Ask HN: How do I get started freelancing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in starting a freelance web development side business in my spare time, maybe even growing it into a full time business over time.  How do I go about finding clients?  How much should I charge?  What do I need to know before I start?  What tools should I use for contracts and invoicing, etc?  What legal issues should I be aware of before starting? <comment><USER2> I would recommend first seeing if it is worth your while. You may find that the freelancing rates you get will be much less than your day job, once you take into account the time and money you spend on attracting clients.

One way to do this is via a minimum viable product. E.g. print a flyer and offer a price that is reasonable to you, and post it to 1000 businesses, see what response you get.

IANAL, but you can probably worry about the contracts and invoicing once you get an order. In-fact start off with small jobs, send them a quote and just get them to pay in advance. Send an email invoice is probably good enough. Not sure what country you are in, but usually you can do a small amount of business without registering as long as you declare it on your tax return. But research this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where are you located? Advice will differ if you're in San Francisco vs if you're in Beijing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in Phoenix, AZ, USA

<comment><USER3> Are you currently working as a web developer? If you are, then you already know 70% of what needs to be done. You just need to go out and seek clients. If not, I highly recommend you build at least one website from scratch, if only to convince yourself that you can do it.

I don't know how vibrant the tech scene is in Pheonix - if it's big, then focus on meatspace marketing: print out a stack of contact cards, and start handing them out at meetups and networking sessions. Make sure people know that you're available for a job.

If Pheonix's tech scene isn't so great, fret not. Focus on online marketing: your Linkedin profile, portfolios, personal sites and such. Post your profile somewhere public: HN's monthly freelancer site has been good to me.

How much to charge? I don't know, start with $2000/project for a small project, just to dip your toes in the water. If it works out, continue to raise your rates until you stop getting new clients.

Don't worry about contracting and invoicing - for contracts I use Word, for invoices I use Excel. I can't comment on how freelance income is taxed in the US - you definitely should check on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best initial clients are through people you already know. I would put the word out on social media that you are working on contract and specify your skill sets, and you are likely to find someone who knows someone who is looking for web design work.

Personally, I used to like to quote fixed prices for my projects, based on what I knew the approximate time it would take to complete the project. This gives certainty to your clients about how much they will pay, and also incentives you to deliver the project on time and without too many headaches for the client (thus leading to unpaid time bugfixing).

If you don't have any contacts who know people in tech, then another way to go is to start attending hackathons, or to do contract work on freelancer websites. These two options are less desirable, as you will tend to find customers who are much more picky and more price sensitive, but it is a way to get started absent a network.

What you should charge is a tough question. I think it really depends on what you are building. Mobile apps tend to fetch more than web apps. I'd shoot for $50-100 per hour to start out, and you can perhaps bump that up the better you get (especially if you are doing fixed price work and are conservative about how you quote jobs).

For invoicing, I would say Microsoft Word usually suffices. Unless you have an insane number of clients, it's pretty easy to keep track of your invoices by emailing PDFs and cashing the associated checks. For contracts, there are a number of options online for doing freelancing. I would download about 4-5 of them, read them thoroughly, and pick and choose the best options. If you want, once you have put together your ideal contract, you can hire a lawyer for an hour to review (but probably not necessary, assuming you are doing business through a corporation that doesn't have substantial assets).

On the contract front, one thing to note that is important. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, sign non-compete agreements. Everyone and their mom is going to want you to sign an agreement that says you will not compete with the product you build for them for 1-2 years (or perhaps more). I would highly recommend against this. By the time you get done working for 5-6 clients, you are arguably going to be non-competed out of pretty much every segment of the software industry in one way or another. When someone asks for this (unless they are offering you a yacht and $20 million dollars) just say no. On the other hand, I tend to view non-disclosure agreements as being pretty harmless (however, read these thoroughly. sometimes people sneak non-compete language into agreements titled "nondisclosure").

As far as legal issues, the big thing is to have an LLC. You should also have a bank account for your LLC. All transactions concerning your business go through the business bank account. Your business bank account should not be particularly well funded (i.e. pay yourself often from your business bank account). All agreements are signed by you, the "Member" of the LLC, not by you individually. Read up on "piercing the corporate veil", and don't do any of the things that might lead to this. If you do this, generally the only recourse someone will have will be against your company, and this allows you to avoid personal liability for issues that arise in the business, assuming you are not grossly negligent in some way.</comment>


Building a Keyboard with Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/building-a-keyboard-with-elixir-fc7bd3f60ec3 <comment><USER2> so, neat article would love to read it except that besides showing the first sentence in hard to read light grey font, for whatever reason, i don't have access to the rest of the article. terrible experience, i'll be passing on medium.com articles.

<comment><USER3> I use the Unlock Medium.com browser extension for Firefox, I don't like medium much myself but its unfortunately the host of a lot of content that gets posted on HN, so I do recommend that extension, there's probably others like it.</comment></comment>


Facebook Tackles (Really) Big Data With 'Project Prism' (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/facebook-prism/

<comment><USER2> Other companies with projects named PRISM:

 _Palantir_ [https://docs.palantir.com/metropolisdev/prism- overview.html](https://docs.palantir.com/metropolisdev/prism-overview.html)

 _Mozilla_ (inactive) [https://mozillalabs.com/en- US/prism/](https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/prism/)

 _CriticalBlue_ [http://www.criticalblue.com/prism- technology.html](http://www.criticalblue.com/prism-technology.html)

 _Goodwill_ [http://www.goodwilltalentbridge.com/tb/projectPrism.aspx](http://www.goodwilltalentbridge.com/tb/projectPrism.aspx)

Universities with projects named PRISM:

 _Texas Tech_ [http://www.texastech.edu/it/prism.aspx](http://www.texastech.edu/it/prism.aspx)

 _Georgia Tech_ [http://pag.gatech.edu/prism](http://pag.gatech.edu/prism)

 _Princeton_ [http://www.princeton.edu/prism/industry/industrial_affiliate...](http://www.princeton.edu/prism/industry/industrial_affiliate/)

While many of these projects have nothing to do with technology, they illustrate a point: PRISM _was_ a great name for a project. The fact that Facebook has a "Project Prism" too is just coincidence.

<comment><USER3> > PRISM is a great name for a project

\---or _was_.

<comment><USER2> Agreed, I can't think of any tech company naming a project PRISM again, even if it's internal.

<comment><USER4> Oh I totally will. Back in the PPro days I called the project to get the workstations cointelpro - and I was just a snippy highschool kid then.

I'm totally going to do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If nothing else, this makes it rather amusing to think of how confused the engineers behind 'Project Prism' must have been when the first PRISM leaks were revealed.

</comment><comment><USER6> > _The result is a platform that can juggle as much as 100 petabytes of data — > aka hundreds of millions of gigabytes_

No more than 105 million gigabytes actually.

</comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunate they chose that name for a project involving spanning datacenters with high-speed fiber connection.

</comment><comment><USER8> Uhhhhhhhhhh</comment>


The-dark-side-of-mongodbs-new-license/ - <AUTHOR> https://www.scylladb.com/2018/10/22/the-dark-side-of-mongodbs-new-license/ <comment><USER2> btw: Draftable was a great tool to do the side-by-side comparison of the licenses. Definitely recommend if you want to display diffs in docs on the web. (Disclosure: I wrote this blog.)</comment>


Fractal planting patterns yield optimal harvests, without central control - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-06-fractal-patterns-yeild-optimal-harvests.html <comment><USER2> This reminds me of something from Sam Bowles's "Microeconomics":

 _Like the overnight train that left me in an empty field some distance from the settlement, the process of economic development has for the most part bypassed the two hundred or so families that make up the village of Palanpur. They have remained poor, even by Indian standards: less than a third of the adults are literate, and most have endured the loss of a child to malnutrition or to illnesses that are long forgotten in other parts of the world. But for the occasional wristwatch, bicycle, or irrigation pump, Palanpur appears to be a timeless backwater, untouched by India's cutting edge software industry and booming agricultural regions. Seeking to understand why, I approached a sharecropper and his three daughters weeding a small plot. The conversation eventually turned to the fact that Palanpur farmers sow their winter crops several weeks after the date at which yields would be maximized. The farmers do not doubt that earlier planting would give them larger harvests, but no one the farmer explained, is willing to be the first to plant, as the seeds on any lone plot would be quickly eaten by birds. I asked if a large group of farmers, perhaps relatives, had ever agreed to sow earlier, all planting on the same day to minimize losses. "If we knew how to do that," he said, looking up from his hoe at me, "we would not be poor."_

<comment><USER3> That story makes no sense. If those farmers of Palanpur can not agree to plant all together at the right time, how come they manage it several weeks later, or ever?

