Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective - <AUTHOR> http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-month-retrospective/#content <comment><USER2> I've always wanted to turn to freelancing, mostly because my girlfriend has visa issues and it would allow me to go live with her full time and take better care of my family, but my biggest drawback and what stopped me was that I didn't know how to start getting decent projects.

I'm a webdev, I mostly feel confident to start with PHP where I have lots of experience and worked on websites with millions uniques and things like that; and am able to setup/debug most part of the stack, but every single time I find that either I can't find any good opportunities, or people want to see "previous experience" and they don't consider what I did at my jobs as counting because it's not websites I did from top to bottom.

When I ask on various websites, people tell me to compete on the various freelancing sites but it feels like so much bullshit with all those 20$ offers getting the upper hands even if it's obvious it will fail ...

Does anybody on HN have any idea on how I can help myself in that area ? I have absolutely no design skill so I can't just do dummy websites by myself, or they would look terrible.

(for the sake of the question, please just assume I know how to do my job well and my problem is mostly image/marketing myself)

<comment><USER3> I would say get involved in your local community... go to meet-ups, tech talks, Startup Weekends, etc, and become a known entity.

The real benefit to this is you get to meet people who are already established, as usually those are the people who tend to do these things and sometimes they work in teams. I did a pro-bono project with a local known dev, he liked the work and invited me to come along on a long-term paid gig which was sufficient enough for me to quit my day job.

<comment><USER4> I do this a lot. A couple things I've realized: \- Quite a few of the people you meet aren't going to lead to much. A few of them will lead to something but not until further down the road. Basically, not everyone is looking for freelance developers.

\- You have to know a bit about sales. If I'm talking to someone non-technical looking for an online store, I'm an expert in e-commerce, but if I was talking to someone in the industry, I'm less likely to throw out the term expert and more likely to try and talk about specifics.

\- This is culture dependent but in the States, I've found being too modest is a negative and people seem to interpret it as either disinterest, lack of confidence, or lack of skills.

\- I once overheard a discussion that went something like this, "I'm looking for a developer." "If you can get <that person> that would be great." I'm not there yet but I want to be <that person>.

<comment><USER5> "in the States, I've found being too modest is a negative"

A Uruguayan delegation went to Silicon Valley recently, and one colleague mentioned one takeaway was that most americans are very "aggressive" selling themselves and outspoken, it came out as a bit of bullshitting to him, as we come from a more modest culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> So as an example, a $100K salary, which corresponds to roughly $50 per hour working 40 hours a week, requires a freelancing rate of $56-58/hour to pay for healthcare and time off.

Cringe -- this is bad advice for setting your consulting rate. In the US, the full cost of an $100K employee is not $100K. It's $100K salary + paid vacation time + employment taxes paid by employer + healthcare + office space & pro- rated related expenses (like cleaning of said office space). This metric is called the "fully loaded cost" of an employee and ends up being 1.3x-1.5x of the salary.

But even this calculation fails to capture the flexibility advantages that your clients get from hiring short term. It ignores the fact that as a consultant you are hired only when you are needed and are 100% utilized, while a yearly employee may not be fully utilized every day of the year. Essentially, an employer that hires a full time employee agrees to "buy in bulk" and pay for time that may or may not be fully utilized. By necessity this means that your rate should be higher to account for the additional value provided plus provide cushion for those in-between project times when you are looking for work or doing proposals.

Two quick and dirty metrics I have seen for determining rate per hour are 1) yearly salary / 1000 and 2) 2x full time employee hourly rate. Both of these converge on about $100/hr. Un-official data from HN seems to confirm a median freelance rate in that range (about $90/hr): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420203>

<comment><USER7> Keep in mind that those guesstimations are for determining the _floor rate_ one would ask for to maintain an expected standard of living, rather than determining the rate one would actually ask for. Your rate should be whatever you can convince people to pay you, and that can be a number well north of $90/hr.

(While I love HNers, one should not rely on HN salary surveys to set one's rates. There are many factors that drag it down: HN has a global audience but you do not have to sell to global consumers of programming talent. HN, in other surveys, frequently skews to young and inexperienced -- you may not be young and inexperienced. Many HNers are unsophisticated about pricing to extract value from mutually beneficial business relationships -- you should not be unsophisticated in this manner. Many HNers occupy positions which are low on the value chain such as undifferentiated "web design" which do not command high hourly rates -- you should upgrade your skillset or marketing such that you can command higher hourly rates. etc, etc)

<comment><USER8> Where can one find good statistics on this issue?

My consultancy is now starting to take on American clients, and I'm trying to understand what the average market condition is like to know where to start ourselves off.

<comment><USER7> That strikes me like "Dating advice: Explain to the average woman that accompanying you to the average restaurant followed by an average movie would make for an average evening."

<comment><USER8> Yes, but to explain why we're worth X% more than the average developer/freelancer, I need to know how much they make in the first place!

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure you don't. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, framing it terms of another developer will hurt you if you are charging more.

If you are delivering $100,000 in business value, and you charge $20,000 for it it is a win for the company. If another developer charges $10,000 for it. Going with them isn't twice the win for the company.

You don't say I'm worth x% more because I work x% faster. You are worth $20,000 (which just so happens to be x% more) because you've done this before, helped other clients realize 5x ROI and you've worked around the nasty #2343 bug in the database that will bite them if they go with someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Guys, a question about this: reading HN, I have the feeling that in USA freelancers are a pretty common phenomenon in software. Where I work (Netherlands), all freelancers I know are working full-time 2 year projects anyway, not at all getting them the flexibility articles like these refer to. They mostly get paid more than the employees, in exchange for less job security and having to invest in education themselves.

What do US freelancers do? Are these people who make websites for local bakeries? Can you do a 20-hr a week freelance job actually _coding_ something? And how long do employers expect such projects to last? What kind of employers look for freelancers like that?

Any personal anecdotes or whatever will be most appreciated!

<comment><USER11> Not US but UK here. And yes, in my experience, yes you can do 20 hour weeks from freelance jobs. The people/companies who want you are simply those companies with more work than they can currently handle.

It's not hard to see why, in the UK especially, there's a severe shortage of good developers. I can safely say ( hopefully without coming across as arrogant) that I'm a better developer than any other I've met whilst freelancing thus far. Companies are willing to pay for that knowledge and experience, even if it's on a time limited basis.

It's well understood in programming circles that a good developer can be much more economically viable then several not so good developers working on the same problem. I think Joel Spolsky's sums up this point quite well here <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html>.

<comment><USER12> I can't agree more about the standard of developers, a host of roles I've interviewed candidates for in my past 2 positions just don't get the same calibre of applicant for a permanent role vs contract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These posts are always both inspiring and wrenching for me. I'm mid-career and come from the mold where getting a good fulltime job out of college is what one does. That's simply the way it was, at least in my circles (college, family, etc), and I never considered working for myself. Fast-forward 15 years. Corporate life has actually been pretty decent to me. I've not been jerked around too much, had some opportunity to travel, and have been compensated reasonably well. My wife and I have had a comfortable life so far.

So, what's the problem? LACK OF TIME OFF. I've been stuck behind antiquated US corp vacation policies for a long time, and having had my vacation "reset" due to a job move is weighing on me a lot. 3 weeks total time off (which includes sick leave). I'm almost 40 and have a young family, and more and more I think the current PTO situation is BS. I actually don't mind working in an office 5 days a week, but I would like some more time out of the office.

So it's great to read someone achieving that, but I'm also incredibly jealous. Yes I could "just do it", but that would go against very deep and well-set views of how I need to provide for my family. I'm not able to stomach the risk (and unfamiliarity) at this point. I suspect that it will need to get worse (i.e. my job goes to shit), and that will force my hand and it could get much better.

<comment><USER14> LVB: you now what I think you should do? If you don't want to leave the corporate world, and your only gripe is the lack of vacation, _negotiate_. If your boss gives you a raise, ask if you can trade in 2% of salary for another week: taking an 8% raise instead of 10%. If he can't give you a raise at all, ask if you can get an additional week off instead. If you have to, offer to have any time past your 3rd week unpaid.

People tend to think that vacation allotments are set in stone. They're not, and you can definitely negotiate out of a "reset". If you're used to having 4 weeks, it's not unreasonable at all to ask for that in your next job.

It's weird to me that so many people do the customary +5k negotiation before they start a job but they fail to negotiate an additional week of vacation which would, in most cases, make them a lot happier than an extra ~$250 per month (after tax).

