Just sent a message to my sales team that all Kuwait project bids need to take this into account. I will not force my team to accept projects that they are not comfortable taking. The Middle East has some friction for businesses but I imagine this will only add to the discussions.
I interned at HubSpot while Lyons was there. Theres some truth to this, but it's greatly exaggerated.
"Frat house": Like many companies, HubSpot often provided alcohol and would host parties for big events. As for personality types, the engineers I worked with were pretty typical engineer types.
"Kindergarden": HubSpot has a big intern/co-op program, and likes to hire former interns as full-time. I can imagine Lyons might feel a bit out of place with so many young people.
"Scientology": The company didn't feel much more cult-y than other young software companies. I'd describe the culture as "We work hard, build products customers love, and treat our employees well".
For what it's worth, I really enjoyed my time at HubSpot and have only good things to say about the people I worked with. However, I was an engineer, and can't speak to the marketing team that Lyons was a part of.
No, Lyons is drastically exaggerating and overstating. Perhaps that's what it was like at HubSpot, but I've worked for four different tech startups and only one of them has exhibited even an inkling of Lyons' description. Even there, I would never compare it to a frat house, kindergarten, or Scientology. More like management makes kool-aid and a handful of people think it's wine.
It varies. Some years back, I interviewed at a San Diego startup that was flying in a dozen people a week, with a $300 reward just for showing up, to go through a five-day interview process, at the end of which perhaps one or two would be offered the chance to work for them...for $50k a year. In San Diego.
Most of their employees lived together, 2-4 to an apartment, because they couldn't afford solo housing.
The CEO gave a speech on the first day where he explained that they paid poorly on purpose, because they wanted people who cared more about striving for excellence (or some such buzzword) than petty concerns like money or stability. And people ate it up.
So, yeah, some startups are totally run like ridiculous cults that prey on starry-eyed young tech grads. I'm sure there's many that are sane and reasonable, too. None of them have paid me to vacation in California, though.
It's like claiming that all large companies are uniformly Dilbert-like hellholes full of pointy-haired bosses and despair. The elements are there, a handful of examples are that bad, but it's broadly exaggerated to push a specific point or to signal.
I've interviewed at a couple like that, but never worked at one. They are present, but there isn't enough of any 'one kind of place' for any description to be representative.
As a current resident of Las Vegas, it is interesting to see articles like this written. We recycle 94% of the water that makes it to a drain[1]. In addition, recycled water accounts for 40% of our overall water usage[2].
However, I just broke a 3 year lease after 2 years because of both an in ground pool and very green lawn. Both contributing to a $300+/month water bill 5 months a year. The landlord could not get the HOA to approve landscape changes and the pool evaporated a thousand gallons a month. It is great there are laws for new houses, but there is still a challenge to change for homes built 20 years ago. Add in the electric bill for non-stop air conditioning in the summer months ...
No income tax in Nevada only goes so far. It will be interesting to see how much longer we can sustain our growing 2 million person population[3].
At least in California there are new state laws prohibiting HOAs and municipal governments from fining or otherwise preventing homeowners from conserving water. Sounds like Nevada needs to do the same.
In my city (in Australia) all pools are required to have a cover, and moost have roll-up ones that float on the surface. They're only a couple of hundred dollars but save heaps of water, and unlike the one above you can just reel it in and do a cannonball!
How common are roof-top solar panels over there? Seems to me like you'd have the optimal climate for solar (in germany you see solar panels on the roofs of detached houses all the time).
The problem is that when you're renting, your landlord has zero incentive to install panels on the house. You're the one paying the electric bill, after all.
If you own, however, you'd be crazy to have a south-or-west-facing roof in Las Vegas and not throw some panels on there.
Also live in Vegas and haven't heard of water bills that high! How frequent were you watering your yard? My total bill with in-ground pool never exceeds $30 / mo.
The HOA thing doesn't surprise me, but would be curious what area / specific HOA.
Your water bill seems high. You sure your pool and/or irrigation aren't just dumping into the ground? That's pretty common out here, things age quickly.
