skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm an employer.

Quick background: We're a small Django consultancy/web app development company based in the UK. 7 people, all remote, split as three developers, one frontend dev, one designer, one sales, one administrator. I'm a developer/managing director.

Our experience with remote working has been largely very positive.

- It keeps our overheads very low. I think that when we remove our staff wage bill, our operating expenses are about £200 a month, which is mainly service subscriptions. If we accommodated everyone in an office, we'd be looking at spending at LEAST £3000/month on rent alone. This cash being available has meant that we can expand the company quickly, pay developers well, and still afford to take the team out to conferences and the occasional get-together and night out.

- Remote working means that your processes and working practices need to extremely well defined from the outset. All our interactions are online, so clear, unambiguous communication and good project organisation and management are essential. Of course, there is an overhead in this level of communication that might not be necessary if we were colocated, but I think that overall it benefits us.

- We are also able to expand our hiring pool. We've recently taken on a freelancer in Poland part-time (we knew him from when he lived in the UK), and we're not making adjustments to suit him; we're already well adapted.

- The tools which exist make up for a great deal of the shortcomings of remote working (we use Skype, Trello and HipChat mainly, with the occasional VNC/Skype screenshare session). This is a huge contrast to even a couple of years ago,

The disadvantages are almost entirely human factors:

- I think it's easy to 'hide' from the team if a developer is having a problem (either with their code, or their motivation). It's easy to coast through an unproductive day and there is often a delay in the other team members realising that a project is falling behind schedule.

- Sometimes working remotely can feel isolating. A few of our developers who live near to each other sometimes meet up at one location and work for a day, and I get feedback that everyone feels refreshed after. We have quarterly 'get together days', where we talk mainly about strategy and review our processes and performance, but I think we need to start having 'work together days', just to keep the morale and motivation high.
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Nope, they're not. Now think about how hard a lot of this stuff is for someone who's not even that great with Word.

http://www.liberwriter.com/testimonials

These are real quotes, and are just a selection of many. Making something hard easy for 'regular people' is a good business. I don't think it's actually that big a niche, and probably doesn't scale up hugely, because there is a human component involved, but so far I'm enjoying myself a lot.
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Idea Giveaway: Digital Standard Book Number
I always wondered about ISBNs in books. I just came to know it costs more than 100 USDs. It may have been a good solution to pin point a book in analog ages. But, With digital services, I think we can do better.

So, I think a website, where self-pubishing authors can register their book, which provides an unique identifier for the book will be awesome. Technically, it'll be feasible to give this service for free, since, this site won't have daily returning visitors, and publisher market is comparatively low in number. But, providing the service for free might encourage spammers. I think any amount upto 5 USDs should be still reasonable for a digital unique identifier for a book.

A profile for the book, will be maintained online in exchange for the money, the profile will have cover picture, author, current version, publisher etc.
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I'm a Django developer working from home most of the time. As you said, it is a bit depressing at the beginning but I believe that with time you start developing new activities and make friends online. I find it really productive and stimulating but it depends on your character of course.
This looks promising, I've been working with the Emscripten[1] port of eSpeak and porting it to the browser and node.js [2] as a contributor (not author)

[1]: https://github.com/kripken/emscripten

[2]: https://github.com/christopherdebeer/speak.js

I'm curious how best one could participate/contribute to spec drafts like this, seems it's being steered by Google at the moment.
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You are right, and I came here to take issue with this quote:

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Endurance, focus, and determination are likely to also be substantially heritable, just like raw intelligence.
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Hi Jon, would you be interested in hiring another Poland-based freelancer? Sorry to hijack your thread, I was trying to find a direct email address for you via your profile/linked site :)
The things that turned me off were:

1) Busy, complex interface.

2) Sluggishness.

I find Convore to be a much better way to approach the same problem of how to enhance email.
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Was it Dehnadi and Bornat? (link in other comment)
I both work remotely, and manage remote employees. I have about 6 years experience doing this.

For employees: You need to set your own rules, stick by them, and have a great work ethic, otherwise you will fail.

For managers: You need to find employees that don't need to be micromanaged, and stick to the notes above, otherwise you will fail.

edit: I should mention that I love working remote. I can't imaging myself going back into an office anytime soon.
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"What would prove my assumption (or idea) wrong?"

It falls under experiment design, but it's a much more straightforward and easy to understand question. You can ask kids that question (they're quite good at it). Really helps narrow down avenues of inquiry & speed up your problem-solving.

It's only useful if the person is already interested in being less wrong, but everyone is interested in being less wrong about something. When they (you) are, this is an excellent question to ask.
Btw, my professor assigned homework, but he never collected it. Test was everything. Gaining the answer didn't mean anything if you don't collect it, learning how to figure it out is what counts. So being willing to help your students even when they can obtain the answer themselves is critical in my mind. Anyways.. Assign the Odd problems, then go over any problems students have and consider doing some of the most difficult even problems you see in the homework assignments. These problems are generally quick to solve unless you are doing transforms, or Eigen values.
Ask HN: What good books are there on the wonder of tech/computing?
Books that portray the mind-boggling capabilities, and problems with modern technology to a pop-sci audience, for example explaining Moore's law, and the incredible speed and scale of modern processors.
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Furthermore:

> Clone the rails3 branch into a separate directory from the usual working directory (instead of simply switching branches)

What does this accomplish?
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What can this unique identifier give authors that the url of their home page for their book does not?

