The Psychological Trap of Freelancing - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2019/02/why-freelancing-creates-anxiety-about-money.html <comment><USER3> "I went outside to get coffee and ran into three different neighbors who wanted to chit-chat. I wanted to scream, 'For every word that comes out of your mouth, I'm losing money!"

This is a statement from someone who either hasn't been freelancing that long, or who hasn't realized that "brain down time" is just as important as raw coding hours. I've worked "for myself" for almost 20 years and for the first 5 I too panicked when daytime billable hours were derailed by "distractions". Once you push beyond that, you realize that those times away from your machine are valuable, and actually contribute to your overall well being, and your ability to code with a clear head, and an efficient mindset.

Wasting away "on salary" is a hard mindset to break. The answer is not to replace 100% of your salary hours with your own freelance work. You'll find even 50% of your previous salaried time can get just as much done, and make just as much money (assuming you price your services and value properly)

<comment><USER4> The biggest problem for me was my (ex)spouse always pushing for billable hours. Every time I decided I wanted time off there was a constant nagging reminder and guilt of not only what it would cost to go and do what I want - for example cost of flights, accommodation, entertainment and food, but also the cost of the loss of income for that time off meaning that every time I was away from my keyboard it was costing me 10 times as much. There was always a reminder to "be responsible and not lose the income" which is a toxic mindset to be in.

These days I skip off work at every possible opportunity and to hell with anyone who can't comprehend my lack of will to bill every waking hour, partners and family included. I may not get paid as much, but there's so much more to life than work. Sure, I'm not billing when I could be and sure there's plenty enough work that I could bill 24 hours a day if I had enough energy and will power to do that, but I don't care. My mental health and my other passions need playtime or I'm going to flame out and never come back to this.

If you don't have a spouse that's supportive and encouraging of your need for downtime away from work, then you're caught in a double trap.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like a shitty spouse

<comment><USER4> It's easy to make a judgment on one scenario, but being unable to get out of that mindset doesn't make her a shitty spouse, it's a fear that's been brainwashed into her by her upbringing. She is more than her fears.

Thankfully though, I'm no longer in this position. I was rather more pointing out a toxic mindset that you need to overcome not just in yourself but potentially in your spouse and the rest of your families.

<comment><USER6> > being unable to get out of that mindset doesn't make her a shitty spouse

This is an incredibly helpful reminder that people should not be reduced to their flaws and relationships are not the mere sum of their drawbacks.

Because people are risk-averse, it's easy to focus on what's bad and take for granted what's good. So when a relationship becomes challenging, people can reflexively give up (or throw away) rather than work with and get through.

Relationships are worth maintaining and building, even when they become difficult. In some cases, relationships are worth maintaining especially when they become difficult because the relationship becomes stronger and promotes greater well-being to the degree that it has survived hardship.

<comment><USER4> Indeed they are... though in this particular case there were a bunch of other factors that caused this particular relationship to fail, but even with those considered, they don't make her a shitty person, she is more than the sum of her parts. Just because the relationship was unworkable, doesn't make her a bad person or even a bad spouse, they just make us bad partners to one another.

<comment><USER7> I have the highest respect for people like you who can make comments like these. It takes a lot of maturity and mental creativity to see things from others' perspectives, and if everyone had your mindset the world would be a better place. If you are ever in Chicago I'd love to buy you a coffee/beer and hear your story.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, if I'm ever in Chicago, I may take you up on that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I went from hourly, to per project, to weekly billings. When I charged hourly I ended up working A LOT more than 9-5. Per project work was good but I ended up losing a lot of prospects in the quote. Since many of my projects ran into the 20-40k range, my closing rate was 1/10 (already pre-screened, what I deemed as high quality prospects). This made me feel like crap. Instead of per project, I decided to increase the rate, so now a project may be 30-50k+, figure out how many weeks it may take me to complete it (rough idea, but this is not important) and then divide into a weekly rate. What ended up happening is me tripling my hourly rate and invoicing weekly. This was game changing for closing leads, now my rate is probably 8/10\. You get all the benefits of having to work a lot less but charging a lot more. I will be honest, some days I feel like shit (who doesn't) and I don't work at all. I don't feel bad because on the days that I feel fantastic I get into the zone and knock out a TON of work and usually get ahead. Client sees progress weekly and they are happy. It helps them that they don't have to pay a ton of money in 2-3 payments and can spread it over the course of months.

In terms of happiness, freelancing definitely comes in flavors. There is the grunt work, the highly paid freelancer, the consultant and the product-based business until you go full startup or large company. I have seen all tiers. Currently I am a step short of having my own product while I figure out what that will be. You definitely need business acumen and people skills to succeed in the consultant stage. For product business you gotta go a step beyond that and either do really well as a consultant to bootstrap, or just work your ass off to get it going. My advice for anyone in freelancing now, who does not have people skills and gets latched onto hourly work, you may want to reconsider your choices. Freelancing can be highly stressful and demoralizing, unless you take the steps to go into consulting or beyond. It's a ladder, just like your corporate gig, you gotta do the work to move up or suffer where you are stuck.

<comment><USER9> > I went from hourly, to per project, to weekly billings

I have tried all three, read all the HN favourites on why value pricing is the way; tried charging for roadmapping; and yet I come back to the most stressful of day-rate (hourly by any other name), unable to break this in 15 years of technical consulting.

Why? Because with per project billing I was losing 30-50% as client expectations were different to mine. When I added 30-50% to the prices, I didn't win the jobs. I could write a spec 80 pages long (which no client would pay for) and still there were variances which cost me.

On my current $50k+ project I've got the client to bear the risk because he's the worst client for cost overruns I've had, and it's on a time and materials system. However because he has no more money than the top range of estimates, and because he wants everything and more, I feel trapped and as stressed as if it was fixed price (which it's turning out to be).

It feels like I am missing something obvious that other developers/consultants have got. I want to price on value so I'm not stressed about every minute's productivity. My clients want fixed price so the risk is stacked on me; they won't/can't do sprints (often because their board of directors won't approve it, even if they say they see the benefits); and the projects are unique systems each time, so the estimation is not accurate.

I freelance/consult because it pays well, but this way of working sucks.

<comment><USER10> > It feels like I am missing something obvious

I'm not sure if you're missing something _obvious_ ..this is HARD, I totally know what you're feeling like.

I was talking with a buddy other day ago (also a consultant); I was grumbling about how clients have "urgent" projects and then proceed to sit on the project proposal for a few weeks...

His response went something like this: "look, there are reason's why consultants are called in to work projects - and those reasons are _not_ that they are well organized, well equipped, well funded ..etc etc". Oddly, that made me feel a bit better.

<comment><USER11> Ah, yes, the "hurry up and wait!" projects. If it makes you feel better, my 9-5 for the man is full of them too. Working all weekend to come in on Monday and find out it was all in vein is no fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the other hand, equating time (especially work time) with money helps with making sense of what money is actually worth. These days every product category is full of well presented temptations in any price range.

The correct way to evaluate a 1000$ phone, a mechanical keyboard with custom keycaps, fantastic coffee machines and barbecues and car parts and designer handbags is to put them in relation to "how many hours do I have to work for this purchase".

<comment><USER13> I completely agree, but would like to note a common fallacy following this logic.

If my hourly rate is $20, I might think that a $200 phone is worth 10 hours.

The thing is, the majority of those $20 I make are probably already allocated to things like rent, food, transportation and so on. If those things account for 50% of my expenses, for example, the $200 phone is actually worth 20 hours of my time. (That is, unless all my necessities are already accounted for, and I'm working 10 hours _on top_ of what I usually work to buy the phone.)

It's important for freelancers to account for what is essentially their "operating expenses" when making purchasing decisions.

<comment><USER14> You could do it like that - subtract 'essentials' (for some definition) from your hourly rate - but you don't have to.

You could also say your rent et al. are X hours, and watch you don't 'spend more hours' than you work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My biggest mistake at the beginning of freelancing was that I sold more or less 8 hours a day of work. That's too much because as a freelancer you do not have vacations or paid sick days, and contract. So I corrected it to 120 hours a month, that means that:

* I can recover sick days if needed.

* I can work a little bit extra for 1 or two months to get a 1 week vacation.

* I can use the extra hours a day to do some marketing/networking/sales.

* It's easy to take half a day off and recover it in 2 or three days.

* I needed to charge more per hour to make it work, but now I'm pretty happy with it.

(Edited: Formatting)

<comment><USER16> That still seems rather high to me. I usually aim at having 3-4 billable hours per day. The rest of the time, if I'm not slacking off, I put into improving the product or sales.

Even for salaried workers, I don't think anyone would expect them to do actual productive work for more than 3-4h of programming per day (rest of the time being spent on meetings, planning, office distractions, etc).

<comment><USER17> Even in an office environment I've seen rough estimates of 5 (6 at most) 'billable' hours per day for longer term projects. The rest is admin, housekeeping, chitchat, etc.