<comment><USER4> At some point, the individual losses from planting later become larger than the losses from birds. Then somebody plants, and then they all do. The first farmer to plant loses more to birds than everyone else, but less than he would by delaying more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't understand:

1\. how they didn't have pest problems if they planted in fractal patterns

2\. but they did have pest problems if they didn't plant at the same time

Could someone kindly explain that in a little more depth?

<comment><USER6> > When farmers are planting at different times, pests can move from one field > to another, but when farmers plant in synchrony, pests drown and the pest > load is reduced.

The strategy is that if there are several fields planted for the same amount of bugs, each field receive less bugs than if it was the only one planted (on the contrary, if they were planted one after an other, the whole bug population would just jump from field to field).

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I thought when it said drown it literally meant something to do with water but this makes a lot of sense now.

<comment><USER7> Yes, they meant literal drowning of bugs when the field is flooded with water, which is one of the stages of growing rice. Bigger the area flooded at once, lower the chance for the average bug to escape. Fractal pattern arises as a trade-off because water supply is limited - if it wasn't for that they would probably just flood ALL the fields at once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I fail to see how the planting patterns are fractal. A fractal pattern is one which repeats itself at different scales. I realize that the repetition does not need to be exact but I don't see how there is any at all in this situation.

<comment><USER9> Actually, that is only one type of fractals. Perfectly self similar patterns like the Triforce or Sierpensky triangle are used as toy models for learning . Typically, fractals in nature are not self similar(Branching of your blood vessels for example) . Mandelbrot developed fractal geometry as a way to model nature that captures roughness. It was kind of a rebellion against calculus, where if you zoom in eventually you get smoothness. It's funny that many people think that only self similar patterns are fractals when his desire was to get away from idealized models towards more pragmatic ones

EDIT: I'm actually just learning about fractals, so I'm certainly no expert, but I'm excited to share what I've learned so far.

Look at a line, square, and cube in 1, 2, and 3 dimensions respectively. If you scale down each by 1/2 in all its dimensions, you need to look at how much of the "mass" (for lack of a better term is scaled down

If you cut a line in 1/2, it's mass is scaled by 1/2 as it takes 2 one-half length lines to make the original line.

If you scale a square down 1/2 along all its dimensions, you break into/scale it down into 4 smaller squares, it's mass scaling factor is 1/4....scaling a cube down 1/2 along all its dimensions (1/2)^2 breaks it into 8 smaller cubes...it's scaling factor is 1/8 and you can see the progression here. (1/2)^3. (I imagine a tesseract/hypercube has a scaling of 1/16 as it is the 4D analogue of a cube) The exponent represents the concept of dimension and this is how you can have non-integer dimensions.

So, back to the Sierpenski triangle or triforce example. Let's scale it down 1/2\. When we do that, we know we get 1/3 the "mass" of the original since there are 3 triangles contained in the larger triangle at each level. The dimensionality is then (1/2)^x = 1/3 where x is the dimensionality. We rewrite this as log 3 base 2 which gives it a dimensionality of ~1.585.

And that is the definition of a fractal, a shape with a non-integer dimension which gives the shape roughness at every scale. I don't quite understand the more technical definition, but hopefully this helps!

Note, you cannot use length or area as a measurment for a scaling factor, as the length would be infinite and area would be 0. Also, I say mass because the more correct concept is difficult for me to explain without a whiteboard, but basically, it has to do with putting the fractal on a 2d grid, scaling it, and seeing what the ratio of boxes touched is. See, told you I'm bad at explaining it :D

<comment><USER9> I forgot to add that fractal dimensionality is a clear differentiator between natural and man made things. So, it does make some sense to separate the natural from the synthetic.

Off topic, but does anyone know how this would affect the Fermi Paradox if aliens produce technology inherently fractal in nature?

<comment><USER10> You might enjoy [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4)

<comment><USER9> I did enjoy it, if you can't tell from the content of my original post. I never quite knew what fractals were until yesterday afternoon. After 30 minutes of youtube, I'm explaining it to someone else, although at a 10 yr old's level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is an agent-based model of Balinese irrigation written in NetLogo here: [https://www.openabm.org/model/2221/version/3/view](https://www.openabm.org/model/2221/version/3/view)

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks very interesting from a regulation point of view, as a potential way to bring greedy self-interest into alignment with national/international social interest. I wonder what scenarios could be given a "pest tax", to alter the dynamic from a tradgedy of the commons to a cooperative/competitive optimum?

<comment><USER13> There's plenty of science against (20th century) top heavy / top down control. The issue seems to be: the current power holders admitting their model is flawed; and those being managed realized they'd be better off without "leadership."

<comment><USER12> > top heavy / top down control

Could you characterise what is meant by this?

I know that achieving some objective 'X' may not be amenable to regulation which says 'you must do X'; but regulation may (in some circumstances, with sufficient thought) alter the situation's dynamics such that greedy self- interest in that environment just-so-happens to coincide with causing 'X'.

What better alternatives are there to "top down control"; do you mean a "vote with your wallet" sort of 'bottom up' pressure?

<comment><USER13> Centralized, as opposed to decentralized. I would say these farms/farmers are decentralized. There's no gov agency, with some academia pencil pusher in some removed city overseaing them. They've figured it out. And they will continue to do so.

p.s. Team of Teams (book) does a great job flying to decentralized flag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now how can I apply this to Dwarf Fortress?

<comment><USER15> That's an absolutely valid question that doesn't deserve to be downvoted. Generalizing these insights for deployment is absolutely a problem worth solving.

<comment><USER14> Haha, people can be such assholes sometimes.

Dwarf Fortress doesn't currently have crop pests, but it's reasonable to assume it will within a decade. Tarn plans to spend the rest of his life working on it.

Dwarf Fortress is a game about decentralized, organized planning so once pests are added we'll see pages and pages of discussion about the best way to plan your fractal farm.

Sure, I was being half serious but c'mon people have a sense of humor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TLDR; Locally collaborative greedy planting strategy leads to globally optimal results and looks like a fractal from above. Mind == Blown.

</comment><comment><USER17> this is very interesting, wondering the principle applies to societal organization and current reversal trends on globalization (mono-culture) and weakening of international 'controlling' organizations.

<comment><USER18> Actually this _depends_ on a monoculture as it is an adaptation to the life cycle of the rice (paddy) plant and its water requirements. If different farmers were growing different crops the requirements would vary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can anyone find sample satellite imagery that illustrates the fractal patterns? I didn't see any in the article or with a quick google search.

<comment><USER20> Fractal doesn't appear in the paper. I'm not sure where phys.org gets the word fractal from.

Here's some figures which might help with satellite image searches.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/05/31/1605369114.figu...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/05/31/1605369114.figures- only)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this a form of emergence?

<comment><USER21> Yes... both profs are external sante fe institute members. That's kindof their chorus.

<comment><USER13> Can you recommend a book or two on emergence? I've seen it mentioned. It intrigues me. But I haven't been able to find anything sold for going deeper. TIA

<comment><USER21> First read "more is different". Solid state physicists were first to pioneer in this field: [http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo...](http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf)

There's a very light book by some modern author that's not terrible: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684868768/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_3Wxp...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684868768/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_3WxpzbP55A6WW)

If you want to really dig in though you need some math: Emergence of Dynamical Order: Synchronization Phenomena in Complex Systems (World Scientific Lecture Notes in Complex Systems, Vol. 2) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/9812388036/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_.Yxp...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/9812388036/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_.Yxpzb925HPYX)

Final suggestion is most of the stuff is online at different professors websites. Warning: the field is full of meaningless fluff too, and there's a lot of qucks mixed in with genuinely interesting science.

<comment><USER13> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> These insights will be useful for my political project.

</comment><comment><USER22> so: monolithic frameworks vs loose coupled components?</comment>


After iOS 14, there's almost no reason to buy an Android phone anymore - <AUTHOR> https://www.inputmag.com/tech/after-ios-14-theres-almost-no-reason-to-buy-an-android-phone-anymore <comment><USER2> Someone commented in another thread (on an article about virtualization on Macs) about the flood of low value articles being posted now, especially related to Apple and the WWDC announcements. This title is so hyperbolic that it fits that description.

