I might soon be part of an internet startup. We're talking with a relative about setting up a consultancy & business news service on a certain sector, and I've generated a part of the idea and accepted to take on the technical/editorial side for a while (I've almost a year til when I start my master's, and will probably work up until when I start my thesis; so almost two years). If things work out, this might be a dream job (except academia) for me, and even very lucrative. But I'm fairly n00b in this space, both business and professional work, though I have the technical skills. Thus I'm seeking general advice on

• how to organise this thing: how to make sure we communicate well on dates and plans and how to make educated guesses when setting up an agenda

• how much will it cost: we'll start with making a database and running a sector-specific blog/news site as publicity (though I'll make sure the content is quite decent, not just a showpiece), but then later we'll introduce a tangential online service and a mobile app leveraging that crowd

• working with non-techies: I'll be the only techie in this startup and I need to help people with gathering, storing, organising and utilising historical data with certain variables, ensuring they keep an accurate record and can make quality queries easily; the 3 people apart from me will be non technical

I think quite a bit of you here have been involved in this sort of scenario, so maybe you could have some advice for me. I'd appreciate anything, examples of approaches, links to tools, what not, anything you think could be useful. Thanks a lot in advance!

I've hard a lot of great results using Google's OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework in my roles leading technical and product teams. I've been tasked with bringing this framework across my organization, including to teams like marketing and business development.

My main issue recently has been around defining the key results of the projects that our teams are going to be pursuing. All of the advice I've gotten in the past has been to ensure that KRs are quantitative, NOT qualitative. This has been at odds with some of the projects the marketing and business teams are planning on working on. These are projects like...

• create a new marketing plan given the new budget constraints
• audit the distribution process to increase our information about the retail sales process

The push back I am getting is along the lines of "when I create the new marketing plan, the project will be complete, and therefore it's just whether or not I finished the plan that matters." i.e. if the objective is finished then the project is a success. My point of view is that ALL projects should have metrics attached to them, and if we can't measure the progress then we cannot show the added value to the business as a result of our effort.

The natural response is: what metrics would you attribute to projects like these? And THAT'S where I could use help. Coming from a product/tech background, my understanding of marketing, biz, and operations leaves something to be desired.

For the marketing plan, I suggested a metric could be to reduce the monthly marketing budget from $current to $future. For the distribution audit, I suggest we track the # of insights/recommendations we produced as a result of the audit. The pushback was that these metrics "didn't really matter" and that "how can we set a goal on insights - even one good insight could be worth a lot, but I could come up with 4 crappy insights just to achieve a numerical goal."

I'm a bit at a loss. I understand their point of view, and I really feel in my heart that we need to be pursuing measurable KRs. Do you have any advice?

I have a gaming laptop that I mostly used as a desktop (bought used, was a good price) with external screen and devices attached. This past Sunday, I was wiping the dust off it and noticed that the trackpad felt oddly curved, then I also noticed that entire device body was slightly bloated as... which led to the discovery that the battery is swollen and that it needs to be replaced.

But I wouldn't have noticed it otherwise if I hadn't been cleaning my desk that day. It's placed on the far side of my desk on a laptop stand (although well ventilated) so I rarely pay attention to it, if at all. It might have gone on for much longer and eventually led to a disaster before I even caught on to the problem.

So, my question is: how does one track these potential hardware problems without having to manually inspect different parts of the device every now and then?

(While my device is a laptop with W10 OS, the question isn't limited to just that. Inputs for Mac and other related products are also welcomed.)

One of my friends said "hey why did you unfollow me" I check my following list (witch is really hidden deep into the gui) and I see I went from following 2k (from when I check a few months back) to follow 600 people. WHAT HAPPENED, so now I'm freaking out franticly making sure I didn't lose anyone.

Didn't know if i should post this in talk or tech, but my focus is on advice, so i guess this is the place.

I am currently in the process of changing my career to be a web developer. Studied IT a few years ago, dropped out due to finances, and spent the last few years working crappy jobs.

I designated all my spare time towards learning the basics. I'm confident enough in my knowledge of HTML and CSS, know how to use Bootstrap and i'm currently learning the basics of JS. The Udemy course i'm taking will cover NodeJS, jQuery and some more backend next. After that i plan on learning Wordpress and a framework i guess (React/Vue/Angular). Have i missed something here?

My final goal is doing freelance web development. My question is, how plausible is this and what else do you suggest learning to have an easier time finding clients?

Also, how soon do you figure i could start doing some basic work with simple websites (even if it means using Bootstrap / altering Wordpress themes)? My country is rather cheap, so even 500$/month on simple projects will be enough of a reason for me to quit my 9-5.

Guess i'll need a portfolio too though.

Anyways, thanks for reading. Any web devs out there care to offer advice? I'm dedicated to achieving this goal, but i'm somewhat lost still.

I've got a server running out of my house that I use to create virtual machines for many different facets of what I enjoy (IE: A Plex Server, Discord Bot, PiHole, etc...). The server runs Ubuntu and is utilizing QEMU I believe for the the virtualization.

I've got issues getting the adapter (currently using one of those Xbox adapters to plug into an antenna and back into the computer) to relay into the virtual machine. On top of that, I'd LOVE to ditch hulu and these others (sling, PS Vue, etc..) and utilize local live television with a larger antenna on my roof, but I'll worry about that once I've got these technical aspects worked out.

I guess I'm looking for some advice as well as anyone with a similar setup and how you are running yours?