Ask HN: Criticisms of Bayesian statistics? - <AUTHOR> In tech circles, it seems that Bayesian statistics is often favored over classical frequentist statistics. In my study of both Bayesian and frequentist statistics, it seems that the results of a Bayesian analysis are generally more intuitive, such as when comparing Bayesian credible intervals to frequentist confidence intervals. It also seems like Bayesian analysis avoids what I think is one of the most serious problems in analysis, the multiple comparisons problem. It's been easy for me to find any number of Bayesian critiques of frequentist stats, but I have rarely seen frequentist defenses against Bayesian stats. This may simply be because I mostly read technology related sites as opposed to more general statistics oriented sites. As such, I would really appreciate hearing some frequentist critiques of Bayesian stats. I feel like the situation can't be as cut and dry as one being better than the other in all things, so I would like to acquire a more balanced perspective by hearing about the other side. Thanks! <comment><USER2> ~bayesian logicism

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic- inductive/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-inductive/) :

> It is now generally held that the core idea of Bayesian logicism is fatally > flawed—that syntactic logical structure cannot be the sole determiner of the > degree to which premises inductively support conclusions. [...]

</comment><comment><USER3> Read an old stats text. One reason why Bayesian statistics was less popular in the past was that people didn't know how to do it, except in special cases. Techniques have e loved since then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your response, but I'd like to understand modern perspectives in the frequentist vs Bayesian debate. I know that in the past, Bayesian methods were oftentimes impossible to use in non-trivial analyses because calculating the integral over the probability of the data was infeasible.

But now that we have efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms along with fast and inexpensive computers for sampling from posterior distributions, why isn't every statistician embracing Bayesian methods if they provide so many benefits over the classical approach?

<comment><USER3> I think most of the people doing research on statistics now are Bayesians, but I think many practitioners still use the old methods because that is what they learned in school and they are still being taught as a result of inertia.

I think the teaching of statistics has often been wrong minded in a number of ways. I am not a professional statistician, but I know enough about it to know what I don't know, so I have a strong preference for nonparametric methods because these are more foolproof than the typical methods that assume gaussian distributions.</comment></comment></comment>


Freelancer.com has ruined my life - <AUTHOR> https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/59fdae7d31302a07249dc4fe <comment><USER3> Stay away from Freelancer.com

They reversed two milestone payments i had received, becasue they had to suspend the buyer's account due to some issues with the buyer's payment method. Note that this is after completing the project fully and leaving feedback for each other.

I left the money on my Freelancer account, becasue they are/were having issues with Skrill withdrawals. It was there for about a month and they suddenly reversed both payments at the end of the last month.

They should validate/verify payments before accepting/processing them, not after a month after completing a project.

Basically, i just did a job for free. no one's going to pay for my time. they have 0 seller protection.

BTW, buyer had this[0] green icon next to his profile. Evidently, it doesn't work as you might expect.

[0][https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png](https://pasteboard.co/GS6oamJ.png)

<comment><USER4> Their web application isn't the canonical source of whether they owe you money or not, a court decides that. I don't know in which jurisdiction Freelancer are based, but if there is a low cost small claims procedure, sounds like that would be worth you time.

In the UK in a variety of circumstances you can petition a court to issue a wind up ("liquidation") order for a company if it refuses to service its debt to you.

<comment><USER5> A friend of a friend got such an order for Tesco, our biggest supermarket chain, a few years ago. Needless to say, their invoice was paid very soon after that.

<comment><USER6> Can you share more? Sounds interesting, especially as I'm reading your comment inside a Tesco store.

<comment><USER5> Not much, i'm afraid - i can't even remember who it was, it was a tale told in a pub, i think. They'd done some work for Tesco, sent an invoice, Tesco messed them around trying not to pay it, so they brought a case in court, Tesco didn't bother sending anyone to contest it, and this person got the winding-up order. When that is issued, official letters go to the directors, and apparently that got their attention.

<comment><USER7> I've twice been involved in sending winding-up orders, or at least sending a letter before action to say that a winding-up order comes next. They're an effective and cheap tool in the U.K. to shake dishonest companies looking to avoid/delay paying their bills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, first let me say that my experience as someone who has hired on freelancer has been very good. I have found some excellent developers there. But I'll also point out that (1) I spec my projects pretty carefully, almost to the point of 'hell I might as well build it myself'; and (2) I pay. And when the project is harder than I originally thought, I don't say "tough shit you signed a contract dumbass" but rather I pay more. I treat the contractors more or less as contract employees, and myself as a project manager.

Second, as others here have pointed out, there is a whole lotta "I'll just skip the details here" in this story.

But what strikes me most is that here is a guy who is raising a voice in the hacker internet community about a company with the intent of either warning us of a dangerous situation or hoping to get some community pressure on the site to get his money out of them, or perhaps both. I have no problem with either of those things, and actually appreciate the first.

What I _do_ have a problem with is how little effort (apparently) went into the piece. It's like a stream-of-consciousness ramble about the bad things happening to him, including the piece about the issue leading him into depression. It's just not....professional. It makes my spidey sense tingle. I wish him the best but I'm a bit skeptical that we've got a balanced view here, and half of me is thinking that if this is how he approaches things then the complainants may have a point.

<comment><USER9> yes, it seems entirely likely that freelancer.com is awful and online marketplaces withholding payments for nebulous reasons is a real problem, but i have a hard time trusting this review. Specifically, this:

"The first time I asked for the reason I was told that there's no reason and that I should keep working, then I was told that because a client complained, and in another occasion, i was told something else that I can't quite remember"

Freelancer.com is "ruining your life", but when they explain their reasoning to you, you "can't remember". I call bullshit. In the scenario the author of this review is trying to paint, you don't just forget the rationale they give you.

<comment><USER10> As someone who has been bounced around customer support before I can testify that I have forgotten reasons they've given me for why they weren't able to help me.

<comment><USER9> when they don't want to refund me $50, sure. But if they're holding $3600, i think i could probably pay attention to what they're telling me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried Freelancer.com when I was starting out, I was really happy when I got my first gig, I did a good job, the client was pleased, I got paid an equivalent of £1 an hour but accepted that as my foot in the door... I tried to keep going down this route but quickly realised that this kind of competitive race to the bottom in terms of price is not just the the entry level experience, it's just generally expected.

This guy is in the top 0.5% and while i'm sure he's earning much more than I did on freelancer, I expect he would be far better off on his own or under full employment. Clients go to freelancer to get cheap labour, for workers I think that it's a great place for someone to go to dip their toes in the water for one of the types of work they advertise, but it's not a place to make a living.

<comment><USER12> Same here at vWorker. Did great work, ranked in the 100s, but it was not sustainable.

To top it off I got a job to implement a forex trading algorithm. He had a system to buy/sell on signals.

But when it came down to it, it didn't trade profitably. He wouldn't believe the code worked, and I couldn't convince him his scheme was flawed because it worked when he did it manually - and I've watched his youtube videos of him trading live. Obviously his scheme on paper didn't capture his feel for trading visually. (And I know now it is very challenging to make it work at all).

Went to arbitration and they decided I'd get 50% of the fee.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like the time I decided to try one of these sites and ended up with a client who wanted software written to pick winning lottery numbers based on some system he'd devised to analyze past winning lottery numbers. Of course such a thing will never work in a fair lottery.

Guy refused to pay the $10 price after the "work" was done. Validated my suspicions that those types of site are a total waste of time even if he had paid the fee.

<comment><USER14> Genuinely curious: why would you accept a job to do the impossible? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding and his refusal to pay was totally separate from the fact his whole idea was flawed?

<comment><USER13> I'm glossing over the details. The actual description of the software the guy wanted written was very straight forward. That said something like, Python program that imports the historical pick-4 results from the North Carolina Lottery and allowed the user to look-up the last date those numbers were picked regardless of order. The job had a fixed price of $10.

This was a long time ago but I think my thought process was that doing the hourly rate jobs at $2.00 per hour would never be viable so I was trying to find fixed price jobs that were miss priced in the sense that I knew I could perhaps do them in 30 minutes but the purchaser assumed it would be several hours of work. This project fit the bill. The job description didn't actually explain that the guy wanted to use the software as part of his nutty system to game the lottery. That only came out later after the work was done.

<comment><USER14> That makes much more sense. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Like most marketplaces, they are only interested in making themselves profitable. Always remember that.

Working at freelancer.com or similar sites is saying:

"I should spend a large portion of my life to become an expert in my craft, and then I should agree to have my privacy stripped away from me while I race to the bottom and undercut my competition because I will actively place myself into situations where I have the highest competition to ensure I receive the lowest rates. Lastly, I will bust my butt and bend the world to satisfy clients who take advantage of me."

By the way, if anyone is interested in making $ on their own as a freelancer I wrote a mini-guide on how to get your first paying client by tomorrow at [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful- fre...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-freelance- business-as-a-software-developer).

<comment><USER16> So after you take down the number on that ice cream truck you saw driving by, and get back home from your walk and decide to call them, what do you say? Just, "hi! Do you need any software developed"?

I've never tried, but it's a little hard for me to imagine ever getting a client this way.

