skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As a freelancer myself I think it's really important to finish what you start, and keep your promises.

Sure, there are times when you have to walk away from a project, such as when there are personality conflicts, or unreasonable expectations. It doesn't sound like that's the case here.

Keep in mind that most software isn't actually done when you deliver on the initial specs. Companies will usually expect you to be available for some sort of maintenance phase where bugs fixes and small feature additions are done by you. They'll likely expect you to work at your original rate unless otherwise specified. Even though you think it's only going to be 200 hours I suspect you will likely be involved with them longer than that.

What I would do is finish the contract, but start to set the company's expectations now so there are no surprises at the end. Tell them honestly that you set your rate lower than your costs, and that after you deliver the project you will need to charge $35/hr or whatever the going rate is for further work.

On a side note, while $35 sounds like a great full-time wage when freelancing you'll be lucky if you can get 8 billable hours a day. Sure, while deep in code it's easy to meet that, but there's the downtime between projects that you have to account for. Also as a freelancer you're expected to be an expert, so learning everything on the job is normally frowned upon -- you don't get paid when you take time off to learn how to use a new tool or technique.

I once heard the rule of thumb is that if you'd like to earn the same as you would working full time, but as a freelancer, that your hourly rate should at least be twice your full time wage. Depending on where you live $35 might be good, but I don't know any experienced freelance developers in North America who charge that.
Here's the whole (unedited) interview: http://www.vimeo.com/3368761
Call to action: Deceptive marketing of Safari 4
So you've taken the idea of progressive enhancement and reversed it? Zeldman would be rolling in his grave... if he were dead, anyway. I've always found it easier to go the other way: make a site that works on everything, then just add bells, whistles, and enhancements with Javascript as you feel compelled to do so. Doing it this way, I find places I was going to use pure JS where there was no real value-add to it.
I remember at a young age telling my step dad that he should be buying domain names of big companies and sitting on them. he laughed at me. :(

I'm the sort of kid who was buying candy in bulk and reselling it at school for a hefty markup. I'm pissed I missed out on all the easy money in web 1.0. If only I was born 10 years earlier.
Probably around 200

Well, say goodbye to your next 12 weekends. ;-)

On a more serious note, this is actually one of the better dilemmas to be in - others are seeking contracts and you have two. Just be open to both companies, tell them about your problem and you guys will find a way. Unless you try to cheat on one or another I don't see anything unethical about your situation - just an unfortunate coincidence.

Ideally you'll be in for a busy 3 months - but you'll get out of it with a load of cash and a well-paying, remaining contract in your pocket. What more could you want nowadays?
I like your idea.

I like the simplicity of the layout of the page when you are logged in. You should make it so the browser can be shrunk a lot more without scrolling, though. This will help with cell phone browsers.

It is not hard to set up a cellular modem so you can do the SMS interface via a real phone number, I have done that before. As an intermediate step you might look at textmarks.com .
I do have citizenship, which made things a lot easier for me.

As the others pointed out, it is possible to transfer between jobs on an H1B. People do it here all the time.

The easiest way to get out here is to go through your university. Industry approaches postgrad students all the time to come work out here. I had Google, IBM and Microsoft, Sun, Intel and a few others all stop by my department, looking for candidates to relocate specifically to California. Failing that, it would be best to have a holiday over here and line up some interviews for while you're in the area.

I can't recommend it enough by the way.
It'd be great if it was significantly cheaper, with much lower specs: <128mb RAM, 100mb ethernet, ~300mhz CPU, etc.

As is it's ridiculously overpowered for it's niche, and at $99 it's too expensive to be 'throwaway'.
It's a reference design for the above.
How does one go about getting TechCrunch to cover their product, on launch day?
I guess the difficult bit is when "results" are something like "build me a new web site". Taking on clients like those on a fixed-bid basis is a recipe for disaster.
If you're this traumatized by my decision, then honestly, I blame you (and people like you) for my burn out. Where were your contributions to the library, your documentation patches, your discussions of better ways to implement things? Have you been in the IRC channel, daily, helping people troubleshoot problems? Have you posted frequently on the mailing list in response to questions? If you're so dependent on Capistrano, where have you been? If your silence was because it all "just worked", then why are you so disgusted now? It all still "just works".

As for the "Hey, anyone interested" blog post: I've tried that before, on other projects. People don't respond to those. No one volunteers to be hit on the head with hammer repeatedly for no other compensation than a few slaps on the back. You have to really, really, REALLY want to do it, and a blog post is a bad way to ask for passion. Passion is discovered when you realize you need something, and it's not there (or not ENOUGH there). By dropping out, I've created an environment where people have to really examine their use of Capistrano and decide how passionate they are about it. Passionate enough to pick up where I left off? We'll see.

