Hacker News Reader

ctideon Developer open-sources 200+ hr project after client refuses to pay

Future clients who have no intention of paying will probably be discouraged by this behavior.

ctideon How much money should my company raise?

That 80k was over 18 months, and you're not including social security tax (which is another 10%) plus a computer, etc. 60-65k / year engineers will affect your burn WAY more than 80k over 18 months.

ctideon How much money should my company raise?

Budget at least $80k/employee in payroll, benefits, insurance, and misc costs. (you'll have to budget more if you plan on hiring more experienced talent)

Competent engineers are willing to get hired for what amounts to ~35k / year?

.... What?

ctideon Google releases Games for Google+

Do you auto follow every spambot that follows you on twitter?

ctideon Why We Threw out All Our Code (And Why You Should Too)

Very important clarification, you are quite correct.

ctideon Why We Threw out All Our Code (And Why You Should Too)

Egotistical engineers always think this time things will be different, because they're smart enough to do it right. The reality is that every rewrite brings a new and different set of problems that need to be addressed. You don't escape problems by scrapping it all and starting over and this is one of the most valuable lessons to learn as an engineer.

ctideon Why We Threw out All Our Code (And Why You Should Too)

3. Sunk costs and egos get in the way of good software

Egos are what drive people to throw away their entire codebase and start over.

ctideon [dead]

That doesn't change the fact that you bombard every post in any way related to nodejitsu with angry comments.

I get that you have some serious personal vendetta against them, but if you aren't going to add any value, save it for your blog.

ctideon Why Zynga Is Leaving Money On The Table

Has everyone already forgotten the recent implosion of poker? I'm sure smaller companies can get away with this by flying under the radar, but should the biggest player in the game go down this road it'd be a short lived trip.

ctideon I Broke Justin.tv

The only time tests aren't the right thing to do is when you can guarantee that you will completely trash that system at some point and that code is never going to see the light of a production machine. Most code gets refactored out of it's initial state, and that's where your tests offer huge benefits. I can say that I didn't truly appreciate the full value of tests until the first time I had to do a massive refactoring of a well tested app.

Being able to change core fundamental components of a system and trust that everything will Just Work™ when you're done is an awesome feeling.

ctideon Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

It's obviously not an ideal situation, but I'm just pointing out (like the person I originally replied to who suggested a business connection [which is more expensive and slower]) that there are ways to work around these restrictions.

ctideon Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

Does it matter if they don't? I'm sure you can find clauses in most ISP contracts that enable them to terminate you more or less at will, it doesn't matter much if they don't enforce them.

ctideon Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

Or just pay for one of the higher speed options. I've gone over the bandwidth cap without fail every month, and they don't care since I pay for the higher speed option (previously the 50Mbit line, now the 105.)

ctideon Electronic Arts to Acquire PopCap Games for $750 Million

Apples to oranges. Treyarch at the time was little more than a studio that handled farmed out jobs to translate existing games to other consoles. I don't think they made any original games other than Die by the Sword at the time of acquisition. Compare that to Popcap, who released multiple innovative and original games across a wide variety of platforms. Just because Treyarch is now busy cranking out Call of Duties doesn't mean that the team that was acquired was anywhere near the level of Popcap.

ctideon Own Your Identity

I still have a hotmail account that I check periodically, and while it may be ok in IE, it's a terrible experience in Chrome. All the AJAX interface is really slow to the point where you can easily end up deleting messages that aren't even the message that you're currently viewing. I have no idea how it is in Firefox, but, I don't care enough about my Hotmail account to bother using a different browser for it.

ctideon Show HN: Mammoth - A Chrome extension that checks for +1 installations

What's the point of this? I don't understand, why would I ever want a notification in the address bar that a G+1 link exists on the page?

ctideon Ex-Wave, Ex-Plus engineer on Google Plus

You're right, javascript should be required to browse the web, not just a blog entry.

ctideon Anyone working at Facebook: what happening at Facebook on Google+?

"Yes, we've had our stumbles with privacy, but will Google be any better? Any legitimate complaints that I've heard are either something we're resolving or is an inherent problem that any social networking site will face."

I would argue that Google will be better because it's clear they've made privacy the most important part of their offering. By making circles one of the topmost items, they take something that most people don't even know Facebook can do (post statuses to specific groups of people) and make it the standard method of sharing. While it certainly can be overcome with UI, it would require some massive changes to Facebook to make it anywhere near as prominent as it is with G+.

ctideon EA forces password reset but tokens don't expire after use.

Yeah, I ran into the same thing. There was no way to force it to no longer be valid, even creating a new forgot PW request left the old link active.

ctideon Skype’s Worthless Employee Stock Option Plan: Here’s Why They Did It

Why even have a vesting structure in this case? Why not just vest all shares on day 1 with the expectation that the company will just take them all back if you quit?

Is the vesting structure strictly in place to disguise the fact that the company plans on buying back all shares in the case of you quitting anyways?

ctideon Thousands of EVE online players riot over microtransactions

That doesn't work when most hardcore Eve players aren't paying for it in cash, they pay for their subscription with in game currency.

ctideon Facebook autobot going berserker

We hope to help solve at least the backup component of this at: http://lockerproject.org/. This just helps reinforce, in our eyes, that we need to push hard to get this in front of people as soon as possible.

ctideon Please, make yourself uncomfortable

Sure, the point is that either way (either by compulsively buying things, or needing to purge down to the absolute bare necessities) you're allowing consumer goods to control you. Those of us who don't feel consumed by goods would gain nothing by purging of everything. I own all the things that the OP purged off in his need to cleanse, but, none of those ever get in the way of me going out.

My point is simply this: I read things like this all the time, and it makes me very happy that I don't feel compelled to control my belongings to be able to live a happy life.

ctideon Please, make yourself uncomfortable

Articles like this make me really happy I am who I am. The fact that you need to sell most of your belongings and turn your apartment into a barren wasteland to be happy is no better than feeling like you need to buy things to be happy.

ctideon Dropbox Cofounder & CTO Arash Ferdowsi responds to yesterday's bug

I don't understand why Drew doesn't either make these posts or find a PR person to filter Arash's comments through. Arash never comes off well in these blog posts or in his comments here surrounding these issues.

His comments always come off feeling like 'sorry bros, it's really not that bad, and we fixed it so no problemo' unlike Drew's comments which generally have a much more personal feel to them.

ctideon Troubled Startup Color Loses Cofounder Peter Pham

And Color costs the same amount as Facebook.

ctideon Troubled Startup Color Loses Cofounder Peter Pham

Are you paying for Facebook now? How is that even relevant?

ctideon Computer compromise leads to theft of bitcoins valued at $500,000 USD

No? I'd say a high of $24 and a low of $16.10 over the last 48 hours most assuredly qualifies as 'fluctuating like crazy.'

ctideon The one slide your startup should never have in its deck.

Considering that slide could be used verbatim in a Turntable.fm deck (which, btw, is an absolutely amazing product) I'd argue that this is post is doing it wrong.

EDIT: After looking at the actual presentation, http://www.slideshare.net/vgvikas/musicwalla-business-pitch-..., this literally mirrors the idea behind Turntable.fm. It provides all those features (plus others not included in the slide) and is both awesome and innovative. I get the general gist of the advice being given, but the example is horrendous.

ctideon 1Gbps fiber for $70—in America? Yup.

Well, then they clearly have better support than service. The one apartment I've lived in that wasn't Comcast wired I suffered through a year of miserable latency, packet loss, and unimpressive speeds via Sonic DSL. Personally, I'll trade shit support for a decent connection any day.