Studies seem to support the 4-5 hours of useful work per day over long periods. It's easy to peak at 8+ for a short time (and twice as easy for personal passion projects) but it wears off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Five hours of working on something you like, often feels like ten minutes working on something you don't.

The real benefit of freelancing is that you will tend to pick work that you actually want to do; which also means that you may indeed end up working more.

But then again, giving people more choice is not good for everybody. Some people will simply turn their lives into a freak show.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am a freelancer, and I chose this path specifically so I could work less, not more.

For me, money is just the road to my personal and family enjoyment. If I can't enjoy life while making money, what's even the point of making it? The road to happiness seems obvious to me: charge more (and automate income), work less, have more free time.

<comment><USER20> I can really echo this way of thinking. I chose this role because I knew it was flexible (sometimes by choice, sometimes by chance), which means the downtime is built-into the price.

I frequently (happily) take days off to be with my daughter, and can very much enjoy the downtime when a client needs to have me out for 4-5 hours instead of a full 8-10.

The only time this thinking creeps in is when scheduling longer vacations. It's somehow easy to spread the cost of downtime over a day or week, but much more difficult to spread a chunk of vacation 'downtime' over the rest of the year. I'm actually toying with the idea of paying myself quarterly to see if I can curb this sensation.

<comment><USER21> My advice is that you find a freelance assistant who is good enough to take your directions but not necessarily able to think/do what you do.

That way you can delegate out some work while on vacation without taking too big a hit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing I would like to add... I created my own solo S-corp and started on the path of contracting. I have been successful enough to minimize my payroll taxes using a solo 401k (~18k max contribution and then my company can contribute 25% of my w-2 salary). Now I am at the point where I am investigating how to setup a defined benefit plan for myself to defer 75-100k in payroll taxes. Most likely a cash balance plan.

I think most employees at FAANG don't realize how much they really give up paying CA taxes and a significant portion of Federal taxes.

Then I realize why FAANG companies don't have defined benefit plans... The tenure of most employees would not make it worthwhile.

I wish we had something like the SAG-AFTRA rate fees for programming. We don't so I guess my solo way of doing things will have to do for now.

[https://www.sagaftra.org/contracts-industry- resources](https://www.sagaftra.org/contracts-industry-resources)

Look at those rates!

<comment><USER22> Here is a good example of how you can max out a solo 401k and use a private pension plan.

[https://www.watsoncpagroup.com/kb/Turbo- Charged-401k-Plans_3...](https://www.watsoncpagroup.com/kb/Turbo- Charged-401k-Plans_302.html)

The dumbest thing in the world is working at FAANG at high salary levels. Unless your are in the C-suite you are always in a precarious position. It's not easy to justify the high salary at a competitor all the time.

The best strategy is to get good amount of revenue via a solo S-corp and minimize your payroll taxes. Hell your defined benefit plan can purchase all the FAANG stock it wants. You don't want to be the Sun employee with many stock options that are worthless in a downturn. At least you can dump your stocks and have some flexibility in your own defined benefit plan.

<comment><USER23> > The dumbest thing in the world is working at FAANG at high salary levels. > Unless your are in the C-suite you are always in a precarious position. It's > not easy to justify the high salary at a competitor all the time.

I don't think you know what you're talking about. An engineer making $200k+ at a FAANG can leave that company and.... probably make the same (or more) at another large tech company. Their salary is determined by basic supply & demand, if they have skills worth $200+ at one company, they'll find similar compensation elsewhere. (If it's not easy to justify their salary at a new company- why exactly is their current company paying them that much? Are they running a charity or something?)

I don't understand your obsession with payroll taxes. I'm self-employed too, everyone knows you avoid payroll or self-employment taxes by setting up an S Corp and paying yourself disbursements on top of a salary. Anyways, for an employee they're really not extremely high, so I don't understand building a whole strategy just to avoid this 6% tax. Being a FAANG employee comes with a ton of non-cash benefits & perks- the 401k match alone is probably double whatever you're losing in payroll taxes. The value of the health insurance is probably more than payroll taxes.... Sounds like you're not really properly accounting for any of this

<comment><USER22> It's not 6%. Im not talking about the employer's portion of social security taxes.

Go to [http://www.esmartpaycheck.com/FreeCalculator/](http://www.esmartpaycheck.com/FreeCalculator/) Change cycle to annually (2019) and in column cp put in 250k.

the taxes I am talking about are: Federal Income Tax Withheld $61,363.50 State Income Tax Withheld (CA) $22,103.55

That's where you can make a substantial amount of savings by diverting that into a solo 401k and defined benefit plan. You need to pay taxes but you can knock that down quite a bit.

So from 250k down to 150k is your take home... imagine you can structure your business to save a substantial amount of that.

Health insurance ... ehh yea can be expensive but you can use an HSA and high deductible plan... That's why keeping obamacare laws are helpful. As long as you can get bumped off for pre-existing you are ok.

Screw the non cash benefits... Im sure many Sun and IBM employees enjoyed those same perks too. No FAANG company has a 25% match policy, they usually have 3% or some small matching percentage across the board for their 401k safe harbor provision... The same match for all employees.

People are catching on and making these calculations... Sure moving around FAANG companies might seem easy but just because company A pays you X doesn't mean company B will pay X+Z... It may seem like it in the hype but ask any former Sun employee making X why they can't find X+Z.

Options... that's where you might get real lucky. You got me there. That's something I am still learning about... But in your defined benefit plan you can just buy a basket of FAANG stocks.

Take a look at [https://watsoncpagroup.com/kb/turbo- charged-401k-plans_302.h...](https://watsoncpagroup.com/kb/turbo- charged-401k-plans_302.html)

<comment><USER23> > Federal Income Tax Withheld $61,363.50 State Income Tax Withheld (CA) > $22,103.55

I think there's some confusion around terminology- that's not payroll taxes (the 6%), that's regular income taxes. Anyways, you realize you do have to pay taxes eventually on your deferred income, right? I agree they will probably be lower rates, but you're not 'saving' yourself from these income taxes, just deferring for a few years....

Health insurance costs $6k+ for a not-great plan with a kinda high deductible (source- this is what I have). The type of HS offered by a FAANG is ultra- premium, literally everything is covered. There is so much financial value there man, especially if you have a medical emergency and actually use it- not to mention that they cover your family too. Minimum value is $10-20k and could be way, way, way higher depending on your usage or your family's usage in a given year.

Yes, FAANGs will match 401ks 10% or above (!). 3% would be poor in any industry or sector. Your information is incorrect.

Not interested in arguing with you about FAANG salaries, you're simply wrong. If you're worth $200-300k at one of them, you're extremely in-demand and worth that at a lot of companies.

I want to argue respectfully, but you have some awful weird financial ideas just based around tax avoidance (which is really just tax deferment). There is absolutely no way the tax benefits of contracting with a defined benefit plan even come close to the $ amount of the benefits from working at a FAANG, you're not even in the ballpark. More proof that taxes just make some people crazy and lead some to absolutely bizarre financial decisions (like people who commit tax fraud and go to real prison- the risk/reward there is completely out of whack)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My sanity and income both improved remarkably once I stopped trading hours for money. Now I trade results for money.

This gives me a lot of control over how I work. The client only cares about the result - X% increase in website traffic, X new leads, etc.

As long as I make that happen, it doesn't matter to the client whether I work 5 hours or 50.

I'm often done with my month's work in about 10-15 days and have enough downtime to focus on side projects.

<comment><USER25> How do you bring up the topic & structure rates? EG, if you get 80% of the way towards that 5% goal, What about 120%? etc.

How do you price based on results like this without a clear internal view of the company's numbers. Feels like it would be throwing darts somewhat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> After freelancing for a few years, I decided that it was not making me happier, since:

\- It is not possible to create significant wealth by freelancing

\- I work on things I do not care. I want to think/spend time on important things

\- Chasing down payments is stressful

\- Finding new clients requires some effort

Therefore, I decided that it would be much healthier for me to get a job that pays well and not work as a freelancer.

<comment><USER27> Have you considered going hourly with a staffing agency? A senior developer can charge a three figure hourly rate and if you aren't known in the industry an agency can place you at companies that can afford to keep you working full time. I've always gone above and beyond at my salaried jobs because I find the work gratifying, and I've been thrilled being able to charge for those extra hours. I doubled my yearly income when I started contracting. Providing your own benefits can be stressful and cost more when your employer isn't subsidizing it, but if you are making over $200k/year medical insurance is a relatively minor expense.

<comment><USER26> Right now, I'm thinking about applying to the largest companies of our industry in a few weeks, but can you please briefly share your experience on staffing agencies, because making $200k/year without an office sounds appealing.

