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ozon Productizing A Freelancing / Consulting Business

>This is worth far more than the $100/month you said you wanted to pay me. ;-)

I'm quite sure Patrick and a host of others would willingly pay you the $100, and shout the name 'Tarsnap' from the roofs. Seriously, you're a world-class mathematician; do the math and raise your prices.

Take. The. Money.

Sincerely,

Someone who wishes he could dream about winning the Putnam ;)

ozon Ask HN: Which Domain Registrar Do You Use?

Another vote for NameCheap. Also, search for the monthly coupons.

ozon Official statement from WikiLeaks regarding Edward Snowden's exit from Hong Kong

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1267261/snowden-l...

ozon A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

Any stories you can share? I'd love to hear more.

ozon The oldest "0" in India for which one can assign a definite date

I can't speak for math, but I know that a few centuries ago, certain musical notes were regarded as 'The Devil's Music':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone#Historical_uses http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4952646.stm

ozon Ask HN: How can you monetize a VBA excel ribbon?

Seconded. I used to be a sysadmin in one of the Big-4. They had custom MS Office Plugins for accounting, wordprocessing and presentations (usually branding-related)

It might be difficult to sell to them though, as those machines are locked down tight and the accountants can install nothing without IT intervention. IT is usually controlled by a central group that runs IT for everyone (as in, all the member countries), so it's gonna be difficult to get an exception for your product, as they have internal tools developed that fit in with their other custom Audit Workflow Applications.

So avoid Big 4, but try selling to 'average accountants' as endersshadow says, who might work in a less locked-down environment.

ozon Ask HN: Why are many software engineers on a "later" schedule?

HN user 'Swizec' actually wrote a small ebook on this, called 'Why programmers work at night":

http://swizec.com/blog/why-programmers-work-at-night/swizec/...

https://leanpub.com/nightowls

ozon Flickr gets new UI, new Android app, 1 TB free space

Never knew Google Calculator could be used like that. Thanks.

ozon Why I left Heroku, and notes on my new AWS setup

For EC2 security groups you have to open access to both the correct ports and protocols. Ports are a concept at layer 4 of the OSI model, while ping, or more correctly 'ICMP Echo Request', is lower down the TCP/IP stack at layer 3. So when configuring the security group, look for the option to choose Protocols, then enable ICMP :)

ozon In Hours, Thieves Took $45 Million in A.T.M. Scheme

Here in Jamaica, it's stripe and PIN for debit cards at ATMs and POSs, and stripe and signature for credit cards at POSs.

ozon Founders: Don't Forget to Sell The Dream

I've spoken with MOC over private channels, and he's * stunningly* helpful.

ozon I Knew a Programmer Who Went Completely Insane

I, for one, would love to hear the stories.

ozon Ask HN: Any advice for someone getting out of prison after 18 years?

Firstly, thank you for your humanity.

There's a guy on Quora named Michael Santos that spent 25 years in prison for drug dealing. He was released last August. While incarcerated, he got his degree, got married, and wrote a book. He has written extensively on the prison experience, and how one can come out on top. He's also quite willing to answer any questions:

http://www.quora.com/Michael-Santos-4

You may have to sign up to Quora to read his answers, but it's totally worth it, if just for his perspectives alone.

Once again, I salute you for what you're doing. I don't know if you've seen the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption', but there's something very "Andy Dufresne" about what you're doing. Through your humanity, you're giving this man dignity. Salaam.

ozon Anti-Apple Anger

>"Our technology choices reflect our values. People willing to yield some control to Apple for their needs are more likely to enjoy the benefits that Apple’s products bring by exerting that control. But people who don’t like being told what to do — people who believe they know what’s best for them, want full control over everything, and are willing to accept the resulting responsibilities — will be more comfortable with the alternatives."

This. A thousand times this.

Most people who know me consider me a rational guy. I'm the type that reads LessWrong, understands cognitive biases and knows who Kahneman & Tversky are.

But I find myself with a deep...dislike of Apple. I fully admit that their products are superb. I admire, and respect the fanaticism and detail that goes into their products. As someone who loves money, I respect a company that rose from the ashes to having 100+ billion dollars in the bank.

But the notion that some guy deep in the bowels of Cupertino knows what I want more than I do makes me recoil violently. I think it's the libertarian in me. I have an inherent distrust of, and contempt for institutions, particularly when they want to decide what's 'right' for me. And the, dare I say cultish (ate least to me) behaviour of many Macolytes only makes me more wary. It's like the recent article proclaiming Apples 'genius' in acquiring Bill Nguyen's team after the Color acquisition. It reminds me of the North Korea articles I've been reading today.

Note that you'll never see any posts on HN from me engaging in any flamewars about Apple, because as an individualist, I believe that my preferences are exactly that: my preferences. Others are allowed to have theirs. I do find the sycophancy by the usual suspects distasteful, though.

Kudos to Marco for a very insightful piece.

ozon Handling Growth with Postgres

I like how you phrase it: We need to give ourselves permission. I think that sometimes, we're afraid that someday "they" will discover the imperfections behind our code, infrastructure, etc. that lies beneath what we build. I suspect that ofttimes, the 'they' is really ourselves.

