skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been freelancing / consulting for just over a year myself and am discovering more of the process myself. Here's what I've done so far..

- Reach out to your existing network - if you have friends who have done freelancing / consulting, find out what companies they did freelancing / consulting for - chances are those companies still need it.

- Offer to meet for coffee / lunch / dinner. I'm based in the UK and was trying via e-mail to speak to a potential client. It just wasn't happening. They are based in the US. So I called them up and offered to meet for dinner there at a time convenient for them - they accepted and I had the dinner last week. It is very easy for someone to decline a phone call / conference call. It's much harder for someone to do that when they know you have made an effort to turn up in person - they also have to eat so meal times work good.

- I find being honest is the best route to go. They expect you to know what you're doing! I think it's fine to say - I've just stepped out of employment and now I'm looking to build a business myself in what I've been doing - people respect you for trying to start a business!

- Don't offer to do something for free too early on. The person you're pitching to is not working for free and they won't be expecting you to work for frre either? Yes, you may need to offer something for free to land a client initially - but do not do it with open-ended development!! Instead suggest you do an analysis of their system etc and write up a report and how you'd improve things - at least that has a fixed scope. Or ask for a dataset and show simply how you can use that data to give them some new numbers they don't yet have.
Because they are, for the most part, in a race to the bottom, and without price-collusion any single airline raising their prices would see them lose customers to their rivals.
Ehh... I thought that 'diversity' means we give everyone equal opportunities and treat them the same way. Now it seems it means 'we need to have this particular distribution of genders and races'. Utter stupidity, from one extreme straight to the other :(
Isn't it really obvious that different topics inherently attract different audiences, and as long as we give everyone equal chances to participate we are okay?
I figured I'd check out the website too. I click on 'Get started - it's free!' and was also instantly put off by having to enter my email. I enter a fake to see whether it'd be worth it... "20% complete! Tell us which emails you'd like to receive?" 20% complete?! I don't want to receive ANY emails! I just want to see the product.

After deciding to abandon the process, I went back to the home page, which then redirected me to http://yipit.com/boston/categories/dining-nightlife/ ! This should be amongst the first things a user sees! This is what I was looking for!
Charge per 0.25-week increments? As long as you hold up your end of the bargain by providing enough value, they'll be happy to recommend you to a friend, or request your services again. Later on, you can charge for larger increments while retaining your billing rate.
Unfortunately, I can attest to this. I am one of those developers who live in a low cost no tech industry smaller city and I would cry tears of joy if I could land a job for $80/hr. I understand my value and I understand what I can bring to the table but that doesn't mean jack when potential clients could "make a website in Word if they just had the time."
I think the point isn't really that he's charging by the week, it's that he's selling the value he provides to the company, rather than strictly selling his time.
They need to improve their site copy. I had no idea what it is after reading the homepage. It reads like a lot of BS to be frank. What about...

"Write full-featured mobile apps using our Android and iOS SDKs, we take care of the server-side"

Also, the site design feels too sparse and low on information.

The product sounds like a great idea though.
Game development in Webgl
The ability to work with (and have the respect) of the engineers is definitely an asset that cannot be overvalued.

But in terms of writing functional computer code...how much are you actually writing? Is this code merely to wireframe/prototype something? Or is it an actually deliverable that the company will build atop?

I guess what I'm getting at is the usual cynical trope by engineers against consulting: that consultants are hired to tell you what you already know/should've known. So given a hypothetical company of such stature as Fog Creek, what is your strategy for convincing them that you can tell them something they don't know? I'm not saying that engineers are above needing consultants, it just seems like a culture that, as you point out, can be extra-resistant to being told by a third-party what to do, in lieu of a concrete deliverable.
Reading this ... man, I'm not even at $100/hour programming yet.
4chan.org creator sends a cease & desist letter to moot.it
Creator of the image board 4chan, Christopher Poole aka "m00t", sends a cease & desist letter to Moot Inc., a company offering free discussion forums & commenting for websites, claiming ownership for his pseudonym.

Definitions of the word "moot" from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot:

1. open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point.
4. to present or introduce (any point, subject, project, etc.) for discussion
8. an argument or discussion, especially of a hypothetical legal case.
9. Obsolete. a debate, argument, or discussion.

Moot's website: http://moot.it
> When you get to the point where such a definition makes sense, you are outside of a reasonable discourse. Racism ceases to have any meaning as a term.

A definition that makes sense and has no meaning. I don't know about racism, but you certainly seem to have lost sight of what "meaning" means.

