). I do it mainly because I don't want to pay $10/mo for an ide. I hope people's code are OK.

Lots of cell carriers are starting to do HD voice with VoLTE. It's definitely helped a bit, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of crosscarrier compatibility.

I like Skype or Hangouts. I think the latency is a lot lower. When I'm on the cell, I feel like I'm always talking over people.

I used to be very pro object oriented (Java, C#, etc). Saw JS as a hack. Then I tried it and realized that it made my development time shorter. Thing is, it's a programming language and it can be as good or terrible as you want it to be.

Just because I moved to JS, doesn't mean I threw away the best practices I learned earlier. I still take a careful look at node packages I use and try to understand how it works before blindly using it. I've worked with some people who would look up something on npm, then immediately go npm install and go to production. You can do that in Java, too.

Only thing I worry about now is that I don't use Java, C#, etc enough to prove to job recruiters that I'm not rusty.

Funny thing I realized not too long ago is that everyone has a different idea of what it means when they say "I know this person." I used to think sales people were well connected (and I'm sure they are), but when a sales person says they know someone, it probably means they met at a bar somewhere at least once. :)

For myself, it would be hard for me to say I know them, let alone call them up. Maybe the lesson for myself is that most people are pretty receptive of just being called up if you have a legitimate reason and there's no harm in being more open about connecting (you won't get in trouble for calling someone a friend even though they are definition an acquaintance).

I feel the most important thing is keeping a conversation going. So I try to have back-and-forth questions.

I'm torn if face-to-face interactions help significantly. Although, if I see someone enough in an unstructured way, I'll either become good friends or want to not see each other again. :)

Facebook is great for keeping in touch in a casual way. Ask questions here and there, comment on their life achievements, etc.

I've noticed that once I got more of my professional network on Facebook, I've been more conscious about posting drama, this-is-how-it-should-be opinions, etc. That's a good thing but man was it hard at the beginning to keep myself from posting rants!!! :D

I try to add them to my LinkedIn or Facebook. When I move to a new job or accomplish something (e.g. new product, etc) I send an email (bcc). This usually gets the people who want to keep in touch to respond. Then we go back and forth updating each other.

Oooh yes, I love Docker. Right now, I do most of my dev work outside Docker (because I don't want to rebuild the image every time I change a file..unless there's a way?). I do use Docker at intervals to make sure everything still works.

The shell being closer to production was more for familiarity sake. For me, I used to think I was going to be Mac for a long time because "Mac has a bash shell." Windows has a bash shell. In practice, I mostly use the ssh command! :)

Oh and the console window in Windows is now resizable! That drove me crazy.

I had trouble signing up for JetBlue because I had a . in my email address!!!

Also why are people still using PPTP?! I thought it was considered compromised.

I have a Mac at work. When I decided my personal Mac needed replacement, I decided to take a serious look at Windows. Ended up choosing Windows because I couldn't justify buying older generation hardware (at Apple prices). I made sure to buy locally so I could return it if I hated it.

I am impressed with Ubuntu on Windows. Some bugs, but overall I can see this working for me. Since I use Ubuntu in production, the Linux environment is closer to production than a Mac shell.

I have felt lately, though, that the Mac vs Windows vs Linux debate is getting less relevant with most things being in a web browser. The diminishing requirement for Windows around 5 years ago caused me to switch to Mac. And now back to Windows.

I can see myself buying a Mac again, though. Maybe even a Chromebook.

More like $11 billion :)

PPTP was probably blocked because it needs the GRE port. And I think xfinitywifi only allows UDP/TCP.

I use OpenVPN over TCP and UDP on xfinitywifi all the time. In fact, I have a wallwart router configured for it. Plug it in, ssh in, set the wifi, and I have a relatively secure SSID I can use.

One day the UDP VPN stopped working. I found out it was because the MTU on xfinitywifi changed to ~1300. Sending a packet with a larger size would result in dropped packets which would cause some stuff to work, but not all. Setting the mssfix parameter to something lower in OpenVPN fixed it.

You can test this by varying the payload size in ping.

TCP worked fine the whole time.