A shame, really: The very thing that drives us to be the best ends up holding us back.

ozon Handling Growth with Postgres

On a somewhat meta note:

>Over the last two and a half years, we’ve picked up a few tips and tools about scaling Postgres that we wanted to share—things we wish we knew when we first launched Instagram.

A common failure mode for myself and, I suspect, others, is thinking that we have to know every single thing before we start. Good old geek perfectionism of wanting an ideal, elegant setup. A sort of Platonic Ideal, if you will.

These guys went on to build one of the hottest web properties on earth, and they didn't get it all right up front.

If you're postponing something because you think you need to master all the intricacies of EC2, Postgres, Rails or $Technology_Name, pay close attention to this example. While they were launching growing, and being acquired for a cool billion, were you agonizing over the perfect hba.conf?

More a note to myself than anything else :)

ozon How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for creationists

>but I think if most of the evolution-deniers truly understood the modern theory of evolution, and understood that it is separate from abiogenesis, I think they wouldn't have a problem with it.

I am the son of a fundamentalist minister. For a time, I was also a Christian. I'm now an atheist.

Take it from me: you're wrong. I've been there. There is literally nothing you can say to them. Their belief system is invested in it not being true. It's like the quote attributed to Upton Sinclair: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'

I once stood in my doorway and pitied Einstein et. al, smugly thinking that for all their "human wisdom", they weren't able to grasp these "universal truths of God as made manifest through creation." Me, who dropped high school physics. So you see, there's another element to the denial. It allows less intelligent people to think they have something over "these intellectuals."

ozon A tale of a 7 year journey in developing software for the enterprise

Thanks for a though-out comment. I particularly agree with your conclusion:

>after dealing with senior business execs for a long while, I feel IT-as-is is untenable. without a rethink, the abject hatred that many business people have towards IT will grow and rogue systems will flourish.

At one of my former jobs, the CEO hated IT, and didn't hesitate to let us know it, either. I was told through the grapevine that he felt it was the one area of the company he couldn't control.

Fantastic response, and I do defer to your more extensive experience :)

ozon A tale of a 7 year journey in developing software for the enterprise

You're quite right :)

ozon A tale of a 7 year journey in developing software for the enterprise

The incentive structure of an IT worker is similar to that of a government bureaucrat: When in doubt, ban.

Because the one time something happens, you're gonna hear that the systems were 'improperly secured.' Then they'll call in external auditors fresh out of school working from an over-photocopied checklist to tell you how incompetent you are.

Personally, I'm happy with trends like BYOD etc. If the CEO loses data because he wanted email on his iPad (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that), then IT won't be blamed for it.

ozon A tale of a 7 year journey in developing software for the enterprise

I'm a former Big-4 sysadmin. I wrote a comment sometime ago explaining things from 'our' side. I'll go see if I can dig it up.

Edit: Found it. A thread called "Why everyone hates the IT department." I'll copy and paste to save y'all the trouble.

-----------------------------------------

I was a sysadmin for a financial services firm, and then for a Big-4 accounting firm, so I may have some perspective:

1. "For starters, I was not allowed to use my own equipment. They rattled off some gibberish about security and support even though my mail client supports SMTP and I can read Office files just fine. Also, for an agency focused on security their insistence on using Windows XP was baffling."

The first rule of System Administration [0] is to start every host in a known state. The reason for this is predictability - as the sysadmin, you know what to expect - certain software is installed, certain settings are configured, etc. You simply CANNOT manage systems at scale without this approach. Without it, testing, upgrades etc. are a shots in the dark. Another issue is ownership. Let's say you get company email on your personal BlackBerry. You're mugged, and the device is stolen. A competent administrator will immediately issue a WIPE command from the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, so that all data is erased. But wait! Those picture of your daughter's recital were on the phone. They're gone, and you're gonna be pissed. With a company-owned device, the expectations are different.

A friend of mine once had to re-image the laptop of a senior executive. Turns out, the only pictures of her daughter's high-school graduation were on it. A year later, he's still having to feed her stories about ongoing efforts to retrieve the data...

Regarding Windows XP, OS upgrades are not to be done lightly. It requires very extensive regression testing for all Line-of-Business apps. Believe me, there isn't an IT guy there who doesn't want the upgrade to Win 7, but after a time in this business, you learn to tread carefully, as information systems can break in all sorts of subtle ways and management doesn't want to hear it.

2. "Secondly, I was told I could only use a certain browser because of another incoherent argument relying on "security." Interestingly, nothing was done to keep me from putting a pocket version of Firefox on a flash drive and connect to my own secure proxy. This is because the IT guys had no idea such wizardry was even possible."

Again, standards. When their enterprise web-based ERP system that's been tested in IE6 and works fine breaks when you're using Chrome 15.0.874.121 m, who's gonna get the call? Oh that's right. IT. Multiply that by a few hundred machines, and your network is unmanageable.

There exists technology to control USB drives, but in most organizations, it won't fly - they're simply too convenient. Besides, how do you expect the VP of Sales to load his iPod? Definitely shame on your IT guys for not blocking outbound connections to your own proxy at the firewall.

