skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I also have a lot of video media (love my Sony EX1!) so backup is a nuisance.

For programming work and writing, I use git (my own servers, periodically backing up my repos to S3; some github and some bitbucket).

For backing up my MacBookPro (which I use for work and video and photo editing/production) I use two large USB external drives with Time Machine, switching from one to the other every few days. My laptop and backup drives are encrypted with File Vault. When external drives are full, I store them and buy new ones (trying to be careful to plug in old drives and leave them on overnight occasionally so that they can check for damaged sectors, self repair, etc.

I still burn DVDs occasionally for backups also.

My wife uses a single Time Machine external drive and burns backup DVDs.

For your particular needs: I would keep one Mac always on with video on a shared drive. Even with wifi bandwidth it should be no problems accessing your video materials.
> Truthfully, why does anyone buy any particular asset expecting to do better than the market?

The portfolio managers do not. They want a basket of assets, ideally with an expectation value and standard deviation.

Read up on Modern Portfolio Theory, which is a typical entry point on portfolio management, if you are curious why expecting to do better than the market is irrelevant. (Despite the name, MPT is not very modern.)

Edit: Note also, when I said portfolio manager above, I meant the customers of the VCs, not the VCs themselves.
Show HN: Slicer for OS X
Here's my new Window Management app for OS X (think SizeUp, MercuryMover, Shift-It, etc). Mine uses a "recursive" style of interface that always starts a window Full Screen and then cuts in it half (or thirds) with each keypress. Works with dual monitor rigs and is fun to use.

Please kick the tires:

http://allsystemsgrow.com/slicer/Slicer.zip

Demo video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_u7nvEWjZuk#!

Let me know what you think!
I'm not sure if I agree with your terminology; I call myself a consultant, and have been doing it full-time for more than 15 years.

However, I'm mostly intrigued by the idea of value-based consulting. I've spoken with colleagues about it in the past, and the concept makes sense to me, and is much more attractive than billing out by the hour or day. But it's not at all obvious to me how I would price, in a value-based way, the work that I do for my clients.

It seems to me that some jobs are more appropriate for value-based pricing than others, but if people could give some examples of how it works, that would be really helpful.
Improving Hadoop Performance by (up to) 1000x
It's lazy thinking to decide to throw away an MVP outright. It's more sensible to decide which pieces are fine the way they are, and which pieces need to be refactored or rewritten, and to do so as the opportunities arise.

In particular, you're setting yourself up for failure if you're building a product knowing that you're going to throw it away-- you'll make poor choices that will stick with you for longer than you expect. Besides that, rewrites are risky for a business; they are often never completed since requirements and scope are constantly changing.
Another Candidate Campaigning Against SOPA Supporter: Jack Arnold
New years resolution suggestions for HN: coding, contributing, founding
I don't think the article "suggests that you eschew option three" at all.

The author recommended several microframeworks. He's arguing against large, monolithic frameworks and pointing towards a more pragmatic, YAGNI approach.

Use a small framework that gives you simple things -- URL routing, JSON parsing, etc. Maybe a base application structure to keep things sane.

You can do a lot of very useful things in a small, reusable microframework that don't have the level of complexity of a larger framework like Zend.

edit: I knew your name was familiar. Good work on Catalyst. My choice in framework really depends on the project.
This is, like, the 4th Betabeat story I've seen that tried to spin a whole epic news event out of something as insignificant as a single Twitter message. It seems to be their M.O.

HN used to block bait sites like this with a much heavier hand.
I do mean megawatt-hours.