Count yourself lucky. In Alameda County I pay over $200 per month while using almost no water, and as for electricity I pay typically over $200 again, because I have to subsidize the people in Bakersfield who run their air conditioners all day long (and in fact the PUC has voted this year to raise my bill and lower theirs so that I subsidize their lifestyle choices even more). It sound like you're getting a really good deal in comparison.
Bullshit. The meter charge for a house in the ACWD is $20.77 / month, and the rate per hundred cubic feet (748 gallons) of water usage is $3.373. I use about 70 gallons per day, so please explain how you pay over $200 / month "while using almost no water."
Here (Spokane county, Washington state), certain towns use the water bill as a tax. I don't know GP's exact situation, but that's a possibility. A water bill in the city of Spokane, WA is often around $150/mo in the summer where outside the city it's around that much per year.
In California, where GGP lives, Proposition 218 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_218_(19...) requires voter approval for taxes on water, which effectively means that taxes on water don't exist, and Californians pay less for water than pretty much everybody else in the country.
Yes, but only until Microsoft issued a fix for any vulnerabilities discovered. After April 8th, no more fixes, just bugs that can be exploited forever.
Rumors have it that hackers are detecting and cataloging vulnerabilities that they're holding in reserve for the day Microsoft stops support for XP, after which they'll have a field day exploiting known vulnerabilities, secure in the knowledge that the errors will remain in place until the victims finally dump XP.
Not only that... The main concern is that since Vista/7/8 are derived from XP, they also share critical vulnerabilities hidden inside the core of the OS. If Microsoft stops publishing patches for XP, there is a non trivial risks that attackers will be able to look at a patch for a newer Windows version, reverse it and make an exploit that will work perfectly on XP, which won't get the security fix.
No they're not. Check the major version numbers. Windows 2000, 2003 and XP were build on version 5 of the NT kernel/architecture. Vista involved a major overhaul and was version 6. Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 are versions 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3, respectively.
You can't make blanket statements like that. It depends on where the vulnerability is.
For example, Vista has a substantially-rewritten networking stack. A networking exploit in Vista would not necessarily translate over to XP.
On the other hand, there's a lot of legacy code around in GDI+ for decoding graphics formats. A file format exploit would be highly likely to carry over to XP.
As much of an overhaul there may have been, it seems unlikely that NT 6.0 was started from scratch. Is there no chance vulnerable sections of the codebase carried over?
The version numbers don't indicated complete and utter uncommonality of the code base, they just indicate points of major revisions. XP and Vista/7/8 do still share a lot of common sub-systems, code, and designs, many vulnerabilities that will be discovered and patched in currently supported versions of windows will definitely apply to XP.
...or until someone else patches them; remember the WMF exploit at the end of '05? There was an "unofficial", but just as effective, patch released before Microsoft released theirs.
Don't be a hypocrite. Tracking is tracking is tracking and it's as wrong when you do it as it is for anybody else. Show your users some respect and value their privacy.
I know it's a stretch, but technically, you are opting in by downloading and running the program, and therefor accepting some sort of privacy policy or ToS.
Are any of us so self-important, that we think our usage stats for a text editor are some kind of top-secret data?
I mean, come on - it's a text editor - I edit my scratchpad and my coding projects on it.
If any of the stuff I had was that top-secret, I'd be doing it in a digital clean-room, with an airgap. And I'd actually have top-secret clearance.
How many of us here actually have top secret clearance? I'd bet very few...lol. And I doubt they'd be posting here, or admit it.
My list of text files I have open is quite frankly, is not that interesting. I don't really care if Google wants to mine it. Or if Github finds out I edit a document called "Lolcat images" fifteen times a day. I seriously doubt any Githubber is going to be sitting there, pouring through logs looking for salacious information about the documents I edit...
Some people with lives "not that interesting" don't want to give up their privacy. Some of us even understand that there is no such thing as "anonymous statistics".
It's not about a big government spying conspiracy. It's about basic privacy and not giving out data about yourself that you don't want to give out.