<comment><USER13> PTO was a part of my negotiation when I was looking for a new job, but it didn't work out. The job market was worse then, and I was quite keen to make the move out of my previous location (it was a cross country move) so it wasn't worth not getting the new job.

That said, over the past week I've been drafting a polite but direct letter asking for the extra week. Sure I've already had the job for a couple years and my bargaining position is ostensible worse, but their need for employees is a lot higher and they have repeatedly said how much they like me, I do good work, future roles, etc. I like the idea of making them sweat a bit (there have been a number of recent departures), and maybe it will pay off.

<comment><USER15> What stops you from just taking a week of unpaid time off?

<comment><USER13> I would love to have that option. Unfortunately the only unpaid leave that's allowed is FMLA, and even then you must burn up any built up PTO before it transitions to unpaid leave.

The work, environment and people are quite good at the company, but the leave policies are annoyingly stingy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Earlier this year in the Harvard Business Review, Jody and Matt Miller wrote about a phenomenon that is similar in spirit to that of freelancing hackers, which they dubbed supertemping:

 _"Supertemps are top managers and professionals—from lawyers to CFOs to consultants—who've been trained at top schools and companies and choose to pursue project-based careers independent of any major firm."_

It is pretty interesting to see freelancing become a "first-class citizen" in the high-skilled employment world, whereas previously it wasn't widely accepted beyond a few select occupations.

URL: <http://hbr.org/2012/05/the-rise-of-the-supertemp/ar/1>

</comment><comment><USER17> A well written introspective piece. I left my job a few months before you did (Aug '11) and have a similar experience.

Here are some of the things that I've learned -

a) Set your working hours. Try to follow them, but not religiously. Having a batch of hours as free time is much better than being occupied throughout the day even for a 4 hour gig.

b) Get a small long term (ongoing) project. Few hours every month. Use the income from this project to pay the bills and perform other chores.

c) Any conversation with a random (or known) person about your profession can turn into a lead. You need to be in _sales mode_ more than before.

<comment><USER18> _Set your working hours. Try to follow them, but not religiously. Having a batch of hours as free time is much better than being occupied throughout the day even for a 4 hour gig._

Yup. Very good lesson to learn. Setting hours for work is _much_ more useful than timing when you work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would love to hear the follow up after a couple of years. I did freelancing for six years & the benefits and drawbacks both become a lot more starkly drawn -- & somewhat different -- over time.

<comment><USER20> What were those starkly drawn benefits and drawbacks you discovered in your six years of freelancing?

<comment><USER19> It's a big topic. To the author's point, the role of free time changes a bit once you have been able to plan your free time over a period of years rather than months. It takes on a very different rhythm.

Beyond that, probably the biggest single evolution was in my relationship to the work itself. In the early months and years I loved being able to go heads down on a project without ever worrying about the politics of the project or the organization: I was there to get the thing done. However, I am the kind of guy who cares about his work. Eventually I found this same experience to be dissatisfying. I felt that I was abandoning my children into a hostile corporate world with no one to look after them.

Moreover, as a freelancer you have much less influence over the product and the process. You're a hired gun. Sure, you can do a great job and collect a good paycheck, but if you love what you do it can be frustrating to have extremely limited input into decisions outside the scope of your contract.

Back to the author's very excellent point, I also found the management of benefits and finances to go from a source of engagement to just another hassle. When you are setting up your system, it's fun. When you are executing it, and occasionally screwing it up (taxes!), it's just another headache.

<comment><USER11> I'm keen to know whether you ever expressed these concerns?

My recent (and limited in comparison to yours) experience is that as a freelancer demanding a certain wage my knowledge and feedback is taken in very high regard and if I feel something needs changing it has been.

<comment><USER19> Sure, and some jobs I had more influence and others I had less. But at the end of the day, it's not your baby. You don't _have_ to live with consequences, and you don't _get_ to. I eventually went back to a full time day job. Yes, I miss the opportunity to take a month or three off; I will probably bounce back to the freelance life at some point; but right now I have the satisfaction of working really hard as the true owner of a product.

The other path here is starting your own company, owning your own product. But if what you love about the freelance life is bountiful free time, that is not the path for you!

<comment><USER11> Thanks blu3jack. I'll be honest I'm not sure how I'll handle that when the time comes. I'm hoping that as long as I always leave the job knowing I did the best I could, even if I believe the decision made were the wrong ones, I'll be happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Biggest aspects from my experience:

\- Follow your work times rigorously.

\- Just because you own your time that doesn't mean you should spend it reading articles all day. (I personally look through HN in 1min, then save my interests into the pocket app and read them at night)

\- Communicate with your clients a lot, sometimes all they need is to know how you're doing, they will appreciate it.

\- BIG one, learn to automate tasks. If you code, get an application like codebox or something, stop re-coding the same stuff over and over.

\- About the money, don't work for free, charge upfront percentage, the separate account thing is a good idea, I do that.

\- Be an expert of your area. Basically, 'skills will set you free'

</comment><comment><USER22> This guy knows what he's talking about.

He omitted the part about not having to put on pants to go to work, though. That's worth $25k/year to me, easy.

<comment><USER23> I don't get this with developers. Are pants that uncomfortable? That much of a terrible obligation that you'd forego 25k a year?

<comment><USER22> Specifically, it's more the "working someone else's schedule" than anything. Also, traveling to some other physical location. Commuting is a total drag, and it's nice sometimes in the middle of a project to postpone the shower until _after_ work that day and sit around in your skivvies in Get Shit Done mode until dinnertime.

Surely I can't be the only one who transitions from sleeping to awake with some crazy architectural change or refactoring in their head? I go straight to the keyboard and do it while it's all crystal clear in my mind.

The only time in the last five years I've _ever_ set an alarm clock is when I've had a doctor's appointment before noon.

Home is comfy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm almost at the end of my second month freelancing (post to come soon) and find this inspiring.

My biggest struggle at the moment is what to aim for, yes working three days a week and getting similar money to what I was earning full time is great. Yet at the same time I'm not sure if this is enough for me personally. In fact when I start talking to my friends in full time jobs I kinda feel guilty!

Maybe I need some more hobbies, but at the moment the draw of earning more money by working harder is far too appealing. It seems I just can't say no to money.

<comment><USER24> Do it then, and save it so you don't have to work. Part of the glory is being able to decide for yourself.

When I was freelancing, I'd be putting in 50-60 hour weeks most of the time, because I felt like the hustle really paid off, but any time I got burnt out, boom, time off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very nice look at making the move. I freelance on the side now, but I might look to do this in a couple of years if things go (or don't go) well with my next move.

Health insurance wise, we're you able to get coverage for yourself, or are you participating in a COBRA plan from your previous employer? To be honest, health insurance is probably the one thing that would keep me employed in regular salaried position. The fear of having a medical emergency and it wiping out my savings is a scary and totally realistic possibility.

<comment><USER26> There are a couple of options for health insurance. If you have a spouse who has health insurance through their job, you can join their health insurance plan. If you want to go solo, I've had good success with using ehealthinsurance.com.

When I was laid off from a job a few years ago, I compared the COBRA price to ehealth, and I found COBRA to be priced about 4 times higher than if I chose a similar plan from ehealth. And, with the same brand insurer.

<comment><USER27> I've been worried about getting labeled with "pre-existing conditions" that won't be covered if I go that route, for things that I'm currently covered for. Can anyone comment on that?

<comment><USER28> We'll see what the outcome of ObamaCare in regards to pre-existing conditions, but the way things are right now, if you go with an individual insurance(i.e. not part of a larger company's group plan), should you develop a medical condition, you will eventually be priced out of cheaper "risk categories", i.e. your insurance costs will be increasing year after year and you wont be able to change plans into other competitive healthcare plans because they will deny you due to these pre-existing conditions. Many states, including california, provide special plans for those who are denied coverage elsewhere, but they are ridiculously expensive(think over a $1k per month per person). If you have a family and your spouse doesnt have insurance, healthcare could be an expensive gamble...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone have an idea what kind of programming jobs lend themselves best to part-time work? The author doesn't mention the kinds of projects he works on.

I'm unemployed since last week and I've been trying to find a part-time programming job for more than three months in Geneva, Switzerland. Part-time freelancing sounds great, but I have no idea where to look for clients.

<comment><USER30> See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4215576>, but just look at what niche skills you have and find markets where those are needed. Generally if they are in demand, putting yourself on LinkedIn / Github with those specialties is all you need, for example <http://mrooney.github.com/about>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Without knowing what his income goals are, it's hard to know how well this would work for others. Most people can't easily charge more than $100 per hour for consulting, unless you have niche, in-demand skills, or are notably above- average in skills and you can back that up somehow (like you wrote a major FS/OSS tool that people know about).

