skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How do I start earning money online?
Hi, I'm a college senior graduating in December with a CS degree from an engineering school. I'm home for the summer and can't find work. So my question is simple. How do I start earning money online?

I have programming skills, graphic design skills, web design skills, and experience in lots of other areas like audio production. I'm a quick learner and good problem solver. So where can I get started?

Has anyone actually started on a freelancing site and had any success? I tried oDesk, and felt hopelessly outmatched by overseas groups with hundreds of projects under their belt. Is there other work for hire that is simpler to start with, or more guaranteed?

Or should I just go all out and do a startup? I have been daydreaming of starting my own online business for a year or so now, but I have no idea where to jump in. I see webapps that make money, and some are so simple that I would have though the market would be 100% saturated, like apps for client billing for web developers or time management. Others seem based on things I don't have the resources for (iPhone/Android development, "location aware" services, large information directories, online backup). I'm not ready to try to start a business on credit or a loan either.

Additionally, if any of you who are lucky and talented enough to already have your own startup going need a grunt developer, email support guy, web designer, or anything like that, please let me know. =)

Thanks for reading!
I thought this was pretty cool
http://noteandpoint.com/documents/pdf/jap.pdf

Not just focussed on games, more what games can teach us about motivation in general.
I do hope that #3 is sarcastic.
People who smoke (or use chewing tobacco) are much more likely to spit.
One of the advantages a Segway has over a bike is that you don't sweat when you ride it.

You can only ride your bike to work if you don't care if you're sweaty, or if you have a shower and the time to use it once you get there.

And one major problem I see with not having cars is being able to go somewhere outside of the city on a weekend, when all the ZipCars are taken. If you reduce the amount of cars a city needs on average, everyone is seriously screwed during peak time. Maybe a graduated pricing scheme would fix this: With all of the cars being more expensive on the weekend, you could have a special set of reserve cars which are even more expensive on the weekend so people who really need them and are willing to pay can depend on that reserve.

However the advantages gained from people sharing cars instead of everyone having their own, far outweigh the costs.
Oh yea, there are also Lunch 2.0 meet-ups you could try, if one falls on the week you're visiting. Lots of entrepreneurs attend those, as far as I can remember (I haven't been to one in years now):

http://www.lunch20.com/
"The first thing you will need to get started with Emacs is a beard." -- Wilhelm Bierbaum
In my teens i got influenced by punk, and I've been wearing black t-shirts with jeans with holes in them, had unkempt hair and have been shaving every 2 weeks or so, ever since. Yes, i actually try to look like a homeless person as a fashion statement.
Incrementally connecting to random IPV4 addresses has been shown to be a really awkward way of setting up a peer to peer connection. When you try it with IPV6 people have the tendency to get born, live 70 or 80 years, and die before their FaceTime call gets connected.
Sextortion via Hacking
thank you my lovable fellow professor einstein geek. :)

but seriously, I knew that, and despite that, I said KGB intentionally because it made it a more effective joke
It's why I went freelance. Win loose or Draw, I am going to work long hours, it's just the nature of the industry. At least freelancing, I make more money per hour, I set my own schedule, I get to work from home a lot, and most importantly as a father of 4, I get paid for every hour that I am away from them. Was I scared stless to jump, sure I was, I left a $150,000 exec job, but in hind sight it was the greatest decision I ever made.
I also enjoy working hard on challenging problems but I don't enjoy working that hard for free.
No, it's much, much better.
For one, there's no such thing as the Linux world. "The Linux world" is everything else in this context, which includes Java, Ruby, Python, Web, C, and dozens of different technologies.
With the exception of the Java community, none of those communities come even close to being as insular. None. Every Ruby and Python dev I know has at least checked out Java and C# before going back to their primary language. Every Java developer has dozens (too many, perhaps) of choices for libraries, app servers, and even other language that run on the JVM. Even PHP developers have some notion of other tools used for web development (generally Flash and Flex).
It's true that many of these communities might not have much exposure to deeper subjects of more dubious relevance, like CS theory and classic FP languages like Lisp, but they at least know and understand that there are other choices out there. Meanwhile, most MS-only devs don't even know about Apache, SVN, or even the notion of using a text editor as your primary development environment.
What court this judgement was granted in? It is supreme court? if not, can't it be appealed all the way.
That information can be had passively via a GeoIP-like service, though, since it's only usable on a wifi (and thus, tethered to some hard line) connection. Sending GPS coordinates seems rather unnecessary.
IOS 4 features by device
Deploy and control Firefox via Active Directory
Also most important, a car has heat and a car has air conditioning. There are parts of Canada that are so horribly cold in the winter that it's unbearable to walk around even if you're all bundled up. It would be even worse on a Segway because you wouldn't be generating body heat with your muscles.

