skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm in the same situation and after experimenting with various tools (basecamp, evernote, things, and more) I'm now down to two major tools:

- a whiteboard at home
- a wiki (simple install of dokuwiki)

The whiteboard is for brainstorming and sketching stuff out and for when I need some kind of physical feedback to my thoughts getting laid out.

The wiki is for laying out basic designs, taking notes and logging my development progress. Also for keeping track of a schedule I've set up along with milestones to hit. It's a simple tool, yet very versatile because of the ability to easily create new, linked pages.

Some secondary tools, used sometimes: google calendar, voice recordings on my iphone (for when I'm driving), etc.
You're correct in that being in the "coffin corner" is not dangerous in itself. In straight-and-level flight, if you go any faster, the extra drag will slow you down. If you reduce your thrust from your engines, you will slow down and lose altitude.

The problem comes about if you enter into any unusual attitudes, which is certainly possible in severe turbulence. The most important part would be a safe recovery to straight and level flight. An unusual attitude can put you in a situation where you overspeed the aircraft (e.g. nosedive). Above the maneuvering speed of the aircraft, you must be very careful to regain control without overstressing the airframe.[1] If your speed sensor(s) are giving you or the autopilot faulty readings, it would be very difficult to know the safest way to regain control of the aircraft after being put into an unusual attitude due to turbulence.

[1] American Airlines Flight 587 crash (NY, 2001) taught us that even below the manuevering speed of the aircraft, the airframe can be overstressed due to dynamic loads from pilot control inputs.
I setup a new Trac instance. The wiki is great for documentation, journals and design details and it integrates with the source repository using svn, git or hg
I've been a freelance web developer, off and on, since I graduated from college in 2003. My latest "freelance stint" has just recently passed the one year mark. In between I've had full-time jobs for people who eventually became steady freelance clients. So that's my background.

Until recently, I had seen a huge drop off in requests for proposals and the few I did get were dead ends. In hindsight, this started happening during the early winter of last year. But in the last few months I've been picking up more odd jobs so on that front, at least in the short-term, things seems to be getting better.

I haven't had to go out and actively seek new clients in quite awhile because I've put together a steady stable of recurring clients. Most of my client base is in the professional sports field and even in down economic times, teams still need to keep their websites up and running. So that's my "secret" to freelance success in a bad economy: have good clients in stable industries.

Aside from freelance web dev work, I've also put together a decent network of sites earning money through advertising. At this time last year those sites were on pace to make a respectable amount of money each year. It wasn't a living wage but some months it came awfully damn close. Since the economy went to the dump I've seen a huge drop off in revenue from these sites. Some earn 50% less now than they did at this time last year. This income was, for lack of a better term, unnecessary for me to pay my bills and live so while it's a bummer I can live without it.

This was a bit rambling but that's my experience so far with the poor economy as a freelance web developer.
Assuming you don't rely on submodules for your deploy :)
I am in a similar stage....

I first started writing my thoughts in a paper notebook. But then i realized, I can't read my handwriting!

I did research for software both online/offline that has the power/flexibility and ease of use.

I settled on 2: basecamp and Zoho Projects.

After trying both out... I am going w/ Zoho Projects.

And you are right, its paranoia on your part about online tools and not based on facts.

Why would anyone go after you and only you?
No, the shift seems to happen in mid-2006. Growth slows dramatically, then hangs around in equilibrium for a bit. I wouldn't quite call that "going swimmingly".
Create folder "newIdea"

Notepad2 -> todo.txt
If you have repetitive data in, and repetitive data out, no modulus is going to help you.

Um, no. A prime modulus will often help in this case. That's the whole point.
And even if it's seen in Perl land, in most cases it is called with a code reference as argument, not a label, which simply replaces the current item on the calling stack with the code reference. This allows for manual tail-call-optimisation which is quite nice sometimes.
The description of Airbus Fly-By-Wire reminds me of programming with Eclipse!

EDIT: Okay, you thin-skinned Eclipsers, note that while the Airbus has a horrendous failure mode in extreme conditions, according to the article, it's a much more efficient way to fly a complex aircraft, and much less prone to human error.

The point is, you still need to know your craft, for when the automation fails you!
"I'm thinking X. Am I thinking this because Y or Z? What's the meaning of thought anyway?"

In the thought example about the "Milk" in the article I found myself asking "Who does that?" and now I'm wondering if that helps further explain to me how women tend to think into things.

I'm curious to know here who would have gone onto thought #3 in the milk example? If I'm enjoying something I'm simply enjoying it... I'm not trying to determine if I'm really NOT enjoying it and thus trying to convince myself that I AM enjoying it.
Twitter Investor Betaworks Buys Twitterfeed Stake
Understandable. I almost exclusively use Papermate felt-tip pens, with occasional disposable fountain pens. These require less pressure to write with, and are thus easier on the wrist.

