Having the wherewithal and self awareness to develop a professional network is meritorious.

In some sense yes, but not in a way relevant to most jobs. Knowing which officials to bribe might also be considered a form of merit, but it adds nothing to the world and should not be rewarded.

>In some sense yes, but not in a way relevant to most jobs

Not relevant to most purely technical jobs, that's true. But these are few and far between, because working means working with people.

hey, I am interested, how do I get in touch?

@thomascornelius

They exist, fwiw.

This probably goes without saying, but they're definitely not allowed.

Yep, you write a marginally profitable bot for Stars and then spend all your time trying to get around bot detection. I gave up although the exercise was informative.

Interestingly I get pegged for a bot rather frequently anyway (well, perhaps once a month). It is EXTREMELY annoying when you have to answer a captcha while playing 40 tables, you time out everywhere no matter how fast you are.

I wish I had this in HS.

The stealing the network series is awesome. I just read "The Director" which was decent.

There are a lot of non-fiction books that read the same as a fiction though; Ghost in the Wires, The Art of Intrusion (really fun read), Fatal System Error, and of course if you haven't read Cuckoo's Egg, you should.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson is also good.

Reamde is good, but far too long. It should have been two thirds.

I can't believe the author of ToneLoc posts here. This blows my mind! Brings up a lot of memories of great times, hanging out at the st. louis galleria food court for 2600 meetings.

I've even been banned here on HN :)

mthreat verified.

I think this is a missed opportunity. Terms may have been violated, okay, that warrants closing the account, do that, then donate enough money to her to help her out, and bask in the PR.

I fit the 30-something, 9 to 5'er demo, and I would not give up 20% equity for an extra 8 hours per week. I'd be much more likely to work out something, that allows me less pay, and more time while at the 9 to 5 to work on a side project.

Pretty cool

This is a great idea (had it myself at one point); the problem is you would have to have buyin from the grocery store itself, and like a casino...the more time you spend in it the more money they make.

That's a good point. Still, it's probably manageable to accomplish for major stores by manually mapping some out (or letting your app users map it out). I usually go to bigger stores, because you can find everything in one store. People who shop often wouldn't need the app, since they remember where everything is.

The same idea expanded a bit, could be to optimize for money. For example, if your list is going to be $200, you might save 20 dollars by shopping in two/few separate stores (accounting for gas), and app could divide the list into multiple lists per store. This is way harder, because prices change all the time (store layout doesn't change as often), and usually you can't look up prices online. The app could take into account any store coupons (assuming manufacturer coupons could be used in any store). The target audience for this are people who are willing to trade in time to save few dollars. I'm not sure they will have smartphones.