nothacker

Another more fatalistic way of looking at it is that if IIT is the top of the game in the area, then even if their startup projects suck, that is the best that could be done in the area, and may be good enough to sell to the public. Now you could argue that this is not the case, because someone from S.F. in the U.S. could have a SAAS app that Indians use instead, but will that app be in Hindi? I think there is opportunity and applaud the OP's efforts.

"How are you doing?" is the least of my worries. For the past several years when a friend or family member asks "How is your job?", I answer honestly, sometimes slightly sugar coated if I'm feeling positive that day, and always feel like I've just had an unpleasant bowel movement. But, what I've come to realize is that I am the problem. I chose this path. When I've had problems at a job, it is a result of not leaving it and making the choice to take it in the first place. Now, many of the details you don't learn until after you take it, but I would have had the same general idea what it would have been like had I taken the time to really think about it. I look forward to a time when I can find something that I'm great at, that I love doing, and I love how and where I do it. But, despite all the books I read and positive things said on HN and elsewhere- I haven't found it yet, and really I would love to give up feeling shitty because I can't find it. So, while I'm still honest that things aren't perfect, it mights me realize each time I say what is going on that I have more work to do to set things right, and I just don't know exactly how to do that. For entrepreneurs and freelancers, most of the problems are inevitable, but there is a lot of help out there for you if you look. For those of us with regular jobs, no one will hold our hands to find answers.

I have some open source projects that I've released on multiple occasions without having tested them. I think people make the assumption that things that have adequate documentation and comments/support tickets, etc. that indicate use, that they are tested before release. That is simply untrue. You get what you get. That is true in the world of both paid and unpaid open-source and closed-source software and well as life in-general.

Something that helps in this regard is travis-ci. It's a free CI server and if you have at least some level of testing, you have some level of confidence.

Redundancy wasn't the problem I saw last night. What I saw, at least with Heroku, is that when I checked, the main Heroku site was down and displaying things like nginx errors. That to me is unacceptable for an operation such as theirs. Even if all hell is breaking loose, you don't only keep your status page up for all to see, you have a pretty damn good message up that the main page resolves to. I'm not saying they screwed the pooch entirely as I'm sure they were busy, but, damn it, even Amazon is going to go down sometimes. Screw redundancy if you can't even serve a webpage to inspire confidence that you are working on it. I'm sorry I'm picking on Heroku specifically, because I'd be really f'n surprised if a lot of you weren't in the same boat. You need to have the main page served when that happens, even just a static page that inspires confidence or direct to the blog and provide updates there.

This all sounds very Hatfield/McCoy to me. Whether or not libav is a PITA/POS, I don't know, but of the two, I had only heard of and used ffmpeg until now. That said, I really don't give a crap how either of them operate, and neither should anyone else but the maintainers. This reminds me so much of the volunteer work that happens at our school. So many personalities involved and people get so upset because they've poured their heart and soul into it. You don't find that as often on the business/corporate side of things. Even though real money is on the line there, it is just a job. I think the same thing applies here. These people are getting so upset, but I doubt they realize that 95-98% of users don't give a crap. We are just glad that you are providing great libraries and utilities. So... take a chill pill and get over it. And thanks for your work.

Don't stop with this post. I think the girl with blog of the school lunches in Scotland showed a modern method to solve any similar customer service issue. Start a blog and continually update it with whatever your issue is in a factual non-opinionated way. Wait for them to try to shut you down, then go to the media and social avenues so that it becomes hot topic, and they'll fix it. Then they may screw you again and you'll have to go to the media again and then they'll fix it again. Perfect solution.

I think when they talk about Apple as an innovator they mean innovative design. I agree that they haven't so much introduced products that changed the world because they were scratching an itch that hadn't previously been scratched- they just provide a much more stylish and cooler way to scratch the itch.

Even though this is incorrect, I agree that this seems to totally violate the spirit of GPL which is meant to be used with free software. It's one thing to open source your code and have people donate to get support and fund development. It's quite another to charge for binaries. Others can just redistribute your binaries instead of you, so what is the point? Also, you are open sourcing and GPL'ing it, and yet you won't follow through and actually provide the built code- that's just shooting yourself in both feet. But, you have to appreciate the fact that he did open source it and that he is trying to make money off of it.

I'm not sure who came up with the "should have 45db of background noise", but I worked in an environment like that for years and never liked it. Others I worked with felt the same way, and some dismantled them. I don't like audible distractions, but I think reducing them is better than trying to cover them up with even more noise, unless you are sleeping. If you do use noise, I think natural running water or a fan is better than digital.

Office? Do you work at Microsoft? Most of us just have cubes. Thanks for the suggestions though. I've worked in a place that had white noise generators. Really awful, imo. Much better to have silence.

Ah- I thought this was the same Arun Gupta that does Glassfish at Oracle, but this is the YC Arun Gupta. Seems like a middle initial or nickname might help.

At first I thought- wow. I really shouldn't overclock.

But, then I realized the findings were biased. The major players, HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, etc. obviously have more lobbying power. Two things stood out specifically:

1. The mention of OEM vs. white box. That is to reduce sales at Newegg, Tiger/CompUSA, the myriad of mom and pop stores, etc. only. No good comes of that. If you really were trying to do good, you've provide the most reliable and least reliable component types/manufacturers, although I know they would never do that, as they piss off everyone but the guys that came in #1.

2. There should be enough data on SSDs now to see some trends in reliability, even if the numbers are small and the variability is much higher. I assume that this was left out because the major players want to switch to SSDs because they provide a much snappier experience, but the context of the study was reliability, and there are a few scary things about SSDs in terms of reliability: the first is that when they die, they die hard right away with little warning, and because of that, the life is shortened; the big players hope this issue will resolve itself over time and in the meantime they'll just cater to the upscale market that buy computers more often and might not notice the reliability as much. Despite this, I still love SSDs and will continue to buy them, but it should be reported.

Really great post. The only thing I was expecting that wasn't there was something about having to be the janitor when it came to cleaning up other messes, like having to let people go, and then having to keep yourself from getting jaded and not taking firing someone seriously enough later.

Awesome post, but I'd like to see the backing data.

I'm a conservative and have spent a good amount of time here and have been vocal periodically. I know how unwelcome my views are but that doesn't stop me usually, although I don't speak up nearly as much as I did for a while. And it's not just conservative views. Basically if your views don't match with the majority of urban, liberal, Apple-evangelizing, Silicon Valley, entrepreneur/MBA/developer elites, then you will be put in your place. It's too bad really, because so many here that don't share those opinions stay quiet. It is quite a bubble.

But back to the site at hand, I think it is a neat idea, but I don't have time to text with people I don't know about politics, because I work, have a family, and am old enough not to waste much time on politics. I wasted many hours of my life trying to convince others about the perils of fiscal liberalism, and the best I was ever able to do is to point people to the Peter G. Peterson foundation: http://www.pgpf.org/Issues.aspx