I've never had any trouble understanding this definition of racism. When I was young and stupid, I thought myself extremely clever for seeing instances of reverse racism, but this was because I understood nothing about racism except that MLK Jr. gave this nice speech a long time ago and now bad things no longer happened. I thought it was this magical thing where there were black people and there were white people and I was yellow except not really so it was kinda weird and I didn't understand why the red people didn't seem very red.

Then I grew up and started understanding how power moves and manifests. It's very fuzzy. You don't see mathematical equations about how the election of the POTUS changes opinion in the Middle East, because we haven't figured out how to model that. Our understanding of power is extremely weak, compared to something like how many atoms of hydrogen are found in a molecule of water. To make this extremely stark, we don't understand power. We have a feel. An intuitive notion. That is all we have.

We do not have explicit forms of racial discrimination to any significant degree. But we do still have significant power imbalances that map suspiciously well to racial divides. These power imbalances are virtually impossible to quantify, because we have no idea how to do it, but we can infer them from statistical trends. We've chosen to call this racism.

That's language drift for you. There are reasons not to call it racism. Apologists, such as yourself, have enumerated a good number of them for us. But there are also good reasons to call it racism. First among these is that we do not need the more generic definition any longer. English speakers generally have difficulty finding instances of chattel slavery or explicit segregation laws. In both of these cases, we have more specific terms anyways. Second is that it signals the correct emotional reaction. Most people are offended when called a racist, because they've been trained to understand it is a bad thing to be. Used properly, it forms a foundation to change behavior. (And before you say that it is sometimes used improperly, this would be true of a different term as well; but a different term would not have the same, useful emotional charge.) Third is that the issue remains one of "dividing people into groups called races which contain people with identifiably similar traits". The generic definition still actually applies, but it does so more weakly.

I'm sure you take issue with all of these, but really? The definition could be improved. That doesn't make it meaningless, as demonstrated by the many people who use it in that capacity without a problem. It does make it difficult, as demonstrated by the many people who seem incapable of understanding it.

(Also, loleconomics.)
The Slow Query Log is Not
A friend of mine is dyslexic, and he coded a disk mirroring program in a weekend way back in high school.
Indeed. Were I not under my parents plan I'd totally be getting the freelancers one
I like this. Simple and single-purpose. I hope it makes a lot of money for Christmas/Hanukkah for you! :)

I launched PicDigest a few weeks ago. I'm curious about which photo lab you use as I'm planning to add photo printing in the future. Would you mind sharing? If you want to keep it semi-private, you can email me at scott@picdigest.com.
And I was thinking "maglev in tunnels along great circles" because anything that flies can crash.
I believe that the Hyperloop is some sort of cannon. He has earlier revealed that it won't need a tube or tracks

Edit: Source to the no-tube from Elons twitter: "Will publish something on the Hyperloop in about four weeks. Will forgo patents on the idea and just open source it. Not a vac tunnel btw."
Mobile Game Developers: Async play platform?
Is this something you would take advantage of?

My co-founder and I are bootstrapping a platform helping
mobile game developers and this might be something
we're looking into building.

Essentially a managed user-base, asynchronous game
creation and state-management across iOS/Android.

Let me know what you think.
Ride-share services run into fines, suit
Question: what's the verification process, outside of stripe?

Say I get someone to authenticate through my "cool twitter app" with permission to post to their timeline. What would stop me from posting a msg on their timeline sending money to my "cayman islands account"?
Command Bar Autocompletes Stars · GitHub
I don't think empathy and acknowledging is the same as going out of my way to make sure any possible minority is pleased if I accidentally meet them on my way.
There are plenty of cities in the world that have a cost of living that's a fraction of the cost of living in San Francisco but have just as impressive infrastructure and weather.
>> I do not have any duty to "serve the common good."

Maybe I miscommunicated. I'm certainly not pushing for socialism or anything like it. I'm closer to libertarianism than anything. To me, the default answer for "should the government be involved in X?" is "no." To answer "yes," I want something pointing to either an "inalienable right", like "freedom from murder," or a clear public good, like "we all benefit if you aren't allowed to dump nuclear sludge in the storm drains."

I think the key thing we disagree on that I don't see copyright ownership as one of those inalienable rights, and you do. And I don't see indefinite copyright as a clear public good, either.

>> "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" != promoting the "public good". This is a distinction the Founders would have been aware of.

I don't understand the distinction you're making. I quote again:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Whose good is intended by said progress, if not society's as a whole?

If you said, "that of the creators," I think that's unwarranted. They could easily have said, "To protect the Inherent Rights of Authors and Inventors, by securing for All Time the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." But they didn't. And they specifically said "limited Times".