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't go after the ice cream man, but here's a couple of people I would (and have) contacted: locksmiths, plumbers, lawn maintenance teams, roofing companies, solar panel companies and the list goes on and on.

Then I would either talk to a worker directly if it looks like a decent opportunity. I'm not going to wave down a guy off the roof, but if he happens to be fiddling with something near his van and I naturally walk past, then sure.

If not, then I just call the number they have later. I'm not pitching them right away with "do you need any software developed?". All I do is ask them about their business. My goal here is to get a feel for how they are doing financially without directly asking.

Then I'll guide the call into casually offering them services that could help them grow. Sometimes it's a new website or setting up a landing page. There's honestly a TON of things that almost every business could benefit from and you can comfortably charge $2,000 to $20,000 for these things with monthly retainers on top. That's not even counting custom software gigs that come later.

<comment><USER17> Pretty much this. Lot's of people dont believe this approach works and miss out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ultimately, underlying all this, is a broken financial setup. At least I suspect so.

Transaction fees, liability, and regulatory-ish obligations are very high. The last one has been getting worse as "anti money laundering" standards are being beefed up to make financing terrorism & tax evasion (also money laundering to an extent) more difficult. It all results in weird rules and policies followed without a good understanding of why they exist. It's even hard to tell who's policy they, regulators/legislature or the companies themselves.

The whole thing has choke points (eg CC transactions) controlled by tiny oligopolies.

Anyone handling money-in-money-out from lots of parties ends up bureaucratic and skittish. Fraud, chargebacks and such are generally a big problem. On top of that there is always an incentive to screw around. For example, the average number of days between payment and withdrawal multiplied by daily transactions is a sum of money sitting permanently in freelancer's vaults. That spread also reduces all sorts of chargeback and fraud risks.

Anyway, all this boils down to a reality where no one but financial institutions can do a decent job of handling other people's money. Freelancer is handling this guy's money. His "salary" goes into a freelancer account. We've seen this problem a lot in startupland. Paypal, even though they _are_ financial institutions. Ironically, the bitcoin exchange world and the MtGox thing. The online poker crisis of 2006...

It's a problem.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a suspicious amount of "I'll just leave those details out" in this article. That aside, this just goes to show why it's important to work toward controlling your own destiny. That seems to be a theme here at HN, and for good reason. Your services will likely always be resold to someone, regardless of how high up the chain you are. However, the less layers above you there are, the lower your risk in ending up in a situation such as this one.

<comment><USER20> The severity of this persons claims are why arbitration was invented. If he's right, complaining on the internet isn't enough of a remedy. And if he's wrong, there ought to be some attempt to hear the other side

<comment><USER21> How can trust that the arbitrator is neutral when they're hired by freelancer.com?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I once had a disagreement with Freelancer over a few hundred dollars. I was a buyer, rather than a seller, the job didn't get done, and I was trying to withdraw the funds I put in. So, although in the US, I filed a small claims case in New South Wales. This can be done entirely on line. It's possible to request court hearings by telephone. So you can do a small claims case remotely.

Within 8 hours after filing the case and sending the documents to Freelancer, I had been paid by wire transfer. I then withdrew the case.

<comment><USER23> The disturbing implication here is that Freelancer has little incentive _not_ to push _any_ given debtor to a legal process, given that this escapade cost them but a little personnel time to respond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> People here are blaming this guy for not thinking Freelancer.com will take care of him like he is an employee. I think the platform, freelancer.com, is trying to play both sides of the issue.

Their advertising, marketing and brand are "we are here to help you!" and to take away the potential headaches and challenges that freelancers without the platform have.

Yet, really, they are not there to mitigate the risk they claim. They don't give a shit about you or your income. They only want people to use the platform.

It's a power imbalance. The company has thousands and thousands of people using their service, so one person is such a small % of their business, they don't give a shit.

For small businesses, in a small town or community, your reputation is what your business is, so you will work really hard to ensure it is good.

Large companies with a huge web presence and the resources to protect it, don't care about you. If you post a bad review, they will find a way to get 100 people to post positive ones.

It's largely about resources, the large company has WAY more than you as an individual.

They only care about their competition.

It's sad, but that's the state of our system, from health care companies to insurance companies to telecoms to banks, you are at the mercy of these large corporations as a customer.

Unless you have a personal networth large enough to fix these problems, it's a basically insolvable problem.

I recently had a disagreement with my car insurance company about an accident. They ruled against me, which I disagreed with. My only recourse would be to hire a lawyer and take them to court. They knew it would be WAY more effort than it was worth for me.

My only option was to switch companies, which I did, but it doesn't really matter since the new company could do the same to me just as easily.

<comment><USER25> This is exactly right, couldn't agree more on every point. We live in a corporate world with companies large enough to not really give a shit about any one individual. It is only when we organize that they start paying attention.

I had a terrible experience of Hertz defrauding me with zero recourse. I searched on the issue and found that it had been rampant in the past and probably day to day. Hertz simply settled every time for some measly amount in the millions. To some large corporations going this route is cheaper than doing the right thing to begin with. Yet we have a government that oks mergers left and right. A win for consumers my ass.

Let's face it, when it comes to options we are truly fucked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ever since Elance merged with ODesk to make Upwork getting online work has dried up, and so I have to rely on my personal network.

With Elance you'd get leads for jobs, and take them offsite. Its not that I wouldn't want to use the ecosystem provided its just that it suck and took too much.

Upwork takes more, and really locks you in. I refused to scan my license to become authorized. Even if I used the platform, taxes and their fees makes and the chances of them hanging payments makes it a death trap.

I would love to build a platform that actually is useful, though I think with these kinds of websites it's a hard market to penetrate because they're already on X platform.

I just want to remote from a small town and bank money, but I'm forced to live near large cities because companies that pay well want you in office.

The only way not to be poor is to be a two-person income of 100K and my gf never going to make that kind of money.

So my choice is be poor in a small town or be poor in large town.

There are remote jobs for 90k, its just they are far and few and interview processes can be very involved with lots of studying.

<comment><USER27> Toptal and Crossover might be an option. But I have no first hand experience with them to recommend.

<comment><USER28> toptal's screening process wants you to write a sample application. in my case the reviewer didn't actually want to look at it, and i was summarily failed. i feel pretty cheated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was a member of rentacoder, which was eventually acquired by freelancer.com. My account there dates back to 2002.

I haven't been active there in a couple of years. The signal to noise ratio makes the website useless. Not enough quality projects and not enough projects with realistic budgets.

But the problem with fraud is beyond serious. I am very careful with who I do business with, and screen customers as much as possible, but their platform really makes it easy for fraudsters to screw you over. I got a couple of issues there over the years. They both were very small amounts, like $200 or so. In one occasion the customer just reversed the payment, stole my code and freelancer.com did absolutely nothing to stop him. In another incident, the customer did not release the payment after completion of the project and I had to settle to accept only his initial deposit as payment, which was like 20% of the agreed price.

The company is also _very_ fee hungry. There are hidden fees everywhere for everything you do in that website. The website itself is also terrible. Customer support is the worst I've ever dealt with.

There are much better ways to find customers than these kind of websites. On the other hand, if you are looking for developers there are plenty of good ones there, just avoid all the Asian body shops and your chances of successfully finding someone are actually not that bad.

</comment><comment><USER30> Tried this for 2 small gigs. Terrible experience.

There definitely is something strangely odd about this site. They act as a currency exchange, pilfering huge amounts of money by converting slightly lesser than actual forex value. They apparently converted currency 9 times for 2 small gigs. And I just stopped using this site. They deserve this backlash. From what I can gather the developer is aghast with difficulties and is emotionally distraught to provide a compelling narrative. But the fact remains that sites like these, though they call themselves for freelancers, is purely hogwash about its business and is more than happy to shoot itself in the foot. The ideology of acting like a half-decent marketplace (at least what they purport to be) is somehow lost out on these guys. Shame.

</comment><comment><USER31> Though the author might be right, as an outsider I have a hard time believing his words tell the only thruth. When you start the blame game like this you better include some actual conversations instead of telling the reader you did them a favor and rephrased them in your own words (state of mind!) for them. Anyone can write a piece like this. An honest victim or the neighbour's 13 yo spoiled script kiddo.

So word of advice. If you want to have true impact rewrite your piece to include conversations and other relevant discussion material that led to this exclamation of frustration; because you might be totally right.

</comment><comment><USER32> It seems you have a good reasons to sue. You got perfect reviews. It shows your dedication to providing great customer service. Maybe you got carried away and said some things to the agent however the lockdown is unacceptable. She doesn't have the right to make these decisions. You should speak with senior management before to get your money out.

<comment><USER33> Suing probably won't help. The freelancer desperately needs money now. Suing requires you to spend money now in hopes of getting money down the road. Since Freelancer.com is based in Australia and the person they screwed probably isn't, suing would require sending spending a lot of money they don't have on an Australian lawyer, probably well more than the $3600 that's at stake. And if Freelancer.com is malicious or doesn't want to lose in public, they could drag this out a long time.

<comment><USER34> See this comment by someone who remotely sued Freelancer.com in small claims court with successful results:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15626228)

<comment><USER33> Nice! That's impressive of Australia. In SF, I'm pretty sure that physical presence is required for small claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I always thought of freelancing websites like freelancer.com as being platforms to meet clients with the goal of removing them from the platform and establishing long term relationships. Basically, meeting clients and then quickly getting them to use a service where you and them work and manage payments directly.