FWIW, I'm an iOS user and wouldn't consider Android for many reasons. But I would never say "almost no reason" to describe choices people make among the two main smartphone OSes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lol, I assume the author is either a troll or extremely privileged, or both. Iphones are still crazy expensive in most of the world, even the SE hasn't changed that, where I'm from SE is worth a month of your salary, the higher end models are nearly untenable.

The most popular smartphones around are all different Xiaomis and Huaweis, since you get good hardware for like $100-200 max. Do you think people buy them for android and now that iOS has widgets those people will move to iOS?

</comment><comment><USER4> > Who needs Android when iPhone finally has proper widgets?

Well, iOS 14 widgets are read-only while Android widgets are fully interactive. So I would not call them _proper_ just yet. Maybe in iOS 15 :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Writing that as a mobile game developer: As long as supporting variety of devices on Android makes me suffer during long debugging evenings - I think that open nature of Android makes the mobile innovating much faster.

Competition between Android phones is enormous - which results with such great hardware features like 90Hz+ displays, truly full screen displays, under- screen fingerprint reader. Picture-in-Picture, Split view - those things were available for a long time on Android - and I loved to add support for them.

I think iOS would be never like nowadays if no Android was released, without Android will never innovate as much - due monopoly of one company using that OS.

<comment><USER2> > I think iOS would be never like nowadays if no Android was released, without > Android will never innovate as much - due monopoly of one company using that > OS.

The same would be true the other way too. Without iOS and Apple, Android-the- OS would be stuck with data sucking, data slurping, battery draining apps and users being buried in an ecosystem that thrives on this right from the company making the OS (most Android users wouldn't know what rooting is or how to avoid all the data being collected and exfiltrated). Google has also started to change its tune and some of its behaviors on this front (though it's still not as much as iOS).

<comment><USER6> I think the idea is that there's competition in android lands because of multiple companies providing hardware and android custom roms to go along with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Until there is a full fledged Firefox with uBlock Origin, there is no way for me to leave Android.

<comment><USER2> If you aren't using the element blocking features in uBlock a Origin (not sure if it's supported on mobile) and are using only subscribed blocklists, then using NextDNS as the DNS provider could be an option. It'll take care of blocking for all apps, not just for one app (like Firefox). It's kinda like running a pi-hole on the cloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Like other commenters, I think price is the big one.

I used to go for Android developer phones since the first in 2008, and liked the fact it wasn't cluttered with manufacturer or carrier bloat. Over time, I became exasperated at the short lifespan of the soldered-in batteries, given the price of each device. The (Huawei) Nexus 6P was the final straw.

In January, I picked up a Nokia 4.2 Android One device, and I use it without any contract on a PAYG SIM[1]. On Android One, there should be two years of OS updates and three of security updates following the device launch last May. It works well, and the battery performance is fine[2]. I chose a smaller device unlike my previous phablets, and haven't dropped it during use yet. The Nokia design is good, and so is the build quality (Foxconn?). I appreciate the vanilla Android without the aforementioned bloat.

The unlocked handset was £99 ($122) at the time from a shop on the high street. I don't think Apple is going to be attracted to that end of the market. When this one dies, I'll look around for another Android One device with the longest update prospects.

[1] The phone is not my primary computing device, and I mostly receive calls and use WiFi for data when using apps and browsing. I'm not a gamer.

[2] I keep battery saver mode on pretty much all the time, which is great for battery life but probably not so much for chatty background services.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great, point me at the source repo so I can build my own distribution with a few things removed, some changed and others added.

What? No source? Really? But you said there was no more reason to get Android devices...

</comment><comment><USER4> > Who needs Android when iPhone lets you choose your own default apps?

Well, iOS 14 makes a little bit of progress here. Which is great. But it will be very far away from Android. iOS will just "allow" this for Web and Email applications, while Android has a rich and open intent and app system that doesn't need permission from Google.

Android also has a great app chooser. Click on a web link and it will ask you in which browser you want to open it. Or set a default from there.

So, good small step forward, but still miles away from what you can do on Android.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article is ridiculous flame bait.

<comment><USER11> Without that headline nobody would have even looked at it so understandable. Just a reminder that you don't have to click on every link (or read every article) on the internet.

<comment><USER10> I wanted to give it the benefit of a doubt, but then my suspicions were confirmed and I wanted to warn others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale Terrible article, beyond the obvious bias, it is rather shallow and misses then entire walled garden side of the story.

</comment><comment> ur-whale >Why wouldn't you buy an iPhone now that Apple has copied all of Android's best ideas?

Because I can still - albeit with some amount of work - run whatever I want on my Android phone.

Not that it'll last, I guess, but as of today, still possible.

</comment><comment><USER12> After reading the article, i have a feeling that the author has not actually used an Android phone, instead has only read about what features an Android Phone has.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's just crazy talk

<comment><USER14> My favourite feature on an unlocked android phone is having a call recorder

<comment><USER15> Care to explain ? I have an "un-rooted" android phone, I can use call recorder without rooting

<comment><USER14> There are many call recorders, from ones that activate the speaker and record through the mic to others that activate a threeway call and record that way.

The one I prefer is one which taps into the audio at the core level and captures the stream -> [https://callrecorder.skvalex.com/get](https://callrecorder.skvalex.com/get)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Myriad Android phones are substantially cheaper than even the iPhone SE. $200 is a lot of money for a lot of people.

<comment><USER17> Considering how important they are for most people at this point, it's worth it. For most people's only device, it's got to work and work reliably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have one, money. If there were apple phones on every price point it'd have been a different story. Add in modular customizations (camera options, camera locations, # of wifi, size options) and I'd be a fan.

</comment><comment><USER19> Even if there's no reason, there's still a reason: choice

</comment><comment><USER20> Ah yes, because everyone can afford a MacBook and a $1k license fee to publish on their store

<comment><USER21> $1K license fee? And you can also buy a used Mac mini.

<comment><USER20> I am mistaken, I did not realize it was down to $100. It used to be a lot more - I was paying.

It's also a yearly fee where Google is a one-time fee.

<comment><USER21> It's always been $100. I spend $90 a year on my R# license. Of all things to complain about, the $100 is the least objectionable.

<comment><USER20> For free apps, maybe? I know back in 2011/2012 we had to pay more than $100 directly to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sure there is, price for pre-paid customers, which is what most of the world uses, and their phones get used until they either die or get stolen, there isn't a two year free exchange program in place.

Ideally I would be using Windows Phone, but given how it all ended up, Android it is, even if Google's stewardship leaves very much to be desired.

</comment><comment><USER23> hahaha, And Iphone here where I live is around U$S 1500-2000

A Samsung Galaxy Note 10 is around U$S 1000, and a Xiami, top of the line, similar hardware, is U$S 500-700.

But the 90% of the really good non-premium phones are in the range of U$S 300 to 500

</comment><comment><USER24> Apple can't compete on price and more apps are available for free on android.

Having the most features only matter to a very small population.

Something rarely talked about. Having an iphone gives the impression you have more money than technical ability.

<comment><USER25> What kind of "technical ability" do you need to operate a phone?

<comment><USER24> Rooting your phone would require a certain technical ability. Possible on andriod..

Side loading apps?

Technical ability like making an app for andriod cost me 10 dollars once. 100+ yearly for apple.

But you missed the key point. It doesn't matter both can be operated by non- technical people. If you look at the populations who own each one group has a higher technical ability than the other. One has people willing to pay 10x more for a phone, willing to pay for apps that are freely available in the other's store app store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't love Google but the fact that Apple has been caught doing shitty stuff like slowing down older phones and having to pay out a $500 million settlement when they were caught is enough reason for me to stay away.

<comment><USER27> Can this myth die? They throttle phones with old batteries that cannot provide enough current. This avoids that phones reboot spontaneously. Replace the battery and it is as fast as ever.

I used an iPhone 6s (2015) until recently and it was still butter smooth on iOS 13. I gave it to my niece who is still happily using it.

<comment><USER28> >They throttle phones with old batteries that cannot provide enough current.

Stop gaslighting. They were forced to admit to doing so, after enough people made a stink about it for a very long time. And iphone batteries are not user servicable.

<comment><USER21> You can find places that will replace an iPhone battery easily many of the places are authorized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> By this logic, there's no reason to buy Windows laptops over MacBooks, because MacBooks can _actually_ do anything a Windows laptop can.

Yup, so I guess that's why Mac market share is a whopping 10-20%.

