skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Point taken; I was saying (unclearly, maybe) that not liking conferences/speaking/whatever is a pretty weak reason for avoiding them. Lots of people don't like them, but go because it's what the job requires (and, just to preempt replies, act pleasant and engaged while there).
A friend of mine is a marketing consultant and a real genius. He got paid $x0,000 to come up with the title and general theme for the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad".

But the author has made $x0,000,000 from it, despite the mediocre (at best) quality of the book. Really it was the positioning that made it catch on. My friend's career is full of stories like that, so it's not a one off.

If you do work as a consultant, definitely, charge what you can. But no matter how much you charge for consulting, it's never as much as its worth.

Im sure that pg could charge what sounds like a really high rate for his time. But it would be nothing compared to what he can make from equity. And I promise, it would be a lot less fun.
From the TC article:

"One key thing to note is that the suit says that Color’s assets have indeed been sold to Apple, something that has not been confirmed on the record by either company to date. Witherspoon claims in his suit that he was the only technical employee at Color who was blocked from joining Apple in October. Today, Color’s website notes that its app will no longer be available after December 31st, 2012."
I'm sorry, but I don't like this UI at all. It looks foreign on the iOS as if it were designed for some other device and the ported over. Such neglect for the consistency with a native look and feel is not a "fun experience", it's really quite annoying.

My iPhone is not an empty canvas for you to drop an arbitrary UI style on. It comes with Helvetica and a whole bunch of well designed controls. I insist you use them.
Actually, the article has it wrong. The signs on the quiet car say this: "Please refrain from loud talking or using cell phones in this car."

They don't say you need to whisper. I only remember because I saw people shushed that weren't loudly talking and glanced up at the sign to double check if you weren't allowed to talk at all and the sign only mentions "loud talking."

Here's a link with a picture: http://roiword.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/conflict-and-the-qui...
Retailers report slow Windows 8 sales, low demand
Trademark, not copyright, is the applicable law here. Copyright protects creative works like books or paintings or program code. Trademark protects names and marks used to identify the source of things. Brands are commonly one word or even one symbol and have trademark protection. If you can't identify the applicable law for a situation, you're probably not in a position to make any comments about the merits of the claim.

Common words can be trademarked. Apple Inc holds the trademark to "apple". Time Magazine holds the trademark to "time". Caterpillar Inc holds the trademark to "caterpillar". They're all common words and they all appear in the federal trademark register, which you can check yourself at USPTO.gov. If someone else uses these common words in commerce in the industries the trademark holders operate in, they will be infringing, they will be taken to court, they will lose their cases, and they will pay damages to the trademark holders.

What's absurd is operating in the software industry without even basic knowledge of intellectual property laws.
Some interesting libs there. Are you familiar with docopt? http://docopt.org/ (originally for python, but has a ruby port). I think it makes the whole command-line parameters/options handling extremely elegant. I used it only with python and it just can't get simpler than that.
Well, I guess an argument could be made that you should read it, and if you don't accept it, you can then return the product. Of course, this calls into question whether or not his 'open box' return will be for full face-value, etc.
Actually no, Android now wins in large parts of Europe and Asia by web traffic, iOS still slightly ahead in the US and only massively ahead in some outliers like Switzerland. One thing is sure, you can't ignore Android anymore.

Source: Statscounter
This is all well and good, but the biggest reservation I have about all of these consulting blog posts is who should do this and who shouldn't? I feel like consulting is easier to consider when you're a seasoned programmer (10+ years) because you have the accumulated knowledge to really provide value to a company when you're not an employee. I'm almost 27, is my lack of years of experience going to prohibit me from attaining consulting gigs? If I can optimize your front-end code, get you higher performance and SEO rankings, are you going to hesitate / ignore me because of my lack of years in the field?
Depends on the situation. I'm asking about pointers specifically because I have a situation in which the lifetime of the property is different than the lifetime of my object.
Full ack. My colleague Bertrand has done some presentations on how we successfully do open source in the enterprise at Adobe (former Day): http://www.slideshare.net/bdelacretaz/open-development-in-th...
>I live in the U.S. When politicians say stuff like "We need to keep more jobs from going overseas"? I don't even know what they're talking about.

They're talking about not playing in a race-to-the-bottom for global wages, and using an internal market to the benefit of the majority of the people (instead of businesses), which might not like having to pay more for a device produce domestically, but they certainly like having a job economy and being able to afford housing and bread on their table.

>We should make things in a more expensive fashion and force ourselves to buy them?

The guy without a job because his went to a least expensive overseas facility cannot afford many things in the first place, if anything. Getting things in a "more expensive fashion" would be great for him. And he's like the majority.
If he is threatening to expose serious corruption, isn't it at least as likely that someone else would commit the murder to set him up?
I really like that you guys are doing this.

