I picked it kind of on a whim and as a hack (are they still allowing porn under .com?). I like the aesthetic symmetry of the domain and TLD, in general. There was a funny potential bug in our code several months ago which almost led to the comment
// XXX TODO FIXME nop is doing too much
Perhaps that link back to development/tech might have been too much of a stretch :)
Yeah ideally we all work for understanding, cool tech companies, but unfortunately that's not the truth. I recommend you buy another similar, safer domain and have this one forward to it.
Last I heard, you could only register a .xxx name if you were in the porn industry or wanted to reserve the name (but not put up any webpage). I wonder how he got the domain.
Despite the domain name issue, the post itself was nice to read. I could easily sense the enthusiasm and pride when you mentioned your success in the launch of FireBase and the gimmicks prior to it. Thanks.
My work blocks the .xxx domain as well -- wish I'd looked at the domain before I clicked the link. What do you actually gain from the .xxx? Seems like it's just getting in the way of the discussion here.
If they actually get in trouble, sure that would be an issue. But I'm pretty sure if I ran a company and it was brought to my attention that there was some traffic to *.xxx domains, I'd at least want to know why.
Worked at a bank, had content filtering. All branches had 'net access through HQ. I worked at HQ in IT. Out at a reasonably remote branch to upgrade software, walk into loan manager's office, he announces "if you see Playboy in the access logs, it wasn't me."
We didn't get notifications about that stuff. Maybe the VP of IT did, but I think it was just statistics. But we just had to check the logs when we got back to HQ. Of course he tried accessing Playboy.
I highly doubt anything would come of it. If it did, it would be pretty easy to explain. Nonetheless, having .xxx traffic originating from you on a work computer is not a situation i'd care to have to explain.
It is amazing how many comments this HN post gets because of the .xxx domain name. Thumbs up in my book for having a title people will talk about. That's the reason I jumped into the comments section.
I too am intrigued by this. It almost seems predictable that this would be the thing the folks would fixate on. HN commenters would be a great sample set to do social experiments on. :)
Exciting to see your perspective, Vikram, including the evolution of an incredible product like Firebase.
In some ways joining a startup in the middle of YC is the best time - as employee #1, you're almost a founder yourself, with tremendous input over the direction of the company. Is that how it felt to you?
Yeah, absolutely: James and Andrew did everything they could to make the experience as an early employee as inclusive as possible. I was kept in the loop at every step of the way. One of our company values is that we are all entrepreneurs, and it's great to have a culture that all early employees have a founder's mentality.
Thanks Anand for moving this away from the .xxx discussion (interesting as it may be). I am fascinated by early employees, since I'm also in the same boat. Although I must admit that my experience hasn't been as positive. While I acknowledge there are many contributing factors to my "less positive" experience, I do consider the lack of proper incentives a key issue.
So were financial incentives structured to increase your commitment? If so, how? I know this question could be a bit sensitive, so I don't expect comments on the details. I am just interested in the general structure or design of incentives, and how that affects the way you work.
Why is there a limit of 25 users for the free/ad supported plan? More users, more ads, more money, right?
When I signed in I was expecting to automatically see the public chat room for that page or website (not sure how it works). Instead I saw a list of users. I don't want to talk with any of them, I don't know them. Instead if I could see some history of the public chat, then I might have something to say/ask. It looks to me that the chat is set up the same way as Facebook chat. But in Facebook you talk with friends, while on a random site you talk with strangers and I think this needs to be reflected on how the chat works: you have a button for the chat, you click it, the main public room is displayed with the latest messages and maybe next to that the users list and maybe other public rooms.
After a while, I saw the other public rooms at the bottom. I closed them and I could not find a way to open them again.
Some users are green (active?), some are black (idle?) and some have a picture (active? idle?).
Why I'm not in the user list? I know it says "x other people are..." but if I'm on the site, I should be in the list.
The application looks solid but it needs some tweaking. Of course, as some people here might say, this is just one data point. Mine.
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[ 10.0 ms ] story [ 20.0 ms ] threadOr for the procedurally-minded: take the first number of the dotted-quad times 256^3 plus second times 256^2 etc etc etc.
We didn't get notifications about that stuff. Maybe the VP of IT did, but I think it was just statistics. But we just had to check the logs when we got back to HQ. Of course he tried accessing Playboy.
In some ways joining a startup in the middle of YC is the best time - as employee #1, you're almost a founder yourself, with tremendous input over the direction of the company. Is that how it felt to you?
Yeah, absolutely: James and Andrew did everything they could to make the experience as an early employee as inclusive as possible. I was kept in the loop at every step of the way. One of our company values is that we are all entrepreneurs, and it's great to have a culture that all early employees have a founder's mentality.
So were financial incentives structured to increase your commitment? If so, how? I know this question could be a bit sensitive, so I don't expect comments on the details. I am just interested in the general structure or design of incentives, and how that affects the way you work.
Why is there a limit of 25 users for the free/ad supported plan? More users, more ads, more money, right?
When I signed in I was expecting to automatically see the public chat room for that page or website (not sure how it works). Instead I saw a list of users. I don't want to talk with any of them, I don't know them. Instead if I could see some history of the public chat, then I might have something to say/ask. It looks to me that the chat is set up the same way as Facebook chat. But in Facebook you talk with friends, while on a random site you talk with strangers and I think this needs to be reflected on how the chat works: you have a button for the chat, you click it, the main public room is displayed with the latest messages and maybe next to that the users list and maybe other public rooms.
After a while, I saw the other public rooms at the bottom. I closed them and I could not find a way to open them again.
Some users are green (active?), some are black (idle?) and some have a picture (active? idle?).
Why I'm not in the user list? I know it says "x other people are..." but if I'm on the site, I should be in the list.
The application looks solid but it needs some tweaking. Of course, as some people here might say, this is just one data point. Mine.