My decision was the right one. I stand by it. There has already been a post on the mailing list by a couple of programmers who have the credentials and the passion, and are willing to carry the torch. Maybe they would have responded to a blog post. Maybe not. But they've responded now, and now the community can either support them, or look elsewhere. My official sanction has nothing to do with it.

I am sorry you (and a handful of others) are frustrated. I wish it hadn't come to this. But honestly, it's not my problem anymore. (And my! How wonderful to be able to say that!)
I’ve Seen The Future Of Mashups, And Its Name Is PizzaShare
in terms of productive output per capita we win by a large margin.
The original article has a perfectly usable headline. Please use that.
Introduction to the Bespin Python backend
Web automation with Groovy and Ruby
For a small private project I need to do some web automation.
S3 now manages 40 billion objects
Couldn't find the pdf linked anywhere else more 'official'.

Looks like the new information is mostly the stats, the Dynamo paper and other old things are still where any details are.
unfortunately these kind of things get hamstrung before they really get off the ground. government school revolves around budgets and ease of teaching, not results.
They have offered me a fulltime+ job at that rate, and I live in Michigan where living costs are quite low.
Something I've been thinking about doing for publishers. http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/12/the-editor-dill.html
This is probably the best nugget in the list:

With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be.

Do this every time you are faced with a choice, and you'll remove the decision paralysis that most people experience.
Isn't Notepad pretty much the only editor, online or off, that doesn't have automatic spellcheck? This is pretty ridiculous.

In any case, congratulations Fliggo! I hope my drunken insults concerning your failure to launch attributed to this climax ;)
Since under his utopia those session players will be basically out of work, they would be a lot cheaper and you could still make your album.
Done - you're right.
I want to ask: It is true that to put the .txt or .doc file into Kindle, it will cost me 10 cents?
Sounds more reasonable than your other post, but I still hear an overwhelming sense of entitlement.

He is doing more than Microsoft did with VB6, but for free. He did us all a favor by releasing it and spending a tremendous amount of time on it. It is open source, you can do whatever you want with it. The free labor of love he bestowed upon the world is MORE than classy, regardless. PERIOD.

If your neighbor shovels your driveway once, I suggest he is cool for doing it, not uncool if he does not do it next week. Capistrano has saved me personally scores of hours of work. So thank-you Jamis.
Because it is just beginning to exist.

Edit: BTW, love your blog
Sure, we can admit that correlation but can you improve that it's only illegal downloads? But what about iTunes, Amazon, etc. and their DRM-free software? Don't those encourage supposedly illegal sharing?
Interesting comment. So how do you think this can be fixed?
I just went through the trademark process with my business. If you use the abbreviated form the filing fee is $275. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009january01_...

Costs beyond that are lawyer's time for doing a trademark search and filing the paperwork. I used a lawyer (and ended up spending about $1,200 including filing fees), but you can also file it yourself if money is tight.

I think it's definitely worthwhile. The odds of having to make use of your trademark are low, but having the trademark is extremely valuable if someone comes out with a similar product or service with a similar name.
This is very neat. It lacks three things to be perfect -

(a) point size selection

(b) ability to select (and remember) which fonts to render

(c) support for all installed fonts the way http://typetester.org does it

This would basically allow previewing how specific text would look like in a variety of types and sizes .. which is a bit more practical than "A way to explore the popular typefaces you have on your computer" as stated in FAQ.
Web pages loaded much faster if I remember correctly. I never really got a chance to use gopher till yesterday and it is a much much faster system for looking through a university library's catalog. Fuck I hate 2009 when everything is moving to the WWW even when it doesn't belong there :(
Since it's in C, it probably has an edge, but as I've mentioned to antirez a couple of times, I'd love to see someone take a crack at this in Erlang - this is exactly the kind of thing it was built for.
Ah, yeah it'd make much more sense to have all the html handy at once instead of requesting them one at a time.

So in the case of that link... org.html has all the html fragments it needs for anything that can be done on that page in a hidden div?

A neat idea for sure, thanks for sharing... (now off I go to play with it!)
In 1996 I was just starting to "code" web sites, so I found lots to do. That doesn't seem like a long time ago until I remember I was 12 at the time, but I digress.

Also, spending all evening on IRC was a common event.
Creation of the printing press, invention of irrigation, nearly every physics discovery.
A shame no one has replied to Jim with a strong app written in the functional language.

