jsprinkles

I've identified several technical problems with this domain, and this isn't an example of how to properly operate DNS. 37signals is setting an absurdly low TTL on these records (10 minutes; the answers never change, I absolutely do not understand the logic behind this TTL), which means every 10 minutes you're re-resolving a local address, through a CNAME (so two DNS round trips, and in my case this resolution took between 115ms and 230ms, not small change):

    [~]$ dig foo.169.254.84.1.xip.io
    foo.169.254.84.1.xip.io.	600	IN	CNAME	foo.daze1.xip.io.
    foo.daze1.xip.io.		600	IN	A	169.254.84.1

Concerningly, ns-1.xip.io is also broken; it does not serve NS records for its own zone, instead relying upon the SOA record and the upstream glue, which I'm shocked works:

    [~]$ dig +short NS xip.io
    [~]$ 

The nameserver delegation from nic.io is also broken:

    xip.io.			86400	IN	NS	ns-1.xip.io.
    xip.io.			86400	IN	NS	ns6.gandi.net.
    ;; Received 86 bytes from 2001:678:5::1#53(b.nic.io) in 60 ms

Oh, well that's interesting, Gandi is a backup for their custom daemon, eh? So did they implement AXFR, IXFR, and notify and such to Gandi? Well, let's ask Gandi:

    [~]$ dig @ns6.gandi.net. SOA xip.io
    ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: REFUSED, id: 3222

Oh, guess not. The long and short of this is for DNS purposes, a custom daemon is almost never the answer. This could have been accomplished with BIND fairly easily, and the zone would be functional as well.

A) My comment was very specifically focused on you, acting as a solo developer/founder, not a person you'd hire.

B) A multihomed setup is not a black box of mystery, and is nowhere near as expensive as people are saying from the hip.

That's not an isolated occurrence. Most Web projects get it all the time from randoms, sometimes completely unaffiliated with the site in question.

At this point HBO is a favor for the cable company, not vice versa. Comcast's business would plummet if Comcast suddenly no longer had HBO, and Comcast probably knows it.

That isn't how your comment reads, particularly taking into account the second sentence.

Having administered several "standard uplinks" from 100 Mbit/sec all the way to multiple ten Gbit/sec links, I can safely say that if your transit isn't 99.999%, you need new transit.

I learned from trial and error and also on the job. In my experience, how-tos are typically antiquated or not terribly clear. My best advice would be to dig into ServerFault and Google what you don't understand.

He implied that Heroku is not his sole provider. I'm skeptical of that figure, too, as it's probably something on the Heroku sales site (99.7% to the 30-byte health check!), or it's manually updated, in which case it's probably rounded.

I think before you put an app on the public Internet for people to consume, you should be comfortable with everything you listed plus more. You might not be doing it for the app at hand, but you should know it at least. Especially if you're doing a solo founder thing, you might be having to implement all of these things before you can afford ops. If you're deploying services without some of the knowledge in your list, too, you're setting yourself up for trouble.

It's not an insurmountable barrier, for sure. Knowing how to operate your own code is a great feeling.

If you are running an app that is utilized by more people than just yourself, there is never "a lack of dedicated operations staff". That situation simply does not exist in any known realm. In the case of a solo developer, you are the operations staff. You are on call, 24x7.

With that in mind, everything I talk about in my reply is doable by one person, or a solo developer. A cursory understanding of administration goes far, and if you're deploying to Heroku, you should know enough about administration to not be completely in the dark when things fall apart.

Deploying a mass-consumable Web service implies that you have accepted the fact that you are now a developer and administrator.

That's exactly why you don't want to use those features, for what it's worth.

I'm sorry, but that's completely untrue. I can't speak for using Heroku specifically, but in the end hosting is just running an app. It's fairly trivial to make an app multi-provider these days through a plethora of methods. DNS and a low TTL is on the easiest-to-approach end if your app is designed for it and aware of the complications, which implies thinking about your database and other supporting architecture from the perspective of a multihomed setup. If your app isn't idempotent nor designed to be multihomed, it'll be harder, but six figures of investment is insanely high even in that awful case.

Perspective: I could throw an app on Rackspace and Amazon, with a replicated database, for under $200, in about a day.

You're assuming, incorrectly, that cable would dump them as soon as they offered a Web option.

Google could store passwords in plain text if they want, because they're never going to leak. I'm only partially joking.

Not working at a startup is a waste of human potential? You're going to have to elaborate on that, as that's extraordinarily disrespectful to pretty much everybody else in computing.

"Other people in my class aren't doing what I want to do, and this saddens me."

Startups aren't the One True Path of computing, and some people appreciate clocking out at a consistent time every day (or have an eye on a family, or whatever); the Silicon Valley life is not for everyone, and being saddened by other people not choosing your lifestyle is just silly. Why does this matter to you?

It was gone last night, before the LinkedIn news. I know because my session happened to expire and I noticed. At least 12 hours ago, possibly more.

The problem with voting with your wallet is that you and your friends are usually the only ones doing it. Feel free to vote with your wallet, but unless you have the momentum to overpower everybody else who consumes the show and doesn't care, it's not even going to bother HBO. Unfortunately, standing upon principle and not participating in HBO's distribution just ends up costing you some good entertainment, just as with taking a stand against DRM. Very noble efforts, which I used to be involved with, but ultimately there's just too much good stuff out there for me to keep letting it pass by. I guess I'm just unprincipled.