As to whether it matters, it's the only existing legal rationale for copyright in the U.S. You may argue that IP is an inherent right, but only a constitutional amendment could properly make that into law.
Oh, and Patrick Naughton, one of the early Java guys and EVP at Infoseek: http://www.zdnet.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-patrick-naugh...
The U.S. has public education, and people still worry an awful lot about whether their kids' schools are any good, to the point of some spending a premium of literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on housing in the "right" districts, or on private education. The poor are still underserved, racially-measured outcome disparities are substantial, etc.

None of this is directly an argument against public health care, since obviously there's a benefit to universal availability in both education and health, but certainly it wouldn't be a panacea.
Nice. Sounds like the REST way would be best, doesn't it? If you are using Rails at least.
Met deze tips voorkom je een ochtendhumeur | Leef Nu Gezonder | Leef Nu Gezonder
Have fun dying in the trenches.
When I was living in Providence,

An area specifically designed for work or study should be a quiet space, but the example given by PG is regarding his living quarters. I personally don't want to live in a library.
What about his friends on the "trumped up charges"?
As featured on PRWeb - http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/11/prweb10121697.htm
Things can be very different in tech.

When your job keeps you mentally and physically isolated from your coworkers, getting together with like minded people to talk shop is nice. Even more so because for some developers talking shop is one of the few conversation topics they feel comfortable with.

When your job is slugging away at decades old enterprise code, watching a talk about game development, fancy math, or improved development environments can be a breath of fresh air.

When your job has you at the bottom of ten layers of bureaucracy, telling people about something they should do, and having them listen and agree is wonderful.

Tech conferences are a joy.
Why use Backbone.js, and not [other framework X]?
Improving Deviare win32 hooking
RIM CEO Thorsten Heins on BlackBerry 10
completely agree. I think if you were to open source this and did it right you could get an enormous community behind it.
I'm in a (good) job developing apps (we're hiring BTW: http://art.sy/job/developer ) and my experience it has always been the same thing. People that I know have recommended me, have read my blog posts and got in touch or have read my code and looked through my website and got in touch.

This looks like a linkedin for developers, it seems like a strange pivot from a "sweepstakes engine that any developer could drop into a game with the aim of raising awareness and loyalty" but I imagine they got to know quite a few developers in that time. Best of luck, it's hard to find good devs. What I thought was interesting is that they are counting on Windows mobile being the next big thing for mobile developers, is there much going on with the platform?
A more appropriate title could be 'Get rich and famous quick by posting articles about quickly becoming rich and famous on Hacker News'.
I believe the link was already posted [boardingarea]. But they have to take a plane in for maintenance to do this. It takes:
1. Time to install it over night
2. Extra training to fit it
3. More mechanics

The last thing you want to do is cancel a morning commuter flight over WIFI.

Did a google search and here is one from American: http://geekbeat.tv/how-american-airlines-installs-wi-fi/
This article is extremely misleading. Delta has 100% coverage for their own fleet.

They do have a significant number of short-haul flights offered by affiliates under the "Delta Connection" brand -- these are all very small planes where you might have 30 minutes to use your laptop between reaching altitude and starting descent. Even so, Delta is equipping these planes with wifi, too.

Someone isn't doing a good job of reading or understanding their data on Delta, and that makes me question the rest of the conclusions...
I am a fan of round numbers for pricing. Of course you want to make sure you have a profit margin, but would something like this work?

Qty: 25 for $30, 50 for $50, 100 for $80 (Best Value!)

Or FREE shipping on all orders. Qty: 25 for $35, 50 for $60, 100 for $90 (Best Value!).

It would also be cool if you had a gallery (before I log in) of example cards you've created. Put this under the section "Beautiful Designs" as "View our gallery." This way, I can get a sense of what the cards will look like before I decide to log in.

Do you have an app? Someday, it'd be awesome if you could sign into the iOS or Android app and order greeting cards directly from your phone. That way, you could send a single greeting card (e.g., 1 card mailed directly to the recipient for $3).

Anyways, good luck! It's a great idea for greeting cards.
The idea that a Mars mission would cost on the order of $1T is absurd. More reasonable estimates place it around $50 billion. The rest of your comment is ridiculous as it's based on such an absolutely outrageous estimate. SpaceX could probably do it alone if they have to. For example, Apple has enough in the bank to afford it alone right now. And we're talking about 10-15 years of SpaceX development and revenue before a Mars mission. Also note that most Mars mission costs include R&D to build a rocket to go there, of which SpaceX has already done huge amounts.

Your figures are absurd FUD. Space travel is nowhere near that expensive.
Has anyone noticed even the libraries are not immune to cellphones? Someone should start selling phone booths to libraries: people who need to take a call can use the booth.

I have carried ear plugs with me for years (two fresh pairs in a small pill bottle, in my briefcase). In a moment of sleep-deprived delerium in an airport, I bought the Bose QC-15s. I love them. I am a huge fan of instrumental music. We have an offer in on a house one bedroom smaller than our current rental, which is perfect: I have an excuse to get a writer's shed.

