skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
$50/hr is VERY cheap. A decent developer in the Bay Area really should be charging at least $100/hr-- otherwise, they can just get a job and make more with less risk. Seriously good developers can charge upwards of $300.
From Phil Plait's blog (http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/h...), the journal is closing, albeit after a conspiracy-soaked rant: http://daviddobbs.posterous.com/journal-of-cosmology-going-o...

Long story short: take this paper with a pretty large grain of salt.
I agree. The margins on this are pretty terrible, and it's not a long term scalable model, but I think it's an easy way to get a foothold in the market.

Here's my thinking (please feel free to tear my logic apart):

(1a) The very small newsletters will be much more likely to signup. (1b)The bootstrapped startups would be very interested in relatively inexpensive ways to target (other than Adwords).

I think 1A has been semi validated.

(2) Success with small newsletters will help show larger newsletters than this model can work. Will probably transition from very small newsletters to medium, to large.

(3) Some bootstrapped startups will grow, get funding and continue to use us.

There are some jumps in this logic, and it would need validation.
If you think the tag about your friend is true, you can vote up
I've been paid $100/hr with no proof of experience or that I could finish the project.
or you think it is not true, you can vote down
In "Marketing Warfare," Al Reis and Jack Trout give a rule of thumb: Never build your strategy around an opponent's weakness. Build it around their strength. Why? because weaknesses can be fixed. Strengths cannot be fixed without undermining an opponent's own strategy.

From this, I get that there are two kinds of problems with a product or service: A weakness, which is something bad that is orthogonal to a product's value proposition, and a drawback, which is an integral part of the value proposition. An example of an Apple drawback would have been its one button mouse for many years: During the period when many Mac buyers were first-time computer users, the single button was part of the simplicity of the interface, but it also was annoying to those who had more experience and wanted more power at their fingertips.

I remember this when thinking about tethering my iPad. This is a weakness, not a drawback. It can certainly be fixed without undermining the iPad's value proposition. If somebody starts selling a lot of tablets that sync to the cloud, Apple can release a firmware or iOS update that syncs to the cloud and boom, no more weakness.

It's annoying but it isn't deeply tied to the iPad's value proposition. So I predict that if and when Apple thinks it is more of a hinderance than a help, it will be changed, and the change will be fairly painless.
An idea: add it to the Chrome app store? I'd love to see a quick-link when I open a new tab...who wants to be productive anyways?!
LakTEK – Building Modular Web Apps with Rack & Sinatra
Now here's a comment that restores my faith in HN: well-informed, skeptical, acute... and offers to do the nice thing anyway.
Looking for developers for equity stake in start up
I'm looking to connect with a developer(s) that will be willing to join my start up. I'm the entrepreneur / business type and that doesn't know much about coding hence I'm on here trying to connect with anyone who is interested. The focus is centered around creating a mobile based application that resembles a yelp and open table all in one. there will be a web interface and mobile interface.

if your interested, please let me know
A: "I don't know memcached that intimately. Why is it not good enough, what seems to be the problem ?"

If I was conducting the interview, I'd be thrilled to hear that kind of response given the candidate's self-admitted lack of domain expertise.
Watch 90% of the streaming video out there? Use your choice of fully functional browsers? Download and listen to Amazon MP3 store purchases? Run arbitrary software, even if it's competitive to the platform provider? Mount a usb flash drive?

I'm not sure that was the list that you were looking for, but there it is. How post-PC is it really if every time you have to do something Steve Jobs might not approve of you need to borrow someone's laptop?
Free isn't exactly illegal. Theres a set of criteria for an employee (aka intern) to be able to work for free. The biggest criteria is that the work can't directly have an impact on revenue, e.g. no free sales positions.
ouch. this is why it's dangerous to read a pg essay on entrepreneurship when you're in college. He makes it look easy, and some kids just follow their dreams without building a support base first. Remember that for every guy like pg, there are 9 others just like him who went bankrupt. Coming out of college, you should always try to find a stable, legit job and try to build up a capital base. Get paid by someone else and develop a level of professional competency, build up your credit score and take out a loan and do something on the side, and only go solo once who you have some stable revenue. This is the way to do it, unless you come from money or are lucky.

So here's my steps to you for changing things around:

1) Completely revamp your resume, and to stop referring to yourself as unemployed. You were self-employed.

2) write down a list of all the competitors your startup had that are located nearby. Find out the phone numbers/emails to the higher ups in those companies through web searching.

3) phone or email those guys, and say that you are writing a freelance article about the industry. Say you want to interview them for their expertise (all guys love to have their ego's stroked: that's the way to get that introduction you want).

