skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I’ve tried freelancing a few times, I never manage to make it work. The clients I find all end up paying less than a “normal” job so I end up going back to that.

I’m working as a Solutions Engineer now. Its basically freelancing without sourcing customers and a consistently big pay cheque every month. Any tips on starting freelancing?
To quote Don Draper: that’s what the money is for! You already get a pre-negotiated salary and maybe a bonus plan, why is there an expectation of more money that nobody agreed upon?
It looks like you're missing Finland: visitor share 0.7%, population 5614571.
Some really interesting projects here! I've been working on my own SaaS project called CorOpera (https://www.coropera.com) for almost a year now. It's a cap table management solution for early-stage startups, helping them manage their cap table, do some bookkeeping, stay legally compliant, and potentially retain employees by offering them stock options. While not quite at the $2k/month mark yet, we're steadily approaching it.

I have an engineering background so breaking into the marketing and sales domain has been quite a journey. It's been a roller coaster of ups and downs, but I remain hopeful.

One of the things I've enjoyed most about building your own thing is just talking to other founders and learning about their experiences. While the dataset has not been large enough to make quantity compensate for quality, I've still learned quite a bit.

It's been fascinating to read about everyone's side projects, and I'm curious to know if any other founders here have faced challenges with fundraising bookkeeping or cap table in general. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Snapchat is centralized.

Also, I wouldn't call the Snapchat UI terrible. I would call it difficult for first time users. This creates a "buy in" effect with users... Lots of powerful tools have this concept, similar to the Bloomberg terminal.
The after work hours must be a culture thing. There's no way you get anyone to show up at a pizza party at work, on a Friday evening, unless you invite peoples families and give two months advanced notice. Kids need to be picked up no later than 16:30 (maybe 16:00), partner get of work at 17:30. You could be ready to go at around 19:00, but that's bedtime for the kids, so now you need a nanny... That seems like a lot of work for a free pizza.
Sounds absolutely supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
I felt that this is more in general trend with most websites, especially with visits from India. Despite being one of the most populous country with "high internet penetration", Indians usually don't seem to visit websites.

I know the post's is the data is from HackerNews visitors over a certain period of time -- when it was working time across USA's timezone.

Even on my own personal website (I'm Indian), India is like the 4th highest visitor with a hugh margin of difference from USA's visit. It, however, does catches up with USA to my family website though the difference still remains high with the top visitors - USA.
> The definition of a continent is a continuous expanse of land.

That is both vague and by no means the only definition of a continent. A continent is basically defined culturally - different places say there are 4,5,6 or 7 continents.

The closest to a good scientific definition is 'the largest landmass of a continental plate' (which would include Australia but not greenland, but then arguably India, east Africa, Arabia and Central America are really also on their own plates)
returns an empty page for me
As far as creative books go, I want to share "A theory of fun" (https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/144...) - it's a game design book very accessible for an .. let's say 8-10 year old, might still be a bit early for your daughter depending on her level.
It's funny how quickly opinion shifts. Read through articles like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35469908 from last week, the second comment compares the importance of "AI" for programming to the invention of the GUI
Actually, it’s a feature :)
I don't know if you went to a French-speaking school in Belgium, but I was told the same thing in a French school. The French "continent" certainly refers to a large mass of land and its surrounding islands [1]. Hence, the continent is Oceania rather than Australia.

[1] https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/continent/186...
> Well, it simply doesn't answer the question of why employees hate pizza parties.

Why do you presume employees like pizza parties?

What leads you to believe that HR-imposed mandatory, non-paid gatherings after hours are something enjoyed by employees?

Those who already want to gather after hours to socialize are already doing it, without needing HR to be involved.
Wait, pizza parties are hosted after work hours? Never seen this
I can relate somewhat to your comments. I suggest you may be describing what is called Synchronicity by Jung.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
I don't get why there is no inter-relay communication. From what I read it would just work but it is not allowed for some reason.
That is indeed true!

The most famous example can be found at the bottom of this page: https://www.alphadictionary.com/fun/tongue-twisters/swedish_...

å: stream

ö: island

i: in

ä: not correct, but used to represent dialectical pronunciation of "är", i.e. "is"
158 years ago was the First International [1]. More of a tongue-in-cheek joke.

Watch the video I linked in order not to put your ignorance in front of you and don't cower behind the guise of rationality to expunge heterodoxical worldviews.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_A...
That's "Virtute", from the Canadian city of Winnipeg's Latin motto, "unum cum virtute multorum": "one with the strength of many".