Yeah, it's a little tiny minor thing, but it makes a difference...
"How about a nice game of chess instead?"
-- Joshua, War Games
Learn SEO in 30 Minutes a Day
Sometimes I feel so crippled by my lack of C fu.
This will vastly improve the usability of LiveCDs.
I think, everyone.
Having followed the link without reading the comments, I was pleased to come back here to find that everyone else was just as unimpressed as I am. The whole thing seems to amount to playing games with words, and disliking Dawkins. Facile.
Don't take it personally, they regularly and consistently delete comments that disagree with them on anything.
Ask PG: Why no search box?
I just saw that New Mogul has a search box that pipes through to searchyc.com without ruining the site design. I'm sure you've considered adding a search box in the past, but might now be a good time to reconsider?
This is actually exactly the project I've been planning for a while and am starting in a week or so!

If you (or anyone really) are interested in hearing me out or helping, email me.
I have to disagree totally. This is exactly the time frame where I learned assembly language (Atari 800) and C (Atari ST, etc.). As a programmer these machine were excellent tools for learning how the guts of the machine really worked, teaching yourself how to program and sharing information with other enthusiasts. Lets face it, how many of today's younger programmers have a clue what a index register is, or even how a cache is used?
In an open world, http://libre.fm shows promise.
A good lab/composition notebook and a Pigma Micron pen. Sharing is a bit difficult, but it can't be beat for flexibility.
->"I've also put together a decent network of sites earning money through advertising".

Care to let us in on any of your secrets?
Haven't you ever come out of a situation and, at the end, when it was all said and done, realized that you had talked/fooled yourself into it?

Self-congratulatory tones can be indicators of something that is very bad.

It's important to not get high on your own supply. A lot of what we tell ourselves is wrong, or at least misguided. If you question your own intentions and observations, you can avoid making big mistakes.

For example, I know lots of people who tell themselves "I didn't get what I want because x." where x is something that is obviously completely beyond their control, and therefore not their problem/responsibility.

But if you want to protect your ego, telling yourself that it's because of x-ism is totally effective. It also cripples you.

Which is why you have to ask yourself, "What's my motive here?" and "What do I have to lose if I think about it from a different perspective?"

Also, considering most of the people who have promoted self-examination and self-understanding over the years have been men, your bit about women is somewhat disingenuous.
Ex-Vidoop Employees Launch iPhone Development Outsourcing Service Urban Airship
I remember job ads looking for mainframe programmers of many stripes to maintain vintage systems, as many cobol and assembly and jcl professionals had retired. There is still a lot of it out there.
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Fedora's boot time. Fedora already has 20 seconds (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/20SecondStartup) and their last release was 30 seconds. So I guess they've got a head-start
We could call it "credit", which the "banks" would offer out of their collective pool of customer "savings", not all of which need to be available to all "savers" at once.
That sounds like a reason to don't visit techcrunch
While I cannot fully disagree, I would like to point out that a great many government contractors take their jobs very seriously and do very good work.

Of course, I may be biased since I work as a contractor.
IIRC the javadoc for HashMap does warn you about this

I hit this issue in production about 2/3 years back and it didn't affect the functionality of the running process that much, but there was a thread spinning endlessly for a few days until the next restart window.

Moral of the story: remember to use the right tool for the job and read the usage manual!
They may have a small head start. The article also doesn't mention what the boot time is for the current 9.10 build of Ubuntu.
Freelance vs. Full-time
The secret to Palm Pre dev mode lies in the Konami code
While I agree with the pen, paper, and whiteboard crowd, I also do most of it in my head.

If the idea is too complex to hold its basic design in my mind, or I am not passionate enough about it to put in the thoughts, then it isn't worth the trouble anyway.
I have seen some very poor coders stay in programming for a very long time as well. This is hardly unique to contractors. I think that in the middle of any large organization you will find a large number of people that just drift along either because they have one particular piece of knowledge that makes them hard to replace or else they are simply to much trouble to fire so they are stuffed into a sinecure and left alone.
Are Predators our best weapon or worst enemy?
Misreading the end of literary culture
The most important bit is hidden several paragraphs in:

Anderson asked villagers about selective abortions and found them open about the fact that they use ultrasound to determine the baby's gender and help them decide whether or not to keep it.

I'm pro-life. I realize that not everyone is. I think that everyone, though, can be concerned that large segments of humanity are testing unborn children for "undesirable" traits and aborting them. We're facing a demographic timebomb.