There's no way I could consider freelancer.com to be a worthwhile long term investment, the fees they take are preposterous to say the least.

<comment><USER25> The smart thing to do although that's breaking TOS.

<comment><USER35> Only for the currently active project, nothing stops you to not use their service for the next project with the same client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It makes me wonder if there is space in the market for a freelancing website that has minimum rates and does some more vetting, or referencing as we might call it in the real world.

Ditch the credit card nonsense and make people pay by bank transfer, like real agencies would. It sounds like a product I would use. I have a need for Freelancer style services, but I don't need to have to vet people and read reviews, thats what agencies are for. I want the service that I get from my local contractor agency, but availability for small projects rather than long contracts.

<comment><USER37> There is one: [https://www.toptal.com](https://www.toptal.com)

<comment><USER36> Does anyone have experience of working with them as a contractor?

<comment><USER38> I've done a couple of contracts through them. For the most part it's beem a good experience.

They try to vet the clients as well as the coders / talent, but it's not perfect process so sometimes a dud falls through the cracks. They do have solid procedures for both the client and freelancer to follow if either party isn't happy, which includes the person who set up the engagement initially.

Much better than the other sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's an emotional post and doesn't really explain what happened.

But I'm sure all these freelance hub sites playing escrow etc there's a lot of stuff going wrong.

Using these to get work would be really my plan-d.

</comment><comment><USER40> I criticized one of these platforms on Twitter over policies & practices -- including horrendous treatment of freelancers -- and they locked my account.

I wasn't a freelancer - I was a paying client with a long and profitable history, good ratings, etc.

Never used them again.

</comment><comment><USER41> The takeaway, summarized from all the negative experiences I've heard from these outsourcing platforms (Freelancer, upwork, etc):

SETUP AUTOMATIC WITHDRAWAL OF YOUR EARNINGS. Don't leave your money on the outsource platform. To do so invites unnecessary risk. Don't work if you can't withdraw your money.

<comment><USER25> You know what's funny about that is though, even with auto payments set up, places like upwork keep some of your money for days even though it's ready to cash out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have no experience with freelancer or any of the similar platforms. What precipitated the whole issue? That is glossed over completely, but it seems very material to the situation.

</comment><comment><USER43> Posting from a new account since my old one identifies me by email address, and as you'll see below, Upwork has vindictive staff.

Upwork is better than Freelancer, at least on a UX level, Freelancer's site is a mess, I'll concede that. However, Upwork will arbitrarily lock your account and you will have no recourse, so don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Once, I asked Upwork technical support about an issue I had where they were showing the wrong hourly rate to clients (who asked me why I was changing my rate), and I asked Upwork whether it was possible to resolve, very politely. They told me no, that's just how it works, it won't be resolved. I was totally baffled, but what can you do? I would just continue to explain to clients the problem.

Upwork, after a support issue, gives you a little survey "did this resolve your problem / how satisfied are you" or whatever, so I put no, and unsatisfied, obviously.

Not 30 minutes later my account was locked, so I could not apply for new jobs, nor withdraw any money that already belonged to me. "It needs additional identity verification", despite having worked there for a long time, having 100% positive feedback, all jobs successful, my photograph on there, all forms of ID they initially required were provided, all payments successful, contracts ongoing, etc. I had to install some nonsensical app and have a webcam interview to prove I'm the guy in the photo, etc. It seems entirely too coincidental that I would give a support person a bad review and then be flagged immediately.

So, if Upwork asks you for a survey, beware, you are obligated to lie. I have been using Upwork since then, but at least now am aware of and prepared for it to be locked up or deleted at any time.

Upwork charges 10-20% of an enormous global tech labor market and there is no major competitor? Freelancer is garbage and I've heard horror stories about Toptal. I'm open to suggestions, and encouraging some enterprising reader to start a competitor; I'll use your site.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have personally used Freelancer.com (I am a web dev) for about 10 projects and everything went great, never had issues with the clients or payment. I also managed to find several good business partners/long term clients through Freelancer. I understand that this is not always the case, but I guess saying that the platform is completely bad because one in 100k users has a issue is just an overstatement, we might not even know if he actually did something wrong that imposed that limitation (maybe because of his accident he couldn't complete the projects for which he was paid).

I am not trying to defend Freelancer.com in an way, just saying that for me personally it was a great platform and a good stepping stone in my developer career.

<comment><USER45> This guy was in the top 5% did many more projects than yourself for 5 years.

In the end all it takes is one help desk person to bring it all down.

The next project may be your last you never know.

<comment><USER44> My guess is that the guy is not completely honest that the "help desk" person blocked his account. Anyway, freelancer.com is just a platform, if you are a freelancer you shouldn't rely only on one specific platform. A freelancer by definition should not be dependent on anyone else, you are in charge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> As a person who would love more freelancing opportunities, the market is littered with sketchy proposals, undercut / underpaid projects, and just a bad experience.

Software Engineering Daily had a episode[1] on Gigster that seems to be trying to solve this, but I have no experience with that. They also tout only hiring "1% of all developers who apply," which doesn't really solve the other 99% of freelancer's problems.

[1] [https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/10/13/gigster- with...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/10/13/gigster-with-roger- dickey/)

</comment><comment><USER47> I've heard of several people getting screwed over by Freelancer. I don't see them as being around too often. Maybe Upwork and others will displace them?

I recommend Open Door ([https://opendoorconnect.com/](https://opendoorconnect.com/)) to market yourself as a consultant or contractor. It's appointment based so it's not a pure alternative to Freelancer but IMO task based sites aren't worth it for talented developers.

<comment><USER48> Upwork also had similar stories in the past. I doubt it's much different from Freelancer.

<comment><USER45> Upwork has one advantage if you go hourly with the screenshot program those hours always get paid. If you go per project then you are at the mercy of the client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Situations like that are, to me, one of the greatest appeals to using cryptocurrencies and decentralized systems or websites. Unfortunately the ecosystem isn't quite there in some areas, so I don't expect these sites to go extinct just yet, but I'm hoping that they do some time in the future.

Freelance.com obviously isn't alone in the way it acts. Fiverr can easily be just as worse, on top of the huge cuts they take from payments (as well as applying their 20% cut to things such as 'tips' you give to workers), it's always clear who is in the position of power and authority on these platforms, and the answer is never the end-user. Go against them and you risk your money, your reputation, and your career. Paypal and other payment systems can be just as bad as well - you've likely read many horror stories about people losing access to 'their' money for months on end.

At some point it's just too much for users to deal with. When proper alternatives are available, hopefully users will move to them as a result of this.

</comment><comment><USER50> I have heard a lot of bad things about freelancer.com from the users' perspectives like the one in the post - but also on both sides - those who do the work and those who post work.

I think Freelancer as a company though has somewhat of a positive feel here in Australia (correct my if I'm wrong fellow Aussies).

It's probably seen as one of the better tech products from Australia and its CEO Matt Barrie is at times outspoken about the aussie startup scene, lack of innovation in Australia etc [1][2].

[1] [http://www.afr.com/technology/matt-barrie-says-doomed- austra...](http://www.afr.com/technology/matt-barrie-says-doomed-australia- needs-an-apollo-program-20170919-gyknq6)

[2] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-last-person-sydney- plea...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-last-person-sydney-please-turn- lights-out-matt-barrie)

</comment><comment><USER51> That's what happens when you entirely rely on one platform as your source of income, be it Freelancer, YouTube, Amazon, or anything else. You become de facto employed by the platform and can be let go in a similar way you can be fired from a regular job.

If OP had a normal salaried job and was let go for whatever reason, would it matter if he used to be a good employee before, or had a car accident, or was short on cash? No, I wouldn't matter; his employer would not keep paying him on the basis of "being fair" or "helping in a difficult life situation".

While I understand OP's frustration, his story is really nothing out of ordinary. I know many people who were, fairly or not, let go and subsequently got into financial trouble. Life's tough.

<comment><USER45> Full time jobs can't hold wages until other work is completed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Single source of income is by definition at the mercy of the source. If one thinks that one could have had a disciplien to save, think again that savings has limitations. You can not save much as an employer and if you get screwed in your mid 30's, you don't have much savings to live off and also can not start over either. The only option is look for multiple incomes and if you are not capable, do not marry or take any personal commitments that affect other people. I know it sounds harsh but that's also make logical sense. Since you now have time, either save more or fight to change the situation so that the next generation of humans does not have to suffer this. Depressing but logical thought.

</comment><comment><USER53> There is a lot of details missing in the write up like what exactly lead to the ordeal with freelancer.com customer service agent and subsequent account limitation. The usual process is quite seamless - you bid, get the contract, you get paid few days after you deliver the job . I also had a bad experience with the cs executive of a similar freelance site before. Most of them are quite insensitive and do exactly what they are said to do without even trying to understand the context of the issue. I believe this is such a case. It would have made much sense if the author could have explained the issue in detail so that readers can decide for themselves who is wrong here.