Not from Winterpeg or anything, just long-ago research resulting from my personal insistence that the guy from Propagandhi wouldn't be making spelling mistakes
I'm looking forward to learning more about why the shopify ecosystem is toughie? I had considered launching a data analytics system that we're using to monitor shopify site.
Yeah, but that's an anecdotal asshole anomaly and drawing a general conclusion from it is nonsense.
At a place I used to work we had optional "pizza parties" as a reward for employees during work hours. Then many people started grabbing pizza and going back to their desks to work, or to head out for a break, etc.

Management got upset that people weren't staying in one place to eat and talk, so they made it mandatory to stay in the room for anyone that was eating.

It was pretty clear then that the pizza wasn't a reward for employees, and was something intended to achieve some other purpose (e.g. teambuilding, work discussions, etc.).
Yeah, this is what I do. I mean I know my data is being collected all over the place through other people clicking “yes, take all my data” on this and many other services and apps, but I still don’t like doing it to other people.

So what this means is that when the owner starts a group chat and adds people I haven’t chatted with in WhatsApp before, those third parties show up as just numbers, and I can’t label them even once I learn who they are.

Also, if the owner says “let’s hop on WhatsApp; start a chat and invite (other co-worker)” I have to say that I can’t start group calls, and explaining why gets a lot of eye rolling. And maybe the eye rolling is justified? Trying to maintain privacy is tiring, and I’m probably accomplishing exactly nothing by refusing to let WhatsApp have my address book. They can probably tell me what’s in it with 95% accuracy already, so it does feel a bit like making a stand to prove a point, except literally nobody cares. It would be like if I had a mustache and chose sustainably-produced mustache wax instead of the regular kind, and it turns out the sustainable-mustache-wax company is a subsidiary of Nestle anyway; that’s about the level of impact I’m having here by refusing to press certain buttons inside WhatsApp.
I don't presume anything. I'm just pointing out that the article does not answer it's own question.
Is it “draconian” to ban content that is inappropriate for children?

Yes. Otherwise, only "G" rated movies would be allowed and the Bible would have to be banned too due to it's "inappropriate" content and the internet would need to be firewalled and on and on and on --- until government control of information started to look a lot like China.

It's revealing to note that those promoting these bans will also oppose similar government control when applied to their own pet interests.
> Did you know your neurons can't go through mitosis? You can't regenerate a damaged brain.

Wow. Did you learn biology in 1970 or something, and not bother keeping an interest in the field?

You seem to have built a large amount of mental scaffolding on a foundation built of sand. Very, very, very loose sand. ;)
I wouldn't say the definition is all that clear-cut either: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/continent#English

> generally regarded as seven in number, _including their related islands_, continental shelves etc.
How about AI that can do physics better than any human?
It worked for me. iOS 16.3.1, Firefox 111.
Moderna spent a few months on it before they had a vaccine ready for trials. The lab spent just under a decade building on decades of prior research. It's pretty clear who did the bulk of the work when it comes to the mRNA discoveries, and it wasn't Moderna or its shareholders.
Crypto has created no useful products yet, unlike AI. I don't know how can you even mention them on the same page.
As a theorist in AI, the premise is funny but also really sad. And yet it is a very pervasive premise in the field.

OpenAI is not doing science. They are building a big shiny thing, showing it off, keeping it closed, and making money off of it. That is not part of the scientific process.

It is as if, every time SpaceX launched a rocket a little bit higher, every aerospace department ooh'd and aah'd and threw up their hands: "we don't have the resources to build a bigger rocket; how can we do science?"

Unfortunately, the research field of AI is diseased: it places way too much value on showing off big shiny things above progress in scientific understanding. But there is a ton of progress available to be made by small teams on small budgets. There is so much we don't understand about neural networks alone, even small ones.
Everything advertised on social media is overpriced junk
Your boss rakes in a few millions, and all you get is a pizza

And the salary I receive every month...
We are not our thoughts. We are not the thinking machines in our heads. We control our thoughts, so we are more than them.

These machines are merely thinking machines.
> All you have to do is prevent your TLS calls from trusting any certs signed by manually trusted CAs that Proxyman/Charles/etc might have had the user add.

Yeah but I have certs signed by trusted root authorities a la letsencrypt?
Design proof that being "unique" doesn't mean "good".

I'm certainly glad they like what they've built. But it breaks a lot of design concepts that help with UX (some in micro ways that aren't really noticeable without the aggregate effect). The "max character width" is a really valuable thing for "readability". But why bother with learning design when you're using all of the TECHNICAL specs 'exactly as specified'. Why bother with design responsibility when you're already absolving yourself of technical responsibility ('it should not be our job to work around bad tech...').

Of course, the most galling thing is that they're not actually using the spec, as it is specified. Using `section` tags everywhere is inappropriate. They are meant to break up content in the `article` tag.