</comment><comment><USER30> Good job projecting your reasons to the world.</comment>


Website lets college students gamble on grades - <AUTHOR> http://www.philly.com/philly/living/20100811_Website_lets_college_students_gamble_on_grades.html

<comment><USER2> So students can place bets to whether they'll get a high GPA or a low GPA (i.e. short-sell their own grades).

I'm going to find all the students that go to schools that grade on a curve and I'm going to take the opposite side of all those short-sell bets, package it into a derivative and sell that! I'll open a bunch of firms and call it "Ivy Street".

With all these prediction markets being opened up, with film companies hedging their movie scripts, I haven't looked but there's probably a market for betting on record sales. Who bets on these things? I can understand people with an edge (insiders etc), but how can there possibly be retail investors for these markets? Are stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, futures, ETF's not enough to speculate with?

</comment><comment><USER3> Heh, those guys are not too stingy wit the titles. The three founders are "CEO, COO and President".</comment>


Help me buy a domain name (inspired by Kickstarter) - <AUTHOR> http://samrat.github.com/blog/2012/07/help-me-buy-a-domain-name.html

<comment><USER2> Hi Samrat, I'm a little confused: is it really true that you can't make any online payments from Nepal? If you have got a credit card, you could always just give another country of residence when you're filling out a payment form if that's a problem. Also, don't you need webspace, too? Or could you rent that in your own country? Tell us a little more about your problem!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Github Pages to host my site, so web space is not a problem.

Regarding the online payment, a card from a bank in Nepal would not be able to purchase anything online. Of course a credit card from a bank in another country would work in Nepal, but I don't possess one.

<comment><USER2> Oh, wow. OK. Tell you what: I can open a DynaDot account in your name, prepay your domain for a year and then hand it over to you. That should work. Also, DynaDot are cheap and they do offer a lot of different payment options you might be able to use next year when you have to renew. Does that sound like a plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> That'd be awesome. How do we go about this? Should I email you?

<comment><USER2> My email address is on my HN profile page. You let me know what the domain name is and I'll open the account for you. When it's done, I send you the login credentials and from then on it's all yours. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Outsourcing and Limiting to Core Competencies are Essential - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-management/4578569760e8

<comment><USER2> I've witnessed first-hand three start-ups slowed or stopped by "ninja" developers using the start-up as an excuse to try some cool new technology that will look good on a resume. In two of them, they were paid the going rate. If you're not getting paid, or getting paid a stipend, then it may be fair to use the start-up as a sort of experiment - the cool experience may be all you get out of it - but this should at least be agreed upon. However, if you're getting paid the going rate, then this is a job, not a party, and your job is to get the job done.

Lets be honest, this sort of thing goes on at large companies too for two reasons: resume stuffing, and job security code. My favorite is when someone builds some really "cool" tech that only they understand, uses it to get a new job, and then quits. If a manager lets this happen, they ought to be fired too, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> From my experience anyone who doesn't do proper research into viable options, is always the person who wants to build "cool" amazing bleeding edge things are junior developers.

There's nothing wrong with this mentality when developing fresh new code for small projects but once you work in an established company you need to stop and think. Is this a new language, technology? What kind of support is available, how hard will it be to hire someone that knows this or train them up? Do we already have something pre-existing that objectively is just as good?

Without such conservatism, you end up with undocumented frameworks that are no longer officially supported, no one knows it and there are hundreds of these things that just replicate each other, just because it was something "cool" at the time.

This applies to frameworks, languages, libraries so on. Someone has to support these things 2, 5, 10 years even down the track.

</comment><comment><USER4> _85% of all developer time must be spent on business specific logic_

Yeah. Come back in two or three years when your application's code has degenerated into an unmaintainable mess, and adding new business logic is taking four times as long as it needs to because no one sat down are rearchitected the software to meet new needs.

I've experienced two jobs where this, in effect, was exactly what happened. In both firms, previous management used short term contractors to get a "lean" proof-of-concept out the door. In both cases customers loved the product and started asking for more features. And, finally, in both cases by the time I was hired (at +3 years in one company and at +5 years at another) the product had grown so bloated and so unwieldy, management had brought development in- house and was embarking on a multi-year project to clean up and rearchitect the code so that it would accommodate new feature requests from customers. If these two companies had paid more attention to the architecture of their code, then a lot of pain could have been avoided farther down the line.

This strategy is great if you're building a pump-and-dump startup (like Instagram, or Tumblr). But for an ongoing sustainable business? It's a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER5> The article implicitly urges one to keep "core competencies" in house. It sounds as if in these instances, the core competency - development of the software product - was outsourced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with the idea of not wasting time, but if you follow the advice given here, you'll come across much like a narrow-minded idiot middle/product manager with an extremely short-term focus. Your choice.

Programmers need to grow, so it's important for there to be opportunities to try new technology. Obviously this can't frequently get in the way of the main thing, but it matters; you don't want to fall behind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing in the piece argues that one shouldn't try new technology. Under this 85%-rule-of-thumb, we went with Amazon Web Services for 100% of our infrastructure in 2008. It was clearly the right choice, and worth learning. My point was more that developers have a gravitational pull toward new and interesting that needs to be tempered by a focus on what's best for the business--and too often, it is not.

<comment><USER6> I agree with what the article says about outsourcing things that aren't core to the business. I was responding to and disagreeing with another point the article tries to make about the use of employee time (which prioritizes the short-term over the long-term).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The concept is sound. You increase "velocity" by strategically decreasing your development effort, but this leaves out the idea of technical debt completely. I've start to believe there are things that will kill you in the short term (bugs), medium term (missing features), and long term (architectural issues). You can play with the percentage of effort put towards each area in every version/release, but neglecting any one for too long can kill the product. It seems easier to explain the balancing act to people that way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does this apply to non-startups? Once one becomes an incumbent, is it not wise to minimize external access (inherent in outsourcing)? E.g., the core competency of the NSA might not be system administration, but perhaps they would now prefer that someone more imbued with their culture had performed those duties.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it does apply to non-startups as well, because the "outsourcing" I'm talking about with software development is really just using existing tools and frameworks, not bringing new developers into the fold.

For example, I think it makes more sense for the NSA to use existing databases than writing their own...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This one is must-read for all (not only non-technical) managers. And actually it sheds light not only on management but recruitment as well. Simply you need people who are passionate about the result (shipped feature that adds business value) not the process (exploring, tinkering, learning etc.).

</comment><comment><USER9> Is all that pathetic flow of long-words about the old idea of having a secretary?)

btw, is it possible somehow to reduce the amount of nonsense^W links from medium.com? We have enough narcissism here from patio11 and likes.)

<comment><USER8> No, it isn't about secretary. It's about huge problem with the way many developers approach their work.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. It's not unique to startups, either; i've seen it in ordinary companies too.

There's something deep and interesting to be unpicked here. On the one hand, the desire to dive into with new technology and make your own things is rather positive and joyful. On the other, doing that rather than pursuing goals with real value is sad.

Many would object that the former enables the latter, but this is nonsense. We're not talking about prudently investigating potentially useful new technologies or inventing transformatively useful new tools. We're talking about using the latest hot NoSQL database without worrying about its appropriateness, or writing your own web framework just because.

Choosing the former over the latter seems, more than anything, childish. It's choosing eternal inconsequential play over taking effective control of the world.

I note that there are other elements of modern programmer culture which can be seen as childlike. The lust for table football tables in the office, the excitement about workplaces that have free food. Garann Means's 'Bacon is bad for you' talk advances a theory that's vaguely related; it really struck a chord with me.

I find this angle of programmer culture to be deeply frustrating, because it means the discourse is dominated by the shiny and superficial, rather than the genuinely difficult and important.

But then, Bucky Fuller wrote that "children are born true scientists", and the dramatist Keith Johnstone said "Most people lose their talent at puberty. I lost mine in my early twenties. I began to think of children not as immature adults, but of adults as atrophied children.". Maybe i'm overlooking the positive aspects of hacker neoteny.</comment></comment></comment>


Advanced objects in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://bjorn.tipling.com/advanced-objects-in-javascript <comment><USER2> I once participated in a web security research project where we used ES6 Proxies to sandbox third-party scripts, basically controlling what DOM operations they're allowed to do in a whitelist. This is relevant when you include sketchy advertisement scripts or scripts you don't trust (e.g. "trusted" scripts but delivered through an untrusted CDN). By default, no operations were allowed and by whitelisting until there were no more errors, we managed to effectively completely sandbox jQuery, Google Maps and Google Analytics. None of these scripts were allowed to execute more operations than the ones exactly required for them to function. Proxies were an elegant way to intercept getters and setters on window, document, location, etc...