<comment><USER27> I haven't worked at home since I started contracting (after a 10 year stretch of all remote work). In my experience most jobs that you get through a staffing agency are for big lumbering corporations that are completely out of touch with the industry and think that all employees are thieves and villains that must be supervised at all times. These companies are also the ones that have enormous budgets for contractors (for accounting reasons, I guess) and very little oversight (institutional inertia can keep you on a contract for much longer than it takes to finish a project, and projects take significantly longer than they should because of all the above factors). I've been fortunate that I'm mostly working on projects where I'm the sole front end developer and I get to dictate all of the technology decisions, and building something from the ground up is very gratifying, even if you have to work in a soul sucking office park in the middle of the suburbs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have been a freelancer for 24 years, and had this problem. Here's how I solved it. I incorporated my business, and I am an employee. My corporation pays me a stable amount, so I'm not worried. When I put the business hat on, I make sure I project the yearly income and have a generous salary fund ( 6 months). No worries anymore, the most I have been without work has been 3months. If at the of the year I haven't spent my salary fund, i have extra money. Another truth one must acknowledge is that its not about how much you make , its how much you spend. When you have financial discipline the mind is free.

<comment><USER29> That sounds interesting. What are the tax implications of such a setup?

<comment><USER28> It's a common setup in Canada. I paid corporation tax once for money left over in the company account, but that is just cost of doing business for me. Once I have the 6 months of salaries, I just roll it over year over year with no more tax to pay. Salary is taxed as regular income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best way to freelance that I know of for stability, low stress, and freedom is to get a regular ~10 hour a week gig doing remote contract development. Change $100/hr+. No hustling really required after you find them since in my experience they want you to stay on for the long haul.

There are a lot of very small companies with less than 10 people in them quietly making good money that have a software system that doesn't need a full time developer. Or, because they can't afford a large team, are willing to hire a few developers part time to reduce the risk of one single person being the sole linchpin for the entire business.

I see a lot of people around here asking "How do I get more clients?" In the course of 8 years of freelancing, I've only had around 10 clients total because most of them have been in an arrangement like this, and they stay for a long time. I've often been the one to end the relationship for it not being a good fit for me, not them running out of money or firing me. They don't come very often, but when they do, they usually stick.

If I had to do the Upwork hustle, I'd have probably quit a long time ago. This seems to not be as true for other professions like design/copywriting/music/etc, but full time salaried development just pays too well to be a freelancer unless you want freedom. Otherwise it's just crappy employment with fewer benefits.

For a good number of years I lived in rural Indiana and worked 10 hours a week for one client at $90/hr and made plenty to live on for just myself. Now I'm working to earn more than that, but with this model it's often a matter of scaling up or down the number of clients you have.

Freelancing gives you the ability to work less than 40 hours a week, which gives you leverage over your time to create the life for yourself that you want. It's stupidly hard to start a SaaS app with a full time job, but freelancing can sustain you on 20 hours a week and then the rest of the time can be spend doing whatever you want (just work less, start a business without stress, travel, etc).

</comment><comment><USER30> "If we're already in the time-is-money mindset, we can reframe our leisure time as something that enables us to be more productive in the future,"

It's a bummer that we've gotten to a point that in order to relax and enjoy time off we need to somehow frame it as "productive". I think it speaks to something deeper.

<comment><USER7> This mindset is so hard to get away from. Still working on it myself as a freelancer of 8 years. I'm starting to think that happiness, work/life balance, and relaxation are all basically a mindset shift that has to be consciously taken.

As my friend recently said, "When I work, I'm typing text into a text box. When I play, I'm also typing text into a text box. What's the difference?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> My approach so far is to:

(a) charge a high rate

(b) preferably charge for projects or

(c) definitely only charge at full day granularity

(d) leave some slack in the accounting, favouring the client

The thing is that the client is not really paying you for your time, they are paying you for the value you can deliver. Time is a very rough analog, but so far seems the best that we can do and actually agree to.

So the above leaves the time-based accounting in place, but de-emphasises it as much as possible.

<comment><USER32> I do roughly the same, and besides charging a high rate, I usually do only one project at the time for 2 - 6 months. With my clients I make a deal about my daily rate * number of days per week I will be working. I never charge more than that, except when I do a lot more work and then I communicate it in advance (or I foresee that the extra work is going over the amount of hours we agreed upon).

This is not applicable to every freelance job off course, but if you have the luxury of being able to charge a higher rate, you can make a decent living and enjoy your free time.

For years I was employed and worked 40-50 or more hours per week. I was devastating for my work/life balance, effectiveness at work and my happiness. Since I started freelancing a year and a half ago, I'm happier, work less and earn more. I spend more time with my kids and I am really (also mentally) present. I'm also in better shape (training for a marathon currently), and I'm more effective at work.

<comment><USER33> Would you guys mind speaking a little on your path from salary to freelance? I want to make the jump but it seems scary and I don't really have anyone to talk to about it? How are you guys finding work?

<comment><USER34> First step, don't call yourself a freelancer, cuz you don't work for free. The word has connotations of "temp". A freelancer is someone you bring in for a 3 week stint. A contractor or consultant is someone you bring in for a longer project. It doesn't matter that these are all basically the same person, but perception matters.

Always make the relationship a business to business one. Don't get stuck being the "hired hand". Just doing the job isn't enough, always provide more value, get involved in their biz if you can. Don't work from home, work on site, "out of sight out of mind" is a thing, and is the fastest way for a client to see you as expendable.

The best way to find work is to build a network. The best way to build a network is to get a gig with a bunch of other contractors at it. Then work hard, and be pleasant to work with. Once that gig dries up, and all those other contractors go out to find new gigs, if they liked you, they'll recommend you for openings at another client. Rinse and repeat.

I got very lucky in that my first contract was a 6 month contract on a team of 15 other contractors (at a F500 company). That 6 months turned into a year and when the money ran out, I had a network of 15 other people to lean on. Since then I've never had to look for a gig, they've all come to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It cuts both ways. As the author says, if you allow yourself to worry about every minute not working, you'll be mentally drained in no time.

On the flip side: Having my time tied to an hourly (actually daily) rate has saved me countless hours chasing things that weren't worth my time. Things like waiting in line for deals on electronics, or spending 5 mins driving around to find the cheapest gas or place to eat. 5 mins @ $100/hour is $8.33, far more than I'd save by spending time on it.

Even at $10/hour, the time I used to spend trying to save a buck was pretty wasteful.

</comment><comment><USER36> The whole reason I got into freelancing was to take 3-6 months off a year. Lighten up people, you're gonna be dead soon and absolutely nobody is going to care about how many times you committed to github.

</comment><comment><USER37> The problem described by the OP largely goes away when you stop charging by the hour.

<comment><USER38> Exactly. All you need to do is charge on 'per project basis'. But it's fare to say that not all freelancer can do this. There isn't really such thing as a 'freelancer'. A coder, a writer, a designer, a virtual assistant - these are entirely different lines of work.

<comment><USER39> It is better if you can charge on a 'per project basis' but only if you have spent time up front working on an accurate estimate and, more importantly, built in significant contingency into your price.

Often though this up front time working on an estimate can end up being for free, an opportunity cost really, if you don't win the project.

<comment><USER40> > Often though this up front time working on an estimate can end up being for > free, an opportunity cost really, if you don't win the project.

Charge for a discovery phase. Your requirements gathering skills and planning for what to build have very significant value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am a "freelancer". I have discovered that billing by the hour is the worst idea. It creates the inherent conflict. Clients start resenting how much time it took you, etc. Instead always bill per job, unless impossible to estimate. Determine value acceptable to you and the client. Agree on lump sum and let chip fall where they may. Sometimes client wins, sometimes you win, in the end it all events out. More importantly you build a base for the next job where everyone agrees to acceptable fixed fee parameters and you can correct the fee estimate. Hourly billing is really wrong in my opinion.

<comment><USER42> Fixed fee is great as long as the scope is limited.

Whenever I've hired companies to do stuff on a fixed fee basis, they typically lose due to unforseen circumstances.

<comment><USER43> One of my clients said the other day: "When working with a fixed fee there's always 1 party that 'loses'". I tend to agree, either it ends up more work than expected (freelancer loses), or (although in your experience that's less common) the freelancer learned from previous mistakes and overcharges.

In addition, the upfront cost of specifying the job is also lost. This is not always trivial to 0do upfront, as both the world, insights, etc change over time (hence many have moved away from the waterfall approach).

<comment><USER42> The biggest thing is that flat rate doesn't do is anticipate risk. If through nobody's ill intent a task takes 5x longer or 5x less, it's all swallowed up by the flat rate.

That's a feature for a productized service.

It also works for well-scoped tasks. I wouldn't pay someone by the hour to cut the grass.

<comment><USER41> On assumes that there is always room for additional services. And unforeseen conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> When I was freelancing a bit over a decade ago I was making more than most people my age I knew at the time. My natural reaction was to try scale that, so I hired folks to do the work _for_ and _with_ me... that is when I learned first hand how difficult it is to scale a services-based business.

However, folks much smarter than me taught me another thing. True wealth is created when you reach a point where you are making money while you are sleeping - which is exactly the _opposite_ of what I was stressing about ("I only make money when I am charging for my time"). Ironic.