I don't know what the normal payback period is for generation infrastructure, maybe 15 years or so is not that unusual.
Flying Robots Build A Tower Near Paris
5 Underdog Startups to Watch in 2012
Darpa wants to give dead, in-orbit satellites new life
Steve Peha: Agile Schools - How Technology Saves Education
I develop iOS applications. Based on j45's definitions I'd be a consultant/contractor. I have one client right now and they take up most of my time. They're a small startup and it was my first development job in nearly 10 years. The first projects were priced according to the scope of the work and what they could afford. I was severely undercutting myself but I Didn't feel I had any leveraging power. Their dependence on me grew and they've come to rely on me to help them shape the direction and future of the company. The last project I charged what I believe is market rate for an iOS developer and I let them make payments while I retain all IP rights until its been paid. Now I have an ongoing agreement with them where I guarantee them a set amount of time per week in exchange for $1,000/wk. How that time is used is up to them. It could go to consulting or to actually writting code. This works out for both of us because my income is fixed from this client, it's not full time, gives them flexibility to use me as best serves the business and keeps us from wasting time on the negotiation table on individual projects.
I charge 115 € per hour ex VAT (or roughly 900 € per day of 8 hours). I do mostly remote work (ruby, rails, etl, agile project management, sysadmin, devops, css/js, technical/org coaching).

If a client can give me visibility and ensure eg: 10 days per month for some months in a row, then I provide a discount on that rate.

I never do fixed-price projects and instead, provide best-effort estimates and bill by the hour.
I suggest starting here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1050

I don't have a 10.1, but I did spend a few hours reading through many of those threads last week before I decided against purchasing one for my wife. (We ended up going with the 7+ model instead.)

For what it's worth, my understanding is that there are workarounds to flash an unsigned kernel, it's just a real pain. Also, I think you would get the message you are seeing even if it were unlocked... my Galaxy S2 gives me the same warning before letting me into download mode.
Leeds, UK (no remote) - Pitch Hero Limited

Sports website with 2MM+ UVs/month, looking for frontend and mobile developers. Competitive salary and possible stock options.

Already profitable, doubled website traffic in the last 12 months.

http://www.pitchero.com/jobs/
Thanks for you reply.
I might have explained myself poorly but the client mentioned the word 'retainer' as a kind of contract where they pay me a fixed income in exchange for my 100% availability for any work they want me to do. They would pay for the work on top of that income as well. If I accept I get a more stable income but I might miss on interesting work opportunities. Is this what you refer to as retainer? Or is there a different word for this concept? It's almost like a call option in financial markets.
Indian Republic Day 26th January 2012 Celebration | National Festival
Conversation on it here as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420358
You're missing my point and getting caught up in the fact that entitlement annoys you. Regardless of how you feel and regardless of the consumers state of mind, this is happening.

> No business can meet all demands.

Absolutely, but it isn't being met. The demand of universal access is being fulfilled elsewhere.

>They act like not getting what you want is unique to our times. Unique to the internet. It's not.

What's unique to our time and the internet is that I can get what I want and it's more convenient than the conventional way.

That's the problem I was trying to highlight, hopefully this doesn't come across as snarky.
75 for the first hour, 40 every hour after that.

That's just for general workstation & network support. Other 'projects' come with different pricing...
He's saying it's FUD because the headline is misleading, not because he's trying to downplay the security issue. You and grandparent are likely in agreement with respect to your comment.

(The headline is misleading because the issue affects several major language runtimes, V8 included – yet only Node.js is mentioned.)
Startup Row is coming to PyCon 2012
If your job involves writing code, $60/hour is too low. The reason you're OK with charging per-hour is that you're undercharging.
Unless it's in PHP.
Søgemaskine registrering
Vores mission er at hjælpe dig med, at få få flere kunder i butikken. Vi vil hjælpe dig med, at udnytte mulighederne, som findes i det online univers.
Agreed. I boulder daily. It is one of the most rewarding forms of exercise on many levels. And if you get involved with it on a serious level you will see fast results.
Another tip: Always quote a range not a price no matter the time period. A range allows you to gauge a response and many times allows the higher end. Whether you are quoting hourly or a per job basis.
New on Kickstarter: Skallops Will Let You Build Big | GeekDad | Wired.com
While I agree on the R mailing list and StackOverflow (subscribe for r on the RSS feed) i would respectfully suggest that you ignore R in a Nutshell. While it does have some interesting worked examples and some good explanation, the book is essentially a commented version of the R introductory manuals.