<comment><USER3> Are you able to link to the research? It sounds like a native-JS version of NoScript, which is really interesting (apologies to the dead comment under me which asked something similar)

<comment><USER2> Yep, here's the paper: [http://www.acsac.org/2012/openconf/modules/request.php?modul...](http://www.acsac.org/2012/openconf/modules/request.php?module=oc_program&action=summary.php&id=77)

It was presented at ACSAC 2012.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Articles like this, about up-and-coming features in JavaScript, usually make me think two things:

1) JavaScript is starting to become a "big" language, in terms of number of keywords and syntax;

2) While many of these things that JavaScript is (finally) gaining are things we're familiar with in other languages (and have empirically found to be useful), they often seem somewhat more unwieldy, fiddly, and complicated in JavaScript.

As a handwavy example, Ruby generally has most of the stuff these sorts of articles describe, and it can be complicated at times, but usually (in my experience) only when you're trying to do something complicated anyway; in JavaScript, a lot of it looks quite complicated out of the box even when you're doing something that ought to be simple.

There are many JavaScript developers out there, some with years of experience, who are confused about, say, `var Foo = function() {}` versus `function Foo() {}`, or the difference between `new Foo()` and `Object.create(Foo.prototype)`. To be honest, it slightly worries me that even more complexity is being added at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> JavaScript has a lot of complexity and little gotchas. I often compare the simplicity of Go with JavaScript and wish JS were more like that, but I still find myself enjoying JavaScript. I hope that "use strict"; evolves to further limit the bad pit falls even experienced developers can get stuck in. Some of the new features like isPrototypeOf can replace the old behavior, like instanceof. I would hope that once browsers start supporting more of the new things we all migrate to using them, if they're implemented well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good thing that this is all coming to Javascript. But I can't help but think we're in bizarro land when the main language of the most ubiquitous medium of the 21st century is only getting all that rather basic stuff (at least by all the other languages' standards) in 2015 or something...

<comment><USER6> Everything there besides Proxies and Symbols is already in common browsers, and I can't say I'm familiar with Proxies and Symbols in other languages (not to say some other languages necessarily don't have them, but I don't think most users consider them basic or encounter them often).

<comment><USER7> Proxies are like __get/__call in PHP, method_missing in Ruby and the similar magic methods Python has.

Symbols are sort of JavaScript's answer to private members. Closest to __ for members in Python.

<comment><USER8> I'm a bit puzzled what symbols are. If you want a unique thing that !== anything except itself, make an empty object. It seems to me: var foo = Symbol("foo") ought to let you dereference via bar.foo vs. bar[foo] (the latter shouldn't even work!) or it's not what it seems it wants to be.

<comment><USER7> The point of it is you can implement private properties, as I understand it:

        function MyClass() {
            var mysymbol = new Symbol("foo");
            this[mysymbol] = 3;
        }

        var bar = new MyClass();
        bar.foo // this won't work

<comment><USER8> What a convoluted mechanism! But where do you keep your reference to the symbol to keep it private? Anywhere you keep it (e.g. in a closure somewhere) that's private doesn't need symbols, so what problem does this solve?

And surely in your private context, bar.foo should still work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alternatives to getType and setType functions (while still not using getters and setters):

Have a single polymorphic function called type: type() gets the type, type(value) sets the type.

Have .get and .set functions, called like: get('type'), set('type', value).

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that idea, but with _Proxy_ you don't have to write the functions any more, you could just define that one _get_ on the handler you feed into _Proxy_ and then in your code you can access via the . notation, like:

      var obj = new Proxy(
       {foo_: "bar"},
       {get: function(target, name) {
         return target[name + "_"];
       });
      console.log(obj.foo); //logs "bar"

Of course maybe you'd do something a little fancier than just return the value, like return null for property names with _ to prevent accessing private variables. I don't know what the performance of _Proxy_ will be like, but it's an alternative to getters and setters and lets you have a fall through for things you haven't defined.

What I'm really excited about is reactivity on objects for setting and getting without using functions. You could have your setter trigger events without forcing someone to use a set function like you have in Backbone.

I think we'll see an entirely new set of model libraries because of these new ECMAScript 5 and 6 features.

<comment><USER9> I'm not yet excited about these getters and setters and new features in the latest JavaScript. I've put a lot of time and effort into developing ECMAScript (JavaScript) 3 patterns that overcome various limitations, and have got accustomed to the idea of deploying ECMAScript 3. In terms of providing an API, getters and setters will be very useful. It will be good to have out-of- the-box JavaScript functionality that does not require extra code to use, like various methods I use to overcome the ECMAScript 3 limitations.

Does anyone have an estimate for when ECMAScript 6 will be widely deployed across browsers, almost ubiquitous? I would say now it's safe to use SVG in many situations on the web that would not have been OK a few years ago, I'm curious about when the tipping point will be with ECMAScript 6.

Anecdotally, recently my customers have been a lot less interested in supporting older versions of IE, and I have used SVG in a couple of situations, and that would not have been OK a few years back. I have not been closely following the developments of ECMAScript 6, it has seemed like it will be a while until it's widely deployed. The only things I have found practical use for are typed arrays, and I have been using them in node specific code rather than in code that I expect to run across browsers.

Though I am interested in the latest developments in JavaScript, my focus will still be on what can be done with the JavaScript available in almost every browser. I am also interested in making use of getters and setters in my code but being able to compile it to ECMAScript 3, I may be able to do some relatively simple text replacement rather than having to parse and compile an abstract syntax tree.

<comment><USER10> Kangax's ES6 Compatibility Table tracks the implementation status for many browsers, though Chrome's ES6 support is hidden behind a pref: chrome://flags/#enable-javascript-harmony

[http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6](http://kangax.github.io/compat- table/es6)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty cool, but something about the notation confused me. Say we have an object called "foo":

        var foo = {};

Is it really necessary to define properties on it with this notation?

        Object.defineProperty(foo, 'bar', { value: 'baz' });

Since foo itself is an Object, wouldn't it also have this method? Why can't I define a property on foo like this?

        foo.defineProperty('bar', { value: 'baz' });

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding your first question, it isn't necessary to define properties with that notation at all. You could just do:

      foo.foo = "bar";

But then it would be writable and configurable.

      Object.defineProperty(foo, 'bar', { value: 'baz' });

This foo.foo cannot be deleted. It cannot be written to. So it's a little different. But really I was just demonstrating the use of Object.defineProperty in a non-verbose way. You can try this out yourself, I made a jsfiddle: [http://jsfiddle.net/btipling/q1v3fn20/](http://jsfiddle.net/btipling/q1v3fn20/)

Regarding your second question, defineProperty is a method on Object, not Object.prototype. "Instances" as you might call them only have direct access to methods found on their prototype chain. You can think of Object.defineProperty as a static method on Object if that helps. I wrote a post about "this" which includes some information about prototypes:

[http://bjorn.tipling.com/all-this](http://bjorn.tipling.com/all-this)

You should probably first checkout the mdn documentation though: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guid...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Inheritance_and_the_prototype_chain)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Small correction: Symbol¹ is available in Firefox since back in ~June and should arrive in Firefox Beta in ~10days.

1: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Symbol)

<comment><USER13> Sadly there are still some kinks to work out so it's going to stay on Nightly only. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1041631](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1041631)

<comment><USER12> So earliest Release date is sometime in February then. Not that bad of a delay at least.

Thanks for the update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > You can use Object.getOwnPropertyNames to get all the properties defined on > an object. This might be a nice alternative to a for in loop.

Careful. These have different behavior for own properties which are not enumerable. A for-in loop doesn't include them, but Object.getOwnPropertyNames does.

<comment><USER7> Right Object.keys(foo) is better.

<comment><AUTHOR> And I also missed out on including this, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> CoffeeScript abstracts out a lot of of awkwardness of working with JS objects.

<comment><USER16> It does however concrete in a lot of awkwardness from working with compiling a static language into a dynamic one then running it.

<comment><USER17> CoffeeScript is not a static language - unless I'm misinterpreting what you mean by "static".

And the compilation is pretty light. The syntax is different, but for the most part the semantics are 1:1 with Javascript.

Having said that, any compile-to-language is going to introduce problems that need to be solved. Source maps and short watch+compile times have basically eliminated any problems for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Node-canvas open sourced - <AUTHOR> http://tjholowaychuk.com/post/1482512206/node-canvas-open-sourced <comment><USER2> Pretty cool.