<comment><USER30> Pretty much anyone will have specific experience that they can market themselves for. Just think about what you've done in your past few jobs, and you probably know more than 99% of developers in those specific areas you worked in. If you check out my About page at <http://mrooney.github.com/about>, you can see I'm not marketing myself just as a general web developer, as you don't stand out that way and can't charge a good rate against all the competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You know, you don't have to give up the "safety and security" of a full-time gig to have the freedom and control-your-own-schedule benefits of a freelancer. The "Results-Only Work Environment" (<http://www.gorowe.com>) is trying to merge the stability and benefits of a full-time job and the flexibility and freedom of freelancing.

If more gigs embraced ROWE, perhaps folks wouldn't have to choose the lesser of two evils.

Not saying that freelancing or consulting is bad, just that I think there's a viable alternative. I don't know what the future looks like, but I certainly hope the "40 hr salary work-week" goes away.

<comment><USER33> Only thing you're missing out on is the ability to work on and towards your own projects.

Not sure about the average freelancer, but most technical freelancers I know see it as a stepping stone towards getting their own little SaaS or iPhone app business off the ground.

If you're working full-time for a company, IME contracts tend to own all intellectual output at your time there, at home or otherwise. This doesn't matter much if all you do is put out MIT licensed experimental programming language parsers, but I wouldn't put many companies above executing on those terms should a product you build in your off-time achieve success.

<comment><USER34> That's just a matter of negotiation.

If you are billing significantly above $100 per hour, you are not a commodity technical talent and have leverage in negotiations. Redline the IP clauses you find objectionable, and supply alternate phrasing. Stress that whatever is paid for by the project from inception to delivery remains solidly available to the client. Lots more details for freelancers to work out, but I don't want to hijack this discussion and just wanted to point out you don't have to accept the standard boilerplate if you don't want to.

<comment><USER33> I think it's possible that you've misunderstood the comment I was replying to. The poster is referring to _permanent_ employees under a ROWE-like system.

As you say, I would have to be in dire financial straits before I accept a freelance contract that even casually mentioned IP outside the scope of a given clients project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Personally i didn't like freelancing from home all that much.. i did it for 3 years but overall you feel quite lonely sitting at home most of the day without coworkers to talk to. Work life/private life gets really mixed up and sitting around in your undies until noon wasnt really all that exciting after a while. Be careful to not isolate yourself too much! I love freelancing, but today i share an office with other freelancers and try to separate work/private life more clearly. Made me happier, YMMV

</comment><comment><USER36> Why is it that I do not see people in India freelancing? I do not know of a single person who freelance in software development and I live in Bangalore, touted as the Silicon Valley of India.

Is it that the developers here are not good enough, or not trustworthy enough. Or is it that they are unwilling to take the plunge into the unknown. I do think there surely is an inertia factor to it. But that's true anywhere else.

Maybe I just haven't looked well enough.

<comment><USER37> I live in Bangalore. Did 'freelancing' for >10 years. Now doing a spot of product dev (so not doing that anymore). I know many people who do (and drop back into BigCo jobs for a year or two when they want to take it easy for a while). Lots of people freelance in Bangalore. The key is to have some kind of specialized skill (design,analytics, etc) - vs generic web stack (J2EE, RoR etc) skills.

<comment><USER36> Hey! Great to know that I was wrong! Do you know a lot of people doing it/did it, or are you an exception? And who were you clients, i.e, were your clients Indian companies or are people in the US, UK etc ready to invest in freelancers in India.

And did it pay well enough for other people to consider it?

<comment><USER37> I've worked for both Indian and US 'companies' (quotes because some were research labs etc).My 'clients' were people who came looking for me because they know someone who recommended me. I never did any marketing and have no skills therin, and probably would botch it if I tried.

I am not an exception.I know tonnes of people who do 'freelancing', though most of them end up starting small companies to take care of taxes etc. (they do much better marketing than I do) and work on a time and materials (x $/hour) basis (I don't). They work for companies in the US/Europe. With rare exceptions, it doesn't make economic sense to work for Indian companies, though it depends on the value you can add. Pays much better than the BigCo salaries (I know people making more than 100k US $).

The hard thing is establishing a reputation for competence, since with so many body shopping companies (Infosys, TCS etc) hiring (literally) battalions of borderline incompetents, "Indian developer" has come to be synonymous with "incompetent fraud" in many people's minds in the west (can't blame them, really), especially in the outsourced context. Standing out in this sea of ultra cheap incompetence takes a lot of work. The ability to communicate well (both oral and written) in English is critical.

All that said, here is some free advice. If you don't have any specialized skills, are not prepared to work really really hard (much harder than in your usual Indian Bigco), don't (personally) know any potential clients, don't jump into freelancing. It is not _easy_.

By the time I was ready to quit the 9 to 5 BigCompany grind, I had many offers to freelance. I just got lucky and I am really the wrong person to give advice on how to freelance in India.

And that is all I have to say. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If anyone is looking to freelance in Australia (specially Melbourne) then please reach out to me at firstname.lastname@example.com - specially if you're a front- end developer or mobile developer.

We don't take a percentage of your earnings (we charge a subscription to the agencies instead) and we have WAY too many requests for positions for us to fill at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER20> How does freelancing relate to consulting?

<comment><USER39> Same thing, slightly different connotations.

Consulting implies a more advisory role while freelancing implies you are working on something.

Another similar term is contracting. The implication of contracting is that you only work on one project at a time. Often enough at the company's office as well. Contracting is more like a temporary work situation.

'Creative' industries like web design and development have a tendency to use freelancing. While consulting or contracting would almost always be used when developing a java program for a bank.

<comment><USER30> Indeed, I used the term freelancing as in my mind it is the parent term of both contracting and consulting. I think "6 months of working for myself" or "6 months of self-employment" would also be equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Are there any freelance jobs which aren't web-related?

I am a software engineer specializing in robotics systems, and I find it really hard to find contract work that doesn't involve Javascript/PHP/etc, let alone one that involves engineering systems.

<comment><USER41> There are definitely freelance jobs that don't involve the web - I know folks who have them, doing e.g. optics design - but they're rarer, just because the potential customer base is so much smaller. And obviously in robotics systems it will be harder to telecommute.

The usual advice is to specialize in something that's specific but in demand. For example, you could get really good at setting up a particularly common _type_ of robotics system, or setting up systems for a particular type of problem. Perhaps try approaching the sales folks for a robot company and seeing if their customers are often looking for experienced freelancers: If so, would they be willing to recommend you? (Of course, if the robotics company has its own consulting division you might not have much luck with this plan…)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> What specifically is he using for a healthcare plan?

<comment><USER43> I'm also a consultant, and use Kaiser in California. I'm paying about $160 a month for full coverage. Although my plan does have a $2000 deductible, preventive care is free, so other than my premiums I haven't had to cough up anything yet.

<comment><USER44> What about prescription drug coverage? What are your copays for non-generic vs. generic?

<comment><USER43> That I can't answer, as I haven't needed to get a prescription for anything in awhile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Where do you find work? Is I just word of mouth?

<comment><USER30> I tried to address this in [http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-mo...](http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-month- retrospective/#comment-574737739), but let me know you find it lacking!

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Are there some online sites to get a freelance job?

</comment><comment><USER47> What are the best sources to get freelance jobs?

<comment><USER48> I've found it's networking, all the way. A lot of random work will come from the ether once you've done good work for a few clients, and then they recommend you to their contacts.

I quit my full-time a couple months ago and it's how I've gotten all my work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm currently trying to get into the freelancing gaming. This article and the comments here have been very helpful! Thanks everyone. :)</comment>


Mojolicious 2.0 released: Perl real-time web framework - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kraih.com/mojolicious-20-released-perl-real-time-web-fr

<comment><USER2> I've been using Mojolicious even before it hit 1.0 and it has been an excellent experience. If there is one area I must applaud sri (and the community) for, is dropping Perl 5.8; Moving forward means moving forward (even though I understand the motivation behind not wanting to make 5.8 obsolete).

<comment><USER3> It took almost a year and multiple attempts to finally get rid of Perl 5.8, so glad it's done. :) But thanks to Jesse and his ambitious plans for Perl, i think there is now a mentality change happening in the community that will make similar changes easier in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just getting into Mojolicious... thanks for a Perlish alternative to RoR, Django and something WAY easier than Catalyst!