Waiting for the bus really sucks in cold places in the winter, way more than when it's too hot in the summer.

Maybe if everyone had personal super-small Popemobiles that went slow enough they were no more a threat to pedestrians than bicycles.
The About page lists "Major Deployments" and seems to indicate that both Farmville and Cafe World are using it, which is impressive.
The plural of anecdote is data -- source
Usually the ones that complain that the job market is difficult in software. I don't know a single polyglot programmer who has experience in at least two platforms who's unemployed. I know loads of persons specializing in PHP or .NET who are.
Indeed! Or other hackerspaces (like Noisebridge in SF) or the commercial TechShop (in Menlo Park).
The backstory behind 37Signal's "Draft" iPad app
MuscleNerd (of the iPhone Dev Team) said after looking through the code, this is complete FUD.

http://twitter.com/MuscleNerd
I credit Sukotto w/ this find:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1455766
Has anyone seen good RoI on Facebook ads?
Heyzap (YC 09) raises $3M round for social game platform expansion
A while back someone started a post about which disasters we were most unprepared for. A major Earthquake on the east coast should be pretty far up that list.
just wondering why you decided to alter the last paragraph in your blog post giving scott g credit for building a new figlet-js parser overnight that is 10x smaller then your implementation? (was it because you found out scott g was helping me?)

you said people should contribute to his project...but now they shouldn't?

http://imgur.com/HeMLn.png

http://github.com/scottgonzalez/figlet-js
Not getting sweaty in the summer, especially when going up hills.
Some things in there seem to be contradictory. In particular, there's a claim about being brokerless:

ZeroMQ follows a brokerless design so that there is no single point of failure.

But then there's this:
ZeroMQ greatly simplifies this pattern by allowing you to have a single socket connect to multiple end points.

How does that work? Seems like a cognitive disconnect to me. AFAIK, a single socket can only connect at exactly two end-points (one being a client, the other being a server). Right? Sounds like a broker would be connecting that one socket up to multiple end points...

Maybe there's no CENTRAL broker, but certainly (at least in some configurations and uses), it sounds like there's an intermediary process involved in the communication.
Nice, but is this particularly noteworthy?

Also, the hyperlinks are nasty - they lose their bold-ness when clicked, which reflows the text.
37signals Draft for iPad: Simple sketching and sharing
I can see this. For example, the message might be: "Please don't talk to me if you're not technical."
So I take it it's ok to just wander around the Berkeley and Stanford campuses?

Some quick googling tells me the apple/google/etc campuses are, understandably, not open for visitors. Is that correct?
I completely agree. It's a novel concept it seems when you get paid for the hours you actually work instead of feeling pressured into doing so because that's what your peers are doing. I think people let it go far too often in the tech industry.
Your post is just another nail in the MS coffin. The simple fact is that the latest, greatest hotness is just not playing in the MS ecosystem. Virtually all NoSQL systems support windows as an afterthought if at all. Not to mention hotness like nodejs.