3. "Thirdly, for some reason print jobs were routed out of the office to a data center in San Angelo and then routed back to the printer down the hall. Printing a single page was non-deterministic and painful, never mind my final reports. This was a result of some state mandate about consolidating IT."

This sounds like the state's fault. They were probably sold a solution that promised centralized tracking / routing of print jobs, based on parameters such as job submitter, color vs monochrome, time of day, printer availability etc. Not IT's fault.

4. "And then there was the time I tried to install Notepad++ to do some minor dev work (they hired a CS undergrad to do financial work so I thought I'd do more than estimate results). 2 weeks later I was approved to use a similar text editor on the grounds that I already have a task bar to manage multiple documents - a tab bar is completely unnecessary and Notepad++ requires further scrutiny. 3 weeks later I had a Perl interpreter."

I was a sysadmin, and I had to get written and signed approval from my Manager, the Security Manager and the CIO to install any non-standard application. Pleasant? No. Necessary? Yes - everything needs to documented; otherwise these things spiral out of control quickly.

5. "At my current job they forced me to let them change the root password on my issued machine to something they knew and I didn't. I get why you do this: because you cannot fully trust people and I dealt with sensitive data; fine. Afterward I re-installed my OS and set my root password back. I don't understand why they don't think these things through."

Don't take this personally, but sysadmins hate people like you - you make unauthorized changes and make our lives difficult. Your IT guys sound incompetent though - why weren't BIOS passwords in place to prevent booting from CD? And since you say root password, sounds like you were in a UNIX / Linux shop. If you were in an AD environment, after reinstalling, you wouldn't have been able to join your computer to the domain without domain administrator credentials.

I understand that the situation sucks, but there are good (at least for a particular meaning of good) reasons why it is so. There is room for improvement on both sides. Whew. Felt good to get all that off my chest. No hard feelings?

[0] Tom Limoncelli - The Practice of System & Network Administration.

--------------------------------------------

To a comment he made further downthread:

"I can't imagine it would take more than a cursory look at Notepad++ to vet it."

This, right here, is the issue. You simply don't know what is involved. "I can't imagine why you need to draw blood to see if I have AIDS, Doctor."

The specific program is not the issue. IT in the enterprise is all about centralized/standardized management and configuration. Every deviation from the standard is gonna increase the burden of maintenance.

How it normally works is that there is a single base OS / apps specification, and defined optional applications. EVERYTHING is tested against these, and guaranteed to work. This allows deployment against a global fleet to go smoothly. It's all about known quantities, which allows them to quantify everything.

Please remember that no IT guy wakes up in the morning and says "Yay! How can I make gatlin's life suck today???" It's more like, "Oh shit, last months patches are not being installed on those PCs in accounting. I wonder if it's the SCCM [0] client?" You find out 8 hours later that there's a conflict between $NON-STANDARD APPLICATION and the SCCM client. Have fun scouring Technet and forums to find a solution. These are the things that fill us with dread.

I'm not saying it's right. Just want you to see the other side.

[0]- Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager

ozon How My Startup Got Robbed

Interesting. Got any citations? A LessWrong link will do :)

ozon No office, no boss, no boundaries – rise of the nomadic rich

Interesting read. I've been doing some reading on starting 2-sided marketplaces. Here are some resources you might find useful:

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/09/29/ubiquity-illusions-and-...

http://www.quora.com/Chicken-and-Egg-Problem-Social-Startups...

http://platformed.info/

Good luck!

ozon How My Startup Got Robbed

Indeed. In situations like these, there is an unconscious bias [0]toward believeing the person who first reported an incident.

[0] Do 'conscious' cognitive biases exist?

ozon How My Startup Got Robbed

"Lesson learned ? I don't know. Trust your gut ?"

The lesson to be learned is that the biggest predictor of what someone will do is what they have done.

This doesn't only apply when dealing with others, but also with yourself. I've gotten quite good at recognizing when I'm bullshitting myself about something that I will do, and often now find myself saying, "Yeah Oz, but that's what you said last time. What's different this time?" When I don't have a good answer, I know I need to take a different approach.

Sebastian Marshall (HN:lionhearted) said it best. "Track records don't lie."

ozon Ask HN: What Software Did You Pay For In 2012

Postbox: http://www.postbox-inc.com/ Postbox is a fantastic desktop email client, based on Thunderbird. It's primarily geared toward Gmail / Google Apps users. Paid $10.

Nirvana: https://www.nirvanahq.com/ Nirvana is a Getting-Things-Done Saas. $5/month

ozon Steve Ballmer fired Sinofsky, clearing the way for faster progress in mobile

"if we assume that Jobs, Ballmer, and Rubin are all lying through their teeth, why would we ever buy their products?"

Because the merits of a product have little or nothing to do with the public statements of their makers.

ozon Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

I had the same realization at about 23 (I'm 26 now). I'd like to talk. What's your email? It's not in your profile.

ozon How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience

Ahh, I see. Thanks.

ozon BlackBerry 10: Awesome

For what it's worth, I use Google Authenticator and Maps on my BlackBerry. Google pulled the Gmail app, but the native mail app supports Gmail quite well.