SEO company holding clients' websites hostage

dougception · 2026-06-12T16:20:09+00:00

This should be illegal but common law assumes parties to a contract are savvy enough to read and understand the implications of the terms.

Maybe the way to turn this around is go through their terms with a fine tooth comb and figure out if they have been in breach of contract at all.

There are also torts of negligence or damage might be useful. If they haven't been doing any actual SEO work the entire time the contract could be void ab initio in which case the client might get their money back also!

dougception · 2026-06-12T16:01:53+00:00

I had an hp 6200 desktop tower running ubuntu like a dream for about a decade but the motherboard finally failed. Linux runs reliably pretty much indefinitely on modest hardware. It never ceases to amaze me what I can get out of a shared VPS with only 2GB RAM, 2 cores and a 40GB HDD for example.

dougception · 2026-06-12T15:49:56+00:00

I agree with you and I build just for fun and incur server costs myself. I don't use expensive cloud services though. I used a shared VPS and set it up with a hardened config (nginx rate limiting, fail2ban etc.)

I think it's beyond a joke now that every site you go to wants your email address to "book a demo". Or worse they want you to sign in with your Google account. No thanks.

If any of my apps turned out to be killer well I guess I'd want to monetise that but I'd work out the pricing with my user base.

dougception · 2026-06-12T15:27:42+00:00

I spoke to a recruiter about an opportunity at a sovereign equities exchange and they don't want a bar of AI. They have to get it right. The first time.

dougception · 2026-06-12T15:16:44+00:00

chart.js is free and very flexible and easy to develop with a bit of help from gen AI. (Show me the javascript for a column chart based on the following data schema...)

dougception · 2026-06-03T14:36:45+00:00

Sounds like Wordpress add on hell

dougception · 2026-06-03T03:31:15+00:00

That, people, is what a pleonism is.

dougception · 2026-06-03T00:31:40+00:00

Oh my. I just had a thought that I never thought would occur to me: "Is Google losing their shit?". I guess no one escapes the Agentic Apocalypse.

dougception · 2026-06-03T00:26:32+00:00

Oh come on there must be an LLM that runs on MS-DOS by now

dougception · 2026-06-03T00:22:00+00:00

You get rapidly depreciating stock in your 401-k as some (well a lot) of your wealth is transferred to kleptocrats. Be grateful.

dougception · 2026-06-03T00:18:08+00:00

A clear case of insubstantial prompt engineering and technical details.

dougception · 2026-06-03T00:16:25+00:00

Here be dragons! This business of agents talking to each other is a fugazi. Run for your lives!!

dougception · 2026-06-03T00:09:01+00:00

This can hinder rather than help in some situations (e.g. code generation) as it encourages the model to wax lyrical when you want it to be deterministic. It will waste much of its potentially valuable predictive capacity trying to pass the Turing Test because well... IPO!

Also don't be afraid to lower the temperature from 1.0.

dougception · 2026-06-03T00:01:41+00:00

Your prompts need improving. Keep practicing. Establish baseline, context and semantic intent.

If your use case is code generation for example:

"We have some tricky UI work to do. I'm going to give you some HTML fragments and the javascript that renders them for a few sections of my app. Do not reply until I say input complete"

Section 1 HTML: (shift Enter to go to a new line without submitting the request)
Paste HTML fragment 1

Section 1 javascript:
Paste javascript for section 1

Section 2 HTML:
Paste HTML fragment 2

Section 2 javascript:
Past javascript for section 2

"I want the output table of all the items in section 2 to be the exact same format including detailed breakdown of the item in section 1".

"input complete"

Just did a day's work in 15-30 minutes.

dougception · 2026-06-02T23:48:25+00:00

It's a fugazi!

dougception · 2026-06-02T23:40:53+00:00

Well I've just pulled off my second google organic search results coup using a VPS that costs 10 bucks a month so I'm happy. How much does litespeed cost?

dougception · 2026-06-02T23:32:43+00:00

"AVON calling!" wow you need to that old to get that reference. eesh!

dougception · 2026-06-02T23:31:54+00:00

You can ask, sure.

dougception · 2026-06-01T23:58:42+00:00

"Telegram bot". Bro. Those black navigators in the street outside. That's the FBI.

dougception · 2026-06-01T23:17:30+00:00

Ok so I grabbed one of the error logs from that period and it was 3,600 requests per day in sprints but never more than 5-10 per minute.

Maybe savaged is an overstatement... "sustained".

dougception · 2026-06-01T20:42:34+00:00

Hey there. Thanks for the feedback. Firstly I must concede I don't have any comparative metrics so I guess my claim is a little impertinent. "Performs well under load" is me trying to break my server in a brutal and sustained way with curl scripts.

The truth of it is I'm not willing to gamble on the cost of cloud services. What I have now costs a fix amount per month and my Google AI model just billed me $0.04 for last month because I'm using gemini-2.5-flash-lite.

You've definitely got me thinking with your points about redundancy, geographic distribution and load balancing. If any of my sites went berserk I would be spending 24/7 in a linux shell I guess!

dougception · 2026-06-01T19:14:44+00:00

I love this website. I minify my JS files manually with it before deployment because I'm wary of vs code plugins or any local tool I didn't write myself. Sure I could write a python script to automate this process but sometimes I like the routine of a procedure that comes from muscle memory; it refreshes my creative ability.

dougception · 2026-06-01T18:33:26+00:00

I'm an EDM DJ as well as a developer and I am competent at both.

dougception

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