I have done this in the past. The reason behind it was to 'help' the company pay less to the recruitment agent and three months later I was to be compensated for the loss of income.
I agreed at the time and yes I was compensated three months later. The issue though was that the company I was working at the time was solid with a lot of capital, so I was not worried that much for not getting paid.
In my view you will have to have a bit of faith in people but you must also do your homework. If the startup is not going to exist in 6 months then don't even bother.
Gather all the evidence you can gather about the job and present that data to your friends/family and ask them their opinion. A fresh perspective can help you a lot.
What is a common practice is for organizations to try and get things for free from the employees. In other words as patio11 pointed out 'exploitation'.
The question that comes to mind after reading the article is "Who cares?"
Nowadays - in my humble opinion - people purchase phones to satisfy a need inclusive of the basic phone call one. Some users think that the X phone is cool or easier to use than the other one. If say the iPhone is cooler than an Android based one, then no article from Techcrunch is going to convince the user to purchase one over the other.
Let's not forget that the people that do not follow stats and capabilities and specifications and purchase a phone because it is cool are not going to read Techcrunch therefore the article brings the "Who cares" question in my mind.
Concluding, don't we have better things to discuss than oh how the mighty iPhone has been surpassed by the even mightier Android one?
I believe that this is a new form of attack by spammers. So far I have observed this only with hotmail accounts and it has happened to two people I know.
I received an email from my neighbor the other day with the title EMERGENCY. The email is below:
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This had to come in a hurry and it has left me in a devastating state, it's an EMERGENCY. I'm in some terrible situation and I'm really going to need your help now. Few days ago, unannounced, I went on a trip to Glassglow, Scotland (United Kingdom) and unfortunately for me I got robbed by thieves, Everything I had on me were stolen, including my phone, credit card and cash and now I'm stranded right now.My return flight leaves in few hours time but I need some money to clear some bills, I didn't bring my cell phone along since I didn't get to roam them before coming over. So all I can do now is pay cash and get out of here quickly.
I do not want to make a scene of this that is why I did not call my house, this is embarrassing enough. I was wondering if you could loan me some cash, I'll refund it to you as soon as I arrive home just need to clear my hotel bills and get the next flight home, As soon as I get home I'll def refund it immediately.
Write me if you are willing to help so I can let you know how to get the money to me here.
Angela.
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I thought that there was something wrong with it but as a matter of courtesy I was not going to contact her family - in the case it was a legitimate email. Instead I decided to walk my dog and go over to her house to check if she was indeed in Scotland. As it turned out she was oblivious to what had happened and yes she was in the US not in Scotland.
It appears that the spammers/crooks (whatever you want to call them) hijacked her email address, changed her security question, changed her secondary email address so that the password reminder is routed to them, wiped all the contact information after they sent the email above to everyone.
She also told me that a lot of people called her phone offering to give her money to help with the situation.
A similar email was received by my boss from one of our common acquaintances. Needless to say that she did not send that email either.
Is this the new "Nigerian" scam? I don't know, but it would not hurt to employ an aggressive password changing policy.
As for your last point - solving the spam startup - yeah it would be great if we could do that, or even easier it would be to convince every company that holds a mail server to not allow any email unless the domain has SPF records. This way spoofing will cease to exist (people impersonating email identities). Once spoofing is gone, spam mail server IPs can easily be blocked.
Wow, your email experience is more fascinating. That's a more creative/elaborate spam scheme. Nice of you to go ahead and physically check, too.
I'm thinking these people may have somehow embedded spyware on the victim's computers, and monitored their password that way. This is quite an advanced attack, and even bypasses SPF records, because I checked the email headers, and they legitimately had everything A-okay and authenticated, as if the person really sent it from their own account.
I agree the attack is very elaborate. However it might not be even malware as you suggested to sniff the password. A lot of users use the same password in a lot of sites. It only takes one to be hacked and that is it.
Yeah, I agree it could just be bad password management. I've got the spam from 3 different people so far, so I thought it might be some similar and widespread attack.
You could find a 'cheap' place but it will have to be in Zone 6 of the Underground which is quite a few miles away from the center of London. Additionally if you want to have decent offices you will pay for it - dearly
Analytics is basically a statistical analysis of your log files.
I believe there are two aspects of what you can do with analytics:
1. You can actually get the log files for yourself and use a log analysis from a security and performance point of view. You can check which pages are being asked, what are the queries passed etc. This way you can check whether there are any loopholes in your code, vulnerabilities, scripts that are being accessed a lot, resources that need to be cached etc. Google Analytics gives you some of that data (top queries, etc.) but not from a security perspective.
2. You can plot data over time for each website and use them for marketing purposes i.e. growth over time
I agree. You do not have to be a member of the U.S. Military to open an account (or more) with USAA. It took me roughly 15 minutes to open accounts for myself and my family through their website.
What you cannot do (if you are not/were a member of the military) is use their direct deposit feature i.e. scan checks and upload them to their website. You are not also eligible to get insurance from them.
Other than that I agree that they have a fantastic website and awesome customer service. Because they do not have ATMs when you withdraw money from another bank's ATM, they refund up to $1.50 for the ATM fees up to 10 times a month.
If you have a topic that you love talking about, then go ahead with the blog. You will need to have a regular posting schedule.
Try getting a few posts in draft mode (ready to be published). This way you will have something to post even if you do not have the time to post at that interval (weekly, biweekly etc.)
Letting your readers get used to a regular posting schedule will help a lot.
Twitter/Facebook are good tools you can use to make people aware of your blog.
If you have something interesting to say, people will follow you :)
And unfortunately the taxpayers are the ones that are paying due to this mastery.
I do not understand why everyone is getting hyped up about this. What is the purpose of the electric car? The low/no emissions or the high MPG? If you ask people you will find out that almost all of them will say the MPG since that is the reason that has a monetary impact.
I recall when I was in England I had a Renault Clio Diesel with 1.5 liter engine. That car would give me 66 mpg on the highway and around 50-55 mpg in the city. That was back in 2003 and it cost brand new 9,000 GBP (less than $15,000). That car was small, comfortable and fun to drive. It did what it was supposed to and more.
Why do we see then a $41,000 price tag on a vehicle that cannot give us 66 mpg and that will be subsidized by the government (i.e. we will all pay for every car sold whether we like it or not).
I use PHP on a daily basis for my work but I also program in Python and I am starting Java.
I believe that if you know how to program then you can effectively use any language. You will only need to know the little quirks that each language has.
I will repeat what coderdude wrote: It's always good to use the right tool for the job.
I agreed at the time and yes I was compensated three months later. The issue though was that the company I was working at the time was solid with a lot of capital, so I was not worried that much for not getting paid.
In my view you will have to have a bit of faith in people but you must also do your homework. If the startup is not going to exist in 6 months then don't even bother.
Gather all the evidence you can gather about the job and present that data to your friends/family and ask them their opinion. A fresh perspective can help you a lot.
What is a common practice is for organizations to try and get things for free from the employees. In other words as patio11 pointed out 'exploitation'.
I hope the above helps :)