</comment><comment><USER54> Inspired by this post, here is my Freelancer.com horror story: [https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/59fe2e9231302a07249de1a7](https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/59fe2e9231302a07249de1a7)

</comment><comment><USER55> These types of platforms have one single function - to drive down the cost and quality of delivered software. I may end up inadvertently using a piece of software as a client of a company that cheaped out and purchased a deliverable from platforms like this and it will end up being a crap experience. If we had something like an engineering oath and certification that developers had to complete before they could work on any projects, we could make avoiding all these freelancer platforms part of that certification process. Would eventually kill these platforms off, and good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER56> 1\. way too many details not revealed in this story, so difficult to make any kind of assessment of the review.

2\. my freelancer experience dates back to the days of getafreelancer and I have way more reviews that the reviewer, so I think I can comment with my take on freelancer.

3\. I have never had a issue with freelancer in regards to payment, either as a freelancer or as job poster. This is the one and only thing that they do well.(That said everything else is pretty poor)

4\. I've had a couple of disputes there, mainly due to the ignorance of job poster on how payment is finally made, and this has always been settled in my favor.

Enough of the nice stuff.

Freelancer is a subscription site disguised as a job portal. IMO they don't give a shit about either the freelancers or the project owners, all they want to do is collect the subscriptions, which I think is not a bad business model. They have to go through the motions of giving a damn, but everything besides collection and disbursement is done on a shoestring and it shows.

Freelancer is the anti-pattern of how to do things online. They have earned a place as one of the classic a case studies on how not to do things on the web.

Their web site sucks in just about every respect, speed, not so much. Test environment = live site. so when they roll out changes, guess how that goes. Might have changed recently, I hope so, after all they have this wonderful pool of resources to draw on.

Their search engine is precious, search on "automate", fine, now search on "automated", and now on "automatic", and so on...

I estimate that less than 10% of job postings actually end up as actual projects. Now and then I tinker with the idea of monitoring their projects and collecting actual statistics, but then I realize that I have better things to do.

Job bids - fields are limited in to 200 character length, and then they have the cheek to send you an email saying basically, "hey, your bid sucks, you need to fix it"

You have no way to vet either bidders or job posters, used to be possible, but they took that feature away.

I'm receiving fake job offers which look like deliberate traps for ignorant subscribers. Can't prove that, but all the accounts are a day or so old for stupid amounts $10, or so. If you're desperate for any lead and click on Accept, hey look, Freelancer just deducted their $5 commission. This has been going on for a couple of months now.

I can go on, but that's enough. The fact is that the site is up and running and generating income. There must be thousands of subscribers hoping to find a career via the platform and freelancer is milking them.

TL/DR - Stay away, the site can be useful, but probably not for you unless you are v careful.

</comment><comment><USER57> What this story and the comments here tell me is that the market for a developer focused contract<\-->bid site is ripe for competition.

There are only a few well known branded marketplaces in the industry, and they all seem to be quite poor in the eyes of skilled developers.

Maybe there is a continuous decline towards the bottom after a marketplace becomes a certain size, but I wish that there were more options to find contracts as a developer without onerous contracts which strip skilled people of their rights.

<comment><USER25> I'm a designer and clients always ask me if I can recommend a developer. I can't seem to network with any good developers who I can honestly recommend to my clients. I even started a freelance slack group in hopes of broadening my network but that hasn't really done much.

<comment><USER58> Hi, I've tried to find some way of contacting you, looked though your post history but nothing came out.

I'm interested in joining your freelancer group, and see whether I could be useful to some of your customers. As others have mentioned, remote work from sites like Elance/Upwork and PeoplePerHour (I'm currently in both) has dwindled in the last years, and by now most of my work comes from repeat customers instead of new leads from there.

I guess your customers ask for web development: the last finished job that I can show you is a balloon sculpture design tool for a business in Australia: [http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/design_tool.html#grid](http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/design_tool.html#grid)

The full source code can be seen right there: [http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/index.js](http://www.balloons.com.au/tools/index.js)

You can find a couple other examples in my portfolio: [https://sentido- labs.com/en/portfolio/](https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I was a top provider on vWorker (back when it was still called RentACoder) from 2001-2010... consistently in the top 100 for pretty much the whole decade. Never had any trouble getting projects or getting paid. Stopped working on vWorker in 2010 when I decided to head back to school for my masters. So its been a while since I was on there.

It was a great place to start off my career, but sustaining it as a business was always a challenge. Sad to know that it has deteriorated to this point now.

</comment><comment><USER60> Sites like Freelancer are another type of centralized platform that will probably eventually be replaced by decentralized peer-to-peer systems. This should result in more fairness and better pay since there won't be a middleman.

One way that could work would be to require payments at short intervals, allow people to optionally opt-in to an arbiter who is also rated or reviewed, and also to not have a facility for freezing funds, and using direct cryptocurrency payments.

</comment><comment><USER61> I remember having an account with them. It had something like $900 sitting there just in case I wanted to hire someone to do something. I had not visited the site for an year or so and then once logged in to see what's going on.

Discovered that my account balance went down to $750 or so. They quietly introduced an Idle account fee of $10 per month with no email notice or anything.

If I did not log in they would completely wipe out my money.

I withdrew it all and never looked back since.

</comment><comment><USER62> Freelancer.com seems like a bunch of assholes, but the guy made a big mistake also by only working for only one such site basically going all in and standing on one leg. The same applies here as many other investments in life; you don't put your money/work/whatever in only one place/thing. In this case, multiple platform, own network should have been build instead of relying one shady company.

</comment><comment><USER63> My 30 second political action for the day:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/the- textbrok...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-textbroker- model.html)

If you want a startup idea, there you go.

</comment><comment><USER64> Slightly off-topic but is Trustpilot trustworthy? As a company they've approached me before but from what I understand Freelancer.com pays trustpilot to maintain reviews, and from the looks of it they have a decent 4 star review there...

</comment><comment><USER65> I wonder why nobody has filled the gap of a job-agency for smart people (10x developers if you will) that are looking for short-term jobs (e.g. when in between jobs/projects or when their current startup is not ramen-profitable yet).

<comment><USER25> Because 10x developers are probably in very high demand and are hardly out of work. I know one such person and he makes a pretty penny on contract work with nonstop offers he has to decline 99.9% of the time because he simply can't handle more work.

<comment><USER65> But there must be 10x developers out there starting a business and who are not yet ramen-profitable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I complained about Freelancer.com probably 5 years ago. The site is evil. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177951)

</comment><comment><USER67> The CEO is an active member on a FB group called Sydney Startups. I suggest OP try to contact him publicly through that. I'd be curious to see what he says.

</comment><comment><USER68> Might be relevant as an decentralized alternative [https://ethlance.com/](https://ethlance.com/)

<comment><USER25> Eth lance is garbage, tell me, what recourse do you have when someone decides to simply not pay for completed work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> You should release the name of that garbage agent at least. Such pathetic people lower the dignity of human beings.

</comment><comment><USER70> Some people, freelancers as well as clients and those middlemen that are unfortunately very common in this market, seem to fundamentally misunderstand what a freelancer or contractor is.

Freelancing is not some alternative form of employment that allows you to conveniently dispense with social security costs.

A freelancer is a self-employed service provider. Like with any other kind of self-employment you're responsible for your marketing, sales and for reasonably insuring yourself against calamities that might happen in life.

If you try to outsource those core responsibilities to another entity you only have yourself to blame. The same applies if you act irresponsibly in terms of finance, e.g. by spending all your income before costs and taxes are taken care of (if you have a problem with that Profit First is a great framework to help you).

That said it's well-known that the software industry is overly dependent on mostly useless middlemen like Freelancer.com . So, perhaps it's quite understandable if you turn to them when you start out.

You should always be aware however that they're neither your insurance nor your employer. They don't protect you. They just take a cut from your hard- earned money. They want you to commoditise yourself by solely defining yourself in terms of a bunch of TLAs because those 'profiles' are easier to sell.

The sooner you extricate yourself from that dependency the better. Putting all your eggs in one basket like the review suggests the author did is recklessly negligent.

<comment><USER71> Classic victim blaming. What you say is mostly true, but it completely glosses over the potential issues raised by this post. So what if the author made a mistake about using Freelancer.com? That doesn't change the fact that what Freelancer is _supposedly_ doing here is incredibly shady and they should be held accountable. The only real issue I have with the author's post is there are a lot of details missing. What did you do to step on the toes? Where are these chat logs? I can't assume that Freelancer is 100% in the wrong here without proper evidence and at least hearing their point of view. That being said, the author is using this as review a platform to raise attention to a potentially serious issue, and there should be no reason to immediately blame him with "sorry, it's your fault for using Freelancer to begin with... good luck."

<comment><USER33> Does anybody have a theory as to why victim-blaming is such a popular response on HN? I don't see it nearly as much elsewhere.

<comment><USER72> I think that smarter people are more likely to victim-blame because it's harder to imagine themselves falling victim to whatever situation.

For most problems, they seem like they could have been easily prevented by either being more knowledgeable about the situation or thinking things through beforehand.

After reading a lot of the discussions here, and considering that most of us are here for the pursuit of knowledge, my guess is that the community here represents more of the right side of the bell curve.

<comment><USER73> I don't think inability to imagine bad luck or own mistake is proof of intelligence. It is proof of ego or arrogance or an attempt to mask I security.