Hmm - but let's take your idea and think it through to it's completion.
It's fine to say, oh but the privacy! But that in itself isn't an argument. It's just an appeal to emotion, with no facts.
What do you think will happen if Github has usage data on how you use their text editor?
Or what do you think will happen if Google knows what websites you search for?
These aren't rhetorical questions - I'm actually curious what scenarios people actually think will play out.
I find it unlikely that Google/Github would publicly publish that information on their websites. I also find it unlikely that an individual person would ever view your data.
What other scenarios do you believe will happen?
Now, if the government were involved, that's a completely different kettle of fish.
I don't think you honestly want to know "what scenarios people actually think will play out" and that you question this way solely for the sake of argument. I think you have your mind made up and would rather snark at people that have an opposing opinion.
That being said, it's no stretch to understand that some people just don't want to volunteer personal information especially originating from software.
There are enormous trust implications with any sort of software that phones home for any reason. And if the software source code isn't publicly auditable it can be impossible to actually verify what information is being sent from your machine. I personally don't think it's possible to actually trust closed source software. I don't care that it's socially normal to ignore your personal computing privacy. I care about mine.
Well, no - you assuming it's rhetorical when I clearly stated it's not is snarky....
As I said, there were two scenarios that I outlined which were unlikely - Google/Github posting my text editor usage publicly on their website, linked to my name, and employees of those companies individually trawling through.
The scenario of them mining for trends in the data, in order to improve the software, I'm perfectly fine with.
The scenario of the government being involved - I agree that's bad - however, we haven't seen any indications that is true for the wide public.
Can you actually come up with any other scenarios that are both 1. probably and 2. worrying?
You don't understand, it's not about "probably" it's about absolute. Just because a 3rd party probably won't do anything that could harm me doesn't mean that I should trust them for any reason. This is one of the main points of the free in free software.
It's not about tin-foil hats or being uptight, it's about my-personal-data-privacy and network-user-best-privacy-practices.
At this point, you either don't get it, or you don't think I should have the right to absolute data privacy if and purely because I want it.
Are you suggesting that it's OK for a private company to collect any data they wish? Do you feel this collection must be disclosed to be proper, or is it OK to just do it? Would "OK" data collection include keyboard logging, password and account info collection, video (camera) and audio collection?
If you do draw a line somewhere -- anywhere, really -- then I'd suggest you're just like everyone else who thinks that privacy is a right and it can be violated. You just draw the line in a different place.
If you really do think that any kind of data collection whatsoever is fine, then I'd just say I don't think many people would feel comfortable with that, not even serious law-and-order types. You're entitled to give away your own rights, but not mine.
This is Github collecting usage metrics for their text editor. It should be fairly obvious to any programmer why they're collecting this information - it's to improve the product (which they will probably then sell).
The other thing is, Github is doing this in aggregate, and de-personalised.
But can you think of a single reason why a company like Github would want to collect, as you say, my password information, or webcam shots of me?
Apart from the stupid amount of bandwidth and storage they'd need to transmit and store webcam footage from all their users - what exactly could they gain from this?
What's the business case? How exactly would it make more people pony up money for Github subscription?
Since that's sort of their goal - to make money.
People seem to think there's some grand Illumati global conspiracy going on. There really isn't.
It's actually a lot simpler - this is capitalism, and companies exist to make money (within the bounds of the law).
If it makes them money, they'll probably do it.
If it doesn't, and it's "evil" they won't just do it for kicks of being evil. There needs to be a business case.
Somebody has to justify to their manager, who will then justify to their manager, why something will add value. Surely you've experienced this?
Now, I draw the line at the law, really - so if companies are fraudulently charging things to my credit card, or threatening to shoot me if I don't buy their product - yeah, that's illegal and I don't like that.
But if they're operating within the bounds of the law, or even if they're just being annoying and shoving ads in my face, I'll either put up with it, to use the service, or just use a different service.