4) during the interview (preferably in person, or by phone), ask them some general questions about the industry, and mention that you had attempted to do a startup in the field but failed. Try to ask questions related to how their business succeeded, in order to compare and contrast with your own experiences. Ask them to give you advice on whether to pursue another startup in this field (even though you may have no intention of doing so) or look for a job in the industry.

Now at this point, it can go 1 of 2 ways. If you're lucky, the other person may see your interest for the field, and ask to see some of your work. If it's good, you will probably move to the top of the pile when a new hire is needed.
If that doesn't happen, then repeat as necessary with every other company.

That's a better bet than anything else out there, don't waste your time with the craigslist blackhole
Eventserver: broadcast HTML(5) server-sent events with JSON
[Show HN] Seat-Rb: CouchDB ActiveRecord replacement with optional Redis caching
Atari Music Network
They are not incompatible messages at all. This article says that SSDs delete stuff fast; the other says you can't reliably delete particular things. Basically, they're unpredictable. You can't reliably expect a particular file to be purged, and investigators can't expect data to stick around. So it might stick around, it might not, and no one has direct control.
I was on the fence as to whether Gnome 3 looked good or not, and this change drops me in to the "don't want to try it" camp. I don't like Unity either (and I have tried that one)... so now will I have a choice when running Ubuntu? I really hope someone maintains the old Gnome-panel system so that I can somehow graft it into future distro releases.

I use Ubuntu on my work laptop. I need to be productive on my work computer, and I just don't have the time or inclination to futz around with drastically changed desktops and unlearn 15 years of muscle memory and comfort level. My computer needs to be familiar and simple to me so that I can spend time building and deploying apps, not trying to remember how to minimize a window or what hotkey is the 'switch workspace' key (since I don't use even them right now).
I deploy django+myapp+modules in to a virtualenv[1] without any permissions other than default user perms in a Unix box. The only 'tricky' bit is setting up the database, that requires more permissions (and for good reasons).

It's completely possible to make to make it simple in any language. I agree with the point that currently the Diaspora installion instructions are a bit excessive though.

[1]- http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv
He probably doesn't have enough to move.

Perhaps a proper recommendation would be "apply for jobs in NYC. The word is they're quite desperate for competent developers".
Fractal Lab - Interactive WebGL fractal explorer
It's lovely :) I had to comment!
Show HN: Seat-Python - Python CouchDB Wrapper, RESTful and ORM capable
Yes, but when I read the PEP, sounded like this is the biggest motivation to not use Git.
My iPad won't even charge right without my macBook. My brother works for Apple and gave me the party line about how "some motherboards are not capable of supplying enough power to their usb ports."

I started Parallels on my macBook, plugged in the iPad and let it connect to the virtual XP that was running: "Not Charging". Shut down Parallels without even unplugging the iPad, well, boy howdy, its charging now. No OSX/iTunes? Purposely broken.
Playstation 3 Problems
Dude, I'm sorry to hear how rough it's been for you. I'd like to echo what many have said about posting samples of your work, and spelling out in more detail your particular skill sets as well as explaining what you have been doing with your time.

That said, I'm afraid we're not hiring yet, however -- and no, this is not a shameless plug, but a genuine offer to help -- I can offer you this:

I think you would benefit tremendously from our new startup. The way that we match Opportunity Seekers (such as job seekers, like yourself) with Opportunity Providers (such as employers) should greatly assist someone in your position -- i.e., talent without experience -- to find a new job or even co-founders to build your own company. We're still prepping the beta (having some typical last minute issues) but you should definitely sign up and give it a shot: venturocket.com.

And as defensive as it may seem to do so, I would like to preemptively state that I'm not trying to take advantage of your seemingly dismal situation, but genuinely trying to help you get connected with something. That my desire to help you will of course benefit our startup -- and therefore me -- should not, on its own, in any way invalidate the sincerity of my claim. After all, if it weren't for my desire to create a more efficient way to connect people with opportunities, I would never be doing my startup in the first place.

Besides, I do believe a certain Mr. Smith once pointed out that "[i]t is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

Best of luck either way.
What do you think of the folks at Mendeley?
Addressing your comment below as I couldn't find a reply on your comment.

Why go into a business with terrible margins from the start? Usually successful biz have great margins to start and then those get eroded with competition, technology, etc?

In general, it also seems easier to go from big to small vs the other way. If I'm a large newsletter owner, I want to know you've worked with folks like me. I don't care that you've done work for 100 newsletters of 5k people.

Waiting on bootstrapped startups to get funding and hoping they'll continue with you is dependent on lots of variables you have no control over. Business is already uncertain and this is just compounding that uncertainty.