</comment><comment><USER5> Supper Awesome! Mojolicous is my favourite web framework for building apps. Glad to see 2.0 and all the goodies it has.

</comment><comment><USER6> I cannot find a web framework in any other language that is as clean as this or has as many bells and whistles.

</comment><comment><USER7> For anyone else who's curious, the actual site is <http://mojolicio.us/>.

If you're trying to get new blood linking to a site without docs, or any apparent links to get more info is maybe not the best way of doing so.

<comment><AUTHOR> The link is right up there at the top of the page. Thanks for reposting the link, though.

<comment><USER7> Ok, so it is. Problem is it just looks like a tag or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Catalyst is easy too. But Mojolicious and Dancer bring us a new breath. Great news.

</comment><comment><USER9> I build a special-purpose frontend to libvirt using Mojolicious 1.33 back in May. It was already a very easy to use and capable framework. There have been 62 releases in the five months since then!

[https://github.com/kraih/mojo/blob/7321e4c7b83a19286b3309df5...](https://github.com/kraih/mojo/blob/7321e4c7b83a19286b3309df53fc6d4d2e7460f0/Changes)

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats on the release. Need to do some cool real time project soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure; especially with web sockets. The built-in test support for the latest websocket spec (in code and on the command line) makes things really easy.

<comment><USER10> Jupp. Seems even MSIE10 is adopting web sockets now. Will be interesting to see what people make with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the last year, since I started using Mojolicious, rolling out web apps has been just amazingly nice. Good work people!

</comment><comment><USER6> Morbo never stops amazing when I build apps with other developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true; and I love that the production server, hypnotoad, is a managed set of morbos. Code re-use done right.

<comment><USER9> Rather, Morbo and Hypnotoad both manage Mojo::Server::Daemon workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER13> That is not what real-time means.

<comment><USER10> async, non-blocking, event driven. This is exactly what real-time web frameworks are about.

<comment><USER13> ><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system>

Specifically:

A hard real-time operating system has less jitter than a soft real-time operating system. The chief design goal is not high throughput, but rather a guarantee of a soft or hard performance category. A RTOS that can usually or generally meet a deadline is a soft real-time OS, but if it can meet a deadline deterministically it is a hard real-time OS.

Async, non-blocking, and event-driven have nothing to do with real-time.

This web framework has nothing to do with real-time.

Stop using terminology you don't understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're munging terms.

As posted in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_web>

"The real-time web is a set of technologies and practices that enable users to receive information as soon as it is published by its authors, rather than requiring that they or their software check a source periodically for updates."

Mojolicious fits that description.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> and i thought perl is dead :O

<comment><AUTHOR> If you thought that, Mojolicious will blow you away. The hot reloading production server and libev event subscription is about as hip as you can get these days.</comment></comment>


Blasphemy & Revelation – with DHH - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/david-heinemeier-hansson-37signals-intervie/ <comment><USER2> I absolutely loved the interview. It taught me to be patient, create an enjoyable workday, and work on things to solve real problems. Learning that the first version of Basecamp took 6 month is refreshing. The most time I spent on a project is 5 months. It shows we should not be caught up on expecting results to come so quickly.

However, there is one thing about the interview that bothered me. DHH said your are not a product company but just a consultant if you don't create products for yourself.

There are tremendous opportunities in industries that don't have as many talented technologists. For example, I am interested in industries that I don't make a living professionally such as retail business and health care. Just because I didn't study medicine, shouldn't stop me or anyone else from trying to make a product to help the health care industry.

This route of emersing yourself with customers from another industries is much harder. However, as geeks, we already have too many products made for geeks. There are plethora of important problems in less tech savvy sectors waiting for us to solve.

<comment><USER3> On one end of the spectrum we have DHH who advocates scratching your own itches. On the other end of the spectrum, we have people like you and Patrick (patio11) reminding everyone that there are huge, virtually untapped markets which are typically not well served by programmers.

My take is that both strategies will work if implemented correctly. In the case of "products for others", heavily relying on customer development and similar Lean Startup principles will be particularly important, given that you are not a customer of your own product, and therefore may not fully grasp your customers' problems and requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I forgot to mention the part about dogfooding. After DHH talked about the importance of designing software for himself, Andrew challenged him by asking if Sortfolio was designed for himself. DHH made it clear that it was. Even though I'm not sure 37signals has got a whole lot of use of it just yet, after hearing him out I am convinced that it was designed with using it in mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> "What a load of crock!" (Love David's use of catch-phrases.)

Nice interview.

</comment><comment><USER4> Even if I've seen the interviewee speak or get interviewed a few times before, I always know the Mixergy interview will be worth watching. This was no exception. Andrew Warner asked some great questions, including one about why feedback from paying customers is different from feedback from non-paying customers.

<comment><USER6> What was his answer?

<comment><USER4> Something about how paying customers have a stake in the outcome of the feedback, so they try to make their feedback effective. The transcript should be out soon.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, maybe free customers will give effective feedback because there are only a few things preventing them from upgrading. Obviously would have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

<comment><USER7> He mentioned that feedback from non-paying customers is great too and (imo) implied for this reason. The message started off with him saying its better to have feedback from paying customers, but then evolved into saying they're both valuable in different ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great interview. Thought it really brought DHH out at his best. He has a rare combination of being very honest and insightful, but also communicating really well in face-to-face conversation.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find the notion that his approach to business is very Danish to be pretty funny. If you've read "The Black Swan" Taleb discusses that everyone thinks his philosophy is the direct result of having grown up in Lebanon and living in exile during the civil war.

I'm not sure such a thing alone can determine our philosophy. Based on his Twitter feed I feel like DHH is more libertarian than the average Dane you're likely to meet.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the best about this is interview is that DHH really sells and believes what he says. He's just not replaying the party line, but a core belief of his.

</comment><comment><USER11> Loved the interview, but what that cake from freshbooks mean? Does anyone sign up to win a cake?

<comment><USER12> Anyone that says "the cake is a lie" will get hurt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are Danes often gratuitously profane?

<comment><USER14> Not sure - I don't swear a lot, but there's a very big difference in how profane language is perceived.

In Denmark you won't see TV programs bleep over profanity and you generally wont see people write f##k instead of just the putting the real thing.

I think most of us danes find the "fear" of certain words to be quite perplexing. And the idea that it's somehow better to see f##k instead of fuck, even more so.

It's as if there's some mystical belief in the "evil" power inherent in these words, that rationally can't really be described as anything but superstition.

Since us danes have a really, really hard time understanding how a word in itself could possible be offending, it's quite tempting to just not give a damn and use a lot of them. Especially if you find some kind of joy in poking at other peoples superstitions. And I suspect that's the case with DHH...

<comment><USER15> Is english a native language for most Danes?

<comment><USER14> No - pretty much everybody in Denmark speaks english, but as a second language.

Typically with a funny accent :)

[edit] On the other hand english profanity has kinda made it into danish. You will hear danes say "shit" or "fuck" when speaking to each other in danish...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dylan Programming Guide (1996) now in PDF, ePub, updated HTML - <AUTHOR> http://opendylan.org/news/2013/01/21/dylan-programming-guide.html

<comment><USER2> "It's called Dylan because it's so cool that nobody understands it." -- a manager in the Newton Group

[Kind of tounge-in-cheek; I didn't see that it was particularly difficult to grok]

The Newton was going to be programmed in Dylan from the metal on up. The week that it was decided to write it all in C++, there were a lot of glum ex-Dylan programmers wandering the halls, clutching copies of the C++ ARM.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of them (from the Bauhaus) group is working with us now on some changes to look at adding alternate syntax support to bring back s-expression syntax. :)

Although he didn't move over to C++ Newton, he went on to SK8 and other things...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe I had a pretty weird upbringing, but the design of Dylan is one of a rather small set of things that gives me a particular kind of wholesome, full- body happiness, and a feeling of real warmth, and like somebody out there truly understands me.

I think it's something like what they call "love." But no -- it's like my _mind_ is getting hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Drop by #dylan on Freenode IRC!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Functions as first-class values, lexically-scoped closures, map, curry...objects, methods, classes & class inheritance...immutable objects that can have their pointers optimized-away by the compiler.

This sounds ahead of its day for a language intended for industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> And multimethods ... but no protocols/interfaces sadly.

But it is enjoyable to write. :) There's a reason that I wanted to let it live again so much that I pour days of my time into it.

