skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, sometimes the timezone difference can be difficult if the two parties are not equally as empowered (or even as good). But I'll give you an example. A guy I was working with decided to transfer to my company's singapore office (12h difference). Working with him was awesome! I could be working on something all day, then write him an email on where things where at EOD, along with things I wanted him to take care of. When my morning rolled around again, everything was done, and I had an email from him sitting in my inbox of stuff I needed to look at. Our work was getting done literally 24 hours a day :P
And what about those who not even in US and belong to a "3rd world country" where one wish to give work only because it's Cheap?
Google's flight search has a "lowest fare for a n day trip" page that's pretty useful for flexible travel dates. You can't sort by wifi only though.

https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=SFO;t=PDX;d=2012-12...
I'm Elliot. I'm in Houston. What is your name?
I feel it still sets a decent baseline for the purposes of discussion. We will never be able to accurately model every last developer's situation.

Though entry-level developers are even more costly to employ. They require more training, more time to solve problems that are old-hat to experienced developers, etc. You still need to bill them out at, say, $100/hr. with the expectation that for every productive hour, they have an unproductive hour that isn't billable.
as a first step, you could try patrick's advice of charging the same rate, but billing by the week (and of course speccing out the work in weekly chunks)
Randomized Consumerism - A bot that buys randomly from Amazon
Glad I'm not the only one scratching my head on just WHAT Parse actually is.

The way their website seems go out of its way to NOT tell you what it is made me wonder if it's some convoluted Flash-to-ObjC doodad (or some other, similarily 'unpopular' way of doing things). At least they have a healthy ratio of cloud icons, pricing links and testimonials on the site...? ;)
The thing is, having a 0% commission would definitely make developers happier and maybe make some more consider iOS as a first platform (although most do already). But that won't keep them from releasing their apps on other platforms after, to make extra revenue. Which in a lot of cases is what happens now, with Apple taking a 30% cut.
I've received MANY reader success stories from people who have simply adjusted their messaging from "I will write code for you" to "I will help you be more profitable (...as a result of writing the right code)." As far as I know, none of these successes pitched prior success with big businesses or their diploma.

This change in messaging lowers the risk factor between you and a potential client (throwing money at a coder doesn't always equate to business success), which in turn allows you to drive up your rates.
Don't forget Hans Reiser! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser
It's cheesy, but "build your brand" is relevant to your situation. When a customer comes to you, rather than you going to them, and they've come to you because of something specific and awesome you've done or written, you can set your price and the customer will not balk.

Many years ago, I did consulting at $125/hour, but if I was going on-site (particular in another city), I'd bill by the day, at $1000/day (often putting in 10 hours a day, so $100/hour) with some sort of minimum in place, so I wouldn't drive or fly somewhere to only be needed for one day. The reason I could charge what I did was because I did some stuff that led to me being well-known. I wrote a book; it didn't sell very well, or pay me much, but when you say, "I wrote a book about system administration, published by No Starch Press" it raises you to the tier of people that can charge $125/hour without hesitation.

Also, when you have a long-running consultancy that specializes in one niche (mine was web caching, website acceleration, etc., though I also did good business in developer infrastructure, like building systems for packaging and testing and revision control, etc.), you'll have fewer customers, but they'll be customers who will value your skills. A jack of all trades, who is actually really fucking good at all trades, is incredibly valuable, but it's difficult to market that because it's difficult to prove you're really good at everything. Proving you're good in one field is just a matter of following the mailing lists and forums in your field, and being talkative and helpful, writing a blog about your subject, and eventually turning all that writing into a book or magazine articles or something.

Of course, I never took it to the next level, as this article discusses. I was still billing by the hour, and still being thought of as a (pretty high end, and difficult to find) commodity. So, I made a decent living, but it didn't scale.
You simply can't ignore Android, the biggest mobile OS and its doesn't get starved if iOS developers earn 30% more.

I think about a bold move like buying Verizon or so.

But in my opinion Apple is losing by simple being Apple.
They can't keep up with the speed of Google. They spent their money left and right and Apple is sitting on it's cash. Why? They even paid out a dividend, that was the sign that they have no big plan. What was one of the first actions of Tim Cook.
When you consider that tech titans are making tools that reshape the way entire societies interact and even how people use information and think about things, we've been in comic book territory for years.
The article didn't appear to be speaking to a "big company". Those people already know the cost makeup of getting their $300k+ app done.

I think this article was speaking more to the smaller business that has no experience in app development but wants to take a plunge into the market. I deal with these smaller businesses here and there. They're often very unrealistic when contemplating the costs associated with app development. They're thinking $500, like that ad they took out in the local paper and they're often shocked when I let them know that their product vision is a couple of orders of magnitude different than their budget.

