TravelTechGuy

Agreed. Another important lesson I learned when delivering code to a non-profit org, and them asking me to convert my final invoices into "donations" to the org.

Sadly every consultant can tell you at least one (hopefully only one) story about clients who refuse to pay. Either outright, or with some excuse about you "not delivering", or they "not liking" what you delivered. I have one of those stories as well.

My SO has her own story - she ran into a guy whom she later found out does it as a policy: hires people, never pays, threatens to sue them if they publish their story. Her lawyer told her to just forget about it.

It's then that find out the limitations of our legal system: if the client is international, forget about it. If they're out of state, prepare to deal with an expensive legal process taking place where the laws may not always favor you. And even if it's local, and you won in a small claims court - good luck collecting.

I have periodic payments built into all my contracts, with the final payment taking place after acceptance tests, but before me surrendering all materials and code. I won't say this is a 100% bulletproof solution, but the alternatives suck.

OMG. We truly live in the stupid timeline. How do I get back to the prime timeline from here?

Your last sentence should be a t-shirt.

It is a very sad story.

Our company committed to open sourcing all of our code (it's in the web3/blockchain space), and we had, and continue to have, spirited discussions about which parts we should maybe license differently, as they contain novel IP.

But my main question is: if your code is open-sourced, and the community contributed: fixes, features, actual new products - what gives you the right to close it? Are you going to go back and compensate every contributor? How can you justify revenue made on the backs of contributors.

Side note: if what Prusa is alleging about Chinese patents given for open-source code produced in the west, and then having international priority, is true, I think the UN (or whoever handles international patents) should look into that. We can't control what goes on in China, but we can damn well make sure no Chines company makes money outside of China, with co-opted IP.

I do not understand why people keep building in that space. Not only is it a niche market, but it can be completely decimated by Google/MS adding a feature to their interface.

Add to that the non-existing costs of switching between these offerings. I was using the Calendly free tier, and when a feature I wanted was moved off the free tier, it took me all of 30 minutes to move to zcal (most time spent fixing web site, and email signatures).

Perhaps there's something I'm missing here. Maybe there's a social aspect that escapes me, but I would love to hear from someone building in this space about their motivation and long term goals.

IMHO this ban will never pass. The only law all these people are always sure to vote for is the one increasing their salary and benefits.

But beyond that, even if it passes, I expect so many violations that it'd be as if it didn't pass.

If we've learned anything in the last 6-7 years is that if there's no shame, law becomes less relevant. It's enough to look at some of of the current crop (and I'm doing my absolute best to prevent myself George from dropping Santos actual names here) to understand that the believe they're above any law.

We need a GDPR in the US. Yesterday. All the people who treat our private data as their own will stop and think twice if they face the chance of losing billions for breaking privacy laws.

And every data collection should be turned from opt-out to opt-in - by law.

How to pass horrible bills:

1. Stuff them with truly horrible ideas. 2. Wait for public to scream. 3. Remove half of the horrible ideas (keeping the core crap, like no FOIAs, privacy violations etc.) hidden and spread amongst hundreds of subparagraphs. 4. Present this is as "fair compromise". Convince idiots from both sides of the aisle that this is good for national security. 5. Pass the law. 6. Profit?

Self custody is hard. And even professionals can make mistakes.

Most people don't think about it: they have a bank holding their "balance", a broker "holding" their stocks, an employer "holding" their salary, and maybe even a crypto exchange "holding" their tokens - until they don't.

Only when you get into the nitty-gritty of self custody, you understand it's a security hassle: you need to save a seed for crypto, or boxes of gold ingots, or precious art in special climate-controlled packaging etc.

People traded this insecurity, this chance of losing it all in one unfortunate event, for the warm comforts of having someone else custody your assets. But ask Greek people in 2008 (or Lebanese people now) how does it feel to come to a bank where you've had an account until yesterday, and find out there's no money to go around.

We're starting to see some strides being made into simplifying and securing crypto custody (MPD, Multi-sig etc.). But at its core, if you want to truly hold your asset, you will need to keep ahold of something (safe key, seed phrase, physical item etc.).

Makes even more sense if you treat it as a foreign hostile takeover.

A quick look at some of the funding sources for the $44b, and the distinct direction Twitter took post-acquisition suggest (to me at least - personal opinion) that Musk is promoting certain (alt-right) agendas. It could also be that the goal is to burn Twitter to the ground, as it has been touted by the US government as a “freedom tool”.

I can easily imagine Mohammed Bone Saw solving potential outcries of future heinous acts, by making sure there’s no outlet to discuss them.

Again, just my private opinion.

Some more background: the companies were engaged in fighting over regulations, and on a personal basis between the 2 CEOs. It went down to really childish levels at some point.

But one thing is undeniable: SBF (FTX CEO) was trying to weaponize US regulation against his biggest rival CZ (Binance CEO). CZ retaliated by selling the FTT token, exposed the fact FTX was over-leveraged, and took over.

This is, as the kids on Twitter say, the embodiment of the old "F#$k around, find out".

Along the way every FTX client who couldn't withdraw, and every crypto user losing value got screwed - but why should these 2 characters care? The space just became more centralized, and whatever smidge of trust was left after the Celsius debacle has evaporated.

re: the performance review: don't know about your work place, but the first quarterly review I got at [insert name of large known company], my manger sat me down and explained she is budgeted a certain amount of bonus points for her 5 team members, and required to "grade on a curve". Hence, 1 team member will be "above average", 3 will be "average", and one "below average" every quarter. And for fairness, she rotates the names. I was deemed "below average" since it was my first quarter, but the good news, she said, is when she nominates me for "average" next quarter, she'd add a "shows improvement" comment to it!

Bare in mind, real actual money was tied to this stupid scheme, and you had to spend at least 2 hours writing a document explaining what you've done for the company, the team and the product, to justify your "averageness".

I lasted 3 quarters in that social experiment. And I'll laugh in the face of corporate recruiters till the day I die.

Sad story, though not uncommon. I heard many eBay horror stories involving buyers' scams.

Frankly, selling anything on Amazon is crazy. But if you do have to, vet your buyer. Look at their previous purchases and feedbacks. Avoid the quick deal that will blow in your face.

The bottom line is that eBay (and Amazon too) are more focused on the buyers. Buying on eBay is great, because you have 100% buyer protection. There's no seller protection at all.

I'd recommend sticking to either local selling apps (like Craigslist etc.) where you can verify the buyer (though stay safe and do it somewhere public), or through online communities that manage access and feedbacks (there are several on Reddit and Facebook).