<comment><USER5> There's the forward-iteration protocol... ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is the original Dylan documentation from 1992 .. It has the s-expression syntax: <http://moo.mx/stuff/dylan/contents.html>

<comment><USER7> Later version of Dylan are a much better language, Algol-syntax not withstanding. Better still, is GOO: a very elegant little language that would make for a perfect Dylan or Common Lisp core.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now that we have someone looking at adding an s-expression syntax as an alternative to OpenDylan, it has been interesting reading through my copy of the original Apple Dylan book from 1992 (originally owned by P Tucker Withington given the signature inside the cover). A lot did change for the better between 1992 and 1996. I think sealing is a big example of that. I think the 'block' construct is a bit nicer than the prefix-Dylan equivalent as well.

It is also interesting to see how some elements of the current Dylan syntax make more sense when you see the roots of it all in the prefix-Dylan syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is a free ebook conversion tool for you. You can easily convert your ebook from epub to pdf.

Free Online Ebook Converter <http://www.ebookconverter.net/>

It provides you with the best PDF to ePub converting experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Recognizing that you're probably just shilling for your own product ...

We use <http://sphinx-doc.org/> and author in ReStructuredText with some extensions. From that, we output HTML, PDF and ePub.

There are some issues with the ePub (they display fine, but don't validate), so it looks like sometime soon, I'll be hacking on Sphinx to fix some of the bugs in the epub generation.

I couldn't really be happier with this system.</comment></comment>


Black Friday: Up to 90% off GoSquared - <AUTHOR> https://www.gosquared.com

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what the "plus plan" includes, because it's not listed on the "plans and pricing" page. This also means I have no idea what the product costs (originally or discounted).</comment>


Stanford students, Apple iPad apps just go together - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/talkingtech/story/2012-03-13/stanford-students-apps/53516698/1?loc=interstitialskip

<comment><USER2> Cool! I wish I could ever travel there.</comment>


Ask HN: IRC Channels - <AUTHOR>

One of the reasons I love reading HN is the quality of its discussions :) Can someone suggest me some good IRC channels related of this sort , say programming , hacking <comment><USER2> #startups on freenode has been the un-official HN channel for about 3 years now.

<comment><USER3> I never knew this, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For Python, both the #pypy and #pocoo channels on freenode have good discussions.

</comment><comment><USER5> #infra-talk and #devops on freenode are solid infrastructure/devops channels.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)</comment>


Inside the Startup-Generating Secrets of Y Combinator (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/10/y-combinator-start-up-think-tank

<comment><USER2> I always found the idea of YC's 'secrets' funny, because if there's one organization with its central philosophies laid bare for all to see and consider, it's YC.

I wish we had so much detail on the founding principles of other organizations (in thoughtful essay format, say). We'd know a lot more about what makes groups of people succeed and fail in achieving their goals.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for posting a very impressive essay. In particular it gets the idea across of how much starting up is a human experience, not only a process. I'm not able to find a previous discussion of it here, or any validating references. Anyone?

</comment><comment><USER4> good advice :"eat sleep program and exercise"

<comment><USER5> May be you left out the most important thing, that is talking to users to make sure you are making things people want. Jessica Livingston in startup school 2012:

"We tell people that during YC there are really only three things you should focus on: building things, talking to users, and exercising."

<comment><USER6> OK, so for best practices, we have:

* eat

* sleep

* build something that people want

* talk to users so that you know what they want

Anything else of note?</comment></comment></comment>


So, you need a typeface... - <AUTHOR> http://inspirationlab.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/so-you-need-a-typeface/

<comment><USER2> This is fantastic - my favourite part "The Netherlands is nice right? No? Get out of my flow chart!" Need this printed on a massive poster. Also the path to Comic Sans is fantastic. Trajan belongs on here too.

<comment><USER3> I guess the path to Trajan would be too simple.

Start -> I'm making a movie poster -> Trajan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm easily distracted, but I found it a bit difficult to follow the (otherwise beautiful and smart) infographic - everything is so entangled and close together.

Also, a small typo: "Something modern, yet _planispoken_ " (halfway down the right side, under Newspaper).

<comment><USER5> Haha I think planispoken is actually Dutch for plain spoken, and the guy who made it is from the netherlands so that may have something to do with it...

<comment><USER6> No, it's not a Dutch word so it's probably a typo for plain spoken.

<comment><USER5> I stand corrected :P

<comment><USER7> You're probably sitting.

<comment><USER5> No I stood up when I typed that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome. A coworker was walking by just now and he couldn't believe so much thought could go into typography. Or that there's an entire movie about Helvetica.</comment>


I'm an Impostor and That's Okay - <AUTHOR> http://scottmw.com/402/im-impostor-thats-okay/

<comment><USER2> "The trade-off is that I feel a ball of anxiety sitting somewhere in my brain — the knowledge that I have so much to learn today, which doesn't include all the things I missed yesterday or will miss tomorrow. There's just too much. I'm just one man."

As a fellow Impostor Syndrome sufferer, this point resonated the most with me. Once you realize you cannot do it all, I think you improve more over time than you would frantically trying to digest everything as it comes in real-time.

I love Fight Club so I'm gonna squeeze this square quote into a round discussion: "It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything".</comment>


DDG's traffic tripled in last 3 days, reason? - <AUTHOR>

http://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html<p>They got plugged on some major site or what? <comment><USER2> Or perhaps, that's their normal traffic, and the first two days of january was lower than normal.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://donttrack.us/> was on the front page of reddit for most of Monday (Tuesday?)</comment>


Webhook, a static site generator with a CMS - <AUTHOR> http://www.webhook.com Hey all. I'm just finishing my static site generator that comes with a built-in, drag and droppable CMS. I asked for some feedback a couple weeks ago in the "Help Me Out" posts and ended up making a proper intro video for it as well as releasing our documentation.
I'm taking the product to Kickstarter to drum up my first month of sales and keep the project completely bootstrapped. It's going pretty well after one day and figured the HN crowd might be interested. I think we've come up with a pretty novel way to bridge the gap between a full CMS and the ease of use of static site generators. Really impressed with firebase as a realtime data store.
I'm also happy to answer any questions about launching something like this on Kickstarter if anyone has any questions for their own projects. Outside of the funding, we mainly did it to have a rough idea of how much infrastructure to build for our first few months.
As to the domain, which I'm sure people will have questions about... we originally had some ideas for incorporating a bunch of webhooks into the CMS that would generate auto-deploys based upon actions from other services. It didn't make it into our v1, but the plans are still there.
It's a fully hosted solution at the moment, but we're going to try to open up the production server for self-hosters later in the year. <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all. I asked for some help on the Help Me Out post a couple weeks ago and thought I'd post a proper "Show HN" post. I ended up redoing the video and decided to launch the project on Kickstarter. It's going pretty well for a new project and we're pretty excited about the launch.

If anyone here is interested in launching on Kickstarter as a means to staying bootstrapped I'm happy to answer questions about how the process works and how we prepped.</comment>


CPU Clocks and Clock Interrupts, and Their Effects on Schedulers - <AUTHOR> http://accu.org/index.php/journals/2185 <comment><USER2> One interesting thing this (dated but still very relevant) article misses is timer coalescing.

Most modern operating systems try to merge a bunch of timer actions into a single wake/interrupt. Not only does this leave more time for other work to be done in the normal case of a loaded CPU, but if there's less demand, it provides way more opportunity for the CPU to fall into a lower power state.

Some timer APIs will let you specify how accurate you want your timer to be. Often enough, a few tens or hundreds of milliseconds doesn't really matter for your use case, but that's AEONS in CPU time!

</comment><comment><USER3> "A SPNT OS has no real need of a scheduler."

I would rather disagree: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking). OS in the most of the cases needs to be interactive, what would be impossible without multitasking. Multitasking would not be possible without a scheduler. So, we would not swap the active task and we would be stuck with the current task forever (or until it finishes), without even the ability to interrupt it.

<comment><USER4> > A single process, non-threaded (SPNT) OS runs one process at a time

There's no multitasking in this scenario. Think MS-DOS 6.22.

<comment><USER3> Of course, there does not have to be, but if there would then it would be very useful. Think MS-DOS 4.0 multitasking: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS- DOS_4.0_(multitasking)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS- DOS_4.0_\(multitasking\))

One process can have a preemptive multitasking. Even one process can make a very good use of a scheduler.</comment></comment></comment>


Gondor.io Django hosting is now publicly available - <AUTHOR> https://gondor.io/ <comment><USER2> It's too bad there's not a development plan available. I have quite a bit of AppEngine projects I'd be interested in porting over, but not if 100 requests/day + 500kb SQL (what I would use during the port) would cost me $20/month.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's one thing I noticed too. A small free quota on the order of ep.io's (1 WSGI process that maybe gets shut down when not in use + 50-100 MB data + 16 MB Redis) would probably be a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gondor looks fantastic. I love the fact that PaaS is picking up and there is more competition. It is such a fantastic idea.