The bottom line is that the people who make the new shinnies just don't play on MS boxes and could care less if their toys ever play on MS boxes. No, I'm not talking 'enterprise'.
We can find  Senior Health Insurance Quotes
The Senior Health Insurance Information Program answers your queries and counsels about Medicare. Healthinsuranceweb provides some more information regarding senior health insurance.
TechShop coming to downtown SF, Summer 2010
... as in, those people who use memcachedb but would like to have something bigger?
Viacom won't take this lying down (it will set a hell of a precedent), but great win for YouTube and the future.
I have no posterous neither Tumblr account, but only because of that post, I'll give a try to tumblr.
Microsoft Launches IE9 Platform Preview 3: Canvas, Audio/Video Tags, And More
The hanging swirl should be fixed. Thanks for the feedback.
Chrome Console still does not support multiline code entry
To the US wireless industry:  stop treating your customers as prisoners
It seems as though if they're properly (and regularly) maintained, they don't clog. Sounds like your university's periodic (compared to acute - think janitor) maintenance workers were improperly trained on how to care for them. The second page of the article explains this.

(edit: on second thought, it was a university. Knowing what university students tend to put in urinals, I'm not surprised they clogged even with proper maintenance)
Why is every DF post ending up here on HN? For comments perhaps?

Google / Google Voice / Gizmo5 or any SIP provider offers data calls. I've been messing around with this on my iPad and it's very close to being viable. There's no question it is on Android.

I hope Apple keeps moving in this direction but I doubt they'll be the first to route around the carriers. Right now all signs point to Apple being happily engaged to AT&T.
IE9 To Support CANVAS Tag (plus VIDEO, AUDIO, and SVG)
World Bank Data R API available: Beautiful Charts in 4 LOC
District court of New York.

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...
Awesome, thanks! Really appreciate the suggestions here and below.
Your wish is my command. :-)

http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2010/05/20/hello-world...
The financial benefit associated with iAds and location awareness provide an incentive. Where's the incentive to poison jailbreakers? One is significantly more plausible than the other.
We are hiring (not just spending all the money on Ferraris).

Engineers and BD welcome. http://www.heyzap.com/jobs, or email us at jobs@heyzap.com
Why is it that I always feel that location awareness is used vastly more against my interests than for it? With the exception of Google Maps, I can't think of a single instance where it's helped me. You can't watch this, because you aren't here. You can't listen to this because you aren't here. You can't subscribe to this. You can't download this app. In the case of O2 in the UK, you can't even use our website. But, you know, at least I'll get some ads in the wrong language because I'm an expat. Win win!
Here's the official blog-post:

http://ebayinkblog.com/2010/06/23/breaking-ebay-acquires-red...
I've always mixed it up a bit from the start, some days dressed nice, others more relaxed...that way, they'll never know when I'm interviewing!
The supreme court only sees the cases it wants to.

Though if they did take it, that would set a lasting precedent.

Either way, its a victory.
Join us!
A poorly-written article with a ridiculously overblown headline on a random blog from a completely unverified source. Awesome.
1> There are few non-kindle platforms

2> The type of DRM they have is pretty easy to strip:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-strip-mobi-and-prc-ebook...
I was in Berlin not 3 days ago and saw a restaurant that, by all appearances, is flourishing with this business model.

It should be noted that in Berlin, you ride the underground on something of an honor system, and no one j-walks, so the culture clearly supports this kind of business model.
I was not claiming I want him to add comments, I was explaining why I can't stomach reading his blog. A claim which is obviously contradicted by my act of posting a comment.
And they learned that's a very very bad idea and aren't going to do it again.
In Barrie, Ontario, it was quite gentle where I was. I thought I was developing a tremour, but then I noticed the wee containers of jam and marmalade at the coffee shop were shaking too. It was pretty gentle, and only lasted half a minute.
Nothing in Rochester.
Perhaps people like to suggest clothes/other stuff in a crowdsourced manner? Sort of like stackoverflow, but for appearance.
Try increasing the ram limit in eclipse.ini. It's really stupid.

Find eclipse.app

right click and choose Show Package Contents

Contents->MacOS->eclipse.ini

change this line:
-Xmx256m
to something like
-Xmx512m
Ah, but time spent is not what we are trying to optimize.