<comment><USER45> "True wealth" has many meanings in life, not only finance. When you substitute all of life for finance, its a trap.

<comment><USER44> Of course if you see it in a macro sense you are right. My comment was within the context of this article:

My point was that [Time worked == money generation] is exactly the opposite way of looking at things.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex This is something multiple clients of mine have told me.

They were straight up about letting me know, hiring me is great for them because they can make a crap ton of income once the product is completed.

That's the nature of things though. You make money the most money by owning things that make money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> For me it is exactly the opposit.

I started freelancing, because I wanted freedom over my time.

While I probably undercharged by a huge margin in the beginning, at least I only worked when, where and how much I wanted.

I still made 20% more than with my last employment job, so I didn't really notice.

</comment><comment><USER47> You can't set a price tag on your time, it's way to valuable in the sense of you can't buy it back.

Spent your time wisely. You are going to die, and if you spent most of your prime time speculating in making more money, you never understood life.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm on salary, but I do feel similar pressure as well. Even though I'm being paid more than decently I'm still looking for additional gigs, but what is hardest on me is the feeling that I'm loosing time and a lot of money if I do not manage my side projects everyday and I do not grow constantly even though my main side thing is not designed to bring me any money I feel really bad when I'm slacking.

</comment><comment><USER10> For those of us out there doing consulting work and charging hourly - <USER2> encourage you to check out the Jonathan Stark podcast "Ditching Hourly"[0] and also the "2 bobs"[1] podcast with Blair Ens and David C Baker.

Both talk extensively about pricing work on either "value" (best option) or a fall back to pricing "outputs" (what gets delivered) ..and they try to get you out of charging by the hour - worst case charge by "blocks of time" (ex 2 week block of time minimum).

To be clear - getting clients out of the mindset of charging by the hour is _extremely difficult_ ..all the back of the envelope math client will do in their head results in an hourly value.

[0] [https://www.ditchinghourly.com/](https://www.ditchinghourly.com/)

[1] [https://2bobs.com/](https://2bobs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER49> _As the economy moves away from traditional salaried jobs and toward contract gigs, more and more people are starting to feel like I did. Other studies found that billing by the hour — no matter how much people charged — compounded the tendency to view time and money as one and the same. Those who did so were less likely to take pleasure in leisure activities, because they were too preoccupied by the opportunity cost of their time. Again, these trends were similar across income levels._

Blah, blah, blah, the article continues. Look, freelancers have transparency. FTEs get paid that paycheck twice a month, or once in some places, but when they sign the offer letter, it never -- in the US and the UK -- really matters how many hours you work. In both places, you'll simply be expected to be suddenly put on an on-call rotation a few months after you start, you discover that the shoddy release happens Tuesday nights from 11p to 2a, despite asking three times in interviews, etc. In some places, you get 'PTO', which means if you get sick, you need to cancel your vacation which comes out of the same pool. In one place I worked, a retail brokerage with a vicious on call week, you had 15 days of PTO, which included sick time. Got the flu? Oops, no Caribbean vacation for you, sucker. We had to work weekends and holidays, due to releases and on call, with no comp time.

Even more importantly, my 40 hrs is transparent as a freelancer while your 45,50+ because you want that promotion or bonus isn't paid. But you're "passionate about technology", right? That's what you tell yourself.

That's not isolated. I have a long career of observing that, and my sucker friends who say, it's part of the job, this that and the other.

As a freelancer I make 30 pct to 50 pct more than FTE, I KNOW they want me there because they'd get rid of me if they didn't, and I'm hedged against 'oh we need you to be available, that should be obvious when you joined' entitlement.

I freelance if I can, do FT when I must.

<comment><USER50> > your 45,50+ because you want that promotion or bonus isn't paid.

Made me think of : "The new proletarian sells his labour power in order to consume. When he's not flogging himself to death to get promoted in the labour hierarchy, he's being persuaded to buy himself objects to distinguish himself in the social hierarchy."

[http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/31](http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/31)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> My working life changed recently after leaving my last role just before Christmas. I've done freelancing on and off for a few years and I just feel like the whole process of freelancing is fragmented and broken.

I've started digging into the issues others are facing too, and at the expense of getting berated for highjacking a thread, I'd be keen to hear what problems others have in this area? I put together a little survey here: [https://adamfarah.typeform.com/to/abznqs](https://adamfarah.typeform.com/to/abznqs)

</comment><comment><USER52> I did freelance work for about 2 years and I didn't feel at all like the author.

To me associating time with money was helpful, but I wasn't thinking on it 24/7\. I know that when I feel tired, the most productive thing to do is have some leisure time or simply go to sleep.

To me having a price tag on my time was helpful deciding what was worth waiting for. Trivial things like waiting for a bus or taking taxi, cooking vs take out, etc.

I guess it mostly depends on your priorities and how much money you make. People living on the day or the week maybe don't have the luxury to relax

</comment><comment><USER53> I have this same issue but instead of money I feel like I'm wasting time because I could be learning and improving my professional knowledge. I wonder if that's also unhealthy.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've always said I could never be hourly (or freelance) because I'd never take a vacation; instead I'd just be thinking about how much money I was losing. Same would apply if I had a work arrangement where I (say) got 3 weeks of PTO but arranged for enough extra pay to cover a 4th week of vacation "unpaid".

I'm sure if I had enough in the bank, and was on a quasi-sabbatical or quasi- retirement, I could view extra freelance income as the "cherry on top", but in terms of money to pay the bills, it would be incredibly hard.

I appreciated the author's comments on paying for time saving things that make you happier (I HATE doing the laundry, but we cook almost every day), as well as the comment about dog walking.

I think this just means you have to find the joy in things you choose to do with your time. For example, I once mentioned that I feel I don't find enough time for hobbies, but a friend mentioned cooking dinner every night, working out, and a few other things that are part of my daily "routine" as things that I choose to do, things that are "productive", but in a way that we don't typically give ourselves credit for. In other words, recognize how you are spending your time, give yourself credit for the good things you do, don't take them for granted; not everyone does those things.

</comment><comment><USER55> Attaching a dollar value to time is productive.

I do see the point though. I'm on a very inefficient board of a financially struggling non-profit. And I keep doing the math of "If we could meet for 1 hour instead of 3, the money saved by the board would pay for the deficit." I squirm every time we spend thousands of dollars of time on fifty or a hundred dollar items. So the OP does have a point that's there's a downside in terms of frustration.

</comment><comment><USER56> I sucessfully have been doing this for more than seven years: the trick is decent but fair pricing per time unit; also you have to budget and calculate a buffer _realistically_. Yes, you also need downtime and if you are stressing about that you are most likely billing too low or are simply too anxious/greedy (all things that can be fixed).

Enjoy the freedom, at last that's what you have optimized for.

</comment><comment><USER57> I have the feeling as the author while I charged hourly rates. I see a tendency that more freelancers start getting money from a fixed price for a project. It helps to charge more and less work. Also, it is easier to get relaxed. You know when you should finish a project.

I shared here one research about the hourly rate of freelance developers [1]. They calculated that right now, it's about $68 of the US JavaScript freelancer. But I assume that American freelancers charge more. Perhaps, some freelancers charge fixed prices. That's why the rate is lower.

Thinking about time equals money really disturbs your life. You have to live for enjoying but not for getting money every minute.

As a lifehack, early I included my vacation/sick/holiday days to calculate my hourly rate. It helps me to have planned vacations and some days to sick without any thoughts about doing a job.

[1] [https://periodix.net/blog/which-developers-earn-more- corpora...](https://periodix.net/blog/which-developers-earn-more-corporate-vs- freelance/)

</comment><comment><USER58> I've been freelancing my entire life. I feel this pain.

I don't think there's much advantage in trying to sort out work vs. life time. The problem is that by stating it this way, it always makes it into some kind of conflict. In fact, if your job and your life are so dissimilar that the concepts can't coexist in your mind, you have an additional problem not related to billing.

What _might_ work is a kind of reverse budget. Decide how many hours you are willing to bill every week/month/quarter and stick to it. You can (and should) spend your time however you think it will help you as a person, but by limiting the amount of time you're willing to put other people's interest first, you sort out a lot of ethical conflicts that otherwise you might fall into.

I know that's easier said than done, especially when you're starting out. I remember many years of billing like a banshee.

I missed my oldest kids growing up. I regret that strategy. Like so many things in life, some folks end up figuring it out by the time it doesn't matter anymore.

</comment><comment><USER59> _People who attach dollar signs to their time — or "value time like money" — tend to be overwhelmingly less happy than those who don't, because their nonworking hours suddenly seem less important. "Free" time gets tainted with guilt because there's a cost associated with it._

Could this be a result of people not attaching a _high enough_ dollar amount to their time?

I tend to see consulting (described as "freelancing" in the article) as exchanging a little bit of work time for a lot of play time. It just plain pays so much compared to a salaried gig that you can buy yourself the better part of a _year_ of downtime with just a few months' work.