As I said in a parent comment - the government is a completely different kettle of fish. However, companies are pretty easy to see through - their motives are, at least on a general level, pretty well defined.
"It should be fairly obvious to any programmer why they're collecting this information" - It's also fairly obvious to any programmer how this can be abused.
"The other thing is, Github is doing this in aggregate, and de-personalised." - THEY SAY.
"What's the business case? How exactly would it make more people pony up money for Github subscription?" - Companies can and do use any information gained about you to build a profile about you. They use this profile to do things like target you ads as well as sell your profile to other companies.
"People seem to think there's some grand Illumati global conspiracy going on." - No we don't, this is about basic privacy best practices.
"If it makes them money, they'll probably do it." - Exactly.
"There needs to be a business case." - There is always a business case. "Business Case" is an abstract concept.
"Now, I draw the line at the law" - The law is an enormous grey area. Essentially you haven't drawn a line. What you've argued is against identity theft and violent threats, not privacy protection.
"But if they're operating within the bounds of the law" - In a democratic society, these things are for us - the society - to decide and change. If you don't agree with the bounds of the law then it is your duty to act accordingly. Arguments like, "as long as it's not breaking the law" have very little use in a democracy.
"government is a completely different kettle of fish" - The government can secretly subpoena these companies for any information.
"companies are pretty easy to see through" - That makes no sense. I get what you're saying, they're trying to make money. There is no one size fits all strategy for making money and businesses do what some people consider "the wrong thing" all the time in effort to just make money.
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People here are concerned about basic privacy best practices, not companies making money or governments spying. No one here is worried about some grand conspiracy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting software that is running on your own personal machine to send statistics about you to a third party whether they are purported to be anonymous or not. It's unfortunate that the societal norm is to turn a blind eye to these basic best practices, but it doesn't mean that those of us that still respect them should too.
The concept is this: Trusting closed source software is not something I want to do.
Not: Github is going to fuck me in the ass if I let them see my usage statistics.
Do you actually think somebody at Github/Google is individually watching you?
As individual data points, I doubt we're that interesting.
It's like NetFlix knowing what movies I watch.
I doubt any single NetFlix employee could give two cents that Victor in Australia likes watching Once Upon A Time. (Awesome show, btw).
However, if I watch Once Upon A Time, and I also watch XYZ, and then other people do the same, maybe they get to improve their algorithm. Woot to them.
Maybe Github want to know what features get used. Or what performance issues people are experiencing.
Maybe it's definitions, but I don't consider this watching - they want to know what we do as an aggregate, but it's not like there's a little imp beside me watching me as I type.
(Although I get how some people might feel that way, if it's just a black box to them).
Also, you do realize that no one is worried about whether "somebody at Github/Google is individually watching you." Unless of course they have an ex-lover at Github/Google.
These organizations, and those capable of secretly subpoenaing them, have software and very fast computers that do the watching. And it's not watching, it's profile building.
I'm not saying that this editor's phoning home of usage statistics is resulting in you being on the no-fly list, but you're argument is missing the point.
Well, let's take your argument, and think it through to it's completion.
What do you think they will do when they have built a profile of you?
Actually, I don't think it's even a huge secret that companies have profiles of customers/users.
Google has a profile of you - and they build targeted ads. I don't see that as particularly evil - Gmail is ad-supported, and I'd rather those ads were relevant to me, rather than endless adds for Cialis (I have no idea what that even is), or for formal dresses or hair extensions.
Github probably has a profile of me - they use it to recommend repos they think I'll be interested in, and keep me coming back to the site.
Microsoft undoubtedly has a profile of me, Yahoo has a profile of me.
Even my supermarket, if I bothered to sign up to their rewards scheme, would have a profile of me.
My credit card company has a profile of me.
All of this is public knowledge - in fact, I think it's better that this stuff is out there, companies acknowledge it and people are aware of it.
Anyhow - to the point - what will happen when these companies, who sell products and services, have profiles of you?
To me - the likely outcome is - they will try to target you better, and get you to buy more products/services.