The refcard is wonderful though. Personally, I found R bloggers really useful, just reading through all the articles is a nice way to learn the packages and tricks of the language (some of the code on the R help mailing list is also extremely useful here).

In terms of short, concise, wonderful books Data Manipulation with R is a favourite. Its only 150 pages, but it describes how to move your data from one form to another in the best and easiest ways. The SQL stuff and the regular expressions might already be known to the people here, but some of the material on dates, times and general reshaping of data was extremely useful (to me at least). R is not strong in this area, IMO and its nice to see some guidance in this area, as R packages often have funky data shape requirements.
To get double your bill rate, double your bill rate.

My sense of it is that a lot of people talking on HN about freelancing could stand to do that right now.

None of this has anything to do with what you call yourself. No two clients will give you the same answer about what differentiates a "consultant" from a "contractor" from a "freelancer".
Does that get any pushback? My impression was that big companies especially are set up to pay contractors either by the hour or per-project, and don't really like alternative arrangements. The (admittedly few) people I know who try to bill by the day or week still convert it to an hourly rate for invoicing; they might verbally agree with the client on something taking "one week", but they submit an invoice for 40 hours to the client's payroll department, because those are the kinds of invoices they know how to pay.
Thank you counteracting the notion that "ideas are worthless, execution is all that matters"

.. it takes a lot of time and experience to know the ideas that should be executed (and how), and if you can be rewarded for that, then all the better.

To run is easy, but to run and obtain health and not illness is the key.
Agree. It's easier to pass along a large price when removing a unit of measure so people evaluate the total value to what they are receiving.

For example if you say to me that you charge $500 per hour for three hours of work to secure my system that sounds expensive. But if you say the charge is a total of $2000 to secure my system then I am evaluating if $2000 seems reasonable without regard to what you are charging per hour.
Depends on a country or region.
Senior User Interface Developer
UI Lead Developer- HTML/CSS/SEO/Javascript
Leading IT consultancy in London is seeking talented, permanent UI Lead Developer to join their world-class development team. The role offers great opportunities to learn new technologies and the opportunity to work with Fortune 200 companies. With varied projects and short timeframes there is always exciting new work on the horizon. The successful candidate will work alongside Java developers, project managers and the rest of the development team to create and maintain websites for large clients.

The successful UI Lead Developer will have at least 5-7 years commercial experience and key technical skills should include:

Key Skills

Advanced:

HTML
CSS
SEO
Javascript

Intermediate:

A server side web language (PHP, ASP.NET, JSP)
Experience with databases (MySql)
Ajax
Jquery
Accessibility
XML
Actionscript
Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe Flash CS4, Flash ActionScript 3.0.
Project Management

In addition to the above technical skills the Lead Developer should be dedicated, highly motivated with excellent verbal and written communication skills. A knowledge of agile methodologies including Scrum and iterative development would be a bonus.
Should have a BS in Computer Sciences, HCI or related field/work experience. And 5+ years of prior technical/team lead and project management experience.

In return we can offer a competitive salary. The UI Lead Developer role is based in Central London with an immediate start date.

The successful candidate may also be required to travel abroad as part of their role.

Location: Holborn WC1R 4NA
Start Date: Immediately
Duration: Permanent
Contact: Yasar Ahmad
Email: Yasar.Ahmad@fistclarity.com
I never do fixed-price projects and instead, provide best-effort estimates and bill by the hour.

So far this is the best advice I have seen in this thread. So +1 :)

I used to give fixed-price quotes and it burns you more often than not.
Pinboard had downtime yesterday, here's how to enable automatic backups
The NBA is promising these networks a product that they can attach advertising to and re-sell. The league pass devalues game in the eyes of TNT - they can't resell the content to local cable providers to attach advertising to.