Societies with more men than women are violent, and start wars.
Thanks for quoting that, I'd never heard of Khalil Gibran and I'm going to check out his stuff now.

I totally agree with your premise (there must be balance), but I do disagree with your interpretation of my essay.

There's a difference between paralyzing yourself with uber-analysis, and digging deeper than level 1.

And there's a reason I didn't have "What's the meaning of thought, anyway?" as an example :)

You don't know me, but I'm exceedingly practical and a pretty emotionally integrated person. And a large part of that I attribute to exactly what I wrote about. If I want to just sit there and wank off mentally forever, and not act, well, I'm aware that I'm doing it... because I am present in my own thoughts.

As Pema Chodron writes, if we pay attention to ourselves, "even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance."

As a bonus, it helps me innovate in design/development where other people just copy one another, working off the same tired old templates.

That's really why I wrote it. I'm tired of every piece of software not just looking, but acting the same, with the same components, and same shortcuts. With people thinking they have a new idea, when all that they really have is the same idea other people have had, but it feels special because it's in their head -- and lacking the framework/habits to judge "Is feeling special to me the same thing as feeling special?"

This problem is rampant everywhere, even on HN.
I went to Lowes and picked up two pieces of melamine whiteboard (3'x4') for $9/each, some mirror hangers (another $2), and drywall anchors ($1). My home office now has a rather huge, expandable whiteboard for under $25.

I then 'persist' the ideas to a wiki once they're fleshed out.
I don't think there should be undue stigma or speculation when founders move on. The type of person who can cast a vision that brings a company to this point isn't always (or rarely is) the same person who will thrive on the task of maintaining a company once it reaches, or nearly reaches the founder's original vision for it. There is nothing wrong with finding the most opportune moment to bow out, provided you aren't screwing over anyone else.
When Sleep Leaves You Tired
Pen on paper. And a spliff helps.
That is amazingly insightful.
The people in developing countries are going to feel mighty stupid when they realize that as modernity increases the value of women increases.
they have a different site design, to add a searchbox on the top, he'd have to redesign the header
I have a pretty good memory. Also, I have a whiteboard in my bedroom.
Let me put it in terms of a startup. She got into a market for the lifestyle (with relatively low pay) and now the customers went away. The solution? Look for a regular job and build up savings for your next venture (or to keep the regular job).

Her initial reaction:

"If you had a regular job and you didn’t have all that travel time, would you make better money in the end?" She gave a small laugh. "But I love what I do. So I try not to think about that."

Fast forward:

She has been auditioning to teach at new studios and e-mailing former clients to offer private lessons, and she added four hours a week of office work for Karma Kids Yoga.
Experience with gpsAssassin (iPhone App piracy is not always a bad thing)
eharmony disagrees
Everything you say is true, but you are leaving out 2 major factors that are brought up in the article:

1. The "geezer" with 10 years of C++ probably wants a lot more money than the guy straight out of college. If the company both needs that expertise and can afford the premium then they will definitely go with him, but if money is an issue they may be happy to take the younger guy for lower pay.

2. The guy with 10 years of C++ may be more qualified than the hiring manager. If the manager is focused on the needs of the company of course this is no issue, but if that manager is some middle management person in a large organization who is worried more about his little fiefdom then the company as a whole, he is likely to avoid any candidate that might overshadow him.
I actually have that keyboard, but haven't yet tried arranging it vertically. Can you use wrist rests when you use it that way?
I've heard that in China the situation is changing. Women are relatively scarce, so the groom's family often has to pony up a substantial "bride price" (reverse dowry?). This is helping to balance out the "value" of boys and girls.
Also, my brain. Seriously though, for big projects I literally dedicate a lot of time to just thinking through things until I have it well organized and in my head.
Good coders code, great - reuse. =)
> you may likely have a mortgage and family

I would like to point out that these don't simply fall out of the sky. They are something you sign up for voluntarily (at least in the civilized world.)
a huge whiteboard with plenty of high quality different colored markers.
I'd second onenote for multiple user whiteboarding and brainstorming. It's a great program designed for this purpose, for quickly jotting down your thoughts. Also it has handwriting recognition if you're a table user.

Personally I use Google Sites' wiki for single-person brainstorming because I can access it anywhere. Also Google Sites supports secure https and true 'private' sites.
Was there a point you were trying to make?
HN readers are expected to know how to use Google to search a single site.
FEBE and the related CLEO extensions have provided the ability to (locally) back up and transfer extensions, as well as other profile information, for some time.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2109

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2942

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6152
yay! Wait until the end of the day, when your done working, to read this.
Not a good reason. There is an important functionality already implemented well by others and all the work to do in HN is to add a small form. Why not?
I don't want to start a war with you. But in the interest of calm, reasoned discussion...