Former options guy myself and was thinking about doing some similar writeups on options pricing.

i like the graphs of you drew of the strips with different times to expiraiton. One thing that is generally counterintuitive for people is how there is translation of the graph on the x axis over time (theta and carry rates).

also generally, I think introducing black scholes is good, but doesn't really "stick" for most people for a while. it takes a while to develop an intuition about the components of "C = SN(d1) - KN(d2)" means.

I think teaching these intuitions would really sit well for the HN crowd. Also explaining option pricing as the value of the cash flows of the hedge portfolio with constant or regular hedging (like physics, start with assumptions like GBM, zero transaction cost, no bid-ask spread -- then if you ever feel like it later, address how hedge strategies can dramatically change option pricing). Natenberg does a simplied version of this.

Also, Cox Ross Rubenstein is a great way to teach euro AND american options -- just change the rules at each node to get different rules and you can demonstate convergence to Black Scholes with the right parameters.
Know Ning?
Looking to wrap up Ning platform dev project for consumer Internet project to be used as MVP demo. Need Ning creative designer or developer to complete work that's been performed thus far on the initial, basic template. Interested? Call me: 925/984-3173.
2 things, Twitter and meetups. There are sooooooo many free tech events in SV you can go to. Get out and go to them!

I've found Twitter is a great way to meet new people in real life. There is little to no friction in following someone and replying to their posts. Often they'll be happy to interact with you through Twitter, even if they're internet famous. See what events they go to and go as well. Say hi if you see them. Invite them to lunch or for beers.
Well, of course it was a disaster long before Elop. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be Elop in a first place. What happened after Elop, is how we should evaluate Elop. And that is really really sad tale. It's not something like "my strategy works, but the company refuses to follow that", type of a thing. It is just, that Elop has hurt Nokia so much more. It's not even funny anymore. It is really hard to understand why he is still allowed to continue. Probably he is, because all who had critic voices have already left the building or kicked out. Elop has hired his fellows in the company. And Elop also sits on Nokia's board. It's quite common situation these days. Weak board, strong management. Elop is a strong leader, but his decisions are horrible. There are no indication anywhere that shows that Elop has succeeded in something. He hasn't. It's a total disaster.
As someone who has both been and hired a lot of freelancers/contractors, I would say that there is a genuine difference in game level between freelancers and consultants. It's a matter of professionalism and willingness (and ability) to steer the project/engagement. Consultants are experts who come in and figure out how to achieve a goal, who investigate the clients' needs, who tell the client "these are the steps we will need to take to figure this out, and then to make it happen." At an advanced level, they will even help figure out the right goal to begin with.

Freelancers typically have to be told these steps by the client (and managed).

If you can come in and steer a project, and let the person hiring you relax his/her no doubt overworked brain for just a few hours, you can charge practically whatever you want. That's how we were doing $500+/hr (each) before we quit consulting, because I led the processes for our clients. They didn't mind paying $2k simply for meeting with us both for 2 hours because they got to be the subject of conversation, instead of the leader, and they'd get a valuable report out of it at the end (for an additional price, of course).

Never once had to worry about price shopping, because if that's the service you want, there is zero competition!

Foolishly, I thought this was just Normal Professional Behavior until I started hiring people for my business.

Sadly, it seems most people out there prefer the unprofessional and haphazard approach where they take on too much work/too many clients, wait for the client to tell them what to do, then jump between clients like a scalded cat to whichever project causes the most screaming at the moment.
So he had no attachment to any lover, friend, family, city or even country. Could be also described like hell on earth for some of us...
> Can "Sun" be protected?

Yes. Why do you think it can't?

Recall that Apple has successfully gained and defended its trademark on the word "apple", easily as common a word as "sun", in the relevant industries it operates. "Time" is trademarked by TIME Magazine, and "caterpillar" by Caterpilllar Inc., the construction equipment company.

Feel free to check yourself. Federally registered trademarks are publicly searchable on the USPTO website. You'll find not only the registration for the word APPLE, but if you do a design mark search, you'll find quite a few drawings of the sun are registered trademarks as well.
Global exception handler and other uncaught shit :)
Boot Camp keyboard mappings for Windows – above and beyond
Ask HN: Would you please experiment on your baby for me?
I'm the author of "Experiments on Babies" (http://www.experimentsonbabies.com), due out on bookshelves this time next year -- just in time for the holidays! buy a few for your friends! -- and I'd like to recruit a few HN folks to help me road-test some of the science projects that are in the book before I turn in the manuscript to my editor.

I know this request isn't strictly programming/startup-related, but the folks on HN, whom I've gotten to know over the past few years, are my target audience, so I value your feedback.