I respect Top Gear a lot, and Jeremy Clarkson was on 60 Minutes last year. I'm paraphrasing, but he said something similar to "if we paid attention to everybody that got offended, we'd make a bland show". I'm sure HBO is completely aware that you are offended by their distribution model. I'm also sure that for them to continue being as successful as they are, they simply cannot care. There's a lesson in that for entrepreneurs.

I still wish DRM wasn't a thing, but I enjoy the pants off of TF2 and most Steam games. I think you can be both, and it's not a binary world view.

I'm amazed Cloudflare got a response from Google that quickly. I'm a paying Apps customer and I don't see responses for 24 to 48 hours on security incidents, not to mention that Google doesn't have a stellar reputation when it comes to things like "support".

Goes to show, it's always who you know (or it's bullshit, which is less likely). Or I don't have enough users.

Having used both, Ardour has a long way to go before it's remotely close to Pro Tools, even SE.

I think you might see interest in the platform develop if there weren't dozens of distributions to worry about. The distributions hamper Linux development, because you have dozens of different variants to try on, all with different versions of things and different bugs. As another commenter said, I bet you could get something Pro Tools quality if there was a consistent Linux-based desktop, not four or five frontrunners all doing GNOME differently.

> I think you should throw away all your legal rights to a trademark if retaining those rights means you have to be a bad person.

That's noble, but bad for business. When you have to make a tough call like this at the helm of your own company, if you come from the heart (like that attitude), you're going to lose. It's unfortunate that the world has developed the way it has, but it's also just about impossible for a tactical shift at this point: heart has no place in business, and those who can successfully use their heart in business had to be very, very careful in how they did so. And they weren't always the cleanest, either.

I appreciate your honesty and your position here, but "that just isn't the way business works". You'll get taken advantage of, thinking like that, because not everybody has the same heart you do. Sucks, but is.

> Every single one of your replies: calls me names, insults me

Oh, my God! You're right! It's almost like I'm reacting to the tone of conversation that you set by calling me names, or something else equally logical!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4056813

> A half a dozen people have asked you for an explanation and you refuse to even elaborate.

And, half a dozen people have gotten replies explaining that I am not legally permitted -- as in, I'll be held in contempt and go to jail if I do -- to elaborate on the firsthand knowledge I have regarding a similar situation. I've seen it happen personally, I advise against it as a result, I'm sorry, I can't elaborate further. The end. The irony here is that I went after tptacek for this a few days ago and now I'm in a similar situation myself.

I know what I'm talking about. I can't provide evidence to you, and I don't care if you believe me or not, but I will still share my opinion that it's legally questionable territory.

> I just don't understand where you're coming from on this topic and it's clear that many others don't either.

The several people and lawyer who agreed with my position make perfectly valid explanations that I did not think of, and not a single soul replied to them, but everybody's happy to pile on jsprinkles because his tone isn't perfect. Don't come back high and mighty about discourse when you started this conversation with three annoying, smarmy comments. Go fuck a rake.

Please, I'm begging you, bring back the Bitcoin remark so I can laugh at it again. And, keep deleting the comments that I'm referring to to undermine my position. Don't worry. I remember.

You came to me, bud.

Can you edit that comment any more? I liked the fuller, more stupid one better wherein you claim I'm mad at you for something you said in a Bitcoin thread, like I'm a high school sophomore or something that holds a grudge. No, you're just ignorant, and I've noticed because I pay attention.

Oh look, a completely new paragraph kissing pg's ass! Rewrite your comment again, this is fun to watch.

> When it's followed by an immediate run to the admin for a ban seems childish to me.

Pause. Time out.

Now you're just being intentionally disingenuous, like many that have come before you. I did not come here to ask pg to ban him. I came here to ask for a guideline to be added advising against giving and receiving legal advice on Hacker News, as if you are not careful it can be disastrous. Without the guideline, it's just jackass me in a thread going "hey, that's a bad idea, don't do that," but people in general seem to pay attention to guidelines.

Since you've been around the block of Hacker News a few times, you and I both know what a guideline is. Stop acting like I'm doing something I'm not.

I read the comment threads and observe patterns. You are generally an obnoxious troll, enough that I recognize your name. Like I recognize tptacek as a security expert. You, in my mind, are burned in as "obnoxious troll". Other names are burned in as permanent no-hires, never-do-business. That list grows pretty quickly. I have a good memory for obnoxious or blatantly stupid people, so you've stuck.

I didn't skim your comment history, I read the God damned thread yesterday. I should have known you'd show up and want a spoonful of this delicious troll soup, hours after the fact, while saying absolutely nothing of contributing value that other people haven't said already.

The complete irony of this is that the abuse I'm getting for "running to mommy" (I'm sure Paul Graham would really appreciate your minimization) is not what I expected for trying to help people not get in legal trouble, and that you can't see that just means: you are a troll.

I gave up this topic several hours ago, and you are just now commenting to scold me for it, and following me around to do so. For someone who self-describes as "not a troll," you sure work hard to look like one, based on observing you for several months. Even pg had to tell you to shut up the other day.

Go away and let this issue lie.

"Hey, Steve. It's John at Cisco. We know you don't like the name iPhone OS since you have iPads now, and we really appreciate the prior settlement with you regarding the mark iPhone.

"I know you want to use the name iOS, and to ensure that we can defend our mark in court in the future, we need you to license the mark IOS from us for $1." Who wouldn't take that? Do you really think a successful business can be run while valuing your marks at a dollar? It's business.

In general, if you have a trademark and do not defend it, your lack of defending can be used against you later.

If you look at the permalink for the "YC table," that's old news.

I apologize for insulting you. That wasn't my intention, and I do see now how it can be interpreted that way.

Not all legal liabilities arise from crimes.