All I can think of is that urls do not have check digits, whereas ISBNs and presumably your unique identifiers do, so typos can be caught without network access. Anything else?
Quite an interesting story, I would like to point out that being from Pakistan, I have seen such services since the first day that I went outside a passport office.
Here in Karachi, you can find people providing Copy services, to scanning and printing and also what they call here is document composition where the guy writes a complete letter application for the client to be submitted in the Govt office. You can also find different Oath Commissioners (for document attestation). And all these are commonly found outside courts and other Govt offices, usually having a desk under a tree !
"Lorentzon and Ek were in a unique place: The former no longer needed the money, and the latter no longer cared about it. So they decided to ignore the dollars and aim for disruption."

This is the crux of why this whole thing ultimately won't work, in my humble opinion. The folks in charge of licensing Ek his product still care very much about money, and as long as he has to license his product from them they are going to charge a completely unsustainable rate.

Rather than focusing on creating a platform for developers to make cool applications with Spotify, Ek should be focusing on creating a platform for musicians to get their businesses together without record labels.
+1 gorgeous! :)
Then again, a tech savvy user that encrypts his drive and claims he/she haven't a slightest idea what the officer is talking about is probably in many cases way more suspicious. At least to an officer that is informed enough to bring that up.
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The best I have found for advanced javascript to be is "Secrets of the Javascript Ninja"[1] by John Resig and Bear Bibeault. Highly recommended. Currently I am reading "Javascript web applications"[2] by Alex MacCaw and it seems to be well written and to the point as well.

[1] http://www.manning.com/resig/
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I believe it failed in part because of the slow rollout (nobody you cared about had access yet) and lack of interop with email for notifications about changes, etc. I tried using it, and gave up. By the time it became widely available most of the early adopters gave up as well.
Don't you like logic & understanding? I am not sure why anyone here would promote an ignorance is bliss kind of attitude when it comes to mental or learning disorders. This reeks of the military's inability to accept PTSD as a real condition, ostracizing those who claim they have it as being weak or lazy. Does the hacker/geek crowd have the same trouble accepting learning disabilities as a valid form of mental illness?
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Haha, I'm in the Philippines also and I understand the need for two internet connections. Now if only I could hook up two electrical connections. Oh well, I guess I need to pick up a generator.

I have a fully self contained development environment on my USB drive for when I absolutely can't deal with down time during internet connection / electricity outages. Then I can just grab any computer at an internet cafe and be back at it. Otherwise the outages are just unscheduled breaks. I have also learned to keep ahead of the ball rather than procrastinating because the outages seem to be timed for that last minute when I can't procrastinate any more.
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I work remote as a developer- mainly doing web based stuff

Advantages-
.No IT jobs locally that i like to work for (mainly high stress financial based IT jobs)
.Choose where I work from- I could work from home but I rent a desk in a communal office to be around other developers/entrepreneurs
.communication is cheap- use skype
.if this contract doesnt work out i feel i could move on to something easier rather than being a full time employee in an office
.Never met my boss :)

Disadvantages
.Spec gets lost- without proper procedures i find myself sitting doing nothing as boss is nowhere to be seen
.you cant nag someone when ya see them. i.e. if your waiting on an email you cant shout across the room at them - you have to lift the phone or get them on skype.

overall i enjoy the experience and some of my main issues are more internal issues- but remote working is made so easy now with the likes of gmail, pivotaltracker, skype, dropbox and google docs

edit- some of the other comments say it can be quite lonely- i work in a communal office and i go to the gym every night after office hours just to get out of the office or away from home
more specifically any american startup working with remote workers :)?
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This can be much cheaper and efficient option for authors to obtain unique identifiers, this service can be upto date with all digital trends, like QR codes for DSBN etc.

Also, Only a very small fraction of books have official websites. So, these pages may also serve as official web-pages for those books, kinda like IMDB for books.
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I think it also depends on what stage a business is at. I think if you are in an initial high growth period the emphasis should certainly be on the 'buy right now' customers, these are new customers trying out a new company or customers you are taking off a competitor. I think commission structures are more appropriate during this phase, the business still needs to find what type of customer it works best with, and it needs to get a critical mass of these, and this is mostly a numbers game.

However, there is a point where you've reached a certain critical mass, where your happy customers market for you, where your own marketing and presence sells the company. Like Fog Creek, which is now an established and known company. At this point you will do better at growing your customer base through marketing instead of commission driven sales, where customer service to the existing customers will do the selling for you, and changing the pay structure of your sales people will align them better to this approach. It also allows you to convert your customer base slowly to those you know will remain with you for longer. I think you still need to keep statistics on sales performance, and deal with bad performers and promote good performers, but these should be closer to a bonus structure and work over longer timescales, like the rest of the staff.
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Gah, you're right. Unfortunately alternative storage adapters are really hard to find (do they only exist?) for the //c.
I assume, given the authors of the draft, that Chrome will have support for this soon?

