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Three Stories

justinkan.com

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Re: Three Stories

#31

Post by stevesearer »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

I can relate to all of these because I've lived through all of these , fortunately not as much in the public eye as Justin and his team (the web was much smaller back then) but this brought back a whole bunch of memories. Thanks Justin (assuming you read HN) for writing these up.

Somewhere around 5 years ago I was doing some maintenance on my site's database without really knowing what I was doing.

My wedding website was hosted on the same server, so I thought I might as well delete it since the wedding was months before. Dropped that database. Visited my business website a few minutes later and it wasn't working. Apparently both sites were in the same database...

Called MediaTemple support and asked if they had a backup. They did! Support guy asked if I wanted him to restore it. Of course I do. He goes on hold.

He comes back on and says, "Sir, I'm sorry to say that the last back up actually backed up the blank version of the site so we don't have anything to restore. Is there anything else I can help you with?"...

After hanging up, I explained the situation to my wife and she just says, call back and ask someone else. The next support guy tells me that there actually is a way to restore an old archived backup, but there will likely be a loss of data and there will be a fee. Turns out the fee was only $15 and the backup was from the previous day, so no loss of data.

I'm still running the same site and I might soon be able to hire my first employee :)

My takeaways were to create backups, not monkey around on the database, and to call support back and ask for someone else to verify what the other person told me.

Re: Three Stories

#32

Post by [deleted] »

navitronic wrote: post #25

A modern alternative to the pizza delivery message would be to use uber to book a car near the location and upon the allocation of the driver, contact them and ask them to deliver the message. and then drive around the block a few times for their trouble.

[deleted]

Re: Three Stories

#33

Post by gaadd33 »

jacquesm wrote: post #24
AznHisoka wrote: post #4

Would there still be any objection to making money from a porn site if it gave them 40% of their revenue?

If you want to deal with corporate America in any way shape or form then any income from porn is right off the table. And if you're getting 40% of your revenue from porn then you are an extension of the porn industry.

Hotels seem to have no problem doing business in corporate America and they are probably one of the largest independent distributors of porn.

Re: Three Stories

#34

Post by robzyb »

[deleted] wrote: post #32
navitronic wrote: post #25

A modern alternative to the pizza delivery message would be to use uber to book a car near the location and upon the allocation of the driver, contact them and ask them to deliver the message. and then drive around the block a few times for their trouble.

[deleted]

I'm not so sure. A taxi in Melbourne Australia won't even take a booking for a street corner.

"I'm sorry sir, it has to be a fixed address."

Also taxi companies aren't set up to accept payment over a telephone call. So they'd have to trust the recipient to pay.

Re: Three Stories

#35

Post by stickfigure »

AznHisoka wrote: post #22
tptacek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't do it. Without getting into an icky and tedious discussion of pornography in general, my general default setting is that major porn sites are exploitative, and that the ones that pay the most affiliate dollars are likely to be the worst of the bunch. Which is just to say, there are reasons you might not want to have a policy of redirecting users to porn sites for money even if Techcrunch isn't shaming you.

What makes you say the major ones are exploitative? And to who? the actors/actresses or the people watching their movies?

I also find this word odd. Usually I think the person being exploited in a financial relationship is the one whose pockets are being emptied.

Re: Three Stories

#36

Post by throwaway3487ds »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #6
AznHisoka wrote: post #4

Would there still be any objection to making money from a porn site if it gave them 40% of their revenue?

Not only that but everyone wins. The user looking for porn is directed to an appropriate venue and everyone in the community that doesn't want to deal with a horny male at the other end of internet never even notices he is gone! Score -1 for continued prudishness.

Not everyone wins. Philosophers and specifically feminists have to spend valuable cycles deciding and debating whether sex work is morally wrong or whether there should be a sex-positive part of the free market. This time could be much better spent on questions such as war, income inequality, discrimination other than as regards sex work, or a thousand other things. But it needs to be done, it's not like there is general agreement or you can ask some authority. Likewise the time I spent writing this comment, and the time you spent reading it, could be put to better usage by each of us.

See: https://storify.com/carolleigh/gloria-steinem-a-swerf

Re: Three Stories

#37

Post by bo1024 »

navitronic wrote: post #25

A modern alternative to the pizza delivery message would be to use uber to book a car near the location and upon the allocation of the driver, contact them and ask them to deliver the message. and then drive around the block a few times for their trouble.

Taskrabbit or a similar service --- practically designed for such scenarios.

Re: Three Stories

#38

Post by patio11 »

cba9 wrote: post #17
livejamie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A startup waiting to happen! ;)

The problem is you don't need fast physical deliveries of short messages that often. For example, a few days ago I was pondering how to reach a particular person on very short notice; I had an address, but nothing else, so I couldn't call them, and while I could spend like $50-100 on international mail, it wouldn't get there faster than 3 days from sending. Ultimately, the best solution I could find was... telegrams.…

Japan spends far in excess of $500 million on telegrams a year, the overwhelming majority of it because it is traditional to send one if you're invited to a wedding and cannot attend.

There exist a variety of circumstances where a business has to put a piece of paper in someone's hand within about 24 hours. It's doable between virtually any two endpoints in the first world. It also costs whatever FedEx/DHL/etc think they can get out of a business which needs to have a document hand delivered on the other side of the world immediately, which is "a lot." (e.g. It's presently midnight on Wednesday in NYC. I can walk next door to a store in Tokyo and hand FedEx a letter. It will arrive at the New York Stock Exchange before the opening bell on Thursday. That will cost ~$125 but it will almost certainly actually work.)

Re: Three Stories

#39

Post by Axsuul »

bo1024 wrote: post #37
navitronic wrote: post #25

A modern alternative to the pizza delivery message would be to use uber to book a car near the location and upon the allocation of the driver, contact them and ask them to deliver the message. and then drive around the block a few times for their trouble.

Taskrabbit or a similar service --- practically designed for such scenarios.

Uber is orders of magnitude better in this scenario.

- TaskRabbit: Post job, wait for bids, accept a bid, wait for driver to leave his/her house to deliver message, 2-3 hours later... profit?

- Uber: Place pin near address, request ride, driver less than 5 min away accepts, call driver with weird request. 10 min later... profit!

Re: Three Stories

#40

Post by girvo »

AznHisoka wrote: post #11
hyperion2010 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but everyone wins. The user looking for porn is directed to an appropriate venue and everyone in the community that doesn't want to deal with a horny male at the other end of internet never even notices he is gone! Score -1 for continued prudishness.

Yep and I lost some respect for these guys because they were bullied into stopping by someone in techcrunch... Techcrunch. Makes me want to barf.

TechCrunch had (still does? I don't know) considerable influence over early startups, so I'm not particularly surprised. The article itself is complete bollocks, which is also not particularly surprising.
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