So yes, the article is right that I did sometimes think of time in terms of money and vice versa. But usually in terms of "how many seconds would I need to work to afford this cheeseburger", rather than the article's anxiety about how much my vacation is costing me.

Downtime/vacation is the explicit goal of the exercise.

</comment><comment><USER60> I value my freedom. Freelancing, which I've done off and on, is the best lifestyle I've experienced. I've never once felt bad about not working on my off-time. Rather, I've noticed that while freelancing, I'm able to have so much more quality personal time than I can have when I'm working a traditional job.

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm a contractor, it's sometimes tempting to think this way for me too. Particularly when it comes to vacation days.

But then you have to remember you are charging more because you need to build this in. Maybe you can work those extra five days instead of taking a week's vacation, but then you're going to burn out sooner.

</comment><comment><USER62> Indeed, as the article describes, it's not so much the stress of freelancing as the particular stress of billing by the hour.

While I/my shop nominally have billable hour rates, some time ago it evolved into projects that are estimated as the rate of billable hours plus materials, but billed on a per-project basis. The project is due for the agreed amount, whether I spend the planned number of hours, twice that, or half that.

This is decidedly less stressful for both me and the client.

I still have the stress of meeting the schedule deadlines, but I no longer feel that stress described in the article of 'wasting' minutes I'm not productive. If I take a break, it may feel that the schedule is slipping, but it doesn't feel like losing an irreplaceable opportunity cost to earn $x in that 0.2 hours.

</comment><comment><USER63> I have been freelancing for more than 10 years and I don't share these feelings at all. I don't know how to explain the discrepancy. There was a period of about half a year when I voluntarily worked just two days a week, while my client was happy to have me full time. I do take vacations, at least a month every year. I never work on the weekends.

I think the most interesting part of the article is this:

"While time versus money anxiety may be more acute for freelancers, we aren't the only ones who struggle with it."

It seems that the time anxiety is not something unique to freelancing but rather a symptom of a broader problem with our culture/economy/politics where business/market plays ever more central role in our lives.

</comment><comment><USER64> This slightly ignores how hourly rates are advantageous to they buyer, and when you sell by outcome, you compete against all hourly people, who necessarily have similar ballpark skills and less negotiation ability.

Clients will often salami slice work to pay %10-20 on your quote. It is all about leverage (batna). Development work is different than say, security consulting or other design and analysis work, as it's all in the findings.

I recommend building a "Matthew Effect," where you have consistent demand independent of price or rate so that you can determine the value of a project objectively. It matters less that your rate is down than being vulnerable to a gap in demand. That gap returns you to wage slavery.

<comment><USER8> For most freelancers "consistent demand" is the hard part. I found it easier to price a service once you can estimate the type of value it will provide. For development work this is probably hard to do, but with experience and enough poking around you can learn the type of value your work provides. It helps if you can get down to the core details such as how much the product is currently earning, and how much your work will contribute. At that point it becomes much easier to sell yourself because when presented with a $ cost and a $$ profit, it becomes really clear that it practically doesn't matter what you charge because the returns are on-going whereas your work is one time. If I made a business $2 mil additional revenue, all of a sudden a 5% investment doesn't seem as hard to swallow. Coincidentally, charging a high rate leaves less of a gap, especially once you figure out your typical gaps and when they happen and budget appropriately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I did freelance for about 4 months five years ago, and I felt that this mindset became really hard to avoid. I would end up waking up at around 7AM, start working at 7:15am, take a 15 minute break to make a sandwich for lunch, then work until 10pm.

Doing this long enough gets really depressing, and I found it difficult enough to "turn off" that I ended up working a 9am-6am regular job again.

</comment><comment><USER66> I have to disagree with the premise of the article. Note: I've been freelancing / self-employed since 2010.

If anything, knowing that every minute can be transformed into cash has a profound _positive_ psycological affect. You _should_ question how to spend your time. Time is, after all, your most valuable resource. It shouldn't be anathema to be protective of it.

<comment><USER67> > _If anything, knowing that every minute can be transformed into cash has a > profound positive psycological affect._

It makes me think of it like a video game. I can choose when and how much I want to spend in fun stuff and how much on "grinding."

<comment><USER66> > _It makes me think of it like a video game. I can choose when and how much I > want to spend in fun stuff and how much on "grinding."_

Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Done both.

Hated freelancing enough that it nearly made me hate programming (something I've loved for 31 years).

I'm happy as a high autonomy employee.

</comment><comment><USER69> We thought of life having a serious purpose, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you're dead. But we missed the point the whole way. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played. -Alan Watts

</comment><comment><USER70> " _People who attach dollar signs to their time — or "value time like money" — tend to be overwhelmingly less happy than those who don't, because their nonworking hours suddenly seem less important. "Free" time gets tainted with guilt because there's a cost associated with it._ "

Of course this comes from a psychology department, where people get accredited to start their own state-licensed soma dispensaries.

Is the purpose of life really to "be happy"?

When I have worked, and have charged for my time--regardless of the billing unit--I may not have been happy while doing the work, but have--far more often than not--been very proud of the result. Value was created for both the customer and myself, and the experience from each project is ammo in the clip toward the next win. And even when the result has been disappointing--still even more ammo in the clip.

Or, I could get my "happy" from Netflix and quartely trips to Disney World, then visit the psychiatrist to get my Zoloft prescription to deaden that inner-voice mocking me for wasting the hours that we only get so many of.

<comment><USER71> You're reading way more into that quote than what it actually says. "Happiness" in this context is not in-the-moment satisfaction of primal urges, it's about how you feel about your life in general, which includes what you describe as pride in your work.

<comment><USER70> Have you read the paper they linked to? How did it define "happiness"? How did it measure "happiness"? From the paper, "happiness" can be read very broadly.

I chose to read it the way that the average person I know would read it, and then I chose to reject that.

edit: And pride of workmanship is not the same thing as happiness. There have been a couple jobs where I've been rather unhappy about helping particular people out, while still being proud of how I did it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Does anyone have recommendations for what I can read to get started freelancing? I had a very successful religious mission, so I know I have "sales" skills, and I'm a pretty good software engineer, but I feel like I spin my wheels when I look for freelance clients.

<comment><USER7> My business skills awakening was started when I discovered Kai Davis and Nick Disabato's podcast Make Money Online:

[https://makemoneyonline.exposed/](https://makemoneyonline.exposed/)

Simultaneously hilarious and incredibly valuable information I had never before heard. The people in the Kai Davis sphere of influence are all pretty helpful for freelancers and consultants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> The ultimate constantly limited resource in life is time. So one should maximize most of the value out of it. Money is just one possible means toward that goal. Unfortunately, it is easy to get so attached to it, that the goal is easily forgotten...

</comment><comment><USER74> It is your choice. You are in charge and freelancing gives you the opportunity to bill _less_ and leave space to other important things in your life for which a regular job would compete. Family time, sports, hobbies, learning new things, etc.

</comment><comment><USER75> I have a different view. Add another column to your ledger labelled 'living a life'. Value every hour in that column above your rack rate for work. Now the whole equation changes; all the motivations change.

</comment><comment><USER76> I highly recommend Jonathan Stark's Ditching Hourly podcast: [https://www.ditchinghourly.com/](https://www.ditchinghourly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER77> As a freelancer I find working-time the least stressful and the time between jobs the truly stressful part. Work is easy, not knowing when the work and money will come is what kills me.

</comment><comment><USER78> My initial thought is that if you worry about losing money on a micro level you aren't charging enough for your time. I actually feel like I can work about 50% time and be just fine.

</comment><comment><USER79> Now consider the new "gig economy". Usually staffed with people who are in need of money more than software developers. Their guilt has got to be much worse.

</comment><comment><USER80> Work to live, don't live to work.

That is, I believe, an accurate summary of the article.

</comment><comment> q-base Freelancer here. This does not ring true for me. I can see a causation between freelancing and vacation. Vacations "seem" more expensive as they are both a cost and a period of lost income.

But all those existential worries looks like an underlying issue with the person itself, more than freelancing in general. Freelancing may enhance it. But if you are more angry, less social and hence less happy, then no matter what job you are in - you should probably consider a change.

<comment><USER81> I almost always feel irritated when booking a vacation for this reason. So many days of lost income! But the funny thing at the same time is - I really need vacations and always feel better after them. Also the same thing if I need to do something during office hours (like a doctor appointment).

<comment> q-base Yes, but it just underscores the point of how important it is to not lifestyle inflate. I am now coming to a point where I do not feel like I really need the money more than the vacation. Sure it is lost income, but will it really change my life as opposed to the time off - properly not :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I tried freelancing for a while but it really didn't make economic sense.

there are so many other ways to make money that unless you absolutely enjoy getting reamed by scope creeps and coding, freelancing is definitely not it.

Given, there's not much an engineer can do.</comment>


Looking Back: WWIII Remembered - <AUTHOR> https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2019/looking-back-wwiii-remembered/ <comment><USER2> 2029?