If they want to cut out two middlemen (the network and the local cable provider) then the NBA must learn to create a steady audience and get money from advertisers, which is a different skill than putting on ball games.
Data Science is the Future
That's part of what appealed to me at the ad agency I worked at. It's fun to build things as quickly as possible sometimes. I'm glad I'm not doing that constantly anymore though.
Twitter Confirms It Verified Fake Wendi Deng Account
Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter considering “nuclear option” to protest SOPA
Kayak: Do As I Said, Not As I Do To Others On Bing
symfony2 (which the OP picks on a little bit) has taken exactly this approach, there's much more emphasis on the components than the framework as a whole.
hmm..I just tried this and I felt that my wrist were nice and relaxed, but my shoulders were not.

Maybe it's just because I'm using a laptop.
Can you get better rates that way? How does it work?

We are currently using hourly rates (around 100€/hour (130$/hr)). Rate is quite reasonable for our expertise level in our area. However, I have noticed that it scares smaller customers away.

I honestly don't know which one would be better approach: crude week estimates and price tag of 4000€/week/person, or detailed hourly estimates and 100€/hour/persons. Of course value based rates would be best, but not really possible in most of the iOS projects that we do.
This is a large topic, but I can recommend the book Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss as a good starting point.

More immediately, you might ask whoever is buying your services for some insight into how your tasks fit into their business goals and the ROI they expect to get from the $ they spend on you. Someone at their org should have this. If not, you get to help them develop such a model which will likely be favorable to you.

Note that you will have to work with the business side to make value-based pricing work at all.
Most "list" posts suck; this one was awesome.

My only quibble: "Argue against something you believe" is not a special, part-time exercise. It should be a tightly-integrated element of your ongoing mindset, even in 'damn the torpedoes' dev mode.
I totally disagree with this post as well. I agree that decoupling the backend API from the front-end makes sense from a maintenance perspective but that's all I agree with in this article. I'd assume this is the default behavior for most developers.

However there's no way that I'm going to build something so crappy that I want to toss the entire thing out. I've decided to completely reprogram a system after realizing the first approach was the wrong way to do things, but that's different than deciding to toss your first product out the door from the get go. I gotta agree with smilliken, you're going to write bad code if you know it's going to be thrown out the window.
What do you do? $60/hr sounds low for Rails, iOS, Python, or serious database work.

If you can see yourself billing out $90/hr in June, 2012, why not try this experiment: bill yourself out at $90/hr (actually, $720/day, please) in January. See what happens.

If there is one thing HN people get wrong about consulting, it is that they relentlessly undercharge. It's easy to see why: the stuff they do seems easy to them. It's not easy. There is a worldwide shortage of real, viable talent. Companies are falling over themselves to attract and retain dev talent. The stuff you are doing is not cheap.

If you are billing at a rate that matches what a good full-time Google employee makes, you are wildly undercharging; freelancing is expensive (you are responsible for all your own taxes and your own benefits, and for providing a cushion for yourself for dry spells) and the service you provide (flexible, on-demand work without bringing a full-timer on) is extremely valuable.

CHARGE MORE.
The only bit of "piracy" I have done in the last 5 years was an episode of QI ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QI )

They decided not to air it for political reasons - Jeremy Clarkson was on the panel and they wanted to keep him off the air during a row about something offensive he had said on another show.

So I got a copy from an illegal source. I still do not see this as stealing as I had already paid for it (via the UK TV License.)
Clothes Clean Themselves Using Only Sunshine
Yes, I know "progressive enhancement" is an actual term. I thought it was interesting to hear it coupled with "mobile-first" and "media queries" as it sounded like a bunch of buzzwords.
Side note. I've seen attorneys price trial work at either a full day or half day which in many cases works out to more than their hourly rate multiplied. I've decided this is because they can't overcharge you since you know how many hours they are working. (4 hours in court is 4 hours. But 4 hours in the office is not always 4 hours.)
Looking at these numbers, I am amazed at the inequality bt. different parts of the world. Here in Turkey, hourly rate of a developer is around 10$, maybe 15$ if you are better. Of course, the cost of living is lower, but still...