If you have access to a baby (age 0 to 24 months) and are willing to conduct a perfectly harmless and hopefully enriching experiment on your kid and report the results, would you mind submitting your contact details here?

http://www.experimentsonbabies.com/hn_reachout.html
Outsiders perspective - SV culture is becoming more and more just like Wall Street. Sad.
The Cost of Ruby 1.9.3's GC::Profiler
This is a problem I am actually trying to solve. I would love to help you find a job but if I were you I think the best thing is to 1) work on your own startup/side project or 2) join some startup. Where are you located?
GnuCash?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCash
Nice essay, a much more nuanced thought process about the single founder issue. I definitely agree the way to take on staff as a single founder is to start lightly and go deeper later - a 3 month contract is perfect, and makes hiring/firing much less crazy if there is a limited relationship in the beginning.
I feel like this could have been longer. Volatility is really the only way options make money, no matter what your position is. Is volatility going to be covered in later parts as well?
The choice of varying fonts makes me suspect he is trying to sell something? It looks like a get rich quick spam page, what do yall think?
Go is PHP for the Backend
This is ONE startup out of 100s in Silicon Valley.
The Man Who Sold the Brooklyn Bridge
Writing a Finite-state Machine in PHP
Knuckles and Nails Get Invite to the Touchscreen Party
>With or without copyright extensions that daycare center will never have Mickey Mouse cartoons on the wall without Disney's express permission. //

Trademarks are supposed to be to indicate the _origin_ of goods or services. The use of an image of a mouse on a nursery wall is highly unlikely to create any confusion in anyone of sound mind that Disney are providing the service of that nursery - if there is a potential for doubt then a simple disclaimer can alleviate that (yes on the wall if necessary).

After copyright expiration of the original cartoons from which a Mickey Mouse like image might be copied there is no reason that a sane application of trademark law would prevent a nursery from using such an image.

Now "famous" marks often get special treatment but this swings both ways. If you don't use an actual Disney mark [as opposed to a simple image of one of their characters which isn't a trademark] then people know that it's not actually from Disney. Indeed just being affordably priced is sometimes all the indication that one needs.
Apparently it is on its way back up:
https://twitter.com/bobmonteverde/status/270646593257078785
Another bathroom confessional which really doesn't say much at all IMO. Minus the quotes, there's a grand total of 125 words in the post.

"_____ is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away" applies to basically anything that can be designed, whether it's UI's, API's or whatever.
You are clearly not literate in Chinese.

There is very little "iconic" about Chinese characters, with the exception of a select few ("Pictograms" is a gross mischaracterization). No attempt was made during their (thousand-year long) formulation (and certainly none during the reform), to design them so that their meaning was readily apparent from their form (Rather, most consist of a semantic classifier loosely classifying them based on meaning, and a "phonetic" component loosely hinting at their pronunciation). Thus, their lack of readily perceivable meaning has little bearing on the possibility of intentionally designed icons having readily perceivable meaning.

(Though not directly related to my point, I also must point out your assertion "each depicting a single, well-defined language element and having just one unambiguous, official reading" is false. One example (of thousands): 行, pronounced as any one of [xíng, háng, xìng, hàng, héng] and meaning any one of ["go", "travel/walk", "row", "action", "trade/profession", "seniority", "competent", "makeshift"])
Q. Did you build something users need?

The reason I ask this is because a lot of times, this can be overlooked. I have found myself spending time twiddling with projects that seem cool to me, then when I ask a few friends what they think about it--they are say things like "yeah that's cool, but..."

What comes after the "but" is what you need to listen to. If lots of regular people are raising issues with you're idea, you may want to rethink your idea. The internet is not the field of dreams so just because you build it, it doesn't mean people will come.

Also relying on TechCrunch as your marketing strategy is a poor business decision.

Edit: Also this video from StatupSchool.org by David Rusenko (Founder, Weebly) puts being on TechCrunch, Newsweek and Time into perspective.

http://www.startupschool.org/2012/rusenko/ - Click "Our Story"
The responsive web will be 99.9% typography
Evolv and Wharton School use big data to predict when you will quit your job
I'm a big fan of FreshBooks
http://www.freshbooks.com/
What is Everythinker? Distribute your content to an unlimited number of users
:). Additionally, I find the double standard that I can get away with phrases like "white peoples collective guilt" to be quite abhorrent. A white person saying the same thing with inverse colours would be deemed a racist, and we all have no qualms with discriminating against white racists.
I don’t call myself an “entrepreneur”
>Windows mobile being the next big thing for mobile developers, is there much going on with the platform?