The closest thing I know is the website which became yahoo stores. It was originally written in lisp (no really functional, I know). The lisp worked great when they had a dedicated lisp manager managing it. When Yahoo took over, the rewrote it in something else, not because the something-else worked better but because they couldn't find/manage the development in lisp.

So functional might be failing this way. But it might just be hard to write big functional programming applications. I'd like to here more about this.
An hour of my time is not easy listening, unfortunately:-/
You could tell people "download Firefox to use my spiffy 3D site" (or download Chrome or whatever) just like people now tell them "download Flash Viewer 9". Does Papervision in Flash take advantage of 3-D acceleration hardware? In those ways I'm not sure there's so much of a difference between JavaScript in browsers and ActionScript in Flash.

Graphics-specific optimizations are probably going to happen, if by that you mean "fixing Canvas so it isn't painfully slow".
apparently not: http://kindlehacks.blogspot.com/2007/11/reading-pdfs-on-kind...
I'm proud that we can debate without physical confrontation; higher-reasoning I guess. Think about it, if all debates where a physical confrontation it wouldn't be the best ideas that would win, but just those who are stronger would win.

Ok... So that's out there a bit. More on the lines of what you're asking, I'm proud that we realise it when we're getting out of hand and actually try to do something to alleviate the issue; philosophies of how to do that asside.
was "launched" here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=487797
> And I've been around enough Chinese Americans to know that yes, a lot of them do look down on white Americans, for the aforementioned reasons as well as others.

Yeah, so you know it's bullshit logic.
Tuyen dung – Việc làm – Bán mỹ phẩm Oriflame
As a programmer, you should be aware of the distinction between syntax and semantics.
There are a lot of projects similar to Redis in Erlang actually: http://www.metabrew.com/article/anti-rdbms-a-list-of-distrib...

Apart from speed what I like of C for this kind of projects is the self-contain-ness and the fact that most developers that may help in the development are probably able to read/write C but not Erlang.
The library of Alexandria was perhaps the noblest human achievement ever, compounding the greatest of our knowledge, historical, scientific, etc. into one location.
I added it to a WP blog, but don't have anywhere in the admin area to add the API key (except hard-coded). I tried "plugins.php?page=atd-key-config", but got "Cannot load atd-key-config."
Can someone explain how a prediction market predicts... the market? Few people thought the economy was going to fall through a trapdoor in September but it happened.

It's been a few years since YC funded Inkling. What's the record now? Have they proven to be more accurate than a dartboard?
Is there a way any techcrunch article can be automatically forwarded to the website under review so we can talk about our take on the site instead of the author's?
Seriously? I hear this all the time; do you guys work in IT or in web development? The web people are way over on another page. ERP is primarily the reason IT exists and ERP packages take DECADES to change - witness the MASSIVE amount of COBOL still around (including here). ERP deployments are complex and almost always customized.

I suspect Gen X and Gen Y (which includes me) generally doesn't have a clue at what goes on in a "real" IT center - meaning one that is not (a) some awesome start-up that will be forgotten dust tomorrow or (b) a web oriented consumer-facing business. Nothing in IT is anything like "buying a photocopier" nor will it ever be. The company that takes that approach will be run into the ground by its competitor that innovates.
Very cool. Try clicking on one of the fonts, it'll replace the one you are using on top!
Your point actually reminds me of a story in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman," where Feynman tries to revise a school curriculum. He gets put off at the end of the process, when the Board revokes the book choices he had fought for (to buy cheaper books) and makes an observation:

"The whole thing was an unnecessary effort
that could have been turned around and done
the opposite way: start with the cost of the
books, and buy what you can afford."*

I think that putting in new stand-up desks could be feasible and would also ease teaching (less restricted kids would spend more time learning than trying to fight restrictions). The problem might be instead that any 'new idea' implemented by a government is going to be bungled hopelessly.

* http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
So it's not a silver bullet. It's still a bullet. Beats a waving hand.
visual programming seems to be one of the great failed dreams - lots of academics and practitioners tried it, and it just doesn't seem to work

LabView is pretty powerful. Commercial, expensive, often annoying -- but pretty powerful. Integrates very cleanly w/ Visual Studio for text-based programming, too.
European and Asians don't teach by the lowest denominator!!

Not everybody is born with the same abilities to learn. Sure, you can teach people, but the slowest kids will take longer to learn. If you teach by the lowest denominator, you slow down the smart kids, the ones that will make great impacts in the economy in the future.