Washing and brushing one's hair does add time to daily tasks, but it is not a lot of time. Not compared to general time spent going to the bathroom, showering, eating. That time as a whole could be greatly reduced. By moving and concentrating vigorously, one can get through the shower in 120 seconds, through breakfast in 45. Hang out with ex-military types and you will see this behavior. (You will also see buzz cuts.) This sort of thing is pointedly not what hackers generally do.

We conserve mental effort. Not because we are lazy, but because we have only so much mental effort to use in a day, and we want to use all of it on very specific tasks. Concentration is currency. Remembering things has a cost. Routine, menial tasks are almost free. In fact, like play, they can have a slight negative cost. They allow the mind to wander. For many of us, shower time is often productive time. But even when it's not, we attempt to get through it, not with a minimum expendeture of time, but with a minimum of mental fuss. Not going fast, not going slow. Just getting through it and thinking about other things.

Hence, daily hair maintainence is not really costly. It's a routine. But remembering to schedule a haircut or assessing whether it's time to get out the razor is one more thing to think about. One more thing to remember.

One cannot attack complex problems without proactively and repeatedly clearing the mind of unnecessary details. Abstract and forget. This is a critical skill. Avoiding periodic hair maintenence is an extension of that. Perhaps a silly one, but an extension nonetheless.

For some, maintaining a hairstyle is a specifically chosen hobby, and that's fine. But for everyone else, forgetting about your long hair is a habit borne of simple good intellectual hygeine.
>> ...You will find that this is the norm here at Caltech.

> Then you're doing it wrong at Caltech.

at Caltech.

This isn't really about the 90-hour workweek. Occasionally, it transpires that you have 90 hours of work to do and only one week to do it in.

What's repellant is that the words "at Caltech" add no meaning to that sentence. They are included purely to argue from authority:

"You will find that this is the norm here."

"You will find that this is the norm here at Caltech."

"You will find that this is the norm here at Caltech, and who are you to violate the norms of such a prestigious institution?"

Scientists are supposed to know better than this.
I think this is pretty cool. Are there any frameworks/tutorials out there to create interfaces like this?
Wow, that's the kind of relationship when you finally get rid of, you feel like in heaven.

I prefer the "boring" healthy relationships.
Here's the official response:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1443143

The exploit only involved a limited set of users and was fixed within hours of discovery.
I like this model a lot but what if it was "pay what you can", not "pay what you want"? While subtle I think this change in the verb drastically changes the game. Not only is it much harder than you’d think to evaluate for yourself what you can pay but it requires a change in how we calculate value and turns payments into a mutual ethical obligation between producers and consumers. It goes well beyond our naive notion of "voting with your wallet".
Did HFT 'Quote Stuffing' cause the crash of 5/6/10?
Internationally Apple works with dozens of carriers, frequently more than one in a territory. This is still the company whose CEO referred to carriers as "orifices" not so long ago. They're going to keep putting a brave face on the AT&T relationship right up until the morning when they announce an alternative.
Attempting to innovate is always good.
The world might not be, but the United Kingdom seems to be. I've seen a few of these over the last year. I must admit, it didn't stand out as anything particularly revolutionary or interesting at the time, but I guess it must be.
If I was to guess, I would say that this is tied to the article on HN a few weeks back about how the Russians want their own version of Silicon Valley.

Rather than sending their president to San Francisco to see how he "gets the web", they would do a lot better by sorting out their corruption problems and improving civil liberties (these are the words of Russian commenters on that article, not me hating :-) )
"We Make Health Care Smarter"

But we apparently don't check for spelling or grammar.
If you have to explicitly remember which code was prepared for future development, you're doing something wrong. The point of having loosely coupled code is that it should be easily modifiable under a wide variety of circumstances.
Right now all signs point to Apple being happily engaged to AT&T.

