Gonna eat some tacos and celebrate this grand day from abroad.
There was a great article on setting up a market like that in the latest issue of 2600. It have a birds eye view of the technical, legal, and even physical challenges involved in setting up that kind of operation and it used some examples from the SR take down as well as the doxnet (?) take down on how to not fail like that.
It seems like a cool technical exercise but too much risk for me.
2015-06-28 at 9:36 AM UTC
in
Any wantreprenuers here?
Ha, that hits close to home. Paul Graham is a bit charming for anyone taking a look at bringing a product to the market, but it's easy to realize that what Paul Graham writes about it good for Paul Graham. It's great kool-aid but soon the artificial flavor starts to scratch at your throat.
Mind me asking about that hobby project? In my case I feel that doing something like this would realize a desire to produce something I am proud of, something that would genuinely solve someone's problems. I think Ive had bad luck as all the places Ive worked at pushed for tight deadlines and after a short while I began to hate my job because it put severe constraints on my work - I could never make something that I'm proud of, only things that looked nice but barely worked.
I feel that while programmers have no special access to market information, the sole skill or programming, of pushing information, transforming it, and pushing it further along is a skill that could apply to a wide range of situations - everything from the post office to banking to a lot of other things. When I think of companies like uber or airbnb, I see them as a service that increases information symmetry in the market, making it easier for people to act the nice little rational agents economics talks about.
It's funny that you mention "building the next big social network". One agency that I worked for had to build a social network for interior decorators. I had zero drive to make that a reality and quit soon.
2015-06-27 at 7:49 AM UTC
in
Any wantreprenuers here?
So how many of you dream of being an entrepreneur but then obediently slog to your day job?
I don't know when this bug bit me but it's been in the back of my head for quite some time now. Started off by reading blogs, then some ebooks that directly relate to my field (programming), and I've caught myself thinking that instead of reading shit I should actually go do shit.
One of my ideas depends on making programming-themed merchandise that geeks/hipsters would like to have on their desks. I have all the materials but I've been hesitating on starting out. Another idea is a community based lending service ie. lend out your power tools instead of having them lying around, lend out your furniture or cooking wares. I would use a service like that but it sounds like it'd have to be super strict geographically because who'd wanna rent a drill from some dude in a different country? Yet another idea revolves around creating an ebook that takes you from start to finish on creating a piece of software that would level up your skills, but I'd first have to learn and build that piece of software myself. My last idea was to check out if there's some brokerage opportunity on sites like fiverr. Maybe there's a class of services on there that could use a more customized portal?
Well, ideas are a dime a dozen. Gotta get off my ass and put some work into one of those or else I'll be stuck building someone else's dreams instead of my own.
2015-06-27 at 7:40 AM UTC
in
What are you reading?
The Stranger is on my list of books to read, but I keep putting it off because I don't feel any existential anguish no more.
§m£ÂgØL, how'd hitchhiking change your reception of On the Road?
I'm reading that new biography of Elon Musk to figure out what makes that guy tick and whether I should keep my hopes up of seeing Mars during my lifetime. I'm also reading some tool-specific technical books to prepare for my role at a new job. I wish I could read some abstract stuff like Knuth's algorithm books to get my coding standards up but I guess I should just code more.
2015-06-27 at 7:34 AM UTC
in
Share Yr Github
Hell naw, I aint sharing not github account on here you crazy ass old man. I don't really have any cool projects and it's been a while since I've committed to any cool open source projects.
It's also a graveyard of old projects or half-written projects that don't work anymore. Every once in a while I get an urge to groom my account, but nothing ever comes of it. God, I wish I was cool and had a cool project on there with like 10+ stars.
Bookmarked. I see some useful simulation tools for malware analysis and some fun wireless stuff on there. I've been meaning to read up and simulate a wifi mitm for a while now.
I would imagine something like this is toggeable or available as a plugin for vB? I believe Zoklet had this and it was pretty handy.
2015-06-25 at 8:02 AM UTC
in
Nice Job on the Site Lanny
Sounds pretty good. I was toying around with the idea of setting up a hidden service running no js - that would not only make things safer but also bring back the sweet web 1.0 days. On the other hand, it could attract some sick fucks.
I can't imagine what kind of illegal content people could post here, apart from stupid porn or something, but hopefully it won't come to that. A quick search based on the whois revealed you're a real estate agent in Texas.
Btw, if you ever need a pair of hands to help out on the backend side of things, lemme know.
2015-06-25 at 7:55 AM UTC
in
Do you enjoy your job?
Same as on redfern: Im a code monkey. Worked on web applications, full stack, but now Imma be working on infrastructure (logging, monitoring, provisioning, scaling, etc). Really excited about it because it's lower level stuff and it takes me away from managers/designers/ux'ers and other fucks. I liked it before and I can only imagine I'll like it even more now.
2015-06-25 at 7:32 AM UTC
in
Ideas for homebrew wines?
Plum wine. I've never made it, but I've drank it at a buncha asian places and it's amazing.
2015-06-24 at 6:37 PM UTC
in
Nice Job on the Site Lanny
Yep, nice job on getting it up so fast. Did you happen to have a vB license lying around?
Also, I've been thinking this over today - what are the safeguards against this place disappearing?
How's the site financially wise? It's probably cheap to run now and there's no point in thinking about future problems at the moment though.
What about hosting security and your own security? Looks like site's hosted by ramnode in the US and there's some other info. Are we ok in this department? There's no questionable content and I sure as hell hope we won't get any, but I'm a bit spooked by how the last 3 sites were shutdown.