Smart people made mistakes in the past, smart people can imagine situations where they become victims (whether by own fault or not). Some smart people do have inability to imagine themselves in other people's shoose - but dumb people are often similarly disabled

<comment><USER74> You're right, it's a one-sided kind of intelligence. Maybe what Casseres said would be better phrased "people who are proud of being smart".

The fact that it's one-sided smarts, the fact that one is probably not as smart as one thinks, and the ability to imagine another person's shoes, are all life lessons that may click into place at different times for different people.

<comment><USER33> This definitely seems like a major factor to me. If I'm proud of being smart, I'll be inclined to perform smartness. And one easy way to perform smartness is by making somebody else look dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Is there anyway to donate to the reviewer?

</comment><comment><USER76> Matt Barrie's collar and unbuttoned shirt should tell you everything you need to know about freelancer.com

</comment><comment><USER77> Can someone with experience explain how freelancer.com works and how the account holds work?

<comment><USER78> It works in a way that's built to maximize profits for Freelancer.com, and that's about it.

You pay up front to cover fees on a project, and hold money for a period before you can transfer it out. So you can end up paying them a percentage of your pay without getting paid yourself if the transfer doesn't happen.

I recall doing a small job and had a dispute opened after it was over. It was a relatively small sum of money so i didn't even respond to the dispute (figured the person was running a scam and just told myself not to use the site again).

Almost 2 months later I get a message telling me the dispute fell in my favor... but then the transfer to my bank account blocked for weeks. Eventually I was told the account holder had been "hacked" sometime during the 2 months (I guess that's one way to get out of paying for stuff), so the money probably sits in my account to this day. The only way to transfer it is to get the original account holder to reconfirm, but obviously they're long gone.

The way I see it is you have to remember that Freelancer.com is out to make themselves money. At the start of a job charge for a small deliverable that covers the fees of the job so that you're not losing time _and_ money if a job falls through.

And although it's against the rules, strive to get contracts out of Frelancer's site.

Freelancer in theory has protections for you that you're losing, but in reality those protections are almost always defaulted to not pay out a job to you.

And definitely don't make a living out of the site. It's like making a living on eBay, you don't want to make a living on a site where a robot can end your access with little human recourse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> plenty of people complaining [https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%40freelancer%20scam&s...](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%40freelancer%20scam&src=typd)

</comment><comment><USER80> Is have to agree, I have had nothing but a spoiled exp with them

</comment><comment><USER81> > You're here because we don't support your browser

Mobile safari.

</comment><comment><USER82> Anyone interested in a free version of the platform?

<comment><USER83> Do you have one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I worked for Freelancer.com briefly as a software engineer at their HQ in Sydney for about 1 month (that was in the year before their IPO) - I was fresh out of university. The culture within the company was toxic.

They treat developers like crap - Both those who use the platform and those who work at HQ. They fired me after 1 month during my probation because I was too slow to implement a feature because I was spending extra time writing tests. I remember the tech director telling me "That's not the kind of engineering we do here" after I tried to justify why tests were important. Several of these horrible people went on to work for Facebook later.

The CEO of Freelancer.com is a complete jerk. A few years after I had gone, I spoke with engineers who used to work there and there was gossip going round that the CEO had sex with a female employee and she got pregnant. He also hired his friends in top positions; some of which were utterly incompetent. Some of the CEO's favourite employees got drunk during work hours in front of the overworked engineers.

Employee retention was very low.

<comment><USER85> > because I was too slow to implement a feature because I was spending extra > time writing tests.

This. Just yesterday, I was asked by an interviewer at a Startup. "How do you test your code? Do you write tests? What's your familiarity with TDD."

My answer: "I prefer to do a test driven approach. However, none of the companies I worked for allocated time for writing tests in the sprint, so I have not been able to actually do this in practice. I usually debug my code and run it through all the happy path and edge cases."

Was bitten once very early in my career just like OP, and decided to only write tests _after_ initial coding, if there was time left. Most (not all) Companies expect you to do TDD, but never allocate time for it in the estimation. So I've made it a point to ask the PM if there was time allowed for writing tests in the estimate, and if they say something like "Oh no we don't have time for that" I don't do it.

<comment><USER86> I couldn't imagine to work without writing tests and I firmly believe it actually makes me quicker than manual coding. Sure, if you aim for 100% code coverage it takes time, but instead of trying out my code a few times, I just write those try-outs as tests and am happy ever after.

I don't really mention tests to my management. To me, they are just part of coding. My coworkers don't mind, they are happy when maintaining or changing my code that they have tests for support.

<comment><USER87> This, exactly this. I've felt the same increase in development velocity; and an equal increase in confidence. I'm able to deliver systems and walk away with 99% confidence that no one is going to come back to me with a problem. And if they do, it's easy enough to write a regression test to prove the problem and then fix it.

I've adopted your same approach. I don't mention testing, but I'll be damned if I'll ever write a piece of code without it.

The light-bulb moment for me was when I realized that testing happens one way or another. Either you're in the console manually setting up and running everything... or you could just write a program (a test) to do the same thing for you. Once I realized that, I never looked back!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> All of those "freelancer" websites are scams.

Freelancing is about not working for other men. It's about being your own boss. Those websites are not really freelancing, they're temp agencies hiring out short term contract work. That is not freelancing. Those websites all share specific qualities: The salaries are too low, the service quality is poor, and you'll be outbid by unskilled indian labor 90% of the time.

Put your portfolio online and find your customers through other methods. If you have to pay someone else even $1 to find customers you are being ripped off.

<comment><USER89> "unskilled indian labour" huh? There are tens of Indian entrepreneurs who have set up Billion dollar companies in US. Don't forget that Microsoft and Google CEOs are Indian too!!

<comment><USER90> Skilled Indian labour is also outbid by the unskilled Indian labour.

<comment><USER91> s/Indian//g

The only reason why its Indian right now is because British occupation taught them English. It also doesn't hurt that they have the second most populous country in the world.

And I know its anecdote, but I've met a number of fakers here in the US. Nothing special or "Indian-like" that makes lying about your abilities.

Then again around 08 I considered padding and lying about my resume. Nothing I couldnt do, but it does look more acceptable to put down a bankrupt business as a source. Hard to.. Check.

<comment><USER92> Who said anything about lying?

It's Indian because they speak English, they're rapidly getting more online, and they have low cost of living.

Skilled Indian tech workers can outbid skilled and unskilled Western workers, but unskilled Indian workers are abundant enough to outbid everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> let me piggyback on this thread. this is my freelancer.com experience as a hirer [https://medium.com/@ss88/freelancer-com-my-horrible- experien...](https://medium.com/@ss88/freelancer-com-my-horrible- experience-991ad0f18597)

<comment><USER94> Your article doesn't mention how much you paid them. If you are paying someone 5$ per hour, you can't expect much.

edit: you mention the prices in the comments, so here they are for anyone curious:

 _Node.js port 155 USD, Android port 789 USD, Website theme 300 USD. It is not slave wages considering the living costs in the respective countries._ (sic!)

>Node.js port 155 USD

This is good for what, 1 hour of work?

Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

<comment><USER93> Well, the hour rate in europe is much higher than in Asia because the living costs are much lower.

So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000 CNY

<comment><USER94> Why should the number be based on living costs? For assembly line workers with no skill requirement, yes. For engineers? Definitely not.

>So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000 CNY

Let's see: Bangalore is (only) 5 times cheaper than SF.[1] So it's hardly 3 days of work. Shanghai is 2.2 times cheaper.[2]

1 - [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&country2=India&city2=Bangalore)

2 - [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=China&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Shanghai)

<comment><USER95> > Why should the number be based on living costs?

Because that's basically the whole point of globalisation.

Both parties benefit, I don't see what the problem is.

<comment><USER96> > Both parties benefit, I don't see what the problem is.

The problem, as always in this kind of situation, is how unequally the benefits are distributed.

If the investor pays 4-5 times (and that's a low end) less for something, while the worker gets 10% more compared to doing the same locally then it's unfair, even if both sides "benefit".

It's also natural for investors to seek the lowest prices they can get. That's why there are laws like minimum wage and other protections of the workers. The globalization is not just a way of getting things for cheap, it also a workaround for laws which prohibit investors from paying _too_ little.

It's unfair, in my opinion, even if the worker does benefit. It gets much worse when the workers don't benefit at all. For example, in EU, we currently have a heated debate about delegated workers - people employed in one country and working (and living) in another. Companies do this to dodge the laws - minimum wage, social benefits, and so on - of their own country, while the workers suffer the higher costs of living in the richer country. It also makes the richer country native workers screwed. It's probably going to become illegal in the next couple of years.

People working remotely are in a different situation, in that they indeed live in a cheaper place. They still get paid much less than the minimum wage of the richer country where the investor comes from, which I think is also unfair. Also, the "cheaper place" is often not really - the prices in these countries are getting ever closer to the richer countries, while the wages lag behind the prices significantly.

In other words, there should be - and is, in many places - a limit on how badly workers can be exploited. The globalization is a loophole which circumvents these laws. I hope it will get closed in the future.

EDIT: note that it's definitely not the _only_ way globalization affects people and many effects of globalization are positive. Just not this one, in my opinion.