Nah. It will happen long before that. Arithmetically, China will surpass US by about 2025. It will be too late for the US to try to prevent that, if it waits until 2025. The US must act much sooner than that to ensure success in preventing China from becoming 'Top Dog'.

That is why I estimated several years ago that the US would have to start the 'Thucydides China-KnockDown War' by Spring-Summer 2020 at the latest. I haven't seen or read much recently to suggest that my original 'Spring-Summer 2020' estimate is very wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awkward future-history fan fiction. There's better ways to get this warning and details about how it might unfold.

I recommend On China, World Order, and Destined for War.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some security and privacy tips when creating a website? - <AUTHOR> I will be starting with mainly blog-like content. Perhaps some stories with interactive elements.<p>As the website owner, how do I ensure my own privacy? Also, how do I minimize tracking of visitors while getting some form of analytics? Any security tips are welcome too. <comment><USER2> > As the website owner, how do I ensure my own privacy?

Don't attract any lawsuits. (These can unmask the site registration.)

Don't use tools that might embed PII (eg your name, or some software ID traceable to you) into the rendered html.

Don't write in an idiosyncratic style.

Don't post content in the same "working hours" all the time. Spread it out widely.

etc.

> Also, how do I minimize tracking of visitors while getting some form of > analytics?

1\. Google Analytics does not track users across unrelated sites.

2\. Use netlify.

3\. Host the server yourself.

#1 and #2 compromise your privacy as google or netlify will know who you are. #3, to do it right, you have to use fringe providers that accept payment in bitcoin.

> Any security tips are welcome too.

Hire a consultant for security & privacy. We're past the age of amateur DIY.

<comment><USER3> > Google Analytics does not track users across unrelated sites.

Do you really think that creepy Google will just say no to the free data? Why would they even give out GA for free to begin with then?

It's like trusting an alcoholic with guarding a warehouse full of bottles at night. Actually it's worse, because at least with the bottles you can count them all given enough time, where as creepy G can use the data in a plausibly- deniable way you wouldn't be able to confirm for sure without looking at their code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Also, how do I minimize tracking of visitors while getting some form of > analytics?

[https://matomo.org/](https://matomo.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's your threat model? Are you looking to hide from average people or governments? What's the worst that can happen if you are discovered?

> how do I minimize tracking of visitors while getting some form of analytics

Server logs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Dont use any plugins from FB, google etc.</comment>


Snipt: Code snippets for teams - <AUTHOR> https://snipt.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> This has been my project since 2009, but reposting as I've recently refocused our efforts on code snippets specifically for teams. Please let me know if you have any questions!</comment>


Germany Cries Foul over Berlin-Bound Masks Diverted to U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-cries-foul-over-berlin-bound-masks-diverted-to-u-s-11585943440 <comment><USER2> Interesting, quoting from the article..

3M said it "has no evidence to suggest 3M products have been seized. 3M has no record of any order of respirators from China for the Berlin police. We cannot speculate where this report originated."

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a surge in support for economic nationalism due to this pandemic citing lack of medical supplies as the reason.

However while if everyone had their own factory meeting their own regular needs that would mean everyone gets a fairer share at the moment. It wouldn't mean everyone gets 100% of their needs, because demand is through the roof. (Yes there is some scaling up that could be done, but point still stands).

It also doesn't seem an automatic given that while some industries should be viewed as critical for security reasons, that _all_ industries must be local.

It seems there's need for much more nuance to this. Countries need better cooperative systems for handling such events as part of negotiating trade treaties. A kind of economic NATO (for a probably terrible analogy).

<comment><USER4> Right. You don't want a standing army to address every potential pandemic or other catastrophe. You DO want the ability to repurpose and scale up existing production resources to address face the surprise. You would want to develop competency in _massive_ scaling rather than just _some_ scaling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kettle meet pot [https://www.thelocal.com/20200309/germany-blocks- protective-...](https://www.thelocal.com/20200309/germany-blocks-protective- masks-headed-for-switzerland)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's sort of every country for themselves right now.

<comment><USER7> Is that a normative or descriptive statement?

<comment><USER6> Normative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No paywall: [https://archive.is/ejcpk](https://archive.is/ejcpk)

</comment><comment><USER9> It wasn't diverted, it was stolen. They were goods paid for by Germany, and then stolen from the plane during a layover.

<comment><USER10> Source?

The real issue is the contract language used by the EU and the member governments specify "pay on delivery" in which the receiving agency will not accept an invoice until the goods are received and inspected as well as 60 to 90 day terms being normal. The EU members are very slow with this acceptance (2 weeks is not abnormal) and combined with the longer payment terms you are looking at 10 to 12 weeks to get paid.

In the US the governments will accept contracts "FOB" which means when the product is ready to ship from the manufacturer the buyer will accept the invoice. Terms tend to be 30 days but 15 is also possible. Plus you tend to get paid on time.

So in a global market with demand the US will always be a preferred customer. They will pay, on average, 6 to 8 weeks faster.

Cash is king in todays world and the EU needs to get used to this or they are going to continue to see such challenges.</comment></comment>


The Essence of Blogging, A UI Experiment Inspired by Svbtle - <AUTHOR> http://staydecent.ca/bits/essence-of-blogging/ <comment><USER2> It's amazing how everyone is under the notion that Dustin coined the concept of simplistic blogging with a minimalist UI! Hilarity ensues for days...

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure how much generalizing you are doing. But, I was quite literally inspired by the exact words Dustin wrote: "essence of blogging" as well as the recent unveiling of his UI. I don't think I ever claimed he coined anything.

<comment><USER2> I'm simply generalising here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amazing how fast the original idea has evolved. There are now at least three versions being simultaneously developed and two of them didn't even exist a day ago.

<comment><USER4> Original? Isn't this basically Ryan Tomayko's "Administrative Debris" all over again?

<http://tomayko.com/writings/administrative-debris>

<comment><USER5> The commenter meant original as in the original idea that sparked these subsequent, similar attempts at simplifying blogging, and experimenting with finding and capturing its essence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fantastic work. Much more in tune with what ought to be the spirit of hacking! Building, growing, and innovating on each others' work.

Are you going to separate this interface into its own git repo or fold it into Gum?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I think that's a great idea (to separate the repo). I was thinking about how to use this UI for multiple popular blogging platforms (Mainly WordPress and static generators).

Could you provide any help in naming the UI repo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"I've only tested it on Chrome."_

...so I thought I'd test a few more browsers:

       * Firefox 11 - Works perfectly (I guess that's to be expected)
       * Opera 11.61 - the bottom bar doesn't appear.
       * TouchPad browser (WebKit-based) - Works great!

If anyone can verify other browsers (like IE?), I bet the author would appreciate it.

<comment><USER8> > If anyone can verify other browsers (like IE?), I bet the author would > appreciate it.

Chrome v19.0.1077.3 on OS X (latest dev build) doesn't show the bottom bar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You'd better fix the remote inclusion and be safe. This site is _Hacker_ News, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER10> Honestly I believe that this is the proper way of stealing an idea, just like Picasso once taught us...

You took the concept and tried to developed it even further. Successfully or not, I can praise this, unlike the other ripoff...

<comment><USER11> I concur!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Love it!

But I cant paste images into the body of the blog.

Support for that would make it perfect.

Actually - put explicit IMGUR support in there with a tool that allows me to simply paste the imgur link...

<comment><USER13> drag and drop image would be awesome!

<comment><USER7> Second that!

(If the author is reading...) Since you're using jQuery for the interface, this plugin might be perfect:

<https://github.com/weixiyen/jquery-filedrop>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> also, check out the quora thread on this subject:

<http://www.quora.com/Technology/What-is-Svbtle-all-about>

</comment><comment><USER14> Dustin's Svbtle is really inspirational!

</comment><comment><USER15> This is why Dustin originally shared his ideas.</comment>


A Theorized Conversation Between AIs (from "The Terminal Man", Chrichton, 1972) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brokenfunction.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/georgevsmartha.html <comment><AUTHOR> The chapter text, for context:

[http://www.rednovels.net/book/The_Terminal_Man/index_10.html](http://www.rednovels.net/book/The_Terminal_Man/index_10.html)

"Saint George had no background for eggplants. But he disliked cucumbers and bananas..."</comment>


Germany looks to step up coal exit timetable - <AUTHOR> https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/germany-looks-step-coal-exit-timetable-doc-1nr6j71 <comment><USER2> This seems nearly unachievable--and will punishingly expensive--if they don't reverse their nuclear phase-out.

<comment><USER3> I know this isn't a very popular opinion, but I've always thought that was a hugely stupid idea in the first place. Instead of shutting down nuclear power plants, we should have doubled down on them and spent more money on research to make them safer (as I understand it, there's still many unexplored concepts to make nuclear power much safer and reduce nuclear waste) and more efficient.

The sad truth is, that decision was largely driven by uninformed and emotional reactions to a single event on the other side of the world. Many people think a nuclear reactor can blow up like an atomic bomb, probably from movies and games as well as just assuming everything "nuclear" is inherently explosive and dangerous.