I guess the use case would be the need to generate an image on the fly from a server. Mixing it up with Socket.IO you might even be able to do server side animation (not using a per second reload setup).

The downside is you use a lot of the speed of running your images on the client side, but as with all things, it is a trade-off.

Great work guys!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice. If your canvas isn't interactive, render it on the server with the same codefor browsers that don't support canvas (i.e. I.E.)!

<comment><USER4> If your canvas isn't interactive, why are you rendering it in the browser anyhow? Why have two code paths, when you could just have one?

<comment><USER3> Because your users are paying for CPU time, not you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's cool that this on HN now, but we open sourced node-canvas a while ago over at <https://github.com/learnboost>

</comment><comment><USER6> As an aside, I didn't realize TJ was part of the learn-boost team. Does anyone know how long he has been with them?</comment>


Ten Years After the Crash, We Are Still Living in the World It Brutally Remade - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/america-10-years-after-the-financial-crisis.html <comment><USER2> I feel compelled to repost a comment I've posted before, so here goes:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Thinkpieces lately have had a trend of reaching harder and harder to link the news de jour to a higher, abstract concepts....The result feels hystrionic to me... it is just designed to raise the excitement for people in the correct echo chamber. By calling on increasingly abstract concepts the author can reign in an appeal to authority and emotion that has more appeal than actual facts and statistics.

The author, and his inward-looking media peers, are all drinking eachother's Kool-Aid a bit too much. It's like some sort of outrage porn that keeps getting remixed over and over again, and becoming some sort of fractal version of itself.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

This particular article is strange in the fact even though it presents a bunch of statistics, it doesn't use them well to advance a cohesive argument- it mostly just goes on to state that everything sucks. It just throws spaghetti at the wall, to see what sticks in the mind of the reader, and anything that doesn't stick is hoped to be given a fair pass. This is the sort of divisive thinking that does little to solve problems, because it is so engulfed in the turbulence of pessimistic rage that it cannot correctly identify just what the problem is, if it exists.

<comment><USER3> > It's like some sort of outrage porn that keeps getting remixed over and over > again, and becoming some sort of fractal version of itself.

This is such a good description of the problem. Right now it feels like people are angry about being angry, and the mood seems to me somewhat detached from the reality around us. By historical standards things right now are not that bad, but a lot of people act like we're living through the apocalypse.

My personal take is that this is the natural product of the social media / hyper media era. It's easy to make a lot of money making people angry ("outrage porn"), but there's no money in calming people down. I wish that weren't the case.

<comment><USER4> This is true, but it's also true (if you are American, at least) that we're living through a major upheaval in our governing institutions. So another way of reading this outrage is that when your president is permitted to do outrageous things daily, to collude with a foreign power to meddle in our elections, to defend that power on the international stage, and to help his family profit by that power... well, you may start to feel a little panicked, outraged, or out of control.

The norms of democracy are starting to show their weaknesses. The assumed reasonable limits have proven themselves to have never been there. And it comes with a bizarre dissonance because locally speaking you may be doing just fine, stock market is up, etc. etc. That atmosphere also creates a kind of helpless anger that goes looking for targets and attention. It's almost an existential coping mechanism, I think.

<comment><USER5> > The assumed reasonable limits have proven themselves to have never been > there.

I think that's going too far. They _were_ there. And then, over succeeding presidents of both parties, they were a little less there. And then, with this president, suddenly "reasonable limits" was a totally foreign concept.

But the reasonable limits _were_ there, and really did limit behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Frankly, I can barely tell the difference between pre-2008 and post-2008. It's nothing compared to the Great Recession, just look at some archival footage of the time.

Also, the blame is once again put on "corporations" and "wall street gangsters" instead of the failed government policy that caused it (and continues to cause it).

How could Millennials be some massively in debt? Price inflation of higher education caused by government-forced loans backed by fantasy money. Literally the same reason why the housing bubble became a bubble in the first place. And the government gets away with it by blaming those "evil corporations" for taking all that money that was presented on them on a platter.

How could so many people die from opiate overdoses? A government that allows opiates for doctors to prescribe, but then bans those same doctors from prescribing them for the resulting addicts, turning them to black-market.

It was the government that created a health insurance system that doesn't make sense and continues to not make sense under both republican and democratic administration.

Lastly, upward mobility is hampered by preventing the rural population to move to cities that have become unaffordable because of zoning laws and taxes.

Blame the damned government, at least a _little bit_.

<comment><USER7> Lobbying. Even though lobbying is not the only factor explaining why government made such policies, it is an important factor that should not be dismissed. And since corporations have much more resources than NGOs and such to do lobbying, it is fair to put part of the blame on them for pushing policies that make them more powerful.

<comment><USER6> _Everybody_ is lobbying for their interest, not just corporations. Corporations may finance a party, but they're not casting the votes. There's an endless number of special interest groups, large and small, corporate or public.

If a government is so vulnerable to lobbying, that's still a government failure, it's not the failure of those trying to defend their interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Median household wealth collapsed. > 2007: $126k > 2016: $97k

> The number of Americans worried about the economy multiplied nearly sixfold. > > 2007: 16 percent > 2008: 86 percent

> The market value of all publicly traded companies was cut > in half. > > October 2007: $63 trillion > March 2009: $28.6 trillion

These numbers are all over the place first stat is comparing 2007 to 2016 while the very next stat is comparing 2007 to 2008 and the next one is comparing 2007 to 2009.

I can't make any sense of those numbers how were those particular years selected for comparison for a particular stat( whats so special about mar 2009) .

<comment><USER9> I haven't read the article, but I saw your question - I believe March 2009 was the low point for the market index.

At least, I remember saying to myself, "Self, you should totally find a way to come up with cash and dump it in the market right now!" Of course, I did not. But I was right. Of course, ideas are worthless without execution...

<comment><USER8> Yea I think article should have been called

* worst things that happened in last 10 yrs after crash*

not

* still living *

Because markets are not _still_ at mar 2009 level.

What an idiotic article.

<comment><USER10> It's just doing the standard low effort scarestory stats trick. Here are some really big numbers picked entirely for visual impact, not because relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Trump derangement syndrome</comment>


Uncomfortable with Agile - <AUTHOR> http://www.pragprog.com/magazines/2011-05/guru-meditation <comment><USER2> Sorry, I prefer to spend my time worrying about the code rather than worry about the rules for interacting as a team. Those rules need to be edgy enough to make things run smoothly and quickly, but not make people wonder if those rules are a bad idea or not.

The kind of Agile he describes is perfect for a startup. It gets things rolling without too much worry about failure... It keeps things from being too enterprise-y.

But an established company needs to be more concerned about their clients and their clients' data. Things need to be as stable as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this just "Wake up sheeple!" converted into a blog post about agile, replete with extra buzzwords?

"Have you experienced emergence lately?"

Don't get me wrong, I love agile. I just prefer it when people use plain language.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't help but read this in Jeff Goldblum's voice as the guy from Jurassic Park.

</comment><comment><USER5> _A truly agile project team lives on the edge of chaos._

One of my favorite current quotes is: "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." -- Mario Andretti

</comment><comment><USER6> What's the opposite of Agile ? Chubby programming ?

</comment><comment><USER7> Somehow I feel reminded of the invisible dragon in the garage. I guess agile is the Om and the Omega?

</comment><comment><USER8> All right, I'll finally comment on Agile (personal perspective, not newsworthy of itself).

A few years ago, one of the "big name" proponents of Agile and whatnot came to the area, and I let a few people know and we went to listen. [1]

It was nothing more than a buzzword laden rehash: Part common sense, part a rephrasing of the same old corporate mumbo jumbo we'd all long since learned to ignore where we can, and tolerate where we must.

On top of it, he was an arrogant prick -- at least, that day. The people I was with were generally quite intelligent and rather conscientious. Some tried to ask questions, especially to get past the buzzwords to the gist of the topic. His responses basically ran along the lines: "You're doing it wrong." This as a preface -- as an assumption, not even acknowledging the details the person described. Then, more 'blah blah buzzwords' lead to "blah blah metrics'.

It felt like a verbalized extension of PowerPoint (IIRC, he had PowerPoint along for the ride, too).

After that, I stopped paying much attention to articles on "agile". There's some good value in some of the details, but trust your common sense, and that you've probably already figured out most of the basics for yourself.