I am south-east european. Back at home everybody starts at the same footing. Same books, same education. By 5th grade, while people are still taught the same curricular, the brightests kids are bunched together in classes. Assuming there are 200 kid in a grade, they are divided in classrooms of 30-35 (teachers come to class, and students stay in the same class with the same peers), usually named A,B,C,D ...etc, witch a main teacher responsible for each class. Example MySchool 5th A, gives a you the exact placement of a student.

Why it is unofficial (not writen in policy) by the 5th the best students are usually placed in the A, B, classes, the average ones in the C and D classes, and the ones that are there just for a formal education in the rest of the classes. There is some diversity introduced also, (for those'd kids that try hard, (and whose parents care) they are still placed in higher level classes.

It is the same curricula, same books, maybe same teachers, but the evnviroment is different. In the higher level classes students face more competition (as there are lots of smart people), are challenged more to learn etc.

The system is setup in a way that it is easier to get a 5 (the lowest passing grade), but it is really hard to get a 10 (the highest grade).

Therefore, while you teach everything you can, the smart people are not artificially left behind by being taught by the lowest common denominator.

Also, a huge difference is that all sciences are taught, By force. You can't choose between physics or biology or chemistry, you are forced to learn them all. (biology is introduced in 6th grade, and chemistry in 8).
The thought is that you have to try everything and have a taste of all sciences (and know the basics), so you know what you like to do in the future (in college)
The only thing you get to choose as optional is the SECOND foreign language you want to learn.

When I came in the States, i finished my last year of high-school on a average american high-school, and I could run circles around most american students. Even in AP classes!

Amazing on how even a poor country like mine (Albania) can do some much better in basic education.
I remember between 92-93 I had to learn in a cold class with no glasses on the windows, during winter, and we had to put paper on them, and all try to bunch up as much as possible together, around the wooden stove.

Amazing, yet there were so many bright students produced by that school. 1. Teachers cared. 2. Parents cared a lot more (education = future in their yes). 3. Curricula was heavy on science, and taught as much as it could on students and not on the lowest common denominator.
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...
Journalists shouldn't write science- or technology-related articles. Ever.
I mean, how would you write a WIN32 GUI in a functional language?

Just like you would in any other language?

Functional programming is not different from any other type of programming. It makes some things easier, but other things are about the same.

I think a GUI app would be easier in, say, Haskell, than Java, for a number of reasons. The lack of global state will make threading easy, which keeps the GUI responsive. Abstractions like functional reactive programming will make the app's implementation cleaner. Finally, if you do it right, most of your app won't depend on the GUI, and will be very easy to test. (You can do that last one in any language, of course.)

Assuming your application does something useful, implementing the algorithmically complex part will be simpler as well.

Anyway, you can't understand the advantages of functional programming from reading some comments on a social news site. You actually need to try writing the application -- then you can see exactly what the benefits are, and whether or not you care about them. If you don't want to invest any effort in learning, well, that's another issue entirely. (And is really the reason why many people don't all switch to Haskell. Learning something new is scary!)
There has been an ongoing series of tweaks to deal with scaling. It's not planned, but I don't worry too much that I'll run out of room for tweaks, because the system started out so inefficient.
Seconded. Wouldn't the results of the prediction market be calculated into the current value of the DOW? I mean, sure, there could be distress selling right now, but even assuming that people are somewhat rational...
No, it's not better than the real thing. You need to have iTunes installed. With OpenCourseWare and various websites of professors I just need a web browser.
I don't like to talk about stuff in advance anymore.
I made a Rails authorization plugin a while ago that has a small following. After I moved to App Engine for my web programming, I recruited two commiters who know what they're doing and made them "Repository Collaborators" with admin privileges, so my repo on the original page continues to be the main repo.

I'm not sure that's the best solution now that I am effectively an absentee landlord. The main repo is under my account and I get included in pull requests. It would be great if Github has a repo forwarding feature or trusted forks could be listed on the Project Page (just saw that). What's the best way to leave it in other hands?
The Green Energy Fantasy
How do you do a CRUD app in your functional language?

I'm not going to give you a long tutorial on this, but it's not hard. You write it like you would anything else.

You have some data that you want to manipulate. You define some way to store, edit, and retrieve that data. (Libraries can handle this for you.)

Then, you make the web UI like you would in any other language. At the top is a function that takes a request and returns a response, which is entirely pure. Then you implement the helper functions as needed; Map URIs to handlers, map request parameters to data to interact with, interact with the data, generate a response, etc.

Anyway, it is not that different from anything else. Why would it be?

the rest of the program is one giant side effect. Monads aren't the answer there, they're a workaround.

You are thinking about the problem wrong.
I wonder if, relatively speaking, Alexandria was more or less comprehensive than the British Library or the Library of Congress.