meiji

Nothing to do with work. I've been "in technology" for my entire life and professionally for the last 18 years. I have learned that whilst homebrew is satisfying an itch, sometimes there are people who do things better. I've had companies go bankrupt on me and that's why I have contingency plans in place to remedy things, but I sometimes like the fact I can pay someone to do a specific thing for me better than I could do it myself (or at least as well). I'm past the point in my life where it seems useful to spend my time doing something because I can, I'd much rather spend that time on something else (other work, family, friends, hobbies) if there's a viable way that makes good business sense.

p.s. Flattered you care ;)

Well the problem with that is, what happens when the atom machine dies. Or the ISP cuts you off? People outsource services not because they can't make a cheap version themselves but because it can be a hassle.

I think you could arguably charge based on frequency. Weekly job -> free. Daily job -> 10c a month, Hourly 50c a month, more than that, pick a price. Definitely useful but then you're also going to need a way to make it a distributed service because people aren't going to want to have it not work because your single Amazon instance has tanked. The number of businesses who have problems because timed jobs don't kick off is insane and this might do the trick but you need to avoid moving that pain point from their own systems to you.

I've never had an awful lot of sympathy for people who assume that because they know they're not up to anything dodgy that the immigration people will know too. I was married in the US and knew that when I went on my honeymoon I better have letters from my employer in the UK as well as my return ticket or I might get refused entry to the US when I was heading back to where my new wife lived. Predictably I ended up in secondary checks, they were fine and I moved on. I've had the same half a dozen times when traveling for funerals, weddings or just holidays. My wife was also interrogated by British immigration for two hours before we got married. Again they want proof that you're up to no harm and it's your job to do that.

A former colleague of mine tried to get his American girlfriend to the UK and they had massively different stories when she arrived. She got a 1-month holiday visa and a severe threat that both (he was a US citizen) would be deported if she overstayed by even a single day.

The onus is on the person crossing the border to know what they're doing. There's plenty of info, particularly on going to the US and no excuse not to prepare, especially if you're going for work not a holiday.

Some of those seem to be people who damaged their kindles then got upset that Amazon wouldn't replace them for free? Do they have the same approach if they crash their cars I wonder...

Very sad to hear this. Despite working in the industry for some time (and therefore being able to have free quality hosting) I have paid for Site5 hosting for some time now. That's a mark of their service.

Deepest sympathies to his family, friends and colleagues

There's some good advice on the reddit thread and some poor. Making a counter offer to the company could be construed as intent to make a buck on the sale and end up muddying the water and causing him problems. Best thing in these cases is to refuse offers.

Can't decide if the writer is trolling for traffic or not. It's clear SOME programmers should take an interest given the number of awful GUIs we see on desktop, web and mobile apps but not all "programmers" need to have anything to do with an interface so, as yinrunning said, training to understand design would just dilute their ability to learn what they need to know.

As a professional developer I enjoyed the front-end stuff for a while but quickly learned I preferred providing a framework for the more visual people and get on with the back-end stuff which I guess Wade considers maths.

So, as a question to anyone; what do we think about designers who have no ability to code or, even worse, ability to design with sympathy for the technology they're using?

Like lots of others, I can help with hosting (work at a big hoster). Ping me a message if I can assist

But Google do allow an opt-out and follows what AT consider outdated methods of data protection. Doesn't seem that AT is the same.