This article would probably be one I'd point them to in order to help them understand the investment that they're making, since it is an investment.
Why consistency in icons is important and how to achieve it
What about something that looked like a regular comms satellite but in fact was something completely different? Does SpaceX get to inspect the guts of what they launch?
I'm assuming all the mails will get probably marked as spam and/or blacklisted by email clients?
HashPay: Tweet payments to your friends
Have you worked through the entire context of this approach?

There was little reason for an 3rd party developer to spend resources to produce a Mac/Linux port during Windows' heyday. Except as a labor of love.

But Apple doesn't own 90% market share. It's split, and growing toward Android. There is no sensible reason for developers not to develop for BOTH platforms, until it is no longer profitable to do so.
it's being singled out for being different. That's also why BritRuby couldn't fix the problem by tacking on diversity speakers at the end

So it would have been better if they singled people out for being different and tacked on diversity speakers from the beginning?

You either single people out for being different or you pick the best speakers and let the racial/sexual chips fall where they may. There really isn't a middle ground.
Nice job of using social media to scoop a quick web opinion.

That said, whoever wants the paper bg should accept that they aren't a designer and focus on other productive tasks in the company.

More importantly, there are a few other glaring issues in this design that go beyond a simple background image decision.

Similar to having two CEOs being bad for running a company, having two "art directors" can completely ruin your product.
Xmonad layouts for netbooks
Not a problem, unless your firewall blocks gmail etc. Most people will access their goatse email through gmail or another service.
I live in the US and know nothing of the UK property market, but could you talk a bit about how you combat against this? Sorry if this is a trade secret, or otherwise 'non-discussable.'
Nah, it's just a place to rest or read. Reading too much into it is unhealthy for you.

It's not even a particularly good place to work or listen to music (and definitely not to talk), because a lot of people going there actually want silence for whatever reason.

But it also usually at least half full with people who think that wearing a suit, sitting a quiet car and reading Ayn Rand will make them serious and successful. Thankfully, they mostly stay quiet in some countries. For some reason here (Netherlands) people almost don't notice that they're in one of them (even though on some trains you can even get a "conversation car," for people who want to be really noisy). Shame. Overrated or not, a quiet car is still a great idea.
Time-Reversal violation directly observed by Stanford Physicists
Patrick's other projects are the self-education, credibility-development, and marketing for his consulting business. He is not going to retire a millionaire on bingo cards and appointment reminders.
What does a consultant with programming chops bring that a non-programmer doesn't?

The ability to write functional computer code, for one, which is a superpower.

Besides that, I speak the language, engineering folks generally like working with me over working with "icky marketing types", I have a good understanding of what is easy and what isn't in terms of implementation, I can spec projects or deliver prototypes without needing my hands held too much, etc etc. (And virtually my entire shtick is "Marketing objectives which are worth serious money to you can be achieved by writing carefully considered code.")
Prevent Alzheimer’s with the 6 Pillars of Wisdom for Brain Health
and if you aren't comfortable speaking or attending conferences, don't let that stop you from becoming an authority. find a topic you are interested in and start learning it in depth. identify common issues beginners struggle with and blog about them. move on to more advanced articles. you should gain recognition pretty readily.
I would be interested in learning more about what a programmer brings to the table in the consulting field.

Simple, reduced risk. Patio11 has built his personal brand very successfully. (not overnight mind you) So much so, that you know exactly what you expect to be delivered when you would engage with him. Much of the content that he produces (especially that which is consumable by you and I) gives a very good indication what you would expect if you worked with him.
Do the same things. Get a blog, become well-known for being awesome. I've hired several "third world country" developers at US market rates (not Silicon Valley rates; more like midwestern rates, like $30-$50/hour) because they were good. And, I've passed on $10/hour developers because they didn't convince me they could do the job. It's about value, not price.

That's not to say you aren't at a disadvantage, if you're wanting to charge very high rates while being in a third world country, but it's not impossible. Doing the same things suggested by this post, and by other comments, is how you raise your value. You may be raising it from a lower starting point, but it can be raised, and there isn't really a firm upper bound on how high it can go.
what's the drama around Musk and Branson?
sarvesh, you were hellbanned more than 3 years ago. His post:

Windows script host (cscript) allows you to execute js files in addition to vbscript (vbs). This is particularly useful in extending the functionality of batch files. This can be useful in a lot of circumstances build process, installation etc.
Measurement Bias Destroys Products
Firefox 17 for Android Finally Supports ARMv6 Devices
New York to host FinTech Startup Weekend
You can help businesses create or optimize internal tools that make current positions unnecessary (cut costs) or make tasks that take 5 hours a day take 5 minutes (increase efficiency.) This won't involve conversion rates, lifecycle mailing, customer-facing split testing, or other marketing standards.
Infinite Jukebox plays your favorite songs forever
I remember during the heat of the youtube audio mute massacre, someone posted the rickroll video along with the title, "Youtube mutes rickroll". We all fell for it.
Thank you. Great listing
This was helpful. I'm in a solo position right now and I'm also not a developer. I have a great idea (according to potential customers), but I don't have the knowhow to make it right now.
This article was helpful in giving me hope that I can build something with the right people (which is what I expected, but you hear so many different stories).
I think the problem is that people believe that once they are on techcrunch, their struggles are all over and that it's the holy grail. Some how people think they deserve more then just 400 people.
My idea will be on Facebook :(
"logout experience LOX".
I am disappointed.
First timeline, now logout experience.
I hope facebook won't brainstorm all my ideas. By the way, "logout experience" was a feature for my ycombinator startup.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/02/29/facebook-monetizes-users-logging-out-with-logout-experience-premium-ad-placement/
I'm just going by the type of work that I do on a day-to-day basis. I personally can't relate to having to fly around to meet and greet with customers on that level.

There is nothing wrong with this, of course. Plenty of companies and entrepreneurs work this way. I am just not familiar with it.
> For higher level development, C++ or just go with C#

The facts:

C# was created in 2000.
After 12 years Microsoft still does not sell a single app written in C#. Not one.

C# is used for PowerShell (free) and MSN (free, the backend is mixed C# and Java).

This is not likely to change anytime soon: pretty much all Microsoft job openings require C++. Also for new projects MS recommends JavaScript or C++.

Python is not better off either: Google does not allow Python code in anything that can be seen by end user. (Youtube is Python, but it was bought, not built.)

I'm not saying C++ is perfect, just that for some use cases it is pretty good. For some other use cases obviously it is not the best choice.

Peter Norvig: "I think that language choice is not as important as all the other choices"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803815
It's much more effective to go after blogs that cater to your target audience, even if their readership is a fraction of TechCrunch's.
You could easily reach that definition of "retire" with a very part-time effort on a small biz product, instead of a huge liquidity event, too. Not a huge fan of Tim Ferris' whole schtick, but the idea of semi-retirement is a very good one.
Please do, I'd love to read it. Your blog is the most honest account of entrepreneurship I've seen. ("Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit and Maybe Fun" was one of my favorite startup reads ever.)

At a previous startup I cofounded, we had an incredible launch. TechCrunch, NYTimes (online and print), Gizmodo, etc. -- it was incredible! We still pivoted a few months later. If anything, the press helped us justify holding on to something that wasn't working.
(and as such, I'll get pointlessly downvoted)

That's some quality pre-martyring there, that is.
Awesome job. I had been stressing about getting my code up there but your tutorial made it easy.
Would you happen to know how they keep the antenna aimed at the satellite? Or is it omnidirectional? I have no clue how it works.
This would be even cooler if it sent the purchased items to random people with a postage paid envelope for a reply!
(I'm going to take your disrespectful sarcasm for the challenges of my career at face value.)

It's funny you say that.

Despite the fact that all my talents were related to computers and technology, I never thought to pursue an actual career there. I did briefly, when I was 12, but as time went on, it looked less and less practical because:

My mom had no opportunities to interact with people in that industry and knew nothing of technology herself, so there was no clear path to my making a career of it.

With no one in tech I could point to whose life background seemed similar to my own, I had no confidence I could forge such a path on my own.

Eventually I did forge that path and got where I needed to be. But how nice it would have been to align my education properly with my career direction. How nice it would have been to see some hispanic people in a more obvious, prominent position to assure me there was a place for me there. How nice it would have been to ease into this career with internships instead of credit card debt. But that's not the way it is. And that's okay. I'm doing great now. But I want to make sure it's better for the next guy.
Manage dependencies with CocoaPods
We have, in fact, no way to know if this was actually done by John McAfee. The domain was registered on 11/16/2012 and contains anonomized whois info (not that if it gave an address that would be any different).

It's more like "claiming to be the official blog of John McAfee".
I think I'll stick with the universal coverage provided by my government, thanks.
> Could you live in the US illegally and be working at a Fortune 500 company? Probably not. Could you come to the US and work at a mom and pop grocery store? Probably.

I would think that this in itself coupled with the high time investment costs of applying for such a startup visa (business plan, prototype etc) would self-select a section of the population who will either succeed or self deport (instead of screwing up their career and future potential by living illegally).
I came away from reading that link and the whoismcafee.com blog thinking that the man is an eccentric but certainly not insane. It is well within my imagination to believe that he may be being persecuted by senior government officials in Belize for not making "donations" or providing other favours when asked of them.