We have been hosting on DotCloud for our django apps and are extremely happy with it. The fact that we can scale up on demand is great. We can add any number of instances by using a simple push command. On top of that the support that DotCloud provides is superb.

All the best to Gondor and DotCloud, I think the pie is big enough for both of them.

</comment><comment><USER5> This news was posted yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955740>

</comment><comment><USER6> This team of people is ridiculously good. They probably wrote half of the Django packages you use.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anybody know how well this compares to ep.io? As far as I can tell, ep.io is pretty similar, only Epio targets more frameworks than just Django. For better or for worse.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a small anecdote, before I purchased a VPS I applied to all of the Django- only hosts and visited each one's IRC channel. Gondor was the only one that actually let me try the beta and they were also the only one that had a human on IRC at the time to help with any problems.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is it conceivable that a service like this could be distilled into Fabric scripts to be run against any hosting provider? I could do without the auto scaling since it would be easy enough to issue the command manually when needed.

<comment><USER10> Yes. I'll be releasing a Django tool this fall (tentatively titled Prometheus), which is essentially a beefed-up django-admin.py startproject, full of best practices for front and back-end development, and sysops stuff, including a fabric script that lets you do this kind of commit to deploy automatically, with any hosting provider or setup (within reason).

<comment><USER11> Take a look at <https://github.com/dziegler/django-create-project> & maybe collaborate?

<comment><USER12> or Pinax :-)

<comment><USER10> Pinax development's stalled, and it's only about halfway to what I'm hoping to accomplish. They've also made more than a few architectural differences that are pretty incompatible with how I'm doing things. It'll make more sense when you see Prometheus in action.

<comment><USER12> Pinax development has not stalled at all, it's quite active.

<comment><USER10> My apologies, it appears I was looking at an outdated fork on GitHub. Off- topic, but I've always found that Google's rankings of GitHub repos to be complete garbage. It rarely shows the original or most active repo, and when it does instead of the link being to the top-level GitHub page for the project, it's some random issue or wiki page from the project. Endrant.

The architectural differences are still a huge concern, and why I never pursued collaboration back when I started it 6 months or so ago. Pinax is great at what it does, but to expand it into what I want a real startproject replacement to be I'd have to tear out way too much. It'd barely resemble Pinax anymore, which would just serve to confuse users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good work Gondor team! It is nice to see another quick deploy service launched. It looks the pricing is a little cheaper than Heroku as well, should be an interesting alternative.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone have any experience with using Gondor versus e.g. Linode?

If I'm reading it right, Gondor costs more than twice as much. But that might be worth it to get a server set up very nicely and good Django-specific support.

<comment><USER12> On top of what Linode offers (which, in Gondor's case is provided by Rackspace Cloud Servers) Gondor is fully managed with an automated provisioning and deployment platform. It's really another layer on top of what a VPS provider is doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good timing. Will probably attract tons of scared App Engine orphans.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm afraid to use Gondor. I'm not sure how solid they are yet, whereas Heroku runs Django apps just fine and is definitely here to stay.

<comment><USER4> >whereas Heroku runs Django apps just fine How?

<comment><USER17> Heroku's Cedar stack can host just about anything.

There was a discussion of running Django on it not too long ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2612943>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there support for WSGI applications in general, like Flask apps?

<comment><USER7> Not yet, but there's a customer feedback page for it. Anyone interested in this should vote this up.

[http://support.gondor.io/forums/111943-general/suggestions/2...](http://support.gondor.io/forums/111943-general/suggestions/2002349-support- for-flask-projects)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd be scared of the Tolkien estate.</comment>


Using Matomo as a privacy-conscious alternative for user analytics on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://worklifewhatever.com/matomo-user-analytics-ios/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, I've been on the lookout for a self-hosted, privacy-conscious user analytics solution to track mobile apps. This is my experience of using Matomo for that very purpose. I'd love to know if anyone has experience with it as well!</comment>


Ask HN: Why are academic articles published as PDFs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> PDF is a workable format for documents intended for paper. With PDF you can produce documents with TeX or LaTeX or Microsoft Word or many other tools and get good fidelity printing on paper or viewing on a screen.

For all the hype, web-based formats like MathML just don't equal what you can do other kinds of workflows.

</comment><comment><USER3> Portable Document Format. That means it is portable. The web browser is the most portable platform currently. Most browsers can display PDF's. Most browsers can't display other formats such as Word, etc.</comment>


AV1 codec ecosystem update - <AUTHOR> https://www.singhkays.com/blog/av1-ecosystem-update-may-2019/ <comment><USER2> > Auorara claims to improve encoding speed by 32.2% against x265 veryslow

I'll have to see it to believe it, because av1 has a _long_ way to go to become even remotely comparable to x265 in encode times, let alone superior.

With ffmpeg built from git, I can encode a 1920x1080 video file to x265 (with a boatload of parameters and options, via a custom threadpool I've written that can saturate all the cores regardless of input stream complexity or size) at 9.2fps on a 16-core 1950X with sufficient RAM.

The same harness powering ffmpeg's av1 encoder (not the fastest, they haven't switched to rav1e yet) does not manage 2fps (I'm letting it run to see what it ends up with, but it'll be a while for this short 3:13 video).

<comment><USER3> First, this is still the dawn of AV1 and the encoder you should be watching is SVT-AV1. You cannot conclude anything about the ultimate of AV1 encoding speed from experiences with a current version of ffmpeg.

As long as AV1 encoding (at useful compression etc) is within a small factor of HVEC, it will not be a factor in its success. License, quality, compression, and decoding speed are the things that matter.

<comment><USER4> And how is rav1e doing? The description claims it to be "the fastest and safest AV1 encoder."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Company, which has every reason to exaggerate, claims it can improve encoding speed by 32.2% against x265 veryslow

"It'll be interesting to see if we find out more info and are able to test this encoder in the coming months."

>BBC, which has no skin in the game, claims AV1 is less efficient than HEVC

"I would call this test flawed as AV1 has consistently shown to perform better than HEVC."

Every article on AV1 that I have read is like this, except for [https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2018/12/why-i-am-sceptical- abou...](https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2018/12/why-i-am-sceptical-about-av1/) \-- they are always blatantly cheerleading new advancements, like only being 5x slower to decode than VP9 or 10x slower to encode than x265 or whatever. But the advancements are not phrased like that, of course--you are never reminded that the competition continues to clobber AV1 in every aspect but filesize/quality efficiency.

<comment><USER6> > _BBC, which has no skin in the game, claims AV1 is less efficient than HEVC_

The BBC does have skin in the game. They have many people in house who have invested in HEVC, and put their names behind that decision; furthermore, maybe you'll remember when the BBC spent a huge amount of money on Dirac, which seems to have continued to be extremely impractical in the medium to long term. Maybe the BBC doesn't have a spectacular track record for picking the winners in the video codec game. ;- )

Added: The BBC's comparison also seems to be between professionally-configured and tuned HEVC/VVC encoders, supported by their vendors; and what seems to be a default-configured libaom, with no consultation with the vendor.

<comment><USER7> To be fair, BBC's sole reason for investing in Dirac (to my understanding) was to fit HD quality video into the pipes for an SD production system. As far as I know, it satisfied that purpose for them, so the project can be considered a success from that standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >From Visionular website, Auorara claims to improve encoding speed by 32.2% against x265 veryslow

This is extremely unlikely. But a game changer if true.

</comment><comment><USER9> Any ideas how this Intel encoder compares to rav1e and why they chose to roll their own?

</comment><comment><USER10> So the Intel encoder handles 128x128 blocks. Isn't AV1 limited to 64x64 blocks?

<comment><USER11> "superblocks... can either be of size 128×128 or 64×64 pixels" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#Partitioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#Partitioning) Unfortunately I don't know of a more authoritative source.

<comment><USER12> > Unfortunately I don't know of a more authoritative source.

[https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-spec/av1-spec.pdf](https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-spec/av1-spec.pdf) is the most authoritative source.