Can't we agree that the most important bit is actually after the first part of the article, where it states that:

* Once she and Ray broke down the numbers by age group, they found that the majority of excess female deaths came later in life: 66 per cent in India, 55 per cent in China and 83 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa.*

They are dying after childbirth, after toddlerhood, because of unequal access to food, medical care and other social services. In China, not only have they tended to undervalue potential daughters, but women kill themselves at a higher rate than men. And in India, full-grown women are being tortured to death because their families have not paid the dowry.

That sounds a lot worse to me.
Didn't pg just say that being in a startup is like being repeatedly punched in the face, but being in a big company is like being waterboarded?
SearchYC is much better.
The relative cost of the symmetric bulk encryption algorithms (RC4 vs AES here) is irrelevant compared to the expense of the key exchange/agreement and authentication.

The first ciphersuite uses the most common option where the server sends a certificate containing an RSA public key and the client chooses a random number, encrypts it with this key, and sends the encrypted value to the server. The server then decrypts this value with the private half of the key and derives the session keys from it. The expense of this decryption increases with the length of the RSA modulus.

The second ciphersuite uses ephemeral diffie-hellman where both sides choose a random number, and then exchange them. In order to accomplish this securely, the server must at least provide a certificate with an RSA key that supports signing (and signature verification) so that the client can verify that the diffie-hellman parameter received from the server has not been tampered with.

The DH parameter sent from the client to the server needs to be checked out too, and there are two ways this can be accomplished. If the server certificate contains a second RSA key which is marked as suitable for encryption, then the client can simply encrypt with this key as in the simple RSA key exchange described above. If this encryption key does not exist, then TLS provides a crazy way that the handshake can still succeed:

1) The server generates a temporary RSA key pair (very expensive)

2) The server signs the public half of the key pair with the RSA signing key in the certificate, and sends it to the client.

3) The client uses this key to encrypt the diffie-hellman value to send to the server.

When the diffie-hellman parameters have been exchanged the server must perform an RSA private-key operation to either decrypt the client value or verify the signature on it. This has the same cost as in the first type of key exchange and depends again on the length of the RSA key. After verifying the client value, the server must complete the DH protocol which requires an expensive modular exponentiation which is roughly as expensive as an RSA operation.

So no matter what, the second option is going to perform worse than the first option. The real reason though that the server probably rejected the second ciphersuite is because no certificate was available with an RSA signing key needed to complete the protocol.
There's a difference between dancing to be seen, and just wanting to dance with other people for fun.
Voluntarily? More like instincts & hormones.
Cool! I'm absolutely retarded when it comes to going to the mailbox to deposit mail-it usually sits on my desk for a few weeks first. And I never seem to have stamps. I think you should organize the card designs into categories, though, to make them easier to browse. This isn't a huge concern now but it will be as you continue to add to your design collection.

I did get an error page when I tried to connect with Facebook- Here's what it said:
"The browser has stopped trying to retrieve the requested item. The site is redirecting the request in a way that will never complete."

Also, you might want to try retitling this post: Ask HN: Review my Startup. I think you'll get a better response if its more clear that you're asking the community for input.
This is a fine article. Unfortunately, it describes very specifically how not to verify an PKCS RSA signature, perpetuating a mistake that screwed over browser vendors a couple years back:

http://www.matasano.com/log/558/public-key-signature-forgery...

To wit: you verify specifically cannot look at the SHA-1 hash at the end of an RSA block and compare it to your own hash, because there are hundreds of zillions of other RSA blocks that can result from the RSA algorithm that could contain a SHA-1 block of an attacker's choosing.

Vendors learned the hard way that to verify an RSA signature, you have to reconstruct the entire m block you'd expect to see, and byte compare it to the entire "decrypted" m block from the certificate.

Crypto sucks.
If you don't intend to return, why pay the tax?
And why no inbox?
There is a lot of data on this site, and a few months ago, PG had to do upgrade the server to handle the traffic. If he added search, is it possible that all those queries would kill site performance?
So in 20 years is going to be a surplus of women?
Gathering rumors of cyberwar
the reason i would read more into this than just 'it's time to move on' is when all 3 founders leave at the same time.
or is that more common than i would suspect?
Sounds like a job for Greasemonkey. Wouldn't be too hard to add a box that submits to searchyc.com/<your_query>
I really like this project: it's great visually and in terms of the message it gives to the developers: "Here are your apps, see how fast they're selling. Keep developing with us!"

On top of that, they're eating their own dogfood: Mac Pros, Apple displays, QuartzComposer and OpenCL.