I think that North Americans sometimes don't realize that one of the reasons that the rest of the world is susceptible to urban legends and conspiracy theories is because in those countries, similar stories have been known to hold true. Nothing like a moon landing of course, but presidents and prime ministers have in fact been involved in murders, drug charges and fraud. In that context you're more amenable to think, "Yeah, this could have happened."
You might be right about that. I'd like to offer another perspective, though: if you get into the habit of quickly replying to all emails, I think your clients will develop an expectation that you'll always quickly reply to emails, which it's not always possible or desirable to do, at least for me.

Also, if you immediately attend to every email that hits your inbox, that means you probably won't have contiguous chunks of real productivity in your workdays.

I usually wait a good couple hours to reply to any email, even if I'm not particularly busy when I receive the message. This a) sets an expectation for responsiveness that I can live up to, b) allows me to have contiguous chunks of productivity (I often close email entirely, which my clients know), and c) demonstrates to my clients that a certain level of discipline: I'm not jumping on every email, tweet, etc. that comes my way right when I see it (not that I think that's what TallboyOne is suggesting - he's talking about work-related emails).

None of this is meant to be a criticism of anything TallboyOne has said. What works for him might work better for some people than what works for me.
I think part of it has to do with the conclusion many of us jump to when someone refuses to submit themselves to a trial in a court of law. In the US we like to believe our system is just, or at least mostly just, and therefore anyone who is accused of a crime and skips out must be admitting guilt through their actions. People then tend to project this bias to people who skip court in societies with less just courts like Belize.

To be honest, even in this country any unattractive minority that is accused of a crime may want to consider running from the law and skipping the country because for them our courts are less than just and more likely to convict them of that crime and give them a sentence worse than the average.
Teaching ourselves to communicate.
That's a novel approach, but where does the IDE live, within the VM? Seems like performance would really suck with that setup, but perhaps I don't understand what all you have on the VM and what you have on the host OS.

At my company, we give developers several days (up to a week at times) to get everything downloaded, installed, setup, configured, etc. It's a huge drain but then again, you should've seen it 2-3 years ago, at which point the only avoidance of duplicated efforts was by virtue of having a single portable HD which held all of our databases [for use in testing]. The data was 5 years old at the time...
Buying Verizon would be hard to get past the government. See how difficult it was for AT&T to buy Alltel (they had to give a not-insignificant part of it to Verizon to play fair).

Buying T-Mobile, on the other hand...
To learn more, check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-symmetry

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BaBar_experiment
This article's clearly written for the state of California. Did you read the article?
What makes it more suspect is the blog post explaining many of the techniques he's using to disguise himself. Why would you share that information when you know people are looking for you?
Tech press comes in handy for biz dev, marketing, and fundraising purposes: You can send the article to potential partners and it makes you look legit.

Side-note: This article is on the front page of HN now (congrats to the author, well played!) but there's no link to the company or TC article in the blog, that I can see.
Sounds like a pretty good conversion rate to me.
Congresswoman Turns to Reddit for Legislative Advice
Two important points I learned was: 1) charge by the week, and 2) charge by the value you will be providing, rather than how much your time is worth.

Charging by the week allows you to not have to keep track of what's billable and what's not (e.g., you chatted with the customer on the phone for 34 minutes).

Charging by the value you provide avoids the conversation of "Hey, you're charging $200 per hour... that's more than I make. And that's like almost $400K per year! Can we get your rate down to like, $90?"

Instead, the conversation becomes, "We want to get at least $40K of value out of talking to you, but have only budgeted $10K for this exercise. How much value can you provide us over how many weeks?"

That was definitely an interesting writeup!
How about the ESA just starts using Falcons - then the prices will go down even further and they can focus more on actually putting good stuff in space rather on how to do it...
there is a better way to do checkboxes in windows modern ui style. I don't know off the top of my head but essentially there should be a way for you to make the label a checkbox that you can toggle (and provides a cool Metro like animation feedback when you check / uncheck)

this might be something nice to have for v2...
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/traveltechtalk/2008/06/30/why-...

The Boeing Connexion system was satellite-based (thus high latency), cost $500K per plane, and weighed 1000 pounds.

The Gogo equipment costs $100K per plane, and weighs 100 pounds. It's ground-based, with stations using EVDO equipment that point upwards. Presumably the EVDO base stations cost a lot less to implement and operate than running a satellite uplink, since that's tried and true cell phone tech.
Objective-C categories are just like monkey-patching in Ruby. You can have collision with categories in Obj-C just like in Ruby, you'll just get a compiler warning (maybe error).