"All superblocks within a frame are the same size and are square. The superblocks may be 128x128 luma samples or 64x64 luma samples. A superblock may contain 1 or 2 or 4 mode info blocks, or may be bisected in each direction to create 4 sub-blocks, which may themselves be further subpartitioned, forming the block quadtree."

"use_128x128_superblock, when equal to 1, indicates that superblocks contain 128x128 luma samples. When equal to 0, it indicates that superblocks contain 64x64 luma samples. (The number of contained chroma samples depends on subsampling_x and subsampling_y.)"</comment></comment></comment>


SOPA/PIPA Explained by sock puppets - <AUTHOR> http://chaoslife.findchaos.com/?p=223 <comment><USER2> I think this is unconvincing and the wrong approach.

You can teach a program to recognise basket balls, faces, kiddie porn etc. You can (and Google etc do) filter that out.

How do you train a program to recognise copyright infringement? What's its defining feature? Oh, it looks legit, its indistinguishable? And how do you prevent punitive malicious take-downs? Oh the bills don't really cover that bit convincingly?

The moment SOPA/PIPA passes, everyone should file spurious claims against everybody else, good and bad, and so the Internet collapses.</comment>


Why did Japan Surrender? - <AUTHOR> http://thebrowser.com/articles/why-did-japan-surrender

<comment><USER2> Different source but same basic thing was posted earlier and has discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856042></comment>


Amazon encouraging fake positive reviews on their own private label products - <AUTHOR> Solimo is a private label owned by Amazon India. There has been growing instances of fake 5 star reviews on the Solimo branded products. List of a few reviews on some products in cases & screen guards category are as below, all of the reviews are non verified purchase:<p>https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/R3STQ57FE0YXO6 https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/R2YR50CL2OAVJS https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/R29N33NUE1J32J https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/R1ZHBF39ABZ5YQ https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/R1RRG47Q7R8XHI https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/R13ZM7HJ9RVSZ8 https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/R13Q0MHAOWJLZN https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/RHIVQI4ALGS5A https://www.amazon.in/gp/customer-reviews/R1P8RHSXDST6IY (here even the picture in the review shows it's not the final product yet as the camera cutouts are pending, and of course non verified purchase) <comment><USER2> The US House of Representatives has a Judiciary Committee, with a subcommittee for antitrust activities. They are conducting an investigation into several large tech firms for unfair business practices. I understand these images are from Amazon India, but the committee might still take an interest.

[https://judiciary.house.gov/contact](https://judiciary.house.gov/contact)</comment>


Valve Software recruits hardware experts - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19475312

<comment><USER2> In Valve's New Employee Handbook released a few months ago there was a quip about how Valve struggled to hire disciplines well outside of its typical expertise. They specifically mentioned industrial designers as one of those disciplines. I guess people didn't pick up on it at the time.

Link: <http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf>

*Economist was the other job they mentioned, which they filled with the famous Yanis Varoufakis.

</comment><comment><USER3> A linux based Steam box of some sort seems like a fairly obvious guess.

With the recent interest in wearable computing I wouldn't be surprised if this is more about peripherals than gaming rigs. Working on additional HID's (heads up displays, kinect-a-likes, voice) might well be a more valuable addition to their software platform than getting into the console wars.

Or possibly a handheld. They seem to have 2 ends of the gaming market, high end FPS graphics fests which sell to people willing to build console smashing gaming rigs, and casual gamers who like the Bejewlled type games. It would be very hard to create a console that taps their existing muscle gamers, but capturing the gameboy, iphone casuals might be possible.

If they did go towards console territory what I'd love to see rather than a closed box console would be a line of Steam certified hardware so you could build a PC that matched your pocket, upgrade in future, and be guaranteed compatibility with the Steam linux distro it runs.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love the caption under that image:

"Hardware, in the form of a crowbar, plays a part in Valve's Half-Life games"

</comment><comment><USER5> Hear Jeri Ellsworth talk more about Valve and Hardware: [http://hackaday.com/2012/08/17/an-in-depth-interview-with- je...](http://hackaday.com/2012/08/17/an-in-depth-interview-with-jeri- ellsworth-about-everything/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, they hired a Hardware Engineer (or something of the sort), and if you bother to read the article, it seems more to me like they may start designing peripherals for the PC. Which still is something to be excited about! Valve could really make some great ways to interact with their upcoming "Steam Full Screen Mode" or whatever it's called. Plus, We PC gamers are in dire need of our own controller. I'm tired of using my 60 controller.

<comment><USER7> That this person is going to design peripherals is pure speculation on the part of the article's author, and it seems to stem exclusively (looking at the original ad) from this sentence: "Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven't really changed in any meaningful way over the years." In context, though, that sentence could just as easily be just an example of one way in which innovation in the Mac/PC space has stagnated.

The alternate interpretation that this person will be designing whole systems is equally plausible to me, especially given their investment into the Linux space. Initially, that move didn't make a whole lot of sense because the Linux desktop space is so small and (particularly where issues around graphics drivers and the like are concerned) requires a fair bit of technical acumen. A ChromeOS-like strategy makes much more sense, though: heavily tailor the OS user experience to fit your specific target audience, and vertically integrate so you control the hardware, and the user never has to touch drivers or configs. Then it's not "Linux," anymore, it's "SteamOS" or whatever.

<comment><USER8> _That this person is going to design peripherals is pure speculation on the part of the article's author, and it seems to stem exclusively (looking at the original ad) from this sentence: "Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven't really changed in any meaningful way over the years."_

Actually it seems as much to do with the more solid "Valve has a patent on a controller with swappable parts". Said patent is here: <http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20110105231>

But yes, there is a lot of speculation, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Didn't Valve previously say something about wristbands and how they would be the future of computer interaction?

That seems very vague to me and I'm having difficulty visualising exactly what that might mean.

Perhaps an accelerometer attached to your wrist would essentially allow you to use any object as a makeshift mouse/keyboard?

<comment><USER10> I'd guess that a sufficiently accurate sensor on your wrist could track the motion of your hand and fingers just via muscle/tendon/etc movement, for one thing. (Place a finger on your wrist, and move your fingers around!) Combined with an accelerometer to track the overall motion, and you have a pretty versatile system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Valve should get involved with the guys behind the Open Pandora console:

<http://openpandora.org/>

<http://icontrolpad.com/>

There is a next-gen design in the works, Valve getting involved with it would be a _serious_ wake up call ..

<comment><USER12> It is am ambigious project but not very good in any way. I owned one and it was awkward and annoying even for me as hacky linux distro user. They have my utmost respect for the idea and persistence, but the execution is nothing to glorify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, the PC biz has not been great to gaming for a long time, if ever. Most PC's don't come with quality GFX cards, so PC games have to be least common denominator, which is basically to port from the XBox360/PS3.

From what I can tell the average selling price of PC's has dropped in the last 10 years from $1,000 to $500 or less. At a $400-500 laptop, you just don't get good GFX, so PC gaming kind of sucks.

Steam helped a ton on the software side, but if the average gamer is going to have to swap out a graphics card to be able to play Skyrim well on their PC, they'll probably just buy an Xbox instead.

The PC market needs some kind of "standard" box configurations with sane pricing and non-crappy software installs. Like, a $500, $750, and $1,000 machines loaded with stock Windows 8, no crapware, good gfx, SSD's, etc.

If Valve did the same thing with their own version of Ubuntu running Steam, they could lower machine prices and also really reshape the PC gaming landscape over the next 10 years, esp. for indie developers who are already porting to Linux.

Valve could even do something awesome with Steam where if you buy a "Steam box" it comes with your Steam account and games preloaded and ready to go when you start it up, sort of like what Amazon does when you buy a Kindle.

If Valve goes down that road and tries to truly innovate, there is some real potential.

<comment><USER14> > If Valve did the same thing with their own version of Ubuntu running Steam, > they could lower machine prices and also really reshape the PC gaming > landscape over the next 10 years, esp. for indie developers who are already > porting to Linux.

At that point, why not just release their own console?

<comment><USER15> Nowadays, what's the difference between a standardized PC running a custom/customized OS and your hypothetical console?

Now, if Valve actually moved backwards to a day when consoles were simple devices that didn't require OS updates, installation of the games, game updates, and a whole slew of other crap from the PC industry that makes it easier for vendors and harder for users, then they'd have a real 'console' that wasn't a PC.

Otherwise, modern consoles are just PCs.

<comment><USER14> > what's the difference between a standardized PC running a custom/customized > OS and your hypothetical console?

Typically software repository choice, versatility, and upgradability of components.

<comment><USER9> Interestingly these are all things that you won't have if you buy a Windows 8 RT device.