Also, I'll add that different people have different working styles. Exhibit some trust that they have figured out, at least to some extent, what works for them. Then stop trying to pound them into that proverbial "round hole".

Yes, people have to communicate effectively. But this does not equate with e.g. shoving them all into a "bullpen". Or making them think all day with someone staring over their shoulder, or vise versa.

As for e.g. continuous builds/integration and all the other technical aspects. Some good portion of that is an outgrown of continued developments in various systems. I suppose "agile" publicizes these, but you should be aware of and considering them, regardless.

[1] I guess I should add that he worked for IBM, IIRC. So, of course, they were there to promote "agile" in a manner that would sell IBM products and services.

My experience may therefore relate more to how agile translates to the world of larger corporations. By the time its transmogrified by all those filters, it sounds a lot like more of the "same old same old".

YMMV</comment>


Indian farmers to get direct cash benefits - <AUTHOR> https://indianexpress.com/article/india/chhattisgarh-sonia-gandhi-launches-rajiv-gandhi-kisan-nyay-scheme-6421246/ <comment><USER2> It's not all farmers. This scheme is limited to farmers of one state, Chhattisgarh.

Furthermore, this is one of the few states that the Indian National Congress (INC) holds power in the state legislative assembly. At the center however, INC has little sway, and is actually in the opposition.

It is to be noted that the party ruling at the center, and indeed, most of the states in the union is a different one: Bhartiya Janata Party, that the Indian Prime Minister belongs to.

Pointing this out because the title of this post makes it look like all farmers in India are getting cash benefits and that it's a national scheme. While in reality it's anything but.

In fact, the central government has been dragging its feet on any sort of direct cash transfers to the poor, or even small businesses for that matter, choosing instead to hand out loans to businesses in order to boost growth.

<comment><USER3> >In fact, the central government has been dragging its feet on any sort of direct cash transfers to the poor.

It's almost as if deciding policy for 1.3 billion people without encountering unexpected effects like runaway inflation is a difficult task.

<comment><USER2> Am not advocating for one or the other. Am not an economist.

My use of the expression `dragging its feet`, was in light of most prominent Indian economists advocating that the government must increase spending now without worrying about the deficit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's lots of money. If they're growing wheat, that's 34 bushels worth at $5 per bushel. I don't know what yields are like in India, but in Saskatchewan, Canada 34 bushels per acre of wheat is not a great crop, but it's not a bad one either.

In other words, that payment could double a typical Saskatchewan farmer's gross income. And considering that the farmer's expenses are typically 90% of the income, that's about 10x the net income. (A typical Saskatchewan farmer has about 2000 acres of land).

<comment><USER5> Agricultural landholdings in India are pretty small. The average size of a landholding is 1.08 acres. Large landholders, defined as those holding 10+ hectares, hold about 8% of the total agricultural land. (Among them, the average holding size is 15 acres.)

[http://agcensus.nic.in/document/agcen1516/T1_ac_2015_16.pdf](http://agcensus.nic.in/document/agcen1516/T1_ac_2015_16.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I should have left the farm size out of my post, it's fairly irrelevant. The relevant point is that it would double a Saskatchewan wheat farm's gross income whether it was 0.5 or 5000 acres.

<comment><USER5> Yes, makes sense.

Per-acre of per-bushel support doesn't work as well when many folks hold such little land. The money required for subsistence is constant per person. Smallholders may not be able to do non-farm work to make up for their low farm-based pay right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Through the Rajiv Gandhi Kisan NYAY Yojana, steps have been taken to > provide all requisite resources to the farmers of Chhattisgarh, encourage > crop production and send funds directly to their bank accounts. There is a > plan to include landless tribal agricultural labourers in the second phase > of this scheme. This is a very unique decision which will make them all > self-sufficient," said Sonia Gandhi.

Next phase is providing ubi to labourers who don't have any land. This sounds like a great step forward.

Interestingly coming out at the same time as people are criticizing Andrew Yang and Jack Dorsey for their UBI initiatives.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds great, now how do they really plan on making sure the money actually gets to the farmer?

<comment><USER8> Many (all?) Indian banks have to offer a no-frills zero-balance bank account by law. Since many banks are government owned, it's quite easy for such banks to offer these accounts. A lot of welfare schemes directly transfer the money to the recipients' bank accounts. I suspect this will, too.

To prevent welfare fraud, many bank accounts have been linked with a biometric database called "Aadhar". In fact I believe all Indian residents need to have registered their biometrics to operate a bank account (as you can imagine, people who don't receive welfare aren't huge fans of this rather invasive approach).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quick aside since "lakh" is used in the summary: In Indian numbering, a lakh is 100,000. There is also a crore, which is 10M.

<comment><USER10> It is spelt "lakh" or "lac" in Roman script.

<comment><USER9> doh! Updated, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mods, please correct this title. The title here is not the title of the news report and is misleading. You could include that this is in just one state in India (something like "Farmers in Indian state of Chhattisgarh to get direct cash benefits" may be easier to understand and appropriate).

</comment><comment><USER12> So... it's a payout to landowners?

<comment><USER13> You have to realize that vast majority of India farm land owners are small farmers (very very small compared to US farm sizes). In my town and villages, 2 acre would be considered a lot of land for a farmer, and I don't even know if there was anybody nearby with anything like 10 acres of land. Most farmers own very small pieces of land. The scheme in question will help these farmers and is a very good step for national food production.

There are some states with somewhat more centralised farms, but the state mentioned by the article is not one. Large scale industrial farming is very rare in India outside of a few select areas.

<comment><USER12> So the small landowners will get a little money.

But also the big landowners will get a lot of money?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's awesome, I think it's a great idea. I wish they had a similar situation setup here in the US. Our farmers are and have been in dire straights for a long time now and they could use the help.

</comment><comment><USER15> State governments should reject Modi regime's stimulus package and instead seek autonomy to print local currency [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer)

<comment><USER16> Interesting. Never heard of local currency. There is also the concept of dual currency at national level. One normal free floating with varying conversion rates and other pegged to USD</comment></comment>


The brazenness of the LIBOR scam - <AUTHOR> http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/libor-scandal/ <comment><USER2> The article is light on the description of what actually happened but there is a section about the impact of his action and whether he relised the impact.

One thing to understand is that there was not one but two distinct manipulations of Libor.

The first is the one this article refers to, which is before the financial crisis, swap traders influencing the libor submitters to move their contribution to the fixing by a tiny amount, often a couple of basis points, to fit the massive future positions they were sitting on. Completely unethical and illegal but unlikely to have any noticable effect on the market, kind of like stealing a penny from a million bank accounts. It's still stealing, but the impact on the market is limited.

The second manipulation was of a different nature. It is at the height of the financial crisis, when banks were failing as a result of bank runs every week, libor submitters, probably under instruction / tacit consent from their management and regulators, low balled their contribution to the libor fixing to not appear to be struggling to fund themselves (by having a high cost of borrowing) since these contributions were public and investors were trying to infer what bank was next to fail. These low balling were probably in the 50-300 basis point range, ie with a material impact on the wider maket (borrowers should have paid significantly higher interest rates during that period). And this is the one whistle blowers complained to regulators about, falling into deaf ears.

<comment><USER3> > two distinct manipulations of Libor

I'd argue that there were three.

The first, and unquestionably illegal, was what Tom Hayes did i.e. collusion between actors at multiple banks to move Libor. I don't think he should have got the sentence he did but prison was definitely justified.

The second was swaps traders getting their own setters to go in high or low. I'm not at all sure this was illegal. Given that Libor was completely broken at the time, I'm not even sure I'd argue that it was unethical. As there was, essentially, no uncollateralised inter-bank borrowing, any figure was wrong. And, as you say, the effect was minor and not particularly directional.

I think your second point, the systemic low balling of Libor by senior management, is, by far, the most important. It's also the one that has had the least public attention. What is particularly problematic about it is the influence that governments had. Because of the latter, I'm sure that it won't ever be properly investigated.

<comment><USER4> > but prison was definitely justified

IMHO prison is never justified for people that pose no physical danger to others. A reasonably big (as big as he can actually afford) fine and ban on working on government and financial positions could be enough.

<comment><USER5> IMHO we need to impose incredibly stiff penalties on those who perform such large, damaging crimes that undermine societal trust. These criminals do not care about being slightly less rich, and imposing penalties is likely to just result in the consumer getting shafted to make up for the loss. We should bring back the stockade and public execution for these pirates.