Not directly related, but on the topic of Docker we use Elastic Beanstalk at work. I found that all output to stdout along with loadbalancer/nginx logs seem to get saved on the instance. I've had instances fill up because of log files since the beginning of the instance. No problem if you kill instances often, though. We deploy new releases by creating new environments, testing, then swapping the dns.

I thought Amazon employees were routinely burned out. At least that's the perception I get from reading the news. Maybe this is to help combat it?

What's next? Unlimited PTO? :)

OpenShift - you can get some instances for free

Cloudatcost - One time fee. The instance is laggy sometimes, but it's gotten better since they launched and I only paid ~$20 (after coupon) a couple years ago so not a terrible value.

self-host! - Since I like tinkering with bare metal, I have a server in my home that I CDN through CloudFlare. CloudFlare is mostly to shield my ip address and make it less obvious I'm hosting a server (inbound is HTTPS using CloudFlare origin certificates). Currently have a server that just runs Docker containers, but might try Xen.

I live in a newish area. New enough that the house has fiber instead of copper. However, it wasn't until recently that AT&T started offering 1gbps service at $70/mo.

Prior to that, AT&T offered 6mbps service implemented using DSL over fiber complete with a DSL modem. So I was stuck with Comcast.

I like to think Google Fiber saying they were coming helped push AT&T into doing something with the fiber. For that, I've benefited from Google Fiber.

To AT&T: WTF? You had nice fiber in the area for years and the best you could do was emulate POTS?! Better late than never I guess.

I've been wanting to try HLS. Seems simple as there's an FFMPEG plugin to generate the folder structure and all I have to do is symlink it to the webserver

For myself, I will often ask myself something along the lines of: "In my current trajectory, will I be doing the same thing in a year? And is that what I want and will I be happy with that?" So I try to imagine the different paths I can take in my current trajectory and if none of the paths interest me, then I know it's time to make changes. Try to draw out a 5 year plan on a spreadsheet. Aim high, but be realistic.

My main point is, you don't need to work for a big N company to achieve your goals (unless your goal is to simply work for a big N company). The sooner I realized that, the sooner I was able to start working on my actual goals where the actions are vastly different than those of "getting into big N."

e.g. I want to design software, but not necessarily at Google makes it a lot easier to achieve than saying it must be at Google. :)

I've worked in some big names in tech. What I do notice is that sometimes people go into these companies thinking they've made it and that they will just naturally grow due to being at a big name co.

I've realized that most companies are similar and opportunities don't just fall into your lap. Want a low growth job fixing bugs for 10 years? You can probably get that at Google (or pretty much anywhere). Want a job where you can develop the next big feature in Android? You can probably make that happen, too.

If you want the latter, don't just sit there, fall into a routine, and fix bugs all day thinking that one day a VP will knock on your door asking you to be a Software Architect. Don't become complacent.

The AMT tax bill!!! What, this wasn't about exercising stock options? :)

For me, getting myself to exercise is about having a goal. I'll get bored of a routine. Right now, it is to lose the weight I gained from working at a startup that offered free lunch (literally full applebees meals for lunch and dinner) On top of that, I'm currently assessing if a 6pack is attainable or worth attaining.

I usually encourage friends to never stop looking for opportunities to expand. Comfort and "stability" is worth something, but it's important to not stagnate (if you want a career). I would do a side project, consult, do something new at work, or find a new job. :) Do anything but let the status quo guide.

If you work for a reasonable company (and I feel most are), your quality of life is something you make happen or let happen. It is very easy to let the company guilt you into working 12 hours. Set appropriate boundaries and be in control.

I use uBlock Origin and it seems to remove the wall overlay. Unfortunately, an invisible wall is still present and you can't really scroll with the mouse (use arrow up and down). Everything else works though.

I usually just click links to Quora in incognito mode.

I'll have to give this a try!

I feel the more #1 is defined, you end up with an old boys club that alienates.

#2 seems to just mean: hire professionals who have integrity. Stuff that sounds really obvious, but hard to quantify. Anything more seems to encroach into #1. Which is bullshit or counter productive to the goal of creating a culture.

My take on culture is: we don't have to be friends or even acquaintances, but we must have respect for each other and be able to get things done. If we become friends, that's great. But a great friend isn't always a great coworker.

History of the male/female BART voices: http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20090309