I'm all for validating the market but do it in a lucrative area in my view where there is a real ROI on your effort.
If "real programming language" advocates spent more time creating equivalient/better alternatives to projects like Drupal or Wordpress in their preferred environments, they'd advance their goals much more than any HN/Proggit comment could.
Interesting and informative. Thank you for the insight.
I'd hardly feel as if working at a fledgling startup is considered unemployed even if it was considered so on paper. I'm quite sure that potentially you must have learned a wealth of knowledge during those 6 years and its in your best interest to highlight those on your resume and in any interview you manage to secure.

Being in the position of interviewing many candidates lately I get truly excited when people want to show me code and examples of stuff they've built, including the challenges they've met head on. Being in a startup gives you many life experiences that you need to address as a strength, whether you succeeded or not. A little secret that should be totally obvious is that no one wants to work with weak, incompetent, whiny developers because your life/project is in their hands when you have to get the job done by the deadline. Your team is only going to be as good as your weakest link.

I will tell you also that the market is hot. I just heard that in the tech sector the unemployment rate in CA is 5.9% compared to 12.3% for the entire labor force. So in actuality you'll face less competition finding a job in the tech industry currently than you will at fast food, etc. At my current company (in the Bay Area) we have a hard time finding good people locally, and I hear this same thing from many people at other companies. There is a very competitive job market (between companies) here and my employer is paying us handsomely if we can bring in a good new hire.

In addition I'd say play to your strengths. If you're an okay back end developer but excel at front end then apply to these positions or vice versa. Think of the hiring process from the other side of the desk and you'll be sure to land an interview.
There are literally hundreds of ways for someone with programming skills to earn money online - and make more money than hourly wages. Here are just a few to get you started:
1) Setup a profile on Odesk / Elance. Showcase your programming skills and start bidding on projects. There are thousands of eager buyers there. Sure you will be competing with programmers from India/Russia/Phillipines - but you can underbid them all and buyers in the US will hire you - as being in the US and cheaper than offshore programmers will be a huge plus for you.
2) Buy a domain name and build websites using Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal (pick any one), get a domain name for $8.00, use one of thousands of free themes, add some content, RSS feeds, add Google Adsense (all free), drive some traffic using SEO techniques. Then list the site for sale on Flippa, Ebay, Craigslist or any of the other sites to sell stuff. You can easily sell a site for anywhere from $50 to $500. Sell one site for $250 per week = $1000 per month.
3) Setup a site, Sign up for affiliate programs (Commission Juntcion, Linkshare, Amazon ...), Drive traffic and earn affiliate commissions.

4) Market complete websites to small business for under $500 using the technique in (2) above.
....
I agree, and suspect this is a major factor driving higher valuations. Companies which can grow organically in this environment are undervalued at 20x revenues. Not only is there much lower risk for investors, but Google gives these companies a significant competitive advantage:

- potential competitors can't compete on price since they'll be more reliant on AdSense

- potential competitors will need more money to survive to the point they see any SEO traffic.
I'm glad that I've spent the last couple of years making a name for myself in the big consultancy firms.

I may have to work as hard as a start-up founder but at least I get a nice pay packet and none of this '6years out of college with no career or anything to show for my efforts'.

I don't get why people spend years coming up with crap start-up ideas, failing, then trying the same failed recipe again. I wouldn't try and take something to market unless it was really hot. Your average web 2.0(crap) is just a waste of everyone's time. You could have been working your ass at a big consultancy or trading firm as a technologist in that time and made yourself some good money whilst actually having a life that doesn't involve ramen noodles.
on my literature course, in the finaly year, more than once somebody read a 'presentation' that was copied straight from wikipedia, indicating they couldn't even put in more than 5 mins effort when they had an actual assignment. add to this that the majority of people never say a fucking thing in seminars, and the 5 hour per week figure sounds about right.
I only hire people with work I can see in Open Source projects.

It's just not worth my time to try to sort through the people who claim skills that don't actually have them, particularly for contract work that is short-term. I might be willing to go through a long interview process for a full-time employee that I expect to invest significant time and money in, but for contracts? It's just not worth my time. I can look at someone's github, SF.net, CPAN modules, Drupal modules, etc. and know within minutes if they're worth working with. Why would I bother with someone that doesn't have anything to show?
Usually the ones that criticize solitude are those that can't handle their own, and get lonely, and thus can't realize its great benefits. Solitude can offer the power to better relationships because it anchors a person.
Reseting them with Cookiesafe on Firefox usually does the trick too.
I really don't use the maximise button ever, then again it is generally considered "broken" in Mac OS X anyway.

Now, a minimise button I do use, and my windows neatly get hidden away behind the icon they belong to (it's an option in OS X and I love it). Now, when I move my mouse to a corner of my desktop and activate exposé I get to see all of these windows as thumbnails.