<comment><USER97> Regarding EU, there is a "Equal pay for equal work!" campaign. [https://www.wageunion.eu/](https://www.wageunion.eu/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Are they related to ODesk?

</comment><comment><USER99> Should've have accident insurance. Should have diversified his business and not relied on a garbage website. _Especially_ after the first 2 months limitation. All these problems were completely avoidable. He might be a good engineer but he is not a good manager. Sorry, no pity from me.

</comment><comment><USER100> In other news, water is wet.

</comment><comment><USER101> This review should get pulled. If the reviewer posted this under his real name, then he should remove it. This review will kill his reputation, which will cause more problems than anything mentioned in the review. If it's not a real name, then I imagine it's a violation. This is the only review under this user.

The review has a TLDR at the top, but my own TLDR for this review would be "I was desperate".

It's easy for me to armchair quarterback these situations, but this is the sort of reason why my parents along with most of middle-class America received medical insurance from their employers and paid into Social Security. Things happen. Most people won't set themselves up for dealing with those things. The government and employers then step in and set up a system in which hopefully will save people from not thinking ahead.

Today, more people than ever are freelancing, these safety nets are going away, people run on the edge and any bad turn is going to put them on the street. In developing nations, these safety nets may have never existed.

If employers were to Google this person, then this entire review comes up as a red flag. This is a person who is susceptible to disasters, being forced into the street and can't manage the basics of living in the modern world. When things go downhill, rational thinking goes along for the ride.

There are many reasons to avoid Freelancer and similar services. That subject has been well covered here. In this case, it's better to build networks of people who will help you out, knowing that you would do the same. Services which deal with money have to follow certain processes. If this were a smart contract, then the contract would be even less forgiving. If you want to deal with people who are going to be human and open to hearing your story and weighing your reputation, then build your community that you can reach out to. Don't put 5 years into being a drone profile on a service.

<comment><USER102> Safety nets are good, but that review is about the abuse of power by a freelancer.com employee.

<comment><USER103> The reviewer is building a monument to their conflict with a previous employer.

Every future interview they have will be in the shadow of this monument.

What do they gain? The company they've focused their ire upon isn't going to fold because of these paragraphs. The person working there now has an opportunity to revel in their handiwork - they riled this guy up all the way to the top of Hacker News!

Best to relegate your emotional outbursts to your art instead of putting them into your business or relationships if you can't keep perspective of how they'll effect your future. I wish someone gave me this advice.

<comment><USER101> Thank you. Don't blow up in public. Go ahead and post a negative review, but keep it rational. That you ended up homeless is too much information.

Post details about the experience, not just your interpretation of the emotional state of customer service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> No, you ruined your life. You joined a group of people that are not really freelancers but are effectively employees only without the associated perks and securities. Just like Uber drivers are not freelancers.

</comment><comment><USER105> I don't understand why he would blame Freelancer and not himself. How do you even sleep at night if you rely completely on one platform? It's also widely known that all those sites suck and the same story happens over and over again.

<comment><USER106> All of those platforms are designed to make developers platform-exclusive. The rating on a platform is extremely important to get new projects. You're shown higher, as more "relevant" offer and so on. At the same time, it's hard to have enough of good and recent feedback on multiple sites.

The market is so saturated that staying relevant (in platform's and clients' eyes) is getting hard. Even if you work on a single platform. One big project (e.g. building a nice app and then updates for it) and you're fucked. One review a year won't get you far. Especially if subsequent updates are handled off the platform.

I worked with repeated clients as well as on my own products for a few years. Working my way back up on those platforms is miserable to say the least.

<comment><USER107> So the harder, and more long term rewarding option, is to stay away from platforms.

<comment><USER106> The things is many of the clients are not really reachable without such platform. How would one advertise to a random mom&pop non-IT company on the other side of the globe? Personal site w/ portfolio would barely cut - <USER2> wouldn't even know what to google for. Arranging payment would be a huge hassle too. Working only locally is not a solution either.

<comment><USER107> I guess if one approaches this as an employee or entrepreneur.

My reply is as an employee. I'd prefer to not chase JavaScript frameworks.

I guess on the other side of the coin, one sort of has to these days if the entrepreneurial route is taken?

<comment><USER106> Did you reply to a wrong thread? I must be missing a link between the marketplaces and Javascript frameworks :(</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ōmoto - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ōmoto <comment><AUTHOR> By way of explanation - I came across this page because I was researching Eye Yamatsuka, the founder of the Japanese art-rock group Boredoms, of "Bulldozer Incident" fame. [1]

Turns out his music is apparently influenced by the Shinto-based religion described here. I mainly found it interesting because of this bit:

"The creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, is revered as a god. However, all of these kami are believed to be aspects of a single God concept.

The Oomoto affirmation of Zamenhof's godhood is stated, in Esperanto, as follows:

…[L]a spirito de Zamenhof eĉ nun daŭre agadas kiel misiisto de la anĝela regno; do, lia spirito estis apoteozita en la kapeleto Senrej-ŝa.

Translated into English, the foregoing reads:

…[T]he spirit of Zamenhof even now continues to act as a missionary of the angelic kingdom; therefore, his spirit was deified in the Senrei-sha shrine."

Such a good example of why I find history (and Wikipedia) so endlessly fascinating - you start out looking into a Japanese noise musician and end up with a religion that worships the creator of Esperanto as a God!

[1] [http://www.johnaulich.co.uk/japanesenoise/?tag=bulldozer- inc...](http://www.johnaulich.co.uk/japanesenoise/?tag=bulldozer-incident)

<comment><USER2> Ōmoto is also strongly connected with Aikidō: Ueshiba (Aikidō's founder) was a member of this "splinter sect" and often helped them with their problems with Japanese authorities.

(If memory serves their doctrine could not allow special divine status for the Emperor so they were often harassed or prosecuted for this subversive doctrine).

<comment><USER3> As an Aikidoka, I've read about Omoto before. I think Aikido wouldn't be the same without Ueshibas connection to Omoto.</comment></comment></comment>


Open Letter to the Students of University of Redlands - <AUTHOR> https://ofhardboards.blogspot.com/2017/02/open-letter-to-students-of-university.html <comment><USER2> "In the name of free speech, I'm demanding that you kids STFU!"</comment>


Doctor on IBM's Watson: "This product is a piece of shit" - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/ibm-watson-supercomputer-suggested-unsafe-and-incorrect-cancer-treatments <comment><AUTHOR> Color me surprised. IT folks rolling their eyes, as now even doctors, the computer illiterati of the modern world, have come to the same conclusions... IBM's Watson is vapor-ware.

</comment><comment><USER2> Google "watson layoffs ibm" \- IBM has been laying off employees for quite some time now. Is there a correlation?

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe TheMedNet will do better.</comment>


Friendly web development tutorials for complete beginners - <AUTHOR> https://internetingishard.com/ <comment><USER2> I'd be interested in your definition of complete beginner? As I think some of the language could be simplified further. For instance:

> Think of HTML as the abstract text and images behind a web page, CSS as the > page that actually gets displayed

Is actually quite a nuanced way of looking at a webpage. What does 'abstract text' mean to an absolute beginner? And it makes CSS sound like what I imagine people intuitively would think HTML is. As in HTML is the content that gets displayed and CSS is what adds colour, structure, design etc. It also sounds like images are HTML, but maybe I'm nitpicking a bit too much.

Regardless, it's a good effort and no doubt a useful resource for the right learner.

<comment><USER3> When I was a complete beginner, in childhood, I didn't understand why the code I copied from a random library book into WordPerfect was not 'running'.

That's what I think of when I read 'complete beginner' \- and people seem to shy away from those very important tooling concepts.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. My girlfriend always wonders what i actually do at work (she's a fashion designer) and she can't even comprehend what code _is_ nor how its run.

Common questions include: "So do you just sit there all day and type code?", "would you be able to code facebook?", "Can you please use your code skills and fix the TV? (it was set on a different HDMI input after I finished playing PS4 and forgot to switch it back)"

It's cute, but a complete beginner literally can't even fathom what a computer loosely does inside/how it runs code aside from utter magic

<comment><USER5> Ah, yes, good ol' could you code facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While there's some good basic stuff here, I'm not a fan of the layout. They talk about responsive design, but use a very thin column for the main content, leaving an ocean of blank white space on either side, at least on desktop.

I'm also taking issue with their advice to "disable viewport zoom" for mobile sites, which is not cool. There is no need to disable zooming for your responsive site to load and display correctly. Taking away the user's right to pinch and zoom is an accessibility issue.

If you're learning HTML and CSS, I would suggest you ignore their advice to disable zoom. Your viewport meta tag should be something like <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> but you shouldn't be adding "maximum-scale=1.0" to that, because it prevents pinch and zoom.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a beginner currently going through this tutorial, grasping the how is vastly less difficult than knowing when to use. I noticed last night that I was spending too much time going through the tutorial (and the examples) without actually practicing what I was learning. I realized that I wasn't exactly sure when to use Flexbox in this simple page¹, or why to use it at all, if I should stick to directly customizing elements or how to divide divs (header, presentation, button). The editor tells me that the universal selector (*) is slow, what should I use then? I want to use best practices, but I have no reference since it seems that CSS has many ways to achieve the same result. Well, I think I'll have to grok it for now.