<comment><USER4> >I know this isn't a very popular opinion, but I've always thought that was a hugely stupid idea in the first place. Instead of shutting down nuclear power plants, we should have doubled down on them and spent more money on research to make them safer (as I understand it, there's still many unexplored concepts to make nuclear power much safer and reduce nuclear waste) and more efficient.

It's a very common opinion among people who have researched this significantly, but not all that common in the general population, sadly.

<comment><USER2> I make my living off of the splitting of atoms, so the opinions I hear are not reflective of the broader population. It's always interesting to hear what people in the wider-world think. A big part of the perception problem, I think, is that people don't really spend a lot of time to do significant research about how power is made. This is understandable--the power industry is kind of setup to keep the generation side hidden (both physically and figuratively). All most people really need to know is that when they plug it in to the wall, electricity will flow from somewhere and their vacuum (or whatever) will work. I suppose that's something that needs to change.

I also wish it were more practical for interested people to tour operating nuclear power plants. They're amazing feats of engineering and operations--and that's very evident everywhere you look at most plants--but they're not so easy to visit for most people.

<comment><USER5> > They're amazing feats of engineering and operations [...] but they're not so > easy to visit for most people.

Why is that knowledge important for a risk analysis?

Also, renewable power plants of all types (wind, solar, water, etc.) are also amazing feats of engineering. So I don't see this impacting the argument in any particular direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is easy and only a political issue, because of the coal workers, but just do like England and switch to fossil gas, it will be more useful with intermittent wind and solar, but only moderately helpful for CO2/CH4 emissions, and doesn't lead to deep decarbonation, where the only solution is a major nuclear mix, or more realistically for Germany with major renewable load the use of batteries storage for daily intermittency and hydrogen in salt caverns for seasonal intermittency.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seemed really expensive in the beginning, but now even more so, given they'll do it 5 years faster. I wonder if the investment pays off as it's implemented. Or does it pay off at all? It's really cheaper to move from coal to other ways of producing electricity? I'm asking about the current state of things because I'm sure in the future it'll be cheaper and cheaper

<comment><USER8> it's not expensive considering the alternative is we all die in a giant fireball.

edit: Also currently on HN frontpage is "Climate threats now dominate long- term risks, survey of global leaders finds" so maybe adverting that is worth the cost.

<comment><USER9> > we all die in a giant fireball.

Hyperbole like that will only lead to the rest of your arguments getting ignored. Even Venus, with its runaway greenhouse effect, is not a "giant fireball" (we even have pictures of its surface).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do they have a reliable and renewable replacement for baseload generation?

Nuclear would be ideal but that has been ruled out for political reasons.

<comment> barry-cotter At worst they can import electricity from France which has plenty of nuclear power.

<comment><USER11> France will not have plenty of nuclear power to spare, many reactors are old and there is no plan to build more of them. In a few decades most reactors will have to shutdown because these things don't live forever.

<comment> Brave-Steak They don't even have enough spare capacity now. I think I remember reading that when peak loads were particularly high recently, they had to import power from Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Didn't they opened a new coal plant? [https://climatechangenews.com/2020/01/09/wont-let-germany- bu...](https://climatechangenews.com/2020/01/09/wont-let-germany-build-new- coal-power-plant/)

<comment><USER5> Not yet, but Datteln 4 (i.e. the fourth block in the Datteln power plant) is set to open soon. The operator has committed to taking blocks 1-3 offline and argues that the new block will be more efficient than the old ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like they'll still be on coal when most of the world will be moving off it.

Just because there's a timetable for it still makes it backward (including the self-decided avoidance of Nuclear) to hang on so long.

<comment><USER14> > Looks like they'll still be on coal when most of the world will be moving > off it.

That's only true if most of the coal-using world excludes the 2.7 billion people living in China and India, neither of which have any plans to phase out coal at all. The US is also only gradually phasing out coal, it'll still be a major coal energy producer 20 years from now (probably 15% of its power base at that point).

China is very aggressively expanding its coal use - despite using as much coal as the rest of the world combined already. It's presently adding more new coal generation than exists in the entire EU.

<comment><USER15> That is true but I often see this used as a justification to not cut CO2 emissions because the "largest" emitters are growing their emissions. However, it doesn't make sense in terms of fairness because if you only look at current emissions you will not see the whole picture. When talking about fairness you always want to consider the cumulative CO2 [0] emissions that a country has emitted over it's existence and in those charts China is still a relatively small player despite having 1.3 billion people. Roughly 14% of the emissions in China are caused during the manufacturing of exported goods. The country is investing in electric mobility and renewable energy as much as it can. The only thing you can do to prevent an increase in CO2 emissions in China is to invent new technology that reduces CO2 emissions in a cost effective way. That won't happen if you just stick your head in the sand and continue defending obsolete technology.

[0] [https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/10/Cumulative- CO2-tr...](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/10/Cumulative- CO2-treemap.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> At a cost of $45 billion. Or, 6% of the US defense budget. Good for Germany.</comment>


A primer on Python decorators - <AUTHOR> http://www.thumbtack.com/engineering/a-primer-on-python-decorators/ <comment><USER2> There is a small mistake in the post: decorators cannot be arbitrary expressions. Something like @Foo(spam).bar fails with an unhelpful SyntaxError, something that everyone who designs complex APIs will probably encounter at some point. This is a restriction which is in place because Guido didn't like arbitrary expressions as decorators.

<comment><USER3> Oh, Guido. Thanks, I've updated the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks, but my favorite explanation of decorators is still this stackoverflow answer (see the second answer)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/739654/understanding- pyth...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/739654/understanding-python- decorators)

<comment><USER5> Direct link: <http://stackoverflow.com/a/1594484/378825>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I really want to know is how a framework such as Flask uses a decorator for the route. How is the correct function picked for a particular route that is defined against the decorator? (Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding this...)

<comment><USER7> Some might say it's a dangerous abuse of decorators.

Since decorators (generally) run at module load time, any stateful decorator (usually) implies the use of global mutable state, which is (considered by many to be) the root cause of much bad design, convoluted flow, limited reusability and untestability. This is perhaps why most decorators in the standard library are pure (off the top of my head).

This is well beyond the scope of the post but an important and often overlooked point in my opinion.

<comment><USER8> In flask, the app.route decorator mutates the app object. There are no globals necessary. Use of globals to maintain state is an orthogonal issue to use of decorators to update registries.

<comment><USER7> Well either the app object is global, in which case you've got global mutable state, or you're defining your handler functions later than module load time, which is pretty uncommon practice.

<comment><USER9> You can use the return value of some function as a decorator, as a way to avoid global state and tie the decorator to a given instance of your routing object. (I don't know flask, but this isn't a limitation of python)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For some reason, decorators didn't click for me until now. I've been parroting the standard decorator logic (e.g. returning a function) without knowing why.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER11> To authors: I would avoid try except in this code snippet, a simple if else is more explicit. I would also avoid a = b = c statement. One line per statement is better most of the time.

<comment><USER12> The Python community generally advocates an "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" coding style. When faced with a condition of the form "if condition a holds, do b, else c", it's very often a better idea to do "let's try b, and do c in case b fails because condition a didn't hold".

In this case it's better because you can avoid computing an extra hash of the object in cases where it's already a key of the dictionary. This may seem like a silly optimization, but it can very easily add up if you're accessing existing elements most of the time--I once had a bit of code that went 60x faster when I replaced an if-else with a try-except.

In other cases it can be even more beneficial. Say you're opening a file. One approach to avoid errors would be to check if a file exists first. This is error-prone because the file might cease to exist in between the 'if' and the 'open' statements, and now you have no code written to handle the error. Using try-except will ensure that you actually handle the error intelligently.

This isn't to say there's never a good reason to use an 'if' to check things, just that if you can do it in one step instead of two, one is usually better.

<comment><USER13> Out of curiosity, in a situation where you are doing negligible condition testing, is try–except still considered "more performant" than if–else flow control? For some reason (and I'm going to do so reading to get clarity on this point), I have had the silly notion that throwing and handling exceptions can be costly.

<comment><USER14> I don't think the try-except is 'more performant'. At least from the below benchmark test it doesn't seem to be so.

      >>> from timeit import timeit
      >>> timeit(setup='x=dict([(i,i*2) for i in range(10)])',stmt=
           """
              if 20 in x:
                 pass""")

      0.07420943164572691

      >>> timeit(setup='x=dict([(i,i*2) for i in range(10)])',
           stmt="""
                   try:
    		  x[20]
                   except KeyError:
    		  pass""")

      1.1514457843105674

<comment><USER15> I am on my phone and cannot test this, but the try:except: construct is optimised for the non-exceptional path. The latter is probably faster for x[0] than x[20].

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice description. I'd suggest explaining how decorators that accept arguments (i.e. @memcached('some-arg')) work lest it befuddle some beginner. It is not straightforward (the first argument of a decorator is the function being decorated).