Removing minimise is in my opinion definitely disruptive, sometimes it is nice to clear all the windows off the screen, using different workspaces is not always the right answer.

I assume that the overview they are talking about (and having read the linked email) looks and acts like Exposé does on the Mac, while nice, a lot of full screen applications and it becomes difficult to select the right window because the thumbnails get too small. The suggestion offered in the email looks a lot like what Mac OS X does.

I do hope that when Gnome 3.x is available in your standard Linux distributions that turning the minimise button back on is available.
I'm not aware of it being illegal per-se, ie criminal. But there is some rather strong evidence that volunteers for a for profit company, if treated like an employee (time cards, minimum work hours, training, etc.) would probably be able to successfully sue for back wages and penalties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program

In February 2010, the United States for the Southern District of New York gave preliminary approval to a settlement between AOL and the Community Leaders totaling 15 million dollars. Final approval was granted in May 2010.

(Good luck to the OP, I know that situation can be rough)
Its not trivial to divorce these "post PC" devices, but its just increasingly lame to require it, and several others have overcome the hurdle.

Android has. WebOS has.

I get OTA updates to my WebOS device, and it backs itself up over the air nightly. I just updated to 2.1 and all my apps just magically came back, and it had all my email/im/linkedin/facebook account settings too - I just had to re-enter my passwords to confirm. If Palm/HP can manage it, Apple can.

And the syncing of data over 3G argument is pretty lame. Most people find themselves with wifi at home/work for the large updates.

Having to cable my iOS device to my PC each morning to get my daily podcasts from iTunes is nuts. These are wireless devices, they should wake up, download the content and have it just magically "be there" when I decide to listen to one in the subway the next morning. Having to cable it up, or even open the application to force the sync is crazy.
Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Font Book 3, Emoji support
That's just silly. Plenty of new sites get significant amounts of traffic from search engines, and figuring how how to do better remains a viable marketing strategy for everybody. OK, it's a lot harder to dominate primary search terms than it used to be, lots of people with deep pockets, and a lot of favoritism by Google to the incumbents. But there are plenty of opportunities for creativity.
I wish I was trolling, but this is the reality of my life. I did apply for one of the investor demo days at Hacker Dojo, but was rejected. I'll admit I am somewhat antisocial, and have not attended any networking events, which is totally my fault.
Worm Spreads Itself Across Twitter (Statistics)
First of all, it's quite a leap to jump to the Internet being broken from your inability to implement a relatively simple piece of code. Here's a tip: if your web browser (a piece of software) can display the title, then you've just proven that piece of software you write can also do that. Understand where I'm going with this?

I'm not a Python programmer, and I've never used BeautifulSoup, but find and fix problems and move on. If it's true that Python can't handle Unicode (which I find a little hard to believe based on http://docs.python.org/howto/unicode.html ), then switch to another scripting language like Ruby or Lua. I understand that debugging can be frustrating (believe me, we've all been there), but making a hyperbolic jump to the Internet being broken is a little silly.

Good luck :)
Generalizing ryan's logic further:

"Can you write code and actually get things done? Do you have examples of your work that look good?"

If the answer's yes, freelancing is now just one of many options available to you.
an unwillingness to work on closed-source webapps adds a further wedge to the situation. you have it pretty good - desperate "work on our proprietary centrally-hosted webapp" pleas for talented developers are oozing into every crack of the internet
I might have some work for you.

Can you speak Hindi?
I know 16 year olds which have been offered jobs at fairly big startups on the spot at events like 500 startups and Launch.
And people have been building this sort of stuff... as online services.

Why would you build it as anything else than an online service (as the person building it)?
we host blog.get and get.tv ;)
Curious how there are hardly any bold colors outside of Russia. Why Russia?
libre.fm is cool, but the UI really disappointed me.

The site does bad job explaining itself, and therefore only makes sense if you already use last.fm. The UI is crude (javascript links with 'href="#"' which bounce you up to the top of the page all the time, etc) and inconsistent (nav bars come and go).

I think it's an awesome idea, but I think it needs some TLC from a good web developer. (And to be fair, here, I don't claim that I could do any better -- I'm bad at web UIs, and lean heavily on others when I have to make them.)
There are more knowledge-based jobs all the time. And more and more jobs all the time involve working with knowledge.

It seems you assume that the economy cannot continue to evolve. I see no reason to conclude that.

People will solve problems as they arise.

Just because a program or drug has large IP costs and low marginal cost to produce doesn't mean its a fundamentally different thing.

An oil well takes a lot of knowledge to find but not very much to profit from once you have. McDonald's franchise system took a lot of intellectual work to perfect, but making copies of restaurants is cheaper with more likely success than starting your own.

A lot of things have a lot of IP involved and that's nothing new.