<comment><USER6> > These criminals do not care about being slightly less rich

That's not what was suggested. What was suggested was "as big as he can actually afford and a ban on working on government and financial positions".

That's called "punitive damages" when they scale to what the criminal can bear, rather than what damage they caused.

I do think these criminals would care about losing _most_ of their money and being barred from working in their field.

<comment><USER5> They'll just get some bullshit gig at a think-tank or as an "advisor" from one of their crony friends they helped prop up. Maybe a nice $400,000 speaking gig here and there at Goldman Sachs. Sure the odd man might get tossed aside as a token gesture to demonstrate how they're just as subject to rule of law as us common folk, but to think that these confidence men will just accept their fate and fade into obscurity is laughable.

<comment><USER6> They don't have to fade into obscurity. The point is just to make it painful. People avoid pain.

Implicit in your comment is that these people have a network that will make them whole no matter what.

A) That's only true for the very top.

B) Even if they are made whole, the more times the network has to "make someone whole" it gets harder to justify the criminality. Over time the network will start leaving people out to dry.

Also, your comment is unnecessarily dismissive. Your position is valid, you can just state it without trying to insult my intelligence and we can carry on a conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >To me, that's a really unhealthy sign, because the thing that would scare some of these bank CEOs is not losing some money or losing their jobs; it's the prospect of being perp-walked in front of TV cameras in handcuffs, or the prospect of possibly losing your liberty in front of a jury of your peers. That is a terrifying thing. To me, the great missed opportunity of the financial crisis was that prosecutors didn't do that a single time with a CEO or a top executive of any major financial institution. They might have lost those cases, but at least it would have struck some fear in the hearts of people. That's just a tremendous missed opportunity, in my opinion.

Ah yes, I love when my government hassles innocent people to make a point to everyone else.

<comment><USER8> > Ah yes, I love when my government hassles innocent people to make a point to > everyone else.

I also love it when some people are just "Too Big To Jail (TM)"

> Those investigations uncovered substantial evidence "that senior bank > officials were complicit in the illegal activity."

> On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC would > not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that > they are too important, too instrumental to subject them to such > disruptions. In other words, shielding them from the system of criminal > sanction to which the rest of us are subject is not for their good, but for > our common good.

> The New York Times Editors this morning announced: "It is a dark day for the > rule of law." There is, said the NYT editors, "no doubt that the wrongdoing > at HSBC was serious and pervasive." But the bank is simply too big, too > powerful, too important to prosecute.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/12/hsbc-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/12/hsbc- prosecution-fine-money-laundering)

<comment><USER9> I am still angry that banks too big to fail were not nationalized at this time.

<comment><USER10> They sort-of were nationalized. But it was done somewhat subtly.

The existing common equity (and IIRC preferred stock) in a number of entities was massively diluted by issuing new preferred stock and warrants to the US government.

Here are two examples, they were among the worst offenders. Look at the share price for Citigroup and AIG:

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/C?p=C](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/C?p=C) [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/aig/?p=aig](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/aig/?p=aig)

If you owned pre-crisis C common stock, you're still down about 84%. If you owned pre-crisis AIG common, you're still down about 95%. (that's approximate, done by eyeballing the charts). Edit: Yahoo Finance charts have been getting worse and worse, you need to click "Max" to see the proper timeline.

I don't follow UK equities closely, but I think the same thing happened to a number of UK banks at the time. E.g. RBS.

Unfortunately the whole thing was quite uneven. E.g. Goldman Sachs took advantage of the morons at AIG who sold them very cheap "insurance" such as credit default swaps. But Goldman was made whole. What should have happened is that Goldman should have been made to share the pain.

Edit: I'm of course talking about the '08 financial crisis in general. I don't agree that the Libor scandal was significant enough to nationalize the banks as punishment. I'd much rather see a few bad actors taken out back and shot. That would be much more salutary in terms of deferring future bad behavior.

<comment><USER11> No, no shooting.

They should have just let the market work and the banks go under.

It would have been a financial loss but a moral victory. An important lesson about carefully choosing who you trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The book might show how big FinTech houses were behind this but the article is light in that regard. The moments where people feel they can ask inside their own bank 'can guy move the LIBOR just a few thou' and not realise that's an otfense, breaks Chinese walls, breaks bounds.. and then institutionalization sets in...and you're off and running.

Those moments felt to me like 'its not a conspiracy, it's Lowe grade decision making by people who aren't reminded of their obligations' so maybe the book tells it better.

Always a bit of a sad moment, when the journo realised they like their subject. How do you maintain objectivity once you humanize the devil? Gitta Serenyi had that with Albert Speer.

</comment><comment><USER13> _" The mastermind of the LIBOR scandal was a guy named Tom Hayes, a mildly autistic mathematician"_

How convenient is to have such people around /s. Developers should learn from stories like this as well -- don't do anything illegal, even though your superiors tell you so, because when shit hits the fan, _you_ will be the one held accountable.

<comment><USER14> It's unfortunately a much more convenient narrative than blaming the people that actually benefitted the most (i.e., bank CEOs).

"This is part of the reason I love Hayes as a central character for this book — because he's not your cookie-cutter banker out of central casting. This is a guy who is much happier going home after a day of work and having a bucket of fried chicken and an orange juice and watching Seinfeld reruns than he is going out to Michelin-starred restaurants or a swanky club. To me, his massive social awkwardness — the fact that he would go to a dinner party, and sit next to a stranger, and start talking to her very loudly about his dandruff problem — he had no idea how to behave in normal society."

Political and cultural ostracism has real world consequences. They've found their scapegoat and they're piling on. It's pretty disgusting actually.

<comment><USER13> I partly blame media for that as well, because they tend to portray movie-like evil minded geniuses that are probably more appealing and easier to grasp for general reader than methodical, faceless, industrious scams and legal gray areas. This can be seen even more so in politics.

<comment><USER15> Captain America punches Campaign Finance in the face, freeing the American people from the grip of expanding monopolies and anti-consumer practices!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is surprising to me is that LIBOR setting was not based on actual transactions but on the assumptions what I would pay bank X to borrow money. The perceived punishment for lying was laughable too. All around this just invites actors with bad incentives.

I believe as of today LIBOR is set based on actual transactions. But who was the genius who created the original LIBOR? Perhaps it all started as something hacky in the 60s and they could not foresee how important LIBOR would become?

<comment><USER17> It started in the mid 80s according to Wikipedia.

I don't doubt what they did was immoral, but most of the articles I've seen skip over the murky aspect of what exactly was illegal.

Thinking of an absurd parallel, if you had a dinner club and had to say how much you were going to pay before the restaurant was picked, it's hard to see how manipulating your decision to influence the restaurant chosen would be illegal if there wasn't some firm agreement in the process being deterministic or formally defined. And that wouldn't change even if others were making money on the back of the restaurant choice!

What I'd like to see explained is how LIBOR went from an ill-defined process to one where the way some participants set it was no longer legal. What had the participant banks signed up to do /not do which they then failed to do?

Or is the illegality all on the part of those trading on it? (ie insider trading, given that it was based on non-public information)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > first, you identify inefficiencies in the market: weaknesses, loopholes, > things like that

Huh? That's not what inefficiency means. It means that an asset costs more (or less) then it's worth.

</comment><comment><USER19> My bank was involved with the LIBOR scandal but they won't let my wife pay small amounts of cash into my account just in case we're up to something dodgy.

If I temporarily have a large amount of cash in the account then they send me brochures trying to lure me into some premium 'exclusive' club which feels more than slightly greasy.

I would switch banks but it's a lot of hassle. Plus I don't get the sense that any of them would be working for me. They're working for the regulator, or for the forces of darkness, or for someone else.

<comment><USER20> Early in 2008, on principle, we switched from a 'Too Big To Fail' bank to a credit union. It was a pain, and is occasionally inconvenient, but that pain is outweighed by the satisfaction in reading the headlines and being glad I'm not funding them anymore.</comment></comment>


Sydney's desalination plant is turned on – so what does that mean? - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-27/sydney-desalination-plant-turned-on-so-how-does-it-work/10753334 <comment><USER2> i never understood people who think that there will be water wars. RO plants like these are all you need. there was some scare-mongering about brine-cakes, and i never understood how anyone fell for that because the amount of salt produced by these plants compared to the volume of the ocean is beyond minuscule. lo and behold, this article says the brine problem was found to be a false alarm after being looked at again. slap a solar field on this baby and youve got sustainable, mostly disaster-proof water. exciting times.</comment>