jhchen

Don't forget Stanford: http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx. Their intro to programming courses are some of the best.

In general the offer seems low compared to offers I have seen though perhaps they are expecting you to counter. Good engineers are incredibly scarce in the valley and if you are good, you will almost certainly get a strictly better deal from other startups.

One publicly accessible data point is RethinkDB: http://web.archive.org/web/20100410043940/http://rethinkdb.c.... They are working on a very sexy systems problem (my concentration in CS is Systems and have no affiliation with RethinkDB) and they have a great team of investors (YCombinator, Andreessen-Horowitz).

Make sure the one founder is actually technical and didn't just build a bunch of simple iPhone apps. Ask yourself would you consider this guy/girl an equal on technical ability? 3 non-technical founders is a huge red flag unless they are in a very unique market. Also presenting the equity as a percentage of the options pool versus the entire company is fishy. What you care about is the latter and this makes it seem like they are trying to sell you rather than help you figure out what's best for you.

If you want to plunge into startups, absolutely apply to others. At the very least you'll have some negotiating leverage but I think you might find there are much better offers out there.

Code is now on Github: https://github.com/jhchen/Search-Engine-Blacklist. I'll be working on implementing the changes you all have suggested but feel free to message me if you want to join in!

Thanks I'll be adding it to Github later today as soon as the code is in presentable form ;)

If this gets upvoted enough I will build a browser plugin that does this.

But you're talking about defending against brute force attacks? Salting's strength is in defending against rainbow tables. It seems the best policy at this point is to use both as they defend against different things and are not mutually exclusive.

In Gawker's case this is exactly right. The database AND the source code was accessed so the config file defense would not have worked.

One concern is if neighboring states differed too much there would be incentive to exploit the system. We already see issues with purchasing cigarettes in low tax states and smuggling and selling them in higher tax states. States would effectively be have to have the same system its most permissive neighbor does since geography makes it so easy for illicit enterprisers to smuggle in those benefits.

Possible solutions are to coordinate neighboring state activities or to increase enforcement but each of those has its own set of problems.

What about living in a country that took the "wrong" approach?

The good news is there's plenty of good choices. There are many that do the job well enough that preference in the end is either personal or just what we happened to have the most experience with. Redmine, JIRA, Bugzilla and Trac are just a few popular ones I'd recommend checking out. All are free except JIRA costs $10 (one time) that they donate to charity.

Is there a way I can just waive my ability to sue? I would love to know my weaknesses in the eyes of others.

I don't think the point is risking life is bad in all cases. It depends on the possible gain. A simple example is a lot of people consider freedom something worth dying for.

But what is the gain here of climbing Everest after it has been climbed hundreds of times? Astronauts clearly benefit humanity with more than just great stories. I can't see much marginal benefit for society for each additional Everest climber.

I'm not saying it's wrong or selfish to continue to climb Everest. For the climber him/herself I imagine the benefits are enormous and perhaps worth the risk of life. But I just can't see much benefit for anyone else.