¹ [https://cyberneets.neocities.org/](https://cyberneets.neocities.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone have something similar for js/angular? I have a buddy that's extremely motivated (works in the sun all day every day), but wants to change his fortunes to something that's a bit less sweat inducing.

<comment><USER9> The best advice you can give to someone staring out from scratch is "Don't try to learn programming. It's boring, frustrating, and pointless. Instead, think of something you want to make, and learn how to make that. Start small though."

<comment><USER10> Give the learner some project he might be interested in. Some website he would like to see online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks really neat and well designed. Looks like they only cover HTML and CSS at the moment. I'm curious if they will add some (basic) modern Javascript in the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what motivates creation of this as there are so many materials out there already?

</comment><comment><USER13> OP, is this your site? Oliver James?

Gorgeous looking site. I really appreciate the feel of the site, stands out in a non-obnoxious way and is strikingly unique.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks good. Does it have chapters on Grid as well as Flexbox?

<comment><USER15> There is at least a chapter about flexbox -> [https://internetingishard.com/html-and- css/flexbox/](https://internetingishard.com/html-and-css/flexbox/)

<comment><USER14> Yes thank you. What I meant was does it also have grid? Grid seems to be more useful than flexbox in most cases.</comment></comment></comment>


What was it like in Silicon Valley after the bubble burst in the early 2000s? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-in-Silicon-Valley-after-the-bubble-burst-in-the-early-2000s

<comment><AUTHOR> Fascinating responses on Quora, but I'm hoping some HN'ers lived to tell their stories too...</comment>


OpenBR – An open face recognition/biometry library - <AUTHOR> http://openbiometrics.org/ <comment><USER2> I really like the explanatory graphic on OpenBR's front page. It's certainly not very artistic... But it does a great job of explaining at a single glance what exactly this project does and where it fits in a software pipeline. I wish more projects had an upfront compact visual representation of what they offer.

I can imagine what it would look like if this were a .io startup instead of a research project. The front page would be 20 times taller with endless scrolling, yet consist mostly of beautifully laid out white space filled with some trendy shade of brown. In that vast emptiness there would be floating decapitated heads that actively try to escape the mouse cursor. When I finally manage to hover over one of the heads, it would reveal a nondescript slogan, for example _" Recognize. Integrate. Socially."_ There would be a single cryptic two-line code example given in CoffeeScript, and nowhere on the site would it be apparent whether this product is commercial and how much it costs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Guys, help me. Every time I see something like this I think "cool thing!", but I also start thinkin about new ways someone will start to track me down.

Seriously, my paranoid level has never been so high.

<comment><USER4> Paranoia can be a symptom of growing or oncoming depression. You should take that seriously: _At least_ take a few days off and try to get a feel for your current mental state.

<comment><USER5> Studies have shown that depressed people sometimes have a more adequate world view.

<comment><USER6> Yep, that's called depressive realism. It's pretty bizarre to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can find OpenBR, along with 40+ other face recognition APIs, libraries, SDKs, and software at [http://blog.mashape.com/post/53379410412/list- of-40-face-det...](http://blog.mashape.com/post/53379410412/list-of-40-face- detection-recognition-apis)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is less 'US defence establishment releases software library' than 'US defence establishment requests decentralisation/functional political deniability of widespread facial recognition, offloading of hardware costs to consumer'.

<comment><USER9> Although I currently can't see any evidence of involvement of any government branch, the ultimate result may be the same nevertheless.

Google Glass certainly has the same issue, but to an even higher degree, since we _know_ about the collaboration of Google with the NSA.

EDIT: thanks for the correction, missed that one.

<comment><USER10> There you go:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159326)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone differentiate between OpenCV and openBR? I think I've read about people using OpenCV for facial recognition. How do these both differ?

Thanks!

<comment><USER12> The OpenBR API is designed to cater to the researchers and users of biometric algorithms, where as the OpenCV API is designed to solve a more general scope of image processing problems.

OpenCV includes implementations of several seminal face recognition algorithms (PCA, LDA, & LBP). The OpenBR algorithm is more modern/sophisticated in its combination of several well studied approaches. While I haven't explicitly compared OpenCV against OpenBR, the OpenCV algorithms can and have been expressed within the OpenBR and are known to be less accurate. Having said that, accuracy & algorithm choice are highly dependent on image quality. Our technical paper [1] provides more details.

[1] [http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klontz2013open.pdf](http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klontz2013open.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Thank you, that was very informative :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _In the unlikely event that you were given a USB License Dongle, then dongle must be in the computer in order to use the SDK. No configuration of the dongle is needed._

[http://openbiometrics.org/doxygen/latest/installation.html](http://openbiometrics.org/doxygen/latest/installation.html)

Anyone read enough to know when that occurs?

<comment><USER12> Hi! I'm the primary developer of this project. This paragraph of the documentation is out of date. There is never a need for a dongle, it's all FOSS :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is great news! Looking forward to experimenting with this new library. I hope it can be somehow used on Android in the future.

<comment><USER12> Please feel free to ask questions on our mailing list [1] or IRC channel [2]. Our software dependencies are Qt & OpenCV, both of which compile for Andriod, so OpenBR should be able to run there also, but no one has tried yet.

[1] [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/openbr- de...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/openbr-dev)

[2] irc.freenode.net #openbr

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious about how to interpret their 'Face Recognition Evaluation' data though.

I'd like to use this for authentication purposes but if I'm interpreting it right their performance is close to existing solutions, but not close enough for commercial use.

<comment><USER12> Correct, we do a decent job on mugshots/driver's licenses, but are not at commercial level performance yet. Keep an eye out for NIST FRVT 2012 [1] and our upcoming conference paper [2] if you'd like to see more complete comparisons.

[1] [http://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/frvt-2012.cfm](http://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/frvt-2012.cfm)

[2] [http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klontz2013open.pdf](http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klontz2013open.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Nice work! By the way, now that you're here ;) do you perhaps also know if there's a way to address fjcaetano's concerns if you have access to a full video feed?

<comment><USER12> "Liveness detection" is an active area of research within the community. I know you can enable this check on Android and it works moderately well.

<comment><USER15> Awesome. Thanks for the reference!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone know of a library that can track the direction a user is looking? I don't need exact eye-tracking type stuff from special equipment, just left right up down etc. My initial googles have come up short so far.</comment>


Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Thirteen_Virtues <comment><USER2> Ben Franklin was a hacker god. He visited Europe by ship and instead of curling up with a book on deck, he grabbed a thermometer and a notebook and discovered the Gulf Stream.

<comment><USER3> But did he invented something to slay vampires?

Seriously, I'm amazed at the width of his accomplishments. Maybe, tt would be difficult for someone today to significantly contribute to so many fields. Even in a relatively new profession like CS, we tend to specialize.

<comment><USER2> Part of Franklin's success was his ability to focus on big problems instead of using his energies gambling, drinking, or wenching. Franklin's moral principles had nothing to do with being holier-than-thou. He wanted a life of meaning, and his moral code was the means to the end: a life as a world-famous scientist, businessman, author, and diplomat.

His autobiography explains his motivations (a wonderful book): <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/148/148.txt>

Edit: Men like Franklin see their moral code as a tool to get from point A (a humdrum life) to point B (a life of significance.) Today we see a moral code as some kind of legal document and look for violations. _Aha! I see that you violated Section B Paragraph 5 "No wenching during business hours."_

<comment><USER4> I was under the impression that he was a rather lusty wencher, at least in his youth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a thought: The modern vilification of hypocrisy strikes me as a step backward in one way - it makes people feel bad about having high ideals they can't always meet.

<comment><USER6> My favorite quote from The Diamond Age is relevant:

> You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices," > Finkle-McGraw said. "It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in > that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others-after all, > if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for > criticism? … Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people > are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' > shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it > from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, > even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise > another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually > done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the > correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour-you are merely > pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all > political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out > of hypocrisy.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. Love that line.

It also captures one of the (IMO) underappreciated elements of Stephenson: he takes up technology, but is hugely interested in how it interacts with both individuals and society at large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Only one I disagree with is #12, "Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.", this is breaking his own moderation virtue and is heavily motivated by social pressures on sex.

<comment><USER9> Maybe he learned something after frequenting brothels ([http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/03/were_there_sex_shops_in_the_time_of_george_washington.html)) and siring an illegitimate son in his youth (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Franklin>).

<comment><USER10> He always had high ideas about chastity but seldom followed them. In my mind Franklin has always embodied "Do as I say, not as I do"--almost in a mischievous or humorous way. I think he did learn from his actions, but not in the same way we usually think of someone "learning" from their actions. He always knew the right answers but preferred to have a little fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >"Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation."

I disagree with this one. Small talk can lead to big happenings, and have many times in my life.

That being said, I'd modify it to: Focus. Avoid multitasking so as to not do multiple things poorly.

<comment><USER12> I thought the same. Even if Franklin was not a puritanic protestant, I guess a bit of strict ethics rubbed off.

Also these "Top 10 of best virtues ever!!1" were always constructed by male philosophers and lack stuff like "Sociability, "Care", "Empathy" or "Compassion".