Honestly, I don't see how anyone can be anything but bullish on Windows Phone long term. It has the backing of MS, which in itself will guarantee a decent sized user base. Also, a large amount of Android's success is simply because its on cheap phones, and its the only alternative for the "anything but iphone" crowd. Everyone buys an iphone because its an iphone. I would wager the vast majority of Android sales are by default rather than because its an Android. Once windows breaks into this segment we're going to see some big moves in terms of market share.
Building email clients are big gnarly tasks...more on that in the am...
People were falling over themselves to sing the praises of Color when it came out.
Ask HN: What are your favorite prototyping tools?
I'll talk about implied volatility in the next part. What parts do you think need more explanation?
The gun parts in 44 and 47 are strange and don't seem to have much meaning except to enhance the perceived threat of the actual threats which are mostly legal/non-violent/career-centric in nature.
Very good article. Thanks. The one sentence "we're not a profession" explains almost all the tech. workplace dysfunctions that I've seen.
Here are my lessons after 6 years running a consulting firm in a pretty specialized business (high end ARM/embedded stuff), from the top of my head:

1. Avoid billing by hours, exactly for the reasons listed here. You can only lose like this; it carries more administration overhead, more friction with the customer and at the end there's a max budget allocated on the customer's end anyway - it's not like you can bill indefinitely if things don't go as planned.

2. Always charge fixed price for projects. Remember the budget allocation from #1? Use it. Bill twice as much in the beginning but avoid charging the customer even a penny more for delivering the work you're committed to, even if that means 'losing' money (you don't really lose when consulting, only earn less).

3. Work alone. Hiring people may seems like a good idea but then you've got a financial burden in the slower periods (and these always come when you least expect them). You can make good money alone, and you can make good (and great) money when you have 8+ people working for you but between 2 and 8 employees, you're busy full time getting enough work for the team and your margin on these employees simply isn't big enough (just think of the office costs). Besides, I don't like the whole pimping thing where you sell someone else's skills; YMMV.

4. You are a business problems solver. Don't tell a customer "no", just jack up the price if needed. If you intend to have a large project with them, don't charge them for general consultancy around the project. Happily give them your time for free; make your money on the project itself, not the meetings around it.

Edited to add something quite important, IMO: Whenever first meeting a customer, I try to get a high level picture of the business they are in, the product they are looking to develop, who will use it and so on - even if they are just looking for me to develop a specific component. It's very easy to fall into "XY Problems", and understanding the project environment would make it easier to assess the work and rates.

5. Remember there are people in a corporate environment on the other side. Make them look good in their company; give them whatever help needed and be their go-to guy. It's really important for the long term (and as fellow human beings). Don't ask for money for small modifications or changes, think of the administrative process they need for each line item - it makes them look incompetent or just annoys them with bureaucracy. You'll more than make up for that in the following work.

6. Long term, your entrepreneur skills are better spent at build your own business. Consulting is good for the free spirited folks that don't want a corporate environment, or for making a quick buck on some lucrative projects, but it's hardly a way to get rich and it's quite wearing in the long run.

Nevertheless, I think that professionally, consulting has been the greatest thing I could have done. The variety of projects, technologies and corporate environment (30+ customers here, most repeating) is great for your own development.
http://betabeat.com/2012/11/4chan-founder-moot-sends-cease-d...
CTF 2013 signups
Today if such an inventor published his idea in a public journal before patenting it, the same thing would happen because it would be prior art.

But in any case, patents are entirely unnecessary for a small inventor to sell his idea. Just create a contract with the company to sell the idea. Your side of the contract says that you promise that your process works according to the parameters of efficiency you say it does, and that you won't reveal it to anyone else. The company's side says he hands over 10 million dollars.
Ah great, I look forward to checking it out. Unfortunately I have to work during the day -- but for those giving the contest a shot, I recommend starting your research here:

http://www.a1k0n.net/2010/03/04/google-ai-postmortem.html
This is not too different from what was done - they did have an internal tech team, who was knowledgeable about the tech to the point where they survived the East Coast AWS outage, but then some cracks slipped through.

One problem with hiring A people is the short-term nature of campaign projects - it's hard to attract excellent players who know they'll get the boot come the Election Day (and who maybe aren't interested in government gigs), and that's where consulting companies fit nicely.
Thanks for the comment, we actually get this question quite frequently. Its natural to think we are selling snake oil, but contrary to your statement our product works very well and in-fact is equally or more accurate then most products on the market. The cheap apps that you can download do a good job but are notorious for false triggers due to the iPhone's accelerometer sensitivity. Not to mention it will pick up motion of your partner and can be easily knocked off the bed. We make no claims to have medical grade sleep device, something like the Zeo may be more accurate but frankly I just don't understand why anyone would wear something on their head while they sleep.

Above all we wanted to create a product that was fun to use and would help shed light onto your sleeping patterns.