I just don't understand why people downvote you. It's quite stupid to downvote someone who is merely pointing out facts.
Google analytic is everywhere. If you don't want Github to track you, then don't use it. So if people fear Google, then should Github do the tracking on its own? Then all the sudden Github is not evil anymore. But look: github has your repository, your code. If you have a private repo, github still owns the source code in their data store. So in the end, privacy on Github? Minimal.
And you know what? Github itself has been using Google analytic for years. And now we are complaining about Google collecting data?
If you care about privacy, you shouldn't even be using Github. If you care about your privacy, you should never give up your true IP, your true identity on the Internet.
> Google analytic is everywhere. If you don't want Github to track you, then don't use it. So if people fear Google, then should Github do the tracking on its own? Then all the sudden Github is not evil anymore.
First, it is not "evil", it's just an invasion of privacy. Yes, if GitHub did their own tracking I wouldn't have a problem with it. What I don't want is one company that knows everything I do online and that's why I have a problem with GA. That GitHub tracks my activity on GitHub is completely acceptable.
> And you know what? Github itself has been using Google analytic for years. And now we are complaining about Google collecting data?
I can block GA in my browser, so this doesn't concern me. Using privacy invading tracking scripts all you want, I'll just block them. Can't really do the same in a desktop text editor.
So it's either all or nothing? It's possible to concede some privacy in some aspects of work/life while trying to retain it in another. Even though you have a Github account doesn't mean that all your code is on Github. You might not have remotely close to all the work you do in an editor on Github, at least if you're the kind of person who's more comfortable in your favorite editor than in a word-processor. People have been power users of editors for decades without needing the cloud or a remote, third party service in order to use them.
I was addressing the reaction. Github has been using GA for years and AFAIK there is no way to opt out via Github account settings. Atom is not something you use on Github; it's a desktop application. If you install a browser, you have the option to NOT send data to the browser vendor, but most people choose to use the default settings. I don't see why we have to think auto opt-in is bad or a bummer. Github even makes it explicit that you can disable GA (or whatever metric software they are using in Atom) in Atom and atom's opt out option is 100x better than Google Plus integration.
My premise is that my life isn't that interesting, and if Github wants to track how I use their product, then sure.
Heck, if they send me a survey, and I can be bothered, I'd probably even fill it in with - this is how I use your editor, this is how you can improve it (in my opinion).
If they can just collect that information for free, with no effort on my part, sure.
Having gone to UMD for computer science I can say that the DNS servers are not on the main campus. And certainly a completely separate group of people managing them than basic infrastructure of the Registrar. That said, collaboration would probably be a good thing if it does not already happen. But who's to say any system is infallible?
At the bottom of their new user signup page is a link to an "opt out" section. If believed, they allow you to install an online cookie and mail them forms to stop Acxiom from tracking you online and selling your data.
Works on mobile devices which is perfect when on the go. Give me a pause button so the timer doesn't go before I'm ready or make the clicking sound. Then I'll be at the site every day.
Sadly, technical roles as I yet to get an interview for a Product Management position. Companies seem to all require a certain number of years with that title and I have yet to find the right way of presenting myself. Maybe I should make a more concerted effort in that direction ... thank you!
Are companies actively telling you that you don't have enough experience, just not responding, or are you getting discouraged by the job description? Having written many job descriptions, a lot of it is a negotiable wishlist and actual numbers of years is maybe one of the squishiest bullet points on the list and is more indicative of maturity and overall work experience vs exp in the role. Lots of PMs (not junior/associate/assistant PMs) get hired with just some "business" experience (finance, consulting, marketing, etc.). I don't think you should have a problem as long as you can demonstrate the qualities of a PM.
You may also want to recraft your resume to be more pointed about your PM experience and less focused on your engineering aspects. Here are two great threads on Quora that can help you pitch yourself to the questions hiring mgrs might want to see.
"right way of presenting myself"... I constantly faced this problem. There are lots of people I know who can write resume to suit the job for which they are applying. May be resume writing skillset could help in this.