<comment><USER13> Sure, men in general probably have a greater tendency towards other virtues, but do you really mean to imply that men often lack stuff like "Sociability, "Care", "Empathy" and "Compassion" ?

Didn't a lot of "the big ones" talk about love? I think that encapsulates those values.

<comment><USER14> > Didn't a lot of "the big ones" talk about love? I think that encapsulates > those values.

Interestingly, "the big ones" tend not to be classified as philosophers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of the Greek Cardinal Virtues[1] , or The Resolutions of Johnathon Edwards[2]. It seems that is modern society we have failed to explicitly pass the importance of these kind of character qualities to our kids.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues> 2\. [http://www.apuritansmind.com/the-christian-walk/jonathan- edw...](http://www.apuritansmind.com/the-christian-walk/jonathan-edwards- resolutions/)

<comment> mike-cardwell Why do you think we've failed in this respect? People always automatically assume that things were better in the past and that the current generation is ruining things.

Maybe we're succeeding at passing on these character qualities to our kids at a higher rate than at any time in the past? There were thieves and liars and murderers and lazy people and scum bags 200 years ago too.

<comment><USER16> > _Maybe we're succeeding at passing on these character qualities to our kids > at a higher rate than at any time in the past?_

Not judging by the behaviour people one sees in any major city, or their kids, compared to historical norms of behaviour one can read about in history books.

One small example: attitude and rudeness like you see today from high- schoolers, would be totally unfathomable in a 1930 or 1950's school.

> _There were thieves and liars and murderers and lazy people and scum bags > 200 years ago too._

Sure. That doesn't mean societies are stationary. They change with the prevalent motives of the era, the changed ethical norms, the economic and political situation, etc.

<comment><USER17> On the other hand, the attitude and cruelty (e.g.,beatings) you would routinely see from high school teachers is also totally unfathomable in 2012.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, and maybe that's the problem. The lack of the same attitude, I mean, not the beatings. As in:

[http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/10/why-american-kids-are- brats...](http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/10/why-american-kids-are-brats/)

et al.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you like these you might also enjoy my rules of life:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Foobaz>

<comment><USER19> you need an addendum about awesome shirts :3

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> i have a document that i've compiled over the years, that i try to look over every morning. It has a list of quotes/maxims and daily habits.

tried publishing it out: [https://writer.zoho.com/public/07e664bb675348bd84c355190c36c...](https://writer.zoho.com/public/07e664bb675348bd84c355190c36ccd0eefbdb46d8980235f0472b7c5d0f4e9a)

funny but i forgot i had Ben's 13 already added :) i guess it doesn't work if it gets too big for a daily brief.

<comment><USER21> My Quotes and Aphorisms file is over a megabyte, it's been growing for 16 years. I formatted it so that the fortune-cookie program can pull up quotes at random, or I can search it with various keywords whenever I want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, glass armonica (a glass instrument, not to be confused with the metal harmonica), Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. Franklin never patented his inventions; in his autobiography he wrote, "... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously." -- Wikipedia</comment>


Why Do We Tolerate Saudi Money in Tech? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/why-do-we-tolerate-saudi-money-in-tech.html <comment><USER2> Why are we asking this question of the Saudis and not, say, the Chinese?

Over the past few months there have been many issues of companies taking actions that seem to be based on appeasing the Chinese government.

Both are awful government's actively committing crimes against humanity.

<comment> notsag-hn What about the crimes against humanity commited by the US then? Should we ban US money as well? :D

<comment><USER3> While the parent poster presented the issue as one of morality, it's more honest to frame it as self-preservation. It's rarely wise to allow another country too much influence over you - even rarer when it's as openly hostile to the US as China.

Any wrongs you may have done don't enter into consideration when trying to prevent being wronged by others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who is "we"?

Recipients like getting money, obviously.

Non-recipients generally don't have the power to interfere.

The US government has that power, but the US government is beholden to the Saudis' control over oil.

<comment><USER5> The US has no particular interest in Saudi oil, as it doesn't provide a particularly large or irreplaceable amount of US consumption.

What binds them to the US is their dependence on weapons and military cooperation to maintain power, and conversely, the American defense industry's need for foreign markets.

The reason we hear so much about dependence on Saudi oil is to engender a false sense of helplessness and keep the latter relationship stable/unthreatened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well they are going to spend that money on _something_. Investing it in the US economy seems like just about the best place for it to go. I wish all fortunes held by dubious foreign entities just got sent to the American stock market.

Twitter is a public company, it seems pretty unlikely that Saudi investment and Saudi spies getting hired by Twitter are related.

</comment><comment><USER7> I admit I have yet to read TFA but I can answer this quite easily.

We not only tolerate it, we welcome and solicit it with open arms. For the same reason we push industrial waste and exploitative labor to developing countries!

</comment><comment><USER8> Because of missing ethics.

If you read this and you have enough power to influence something like this and don't consider where your money comes from -> fuck you.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why do we tolerate saudi oil in our gas tanks?

<comment><USER10> I feel like you're saying this sarcastically, but you should be saying it earnestly.

<comment><USER5> In general, people don't ship oil around the world for no reason, which is why US oil tends to come from the Americas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Because it spends.

Edit: Clay Davis said it best: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU5IoHf3xdg&t=256](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU5IoHf3xdg&t=256)</comment>


Pure CSS Components - <AUTHOR> http://www.felipefialho.com/css-components/

<comment><USER2> I know that may sound stupid but none of those nice effects work on IE8 :-) And here is something that may sound even more stupid - there are still some companies out there that are pretty limiting their employees to use old versions of ie (yay!)

<comment><AUTHOR> All this new shiny CSS3 features that are being baked into products right now (as my own Picnic CSS) are not meant for production for most people, only for some sectors and hopefully for most people in a 1-3year period.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it risky to use React-Native? - <AUTHOR> React-Native seems like a great solution for a new startup -- sharing codebase for iOS and Android is huge help addressing scarcity of resources.<p>Before starting a new project in React-Native, I'm wondering, how big of a risk that Apple will ban React-Native apps from their store in the future? <comment><USER2> This isn't strictly related to React Native but have you considered using Flutter? IIRC it compiles to a "native" iOS app instead of doing this weird JS stuff React does.

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW, never've heard of Flutter until you mentioned. Looking into it now. Looks cool, but... It's just been released? I do not want to depend on a bleeding edge solution when everything is at stake (I'm talking about a typical startup execution). I'd give it few more years before seriously considering it. I've seen the solutions that were supposed to take over the world (which never happened). SmallTalk, C++, JavaApplets, RubyOnRails. I'm sure I'm missing a few. While all these are very cool technologies, the "weird" JavaScript stuff is being the most used language in the world these days (whether we like it or not).</comment></comment>


Some Words on Programming the Atari Jaguar (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://alive.atari.org/alive13/jagcode.php <comment><USER2> I have a strange fetish for the study of old, and in particular, failed or flopped consoles - especially things like development and hardware structure.

The Sega Saturn, in particular, has been a fantastic and interesting area of study and development for me - I've toyed with developing a simple 2D homebrew platformer and learning the unique way the hardware is laid out has been a lot of fun.

Articles like this are becoming harder to find for me, and the more detail I see (like in this particular instance), the more content I am.

<comment><USER3> Got any links or a blog that consolidates your findings? I love learning about gnarly hardware, and yes, Saturn takes the cake there. Dual SH2s and VDPs, with scaled sprite quadrilaterals for polygons... what a nightmare!

<comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi29TNPrdbwJLiB- VcWSS...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi29TNPrdbwJLiB- VcWSSg-3iNTGJnn_L)

I absolutely love this series, the author goes into so much detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> angus-prune A while ago I worked out that _every_ Atari Jaguar ever made could render as many polygons as 2 and a bit PS4s.

</comment><comment><USER5> 3D0DEAD anyone?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's amazing that it took so long to figure out a 7-character encryption key. For those that aren't aware, 3DODEAD was the key used to encrypt Jaguar cartridges to verify that they were licensed by Atari Corporation. If you try to boot an unlicensed cart in a Jaguar or something goes wrong during the validation check during startup, the Jaguar screen turns red. The Atari logo characters only fall on screen in the startup animation if the validation check passes.

<comment><USER6> Is the code a reference to the 3DO game system from Panasonic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fred Wilson: The Father of VC Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomloverro.com/2010/04/11/fred-wilson-the-father-of-vc-marketing/

<comment><USER2> On a similar topic, Mark Suster (with GRP in L.A.) talks about how his blog (<http://bothsidesofthetable.com>) has impacted his deal flow in this video from the inaugural show of This Week in Venture Capital:

[http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-venture- capital/twivc-01-wi...](http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-venture- capital/twivc-01-with-mark-suster-2/)</comment>


Half of American's Don't Ever Check Their Credit Score - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesimpledollar.com/credit/survey-half-of-america-doesnt-check-their-credit-score-at-all/ <comment><USER2> Is this supposed to be a problem? Avoiding the credit industry generally seems like a healthy thing.</comment>


The Dark Side of Psychedelic - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@AmazonkaIV/the-dark-side-of-psychedelic-8235547a0929 <comment><USER2> This is exactly how I like my psychedelics. New age bull with a side of content marketing.</comment>