Sure, but they were also happily engaged to the PowerPC chip while they had the Intel-compatible OS X waiting in the wings. It would behoove Apple to have a strategy for routing around the carriers at such time that a relationship with said carriers is no longer advantageous to them.
Those who think they can never do wrong won against those who can never do right. Thrilling.
You might be right. Vim users seem to get by without it (http://www.moolenaar.net/kopk.jpg). TextMate users just need a soul patch.

Hmm, does this mean there's a marketing opportunity for hipster-oriented Emacs screencasts?
Yeah - the guy I worked for was heavily involved in EU level projects. We typically had no idea which country he was in let alone whether he was supposed to be in that day/week/month.
Don't encourage them! Car parks have proven to be one of the most reliable indicators of whether I want to work at a company. On arrival for interview, I take a look around.

If there are lots of nice cars, it's a good sign that the company is doing well and compensates its staff accordingly.

If there are lots of older cars, it's probably a geek-friendly start-up atmosphere, not making much money yet, but everyone's in it together.

If there are a small number of very expensive cars in reserved spots for senior management, and in the few other spaces available there are lots of old cars, IME there is a 100% probability that I will not want to work there.

If people start doing things like car pooling, this almost perfect way to avoid wasting several hours in an interview for a job I'm never going to accept anyway will be spoiled, and I'll have to find some other obvious prejudice to use! :-)
Congrats, guys. (and Go Blue!)
Make it a place where you eat every day, and it will be a failure.

Make it a place where you take your girlfriend on payday, and it will be a total success.

It totally depends on context.
Writing robust shell scripts
Basically impossible to learn computer science, though, except by trial and error.

This is a good point. I'd been coding for over ten years before I was even introduced to the (actually rather important) concept of algorithmic complexity! If I'd taken CS in university, that wouldn't have been the case. Now, though, it's possible for even novices to be introduced to these topics online (depending on who they're talking to).
Redis cloud service looking for alpha testers
I for one like the concept of storing JSON-like data structures and using javascript-based indices on top of that, like you can do with CouchDB or MongoDB. For the
greater part, having something where you can store big
amorphous blobs is much less useful than something where
you can (a) work on a standard format (usable at least from
Java and Python) and (b) use some indices to speed up access via selected attributes.

For a project of mine, I've setup something where the frontend (i.e. javascript) munches on some data structures, which are then passed on to the backend (some Python code for business logic and authentification) which sticks them into the database more or less directly. Works really well, although MongoDB still has this "embrace of the exotic stranger" feeling (i.e., you wonder when exactly your database will stop to like you and just crash), whereas CouchDB is just too slow for my purposes.
http://c2.com/xp/YouArentGonnaNeedIt.html
The first commit to memcached on github is http://github.com/memcached/memcached/tree/32f382b605b4565bd..., which uses libevent. libevent has been around for a while...
Binding an SSL Certificate to a Web Site in IIS 7
- Email can have multiple recipients and reply vs reply-to-all

My mother has been using Outlook at her office for over 5 years. When I send an email to both her and my father, she replies only to me and frequently ends with "tell your father..."

-Copy and paste

Somehow, she understands CUT and paste, but can't make the mental leap to COPY. She typically cuts, pastes it right back to where she came from, and then goes to paste it again elsewhere.

--

Despite all this, she used to work with a 100% text mode CLI app for requisitioning with airline tickets as a travel agent. She was an expert at esoteric commands and had a little notebook that co-workers had photocopied and bound as a reference manual. She didn't understand a thing that she was typing, but she knew which magic incantations worked and which didn't. I noticed that she was doing the equivalent of calling functions, piping data, storing variables, etc., but to her it was "I type this in, and instead of 'CITY' I write the actual city name. Oh, but if the city name has a space in it, I need to type \ before the space. But if I type a \ anywhere else, it can crash the whole computer."
Wouldn't it be awesome if somebody already had this planned, complete with a domain name, a compelling candidate for the new constant, and even a whole freaking manifesto written just to promulgate proper pi? I for one wouldn't want to miss out on that, so if I were you I'd hint hint be watching Hacker News quite closely on June 28. ;-)