As consoles become more like PCs , PCs become more like consoles.

<comment><USER14> Thank goodness I'm more intelligent than to use Windows 8!

/end country bumpkin

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm guessing a VR headset.

<comment><USER17> John Carmack has been prototyping VR games and, in his QuakeCon 2012 keynote, he said he knew ex-Id Software people are Valve were too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Incoming: another walled garden.

<comment><USER19> It isn't fair to discredit what Valve is building on the principle that it isn't free and open. Steam is a walled garden and is adored, for the most part anyway, by its users.

<comment><USER20> Yup. My only concern is more in the lines of "what if they close?". I hope they have great success so I can keep my games forever :P

<comment><USER9> I believe Valve promised that they would just unlock and unDRM all of their games in such an event so that you can just install all of your Steam games straight on your PC without going through Steam.

How that would work if you were running actual Steam hardware on the other hand.

<comment><USER21> > How that would work if you were running actual Steam hardware on the other > hand.

1\. A hypothetical Steam Box or Valve-branded computer is extremely likely to be based off of COTS PC hardware, so there would not be a significant technical barrier to running games purchased on those platforms on a regular PC.

2\. Steam already lets you buy a game once on Windows and play it on any Mac you own -- ie, they're not considered separate versions -- and Valve, at least, is extremely unlikely to stop developing for regular PCs, so you'd probably be easily able to load up any PC you have lying around with your Steam Box games in a worst case scenario.

<comment><USER9> Yes, you could probably run the games on your PC. What I mean though , is if you bought a Steam branded console and ran all your games through that.

A Steam console if likely to be much more tightly integrated with their cloud stuff than a regular PC would and be reliant on valve for software updates so there might be more implications if they switched the cloud services off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Off-topic, a little detail caught my attention: that guy with a crowbar has a lambda symbol on his chest. Coincidence or a hidden reference to functional programming?

<comment><USER9> The character is Gordon Freeman, the protagonist for the game series Half Life which is the game Valve is best known for.

The Lambda here represents the radioactive decay constant and is used as part of the measure for the "half life" of any radioactive material.

The Gordon character is a scientist, much of the game is set in a science lab and Valve are known for making games with many scientific references (see also: Portal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I thought Valve will sell valves.</comment>


Are Your Goals Holding You Back? - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5941753/are-your-goals-holding-you-back <comment><USER2> Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4482044></comment>


In Rainbows: the top-selling album in the country this week - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/arts/music/10radio.html?ex=1357621200&en=957fe805d9e3bff9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> This article does not attempt to answer the obvious, fascinating question at hand: "How do pre-release online sales affect in-store sales, in terms of units and total profit?" I suspect that artist-to-fan internet sales affect demand elasticity in unknown ways, and for all the confounding variables at play, this seems like a valuable data point.

</comment><comment><USER3> Crazy how the top-selling album this week only moved 125k units.

More proof that the record industry is really going to have to find a way to make money outside of CD sales.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I posted is that In Rainbows was released earlier under a "pay what you want scheme". Many more people downloaded the album that way. They also solve an $80 disc box with a ton of stuff for fans.

They also make money touring, because fans love live shows.

That is exactly the way artists will continue to make money: give fans what they want, in convenient formats. Let the fans directly support the artists.

As for the record companies, they are going to have to agree to creative distribution models that NIN and Radiohead are pioneering.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you add to your programming toolbox? - <AUTHOR>

To become a decent programmer, it's important to have a variety of tools in your mental toolbox so that you can pick the right tool for the job.  However, even though I learn about other tools, when I approach new problems I fall back onto the tools I know well, even if they aren't the best solution.  For example, as a Java programmer working in Python, it's easy for me to fall back onto for's and classes when a lambda or generator would be a much more elegant solution.  I'm curious to hear any books, essays, ideas, or techniques you use to combat this problem. <comment><USER2> I typically have a backlog of things I would like to do. When I go to conferences, or have boring meetings where I only need half an ear to the proceedings, or whatever, I do those things. Usually they are toys or side projects and what-have-you. They are usually doable in some form that 'I've been meaning to learn'. They are usually fairly easy as well. Then I just combine all the above factors. If I want to learn some new vim thing, (or generators or ...) I do the extra task (which is easy) with a focus on using what I'm trying to learn.

It doesn't always take, nor do I expect it to. Even if I get just one small technique to "stick" and become regularly used, I do this enough that I fairly rapidly gain new skills and tools.

HTH</comment>


Bruce Sterling: Network Society Isn't Compatible With Democracy - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/17/keen-on-bruce-sterling-%E2%80%9Cnetwork-society-isn%E2%80%99t-compatible-with-democracy%E2%80%9D-tctv/

<comment><USER3> I'm still waiting for my browswer plug-in that will generate computer transcriptions of online video. Bonus points if it crowdsources corrections. The video looks really interesting, but I can't watch it at work. Somebody please build a solution to this problem.

<comment><USER4> Second video is worth it for the look of contempt on Sterling's face when he compares old-school hackers to new-school (start at 1:00 and watch through to 1:18).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> democracy always sounds like a good idea to educated value-homogeneous groups because it works fine for educated value-homogeneous groups.

</comment><comment><USER6> Q: "And are you saying that networked soceity people and democracy are incompatible?"

A: "Uh, yeah, I don't think they're inherently incompatible but certainly republican democracy with its set of geographical settings, and you know... the power coming from geographical regions and networks, don't work.

The great lesson of wikileaks is that global internet networked soceity, and the international order which is mostly run through diplomacy and kind of... people representing states talking to other states, those do not mesh at all well."

<comment><USER7> The US constitution was based on the idea of balancing factions. What Madison could not have known when designing his version of a Republic was how modern mass high speed communication would turn his plan into the exact opposite of what he intended: tyranny of a majority. His intention was to prevent factionalism from destroying the Republic as it had all previous Republics. The options for preventing factionalism had been either a tyranny to suppress the factions or creating homogeneous/fraternal society in which factions were less likely to develop. Madison took a third route, he instead encouraged factions and counted on factions to keep each other in balance. The constant struggle between factions would prevent any one faction from winning and instituting a tyranny of the majority over the minority. The minority that mattered seemed to be the rich people and their property. The majority was the poor people, who if they had power would want to take it all away. By having a representative democracy then the states would act as a buffer keeping any faction from gaining a majority. It would be difficult for any faction in one state to gain enough support in other states to create a majority capable of exploiting the minority. A fascinating and interesting plan. Completely different from Montesquieu's idea of a republic at the time in which loose confederations of small groups participated directly in their own government. The US government is purposefully architected to prevent direct public involvement in the government. Madison views the likely representatives to be lawyers who he thought would be less swayed by the masses. He wanted an aristocratic form of representation. The anti-federalists wanted citizen farmers as representatives because they were more virtuous and independent. We still see this same split today. Madison's strategy to control factions in order to prevent employing the the power of the centralized government for they tyranny of the majority may have worked in his time, but it's clearly broken for our time. State boundaries mean very little today as far as creating factions. Movements quickly and easily form on a nationwide basis in a way that Madison could never have imagined. This allows for majority factions to arise and take power, completely gutting the system that was supposed to protect the American Republic from succumbing to the same factionalism the doomed every other Republic. Clearly that has failed. So in this way the republican form of democracy embodied in the US constitution is incompatible with modern technology. It's interesting to think what factionalism preventing design strategy would be appropriate for a modern era?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> nothing surprising that a two plus thousand year old form of societal organization (which emerged to organize small cardinality set of equal peers who themselves were the top of the hierarchical society (oligarchy)) - democracy - and the form that has emerged during recent decades are incompatible.

How many 2000 year old things are still actual or fitting well with the modern technologies? Horse races? Sailing? Basics of writing and calculation?

<comment><USER9> Language?

"Oh" you say "but language has evolved."

Which is true. And so has democracy.

<comment><USER8> No, it was patched only. Democracy is a system that can't effectively scale beyond big room or small town square (in particular, the voting event is a "synchronization barrier" that restricts the scalability). As a result with increased number of participants we are forced to keep oligarchical structure with small cardinality set of equals (among themselves only) peers - <USER2> council, Congress, etc... - on top of the managed society.

The development of human society calls for a system where everybody is a peer equal to everybody else. While it is early to say, it is possible that network technologies pave the way for such new forms [or may be some completely different, hard to imagine] of society organization

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone got a link to the audio of his talk? I've always loved his SXSW talks, and they've been available on the web pretty quickly in the past.</comment>