I would pay a membership fee to anyone who could build a Quiet Car Hacker Space within 5 miles of my house. QCHS: where are you?

But seriously: phone booths in libraries: it's brilliant. Somebody: do it!
I think people are burned out on daily deal sites and deal aggregators. I checked out your product and while it seems to be executed well, it didn't offer me a compelling reason to come back.
So there's some sort of difference in the neurological makeup of developers and business owners around the phrase "you don't have to pay me." Developers think that proposition decreases risk. Business owners think exactly the opposite. It suggests that there's such significant project risk associated with employing you that the market forces you to self-indemnify for that risk upfront, which virtually no other service provider they use does. (Separate from what your client thinks of it, it also puts your paycheck at the mercy of clients' ability to e.g. follow through on your recommendations. Clients generally earn the results they get from working with outside consultants, just like they earn the results they get from working with their own employees. The ones who do everything in their power to make engagements a success tend to do better than ones who... don't. You probably still want to get paid when they... don't.)

I'm not totally opposed to some sort of variable payout mechanic to pricing, but the vast majority of my engagements are structured "I work X weeks at $Y per week." By the time I've sold you on the engagement, I should have been able to sell you on X$Y being an acceptable price to pay for the risk-discounted probability space of all possible outcomes to the engagement. (n.b. If you do variable payouts for anything, you need to figure out how to transfer a large percentage of the upside from the client to you for the math to work out.)

If I personally was selling you an engagement, and you said "What happens if this doesn't lead to an improvement in the business?", the very next words out of my mouth will be "It is entirely possible that this engagement will not lead to an improvement in the business. The vast of my engagements have been successes. Some of them, like the ones we talked about earlier, were incredible successes. Let's talk about ways we can be more likely to make this engagement successful. If you do not believe that this engagement is likely to be successful, we will not do this engagement." (I'd also independently decline an engagement where I thought it wasn't likely to be a win or would meaningfully damage the business in event of a failure. I typically work for companies with revenues in the eight figure range -- if they set fire to my entire paycheck, nobody goes home hungry.)

As to what you personally could offer for risk reducers, absent a history of doing exactly this thing before, I might suggest reaching back into your portfolio of other things you have done and showing off ones which demonstrated likelihood of success. In my first few consulting engagements, my main portfolio piece was "similar work which I did for my own business worked out well, as evidenced by a few years of blog posts; here's a few I like." After the first few engagements, well, BCC was no longer the most credible piece of evidence I could point to.
Love the Norman Rockwell reference.
lol... just... lol...
Each time you get a new article you get a spike, and then
a downturn, but each one leaves your baseline higher. Now
we get many times the traffic we got in a spike at
announcement every day.

I've noticed this higher baseline effect and it seems to hold true even though I am 3+ years into my startup. Others have spoken about it too (David Rusenko of Weebly quite recently). I find it fascinating.

Why is the baseline higher? Is it link juice from SEO? Is it some mysterious equilibrium of new users and returning users but more of them find you through the article? Is it simply that X out of 1,000,000 people have heard of you, and X gets incremented by a small amount and therefore your daily base traffic increases?

To be honest our traffic has been very predictable, both in the weekly steady state and the year-over-year growth. I'm shocked the daily variance of visits isn't a lot more.
... to... their... already packed rivals?
Sure will. Everybody's quick to add a questionable domain to a blacklist, but nobody's too quick to remove them.

ALSO, corporate/school/family/etc filters will block browsing to the site if you want to use a webmail UI.

So in all, this might be fun to mess with your friends, but not too useful otherwise.
Is the fix to go to https://github.com/settings/profile
and put an email in the field labeled "Email (will be public)" ?

How does Coderwall allow github signups without me sacrificing an email to the public?
No, they dug up the entire bodies, but only kept the heads, which is normal concidering it's a standard way to test for poisons in dead animals (they test the brain matter, not the muscle tissue).
I think they've done a very excellent job with Cloud9 and I've signed up to play around with it some more.

However, the problem to me seems that in order to reap the benefits of Cloud9 one has to give up the benefits of their current IDE. It will undoubtedly be the same situation for LightTable when they release.

I want collaborative editing in my IDE. If I'm using Visual Studio and my colleague is using SublimeText, I want to be able to work collaboratively with him/her. I've wondered if some sort of protocol could be created by which other developers could create plugins for popular IDEs that might allow cross-IDE collaboration.
I've taken two vacations for conferences this year... Maybe I'm crazy. Clojure/West and Strange Loop. Maybe you just need to go to better conferences.