If you've never dealt with a problem like this, you may not be ready. So, here's the most important thing you need to understand:

If you have a vulnerable application anywhere, on any port it will be found and compromised. This is a spray-and-pray vulnerability. It costs attackers nothing to try, attempts don't crash servers, and so people will try everywhere.

If you lose an application in your data center / hosting environment, that's the ballgame. It doesn't matter that the app you lost was the testing instance of a status dashboard with no real data in it, because the exploit coughs up shell access on that server. If there is one thing every black-hat attacker in the world is truly gifted at, it is pivoting from shell access on one server to shell access on every goddam server.

Please make sure you didn't just patch the app servers you know/care about. THEY ALL NEED TO BE PATCHED OR RETIRED.

Additionally:

* If you are one of those "same password on a whole bunch of services people", now is a good time to make sure nothing you care about has that password. Some app somewhere is about to lose that password.

* Now would not be the worst time in the world to go to your Twitter config, hit Settings -> Apps, and scrub out all the stuff you don't use.

* Now you know why you never give 3rd party web apps your Gmail password.

A more realistic view of C:

- C is straightforward to compile into fast machine code...on a PDP-11. Its virtual machine does not match modern architectures very well, and its explicitness about details of its machine mean FORTRAN compilers typically produce faster code. The C virtual machine does not provide an accurate model of why your code is fast on a modern machine. The social necessity of implementing a decent C compiler may have stifled our architecture development (go look at the Burroughs systems, or the Connection Machine, and tell me how well C's virtual machine maps to them).

- C's standard library is a joke. Its shortcomings, particularly around string handling, have been responsible for an appalling fraction of the security holes of the past forty years.

- C's tooling is hardly something to brag about, especially compared to its contemporaries like Smalltalk and Lisp. Most of the debuggers people use with C are command line monstrosities. Compare them to the standard debuggers of, say, Squeak or Allegro Common Lisp.

- Claiming a fast build/debug/run cycle for C is sad. It seems fast because of the failure in this area of C++. Go look at Turbo Pascal if you want to know how to make the build/debug/run cycle fast.

- Claiming that C is callable from anywhere via its standard ABI equates all the world with Unix. Sadly, that's almost true today, though, but maybe it's because of the ubiquity of C rather than the other way around.

So, before writing about the glories of C, please go familiarize yourself with modern FORTRAN, ALGOL 60 and 68, Turbo Pascal's compiler and environment, a good Smalltalk like Squeak or Pharo, and the state of modern pipelines processor architectures.

Isn't this a horrible deal? Incubators typically inject more money for far less equity! I earn $10K a month, I could easily save up $8K in a few months, and do this myself for 100% equity.

True. If you can get into YCombinator, for example , you should obviously go for it. I can't compete with that. If you're earning $150K+, or you've already been working on your side-project for a year, this may not be for you. On the other hand, if you're just getting started and you need a little push, both financially and emotionally, this could be right up your alley.

Who the hell are you? Why would I work with you?

I'm also a techie. Have had one moderately successful venture so far, which has given me a comfortable life (but not quite retirement amount). I want to reduce my coding time and instead help people get their ideas to market using my resources. Hopefully we can build a few success stories along the way. You can find out more during our first Skype chat!

Will you fund everyone and every thing?

No. I'll still need to like your idea, and feel that a positive long-term return is possible. But my belief in Premise 1, combined with the favorable structure of the proposition, means I don't need to be that picky. I'll also need you to commit to working on the MVP full-time until it's done. Evenings + Weekend work is something this structure is actively aiming to avoid. Sign up, ship it, then go back to earning a steady income.

First, its a great deal, both for hmexx and folks who take him up on it. Frankly I think it could be revolutionary. My reasoning is as follows;

Many "products" over the last couple of years have been fairly straight forward web "apps" built on top of existing infrastructure. They provide some basic customer value, they tend to be fashionable (moderate lifetime), and generally take less than a year to produce.

That is almost exactly the same as the book publisher model.

So hmexx sets himself up as an MVP "publisher" and pays "authors" $5000 up front and a 50% interest in the proceeds going forward. Now lots of new book authors would love that deal because they know how to write books but they have no idea how to promote them into bookstores and Amazon's top lists etc. Unlike books though web apps don't pay out a revenue stream on per-unit sales. Instead they tend to either a pay a chunk via a buyout, or they generate income over time with advertising/partnerships. If we're talking about "apps" for mobile then there is a revenue stream very similar to books.

So I reason its a good deal because the content creator has a much better chance to benefit from their creation than previous generations of artists had.

Now as an illumination, the whole 50/50 thing shines a light right into the core of the startup 'dream' mentality. It is the idea that you will start a company that becomes the next Facebook and you become a billionaire over about 10 years of nights. 50% of zero is zero, 50% of a billion dollar company is $500M worth. The closer reality is that if the idea has 'legs' then you can expect a series A round that will reduce both of you to 33% and then a series B which takes you to 20% to 25%. If you get there you're probably making a decent salary and have some small but non-zero shot of a return.

Every year somebody makes over $50M on one of the big lottery games in the US, its only like once in 5 years that people make over $50M from their startup. The good news is that fewer people have the chops to "buy in" to a startup lottery ticket.

So that is the reality. If you want to make some money, buy a house, raise a family. Go work for Oracle or Apple or Microsoft or Google. Don't do startups for the money, do them because you are passionate about what they are trying to create. If you do them for the money you will become bitter and depressed.

But this offer, to be paid $5000 in exchange for a half interest in the lottery ticket you create? Given the 'two, three month' worth of work estimate. There is not a whole lot to complain about.

[1]: https://twitter.com/jorilallo/status/261977607757778944

Around 5pm, your display turns pinkish orange and it becomes a lot harder to see anything. Code gets harder to read, colors display wrong, video just fades to black. None of the advertised happiness ensues.

The second half-year it remained installed, my only interaction with it was to notice it screw up my display, then right-click the tray icon and disable it.

Needless to say, I didn't install it on the new box I bought this year. I don't understand why people like it.

- match the offer with a better one, so all those that would take up the OP would flock to you instead

- build your MVP, keep 100% and then do your own marketing. $5000 for 50% difference but you get to do all the work.

Either one of those would be so much more effective than just berating the OP or warning others of this evil and greedy person.