But, okay, whatever; you're going to cling to the spec but still ignore the parts of it you don't like. Fine. Like they said, it's not causing screen-reader issues, so who cares, right? Except that they ALSO don't use the `header` tag within those sections to denote what is clearly a header. Not a "heading" (h1-6, used for breaking up paragraphs in articles), maybe, since it's not in an article and that can cause funky screen-reader performance, but there's no reason to NOT use a `header` tag. This use case is literally what it was made for; giving a generic header that you can style and make accessible on your own. So why use a `section` tag erroneously, but then eschew using the `header` tag for the exact purpose you need? (why use it? screen readers/accessibility)

Nothing in this seems like "well-considered design". Rather it seems like "good enough, and how I like it." Which is a perfectly wonderful way to design and run a website! It's just kind of shitty to then go write an entire article telling anyone who misunderstands your uniqueness for a different flavor of uniqueness that you are actually doing everything exactly right and that anyone who dislikes your site should take their "problems" elsewhere. A fine enough attitude, if you're in to that kind of gatekeeping, but I've never found it compelling or endearing.
Raising salaries is a permanent commitment and much harder to push through. Paying one-off bonuses, though, is much more feasible.
If you have iOS/Android development experience, you can look at the Developer sector, which is relatively niche IMO.

I've developed the iOS/iPadOS app, Proxyman for iOS [0], which gains steadily ~2k recurring revenue every month. Basically, it's an iOS app that helps you to capture and decrypt HTTP/HTTPS traffic on your phone. The app is needed if you need to inspect traffic from your app.

Because it's an iOS app, published on AppStore, you can provide a subscription pricing model: e.g. $4.99/month, $39.99/year, or lifetime $99.

I also develop the macOS version, but it's a huge market, which is out of context.

- [0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/proxyman/id1551292695
But they kind of are, because we all love what we do, so there are no work and no-work hours here at Slave Galley Inc. We're a family!
Indeed. (ChatGPT silently removed that row...) Fixed now.
I was much more successful in creating a SaaS product, I've reached almost 3 digits of profits. But I still wouldn't suggest someone to do consulting because it's a different mindset. You can only earn money if you decide to work, while having a working SaaS project has great scaling potential, but I totally agree that it's far more riskier when you factor in opportunity costs.
Obsidian is not:

1. A native app (it's an Electron app).

2. Open source.
Interesting project. Will definitely check it out next time I have to analyze the traffic from my phone.

I was just about to ask how do you differentiate your product from mitmproxy but on a quick google search I found this thread from a few years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627819
I'm fine with pizza. Just don't make it into "reward" for completing anything and it is fine. I sure would rather talk with colleagues and eat something for last hour or two of work rather than work.
I should have mentioned I have an iPhone SE (2nd gen).

I never got a "You're all set, John" message. Just the JSON reply as seen in the screenshot.
Thanks for the same.
Is this an on demand platform like uber?
but try anyway
I think you're trolling.

You said plants and fruits are 'literally screaming in pain'.

I don't think you know what the words scream or literally mean.

If you're serious about what you said please provide your evidence based sources that claim that plants and fruits are literally screaming in pain.
Is it a platform to connect providers and customers? What's the business model?
Not all cars are made equal. Just as you don't go to a cross-Sahara race in a car you don't know you, you don't buy a Prius to go logging in Alberta or Yakutsk.

Sure, that doesn't necessarily invalidate your argument, after all this increase in car complexity (through "electronization" and smartification of more and more components) without the increase in debuggability/repairability is IMHO a bad trade-off for many consumers.

Case in point, our second-hand 2011 Ford Focus has a problem with the electronic steering assist. Apparently it somehow experiences some kind of over-voltage and the internal system shuts down. It's likely due to humidity. (So probably it's simply a design/manufacturing/QA issue.) Okay, but there's no way to get the actual data from the integrated electronics from the steering system, but it's possible to reflash a different firmware on it. Which resets the internal data. Which basically clears this error state, and the car will happily use it.

But there's clearly a mechanical error, there's a new "bad" noise when turning the steering wheel. But it's a 10+ year car, rarely used, and replacing the steering system is about ~1000 EUR, doing the firmware flashing was ~30 EUR. (Finding the guy with the laptop, who can flash the firmware through the good old ODB port was the challenge.)

And it's basically a big (market) information asymmetry problem. The car industry wants to sell more cars. Sure they sell some parts, but the more repairability a car has the less parts it really needs, as consumers can make their own tradeoffs.
The article talks about using them as reward for hard work, not as just social event.
> I don't service my devices through the telcos. I use prepaid plans and phones.

That's on you.

> Many people do. That's why department stores sell them. Because there's a customer base that needs them.

Then make the department store responsible for offering recycling points. Make them responsible.

> I sincerely doubt many 40 dollar off the shelf phones are being recycled.

And that is a problem.

> Many people also likely find it stupid to pay someone to change a battery when we can do it ourselves.