Time to move abroad perhaps.
I think it's unfair to say the article glosses over this point. It's the theme of a section that starts with the sentence: Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location.
> As a beginner, I need to be shown how to do the regular stuff in Lisp. Like other languages tutorials.

The problem is that a very basic, idiomatic solution to an everyday problem in a lisp will utilize things like recursion, macros or higher order functions that you really need to understand first. Lisp is not just another programming language, it is another genre of programming language and you need to spend a bit of time understanding the fundamentals before digging into code. Otherwise it'd be like trying to learn Java without knowing what a class is.

So, most Clojure tutorials intended for non-lisp programmers start with language basics. I agree that there's a slight shortage of "cookbook-style" Clojure tutorials/examples out there, but most people find that once they "get" Clojure, via the basic tutorials, it's fairly straightforward to read and write. The lack of exampless for particular tasks doesn't seem to be an obstacle for most people.
not indicative of anything, i was able to compile check using "ab" a "hello world ap" with eventhttp;

- sinatra request per second 442
- tofu requests per second 5909

Note that it is not indicative of anything; just a simple quick test for curiosity on my vaio laptop with ubuntu 11.10.

Which other C web frameworks could you suggest? Which Sequel-like ORMs for MySQL could you suggest? I am especially curious on sinatra or rails-like frameworks with MVC or similar architectures.
Full-stack web developer. I'm a mediocre programmer, but know the web platform well. I've just been at this game for a few months, but have spent the past seven years working for å browser vendor. That helps.

My most significant customers so far have been impatient non-profits that want results yesterday. I don't know if that will remain my primary demographic. (c:
If the clients you're dealing with are scared by person/day rates, stop working with them. This is an observation Patrick Mckenzie has made here perhaps 100 times: as you raise your prices, the quality of your customers improves, often dramatically. Charge peanuts, work for monkeys.
> What's your strategy for dealing with your exponentially-increasing home movie collection?

I have a small low-power server running Debian Squeeze:
- ZFS-fuse filesystem (packaged with squeeze)
- disks in ZFS pool are arranged in mirror vdevs to protect against single drive failure
- separate ZFS file systems for archive and less important bulk storage
- weekly cron job: ZFS scrub to verify pool data integrity (and report the result)
- daily cron job: ZFS snapshot archive to protect against user errors
- SAMBA shares so the family can easily use the server.

This still doesn't protect against catastrophes which wipe out both disks at the same time, so I also make copies of my archive on USB disks for off-line storage in another location. That's the annoying part which is the most work.

I will probably move to the BTRFS file system in the future, because it is likely faster than ZFS-fuse and it seems to have support for mixing disk sizes, which makes it easier to grow the storage organically.
As I said, it depends on the sort of work you're doing. I can, and do, and want to work in sub-day increments.
It's a perfectly fine way of benchmarking. I'm not complaining, just reminding.
You mention not knowing Ruby before. But did you already know how to code?

When you can already code, picking up a new set of tools is a whole different beast to learning how to code from scratch.
Armory - a new Bitcoin client with a lot of features
Okay chicken-sh*t, mod, downvoter, if you have a tummy ache, then upchuck so we can all see what you can't take.

PG: I'm being personally attacked by your mods again. This is a HN scandal.
Ask HN: How do you get your app on the homepage of Google apps marketplace?
When one searches for apps, it shows results based on the description of the app listing (keywords etc).

But the homepage (https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/?pli=1) has a couple recommended sections ("Staff Picks") etc.

Any wise words? Thanks!

Raj
recruiterbox.com
What's better, a fork or a spoon?

It depends on what you're eating...