Edit: Apparently, it already has it:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3428329
"- I think it's easy to 'hide' from the team if a developer is having a problem (either with their code, or their motivation). It's easy to coast through an unproductive day and there is often a delay in the other team members realising that a project is falling behind schedule."

I understand the code part of this problem. I think it's good to have a set estimate on how long the item should take so that as soon as you hit that tripwire you stop, send a notification out to the rest of the team, explain the situation and ask for feedback. Perhaps a good way to help with this would be to setup a "feature timer" which automatically hits an "oh shit" button and sends out the notifications automatically.
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How do you upload the mobi files to the Kindle store?
Point taken. I wonder if Lotus could have patented their menu assignments.
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I live in a huge city(São Paulo) and just like most of big cities the traffic here is terrible. And it's just getting worse.
Nowadays I work really close to my home, so I don't have problems with it. But I remember of taking 2 hours to go to work, 2 hours to come back. And when it rains...well, it gets much worse. It's terrible.

Working as a remote employee full time is something I need to achieve.
I think I haven't found the right opportunities yet or maybe I'm looking for them at the wrong places.
Given that he takes an inordinate amount of time explaining how to format code using a tool, is the rest actually worth reading?
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I'm also an employer, I pretty much exclusively use oDesk.

I believe outsourcing will begin to play an increasingly large role in how society operates due to changes in work/life balance, increasing internet speed and availability, and the number of people working office jobs.

My experience with outsourcing has overwhelmingly been positive, however there's definitely an art to hiring a good employee. Some people who want to work freelance really shouldn't, they need too much direction or micromanagement, even if they're quite good at what they do. It brings a lot of value when your employees can think for themselves, most of the overhead of outsourcing is keeping on top of people.

One thing that people don't consider when hiring remote workers is the experience that can come with it. I've hired people who are experts in PPC. They have used screensharing to walk me through what they're doing while simultaneously delivering value to my company. I believe there is market for this type of remote training in the near future.

Incidentally, I had heard of hacker news but never read it, one of my outsourced employees really got me onto it. He's a designer from California. More than happy to share more detail if people are interested.
I was able to work remotely (exclusively) for 2.5 years from 2004-2007. I was able to live in two different, beautiful places, and moving was a non issue. My work schedule was totally random - I would wake up whenever I wanted and simply skip "work" days at random going to hike, but despite this it was, in terms of output, one of the most productive periods of my life.

However, after that period I simply decided to quit, because of the totally absent social life. Now I waste 2 hours a day in commute and waste time in useless meetings setup by some random executive. I'm also paid less comparatively, and have more expenses. I still wouldn't go back. I now discuss openly and face-to-face with great colleagues, work with great problems together, share great ideas, etc. Choosing a good job is so much more important.

I would still happily work remotely one, two days a week. Just for the convenience. Or maybe in small periods throughout the year. Still, I will never work remotely again.

During the period I worked remotely, I was able to knew/meet a lot other people that worked remotely all the time (some since the '90!). We all had, more or less, the same problem: we all scored incredible amounts of hours (compared to normal workers) despite the absence of both work pressure and schedule. We tended to be a bit extremists in quality (of course, you had all the time to think about the best solution), which wouldn't work well with normal colleagues that had to struggle with time constraints. I didn't understand that at the time. Because of your derailed work schedule, you generally tend to be less social even if you have good social contacts. In the end it's a self-inflicting problem: you are less active socially, you dedicate more time to your work, etc etc. It's actually quite difficult to find balance. I couldn't in the end.

Employers should take note, because working remotely sorta-implies a very dedicated person. Being able to work without any social pressure is difficult if the worker is not a motivated person. Un-motivated persons will basically quit by themselves after just weeks (I saw it happening a lot).

It also boggles my mind that employers (and this happens mostly in EU) still don't grasp that concept. Regulating work hours, presence, etc is stupid unless your job is depending on a regulated schedule itself. People slack right in front of the monitor all the time. Allowing people to work from home it very beneficial: it actually increases the production (less time wasted in commute, colleagues, etc). But of course, it really depends on the people that you hire, and how willing are you to thrust these people.
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I have worked remotely for 6 years - in one case working for a UK company and living in Australia. Once you get the hang of it (especially as an engineer) it is significantly more productive. BUT it does take the right sort of mindset - I am self-disciplined in terms of starting hours, I do not get distracted by things around me.

Of course the downside though is that the work/life line gets significantly blurred. At least working at a office when finishing work I 'finished' working remotely it doesn't work like that.. just will finish this one last thing then I will stop... and I don't.. I have a family now so its great to be near to see them grow up... but sometimes families still don't get the fact you are 'working' can you just drop so and so off to school etc...
Completely agreed on the crowd-sourcing of typos, that would be very useful. I just got an updated version of Programming Clojure, and the experience was wonderful.
Nerdi
I see internet as the fourth dimension to daily life. It certainly isn't an necessity but making sure that it is available, if requested, is sane.

Related: Finland makes broadband a 'legal right'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10461048