Sure. Given the amount of small businesses that offer phone repair, many don't for a variety of reasons too. My own; keeping the manufacturer responsible for the rare earth materials, and if they fuck up the repair, they are liable. I fuck it up, I'm on my own.

> I think a more reasonable compromise here is that we can probably both agree that recycling in general needs massive improvements. i.e. make it incredibly easier for people to recycle or remove the choice from the consumer completely.

I agree wholeheartedly. To answer your postscript; being in a drawer unused is as bad as being in a landfill because there are materials and components that could be salvaged and reused/recycled. By not recycling them or reusing the device, new materials have to mined and processed. Th only thing you can say is that potentially harmful materials are leaching out, but as discussed, that is only part of the picture. The degree to it being marginally better being in a drawer is negligible.

> And if small amounts add up then arguably devices+batteries in landfill are worse than just battery.

Neither is good. Arguably, losing your hearing is better than losing your sight. The better option is losing neither.
> This was not some random internal IT document. This was an official, public Stanford policy, advertised as part of a specific PR strategy.

You're just projecting that you don't really understand how universities are organized. Universities are towns more than corporations, and we share a lot of things in public because we are very open. Unlike corporations which use a veil of secrecy to hide their operations, universities operate more freely. This is a good thing.

That is of course until the public and provocateurs come in and start misrepresenting things, as was the case here. It was a policy proposed by a subcommittee of a department, and the document described itself as aspirational and a guideline. Was it a good idea? No. But it was misrepresented by outsiders as "official, public Stanford policy, advertised as part of a specific PR strategy." This is a flat mischaracterization of what that document was. It's a mischaracterization of the literal words on the document explaining what it was.

You may say that its nature on the Internet made it a defacto public PR strategy, but again that shows ignorance of how University PR works (lol, what's a "PR department"? That's corporate speak), but the subsequent hiding of the document behind the Stanford network should make clear it was never for you in the first place. The fact that you're still mischaracterizing the document today tells me you are intentionally pushing misinformation. I'm not sure why, but don't you think you should stop?

> speaks volumes to their incompetence.

Okay, and what was the fallout really? A bunch of conservatives and right wingers had a field day complaining about wokeness gone wild. And? Stanford continues to be a world-class institution producing cutting-edge research. The world continues turning. Stanford enrollment continues to grow.
The reality is most EU cookie banners aren’t cookie banners but requests for consent under GDPR
I'm building mobile games where you can use AI and machine learning to solve different puzzles.

It has some fans among teenagers: https://ai-simulator.com/
I run small outsourced IT systems for SMBs. Web scrapers, reporting, stuff like that. Baisically private bespoke SaaS.

About $10k/mo gross revenue and takes a few hours of work a week (unless there’s a downtime event that needs fixing). A lot of upfront work to build some of these systems though.

Got to $2k/mo in the first month of doing this. I don’t recommend working (as a solo operator) with clients who have budgets less than $5-10k/mo. Too much overhead for too little return in that case.

In what little spare time I have left after my day job and looking after two small kids, I put more automation in place to improve reliability for my clients and reduce my own ops time requirement.

I get leads for this by referral from people I’ve done good work for in the past. But it’s the kind of thing you could bootstrap by direct outbound sales, publishing authority-building content to the right business audience, going to conferences/trade shows, or building a referral network from other service provides.
People are different. Extroverts love social activities at work and introverts hate them.

Extroverts are estimated to be anywhere from 50% to 74% of the population. That coupled with the fact that employees are less likely to quit a company that they have social engagement with in the office means pizza parties aren't likely to go away anytime soon.
> Human creativity and innovation thrive when people feel free to talk and reason about anything without restrictions or fear of retribution.

Any data on that? In my experience creativity thrives even more when solving problems under a set of constraints. Even if they are artificially set up.
2019 Net Income - $36B

2022 Net Income - $60B
There are various themes and it works well on mobile and doesn’t look like every single other website out there today, so I count it as a win.

It’s kind of how so many LaTeX documents look the same because nobody bothers to design anything; the inverse problem from Word where things are too easy to change.
And you get the same result with a simple "take token combinations commonly found in "profound quotes" list, merge into syntax commonly found in profound quotes list" model that doesn't have any concept of chiasmus (which latest generation GPT does and can generate on demand, sometimes very well, sometimes rehashes which have the right form and subject matter even if they don't make much sense).

tbf some of the people making greetings cards are doing likewise...

Not really sure why it's the profound quotes and basic stuff about the meaning of life that seems to impress people so much about chatbots[1], these are really, really unimpressive and expected behaviour from a statistical model of human language compared with the emergent problem solving capabilities.

[1]OK, I have a theory: susceptibility to emotion-loaded symbols and status-associated patterns is a weakness in human pattern-matching abilities