</comment><comment><USER17> For those who prefer video, Dave Brondsema gave an excellent talk on decorators and custom context managers at PyCon: <http://pyvideo.org/video/883/decorators-and-context-managers>.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice description of method decorators. Didn't touch on class decorators, or decorators that can decorate both classes _and_ methods (arguably very ugly wrapper functions that return decorators that decorate).

<comment><USER19> Wrote a post a while ago that talks about them - <http://hangar.runway7.net/decorators-wrappers-python>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For an interesting use of Python decorators - event handling - have a look at Decovent on pypi <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Decovent>.

<comment><USER21> This is similar to how Pyglet does things: <http://pyglet.org/doc/programming_guide/hello_world.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great primer, reading it gives a good sense for why the decorator syntax was made and the potential uses. Is this part of a wider series you are running?

<comment><USER3> Thanks! It is indeed the first in a series of Python posts that will be on the Thumbtack engineering blog.

<comment><USER23> Can you please email all future posts to me? ;p firstname.lastname@example.com -- I don't use RSS any more, and I'd hate to miss them.

<comment><USER23> Or just let me use Feedburner to subscribe via email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Love using Python, but still haven't got around to using decorators yet. I probably didn't understand the concept properly until now ...

<comment><USER11> You could say decorators are for the code that you want to put inside a function but that don't really belong to its logic. The memoization example shows that: if you have memoization logic inside the function it works but you should feel that there are two disjoint logics at works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Minor nitpicking:

> unlike in Java, you can also call a class method on an instance

It's possible in Java, too. It's just considered bad practice.

Still, a very nice read!

<comment><USER11> I'd say if you have to do that, it is most likely because you have a design problem somewhere. It is a code smell in Python as well.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which feature in your favourite programming language excites you most? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Rust. Ownership and Borrowing.</comment>


Ask YC/HN Archive - <AUTHOR> http://gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive <comment><USER2> Wow; many thanks to Gabriel Weinberg for making this.

<comment><USER3> You could thank him more effectively by linking to it somewhere in the margins of HN (and <http://searchyc.com> too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is excellent! I wish there was a semi automated way of voting a post in or suggesting one. Either way, this is an awesome resource!

<comment><USER5> Email me your best submissions and I'll add them in the next update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a way to make this a sticky post? Like the forum posts.

<comment><USER7> That's a good idea. Perhaps a link on the guidelines page would be easier & less abrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> On a related note, <http://searchyc.com/> also has a lot of good info.

<comment><USER9> They have a really nice subdomain just for Ask HN posts (although theirs is chronologically sorted, not organized like the OPs):

<http://ask.searchyc.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I did not author the archive, by the way. It seems epi0Bauqu is the one responsible.

Edit: epi0Bauqu _is_ the one responsible.

<comment><USER5> Here was the link to the initial posting: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=184766>

I updated it weekly thereafter for a long time, but eventually stopped when people stopped coming to it regularly. I was originally hoping pg would add a link to it somewhere. Thankfully, searchyc.com did add a link from their ask yc archive page: <http://ask.searchyc.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn, that was a looong time ago ;) about twice as much as I've been on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thank you very much for compiling this list. Will you continue adding Ask YC/HN posts to this wiki?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I do plan on doing a massive update/overhaul. It's pretty out of date at the moment, though still useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I could imagine you could create a book focused around start ups just by extracting the wisdom of the best responses on HN. So much collective knowledge here from smart and accomplished people.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just had to post a comment to say thanks. Even the archives on searchyc is good enough, but this will surely save me a lot of clicks. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really enjoyed this excellent resource. However, I've noticed that some of the posts are over 900 days old.

I know many things still hold true, but would that make a difference in the quality of information? For example, some of the posts about technology might be a bit outdated because things change so quickly.

Nevertheless, this is something that really helped me out.

<comment><USER14> The early days here produced some of the most interesting and informative conversations I've run across online. Signal to noise ratio was particularly high, as were mutual respect and consideration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is fantastic! Thank you very much for compiling this and breaking it up into manageable sections

</comment><comment><USER16> I couldn't find my Ask HN on what game developers should use instead of C++. Was it that bad? Anyway here it is in case you want to add it later: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=888643>

</comment><comment><USER17> Bookmarked! My usual approach of finding these was to google for topic + Hacker News + Ask.

<comment><USER18> If you want even more power / better search results, you can use this query:

site:news.ycombinator.com intitle:"ask hn" topic

While I do not use "intitle" very often, I use the "site" operator _all the time_. It's often even better than using the search boxes provided by some web pages.

More examples here: <http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/operators.html>

<comment><USER17> Sweet, I use the "site" operator a lot but I've never actually used the intitle one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _All posts on this page have been looked at manually_

Was all of the categorization done manually?

I ask because it looks stellar, and I'm just curious if you had/built a tool to help you make it a bit less tedious

<comment><USER5> Yup.

Edit: thx. No tools, just a lot of re-org over time after repeated use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Genius! This solves a huge need among the more recent HN readers.

</comment><comment><USER21> Excellent is an understatement! thanks for the link.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow, so much great startup and business knowledge in one place.

</comment><comment><USER23> Freakin AWESOME! Thanks

</comment><comment><USER14> Thank you! Just the other week, I lost a personal archive that included interesting HN posts, particularly many from the early HN days having, in my perspective, a particularly high signal to noise ratio.

I've been debating whether to post/ask whether anyone has a means of re- finding / replacing some of these. It looks like your site may provide a start.</comment>


Titan: the poor man's Atlas? (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res44.htm#e <comment><USER2> For those that read the comments first, this has nothing to do with rockets. :-) It's interesting, though, that the rockets have a similar relationship. The Titan computer was a scaled-down version of Atlas, and the Titan rocket was a fallback in case the Atlas rocket didn't ship on time.

</comment><comment><USER3> An Atlas was the first computer I used. At school in about 1970 we had some programming lessons and we sent our coding sheets (in FORTRAN) to be run at the Atlas Computer Lab near Oxford. Those lessons were probably responsible for launching my career in software which I'm still enjoying today.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am simultaneously glad that I did not have to live through such times where computing power was so scarce, and sad to have missed such an exciting time. It is always fun to read these stories, though.</comment>


Google Has My Dead Grandpa's Data and He Never Used the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2019/09/03/google-has-my-dead-grandpas-data-and-he-never-used-the-internet/#5bd4f2df2b0c <comment><USER2> I think this article was debunked heavily here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/czfml2/google_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/czfml2/google_has_my_dead_grandpas_data_and_he_never/eyyinb1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would bet the farm on him having sent his grandparents packages from the internet years ago or filled out some sort of paperwork and forgotten.

Chromes addresses aren't pulled from a magic ether, unlike most of Google's offerings, they're exclusively things you've entered.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clicking "never save password for this site" is obviously going to store the site somewhere, how does he think it works?

</comment><comment><USER5> This goes beyond Google. Data aggregators in general are greedy bastards and absolutely refuse to throw anything away. All four of my grandparents have been dead twenty-thirty years but still show up in all of the people search sites and are known associates in my Transunion reports. Even in death you can not escape.

</comment><comment><USER6> Information about one's relatives is basically a default offering by every data broker that deals in PII. The most likely explanation is that the author provided information about himself to a company which, in turn, supplemented it with data about him pulled from a broker.

<comment><USER7> What I don't understand is why it's in his Chrome saved addresses. I checked mine and it's - just my address and my previous address. And my linked account is _old_ , I opened my gmail account a year after gmail became a thing.

 _Google_ for sure has more addresses about me, but they don't show up in Chrome.

<comment><USER8> It's in his saved addresses because he saved them.

Any explanation involving some mysterious cross-contamination across Google's various data repositories (as if everything is in one giant database) doesn't pass the smell test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't wait for the GDPR--after addressing the most egregious privacy violators, to get around to these data-wigglers:

"we are committed to protecting the personal data of our audience", _please click the big green button to forfeit any protection of your personal data._

They know darn well that's not how the GDPR works. Either block the EU or shape up.</comment>


Most Wealthy Individuals Earned, Not Inherited, Their Wealth - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/04/20/most-wealthy-individuals-earned-not-inherited-their-wealth-2/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

<comment><USER2> "Earning" lots of money involves almost as much luck as inheriting it.

This is particularly true in the equity-heavy tech sector.</comment>


A map of everywhere I've been in Portland - <AUTHOR> http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronpk/6958126945/in/set-72157623306420643/

<comment><USER2> You used the iPhone app to get these measurements? How was that on battery life?

<comment><AUTHOR> Over the past few years I've used several different devices to record GPS logs. Starting in 2008 with an HTC Windows phone, switched to an HTC Evo running Android in 2010, and in 2011 started using an iPhone. In order to get data at such a high resolution, I've gotten in the habit of turning on and off the GPS in order to conserve battery life. Also I usually carry backup batteries on me if I will be away from a computer for an extended period of time.</comment></comment>