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Rate my idea | anonymous14: I think it's a great product idea, and I think it would actually be a good candidate for a Facebook app or FB Connect.I have a lot of trouble imagining a viable business around a bookmarklet. The only way you are going to get enough users to make it profitable is if you have 1% of your users who invite all... |
Your ideas about creating an alternative to PowerPoint | tokenadult: If you imagine the next generation of presentation aids, what are some problems that we can solve?Persuade users to use them less. See Edward Tufte for more on this.http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.htmlPeter Norvig has a funny take ... |
State of the art in simulated browsing? | ismarc: Mechanize is good and watir for ruby, and then there's Selenium. Be very cautious of selenium and similar because they invalidate a large amount of QA tests (depending on what you're testing). Selenium works in 1 of 3 ways, injecting javascript into the page via a Firefox plugin, injecting javascript via a pr... |
Your ideas about creating an alternative to PowerPoint | ScottWhigham: You know, I like HN for a variety of reasons but idea sharing just isn't really one of them (for me). I haven't thought about this topic nor do I care to but here's the thing: if I did care to think about it, I wouldn't dare talk anonymously to a bunch of insanely smart, DIYers who can probably out-everyt... |
How much? | utku_karatas2: As another freelancer much below your rate I wonder if they knew you were a one man show in your 100K project. Usually firms want to see teams and sales reps in suits if they're going to shell out large amounts like that. How did you ever gained their trust? |
Your ideas about creating an alternative to PowerPoint | jpwagner: I don't see a lot of "flaws" with Powerpoint because its functionality is very simple.I would say there are 4 key components to presentation:1. predetermined agenda/topics for discussion (what people use powerpoint for)2. ad-hoc discussion (whiteboards are a great tool for this)3. verbal communication (in-... |
How do technologies like Farecast (now bing) and Flightcaster work? | gtani: There's really good books on Data Mining at Borders, and a recent bunch of "collective intelligence" books; the Manning books are excellent, but you have know java; you probably also want to install Weka and R, look at the Python suite (numpy, scipy, matplotlib), tools like that; also look up the ~107 (!) algori... |
What are the best developer/hacker focused blogs? | pfedor: http://research.swtch.com/ |
What's your least favorite tech word? Mine's "non-trivial". | jlintz: "the cloud" please make it go away, it's totally the next buzzword to replace 'web 2.0' |
Where do you find clients? | blazzerbg: http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/freelance/a/clients_8ways.htm |
Where do you find clients? | hajrice: hmm well I suppose networking would be crucial. At least for me it is. I sometimes do some web development/design work and all of my clients recommend me. How I found the first one was simple, I did it for a friend...you could offer a free version to someone, etc?I suggest you read Seth Godin's website. For Go... |
What are the best developer/hacker focused blogs? | ganley: A few of my favorites that I didn't see people list; note that many of these are sort of combined personal blogs and programming-related (like mine - http://joeganley.com):- http://wilshipley.com- http://lbrandy.com- http://nedbatchelder.com- http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/ |
Where do you find clients? | patio11: This is not a "put food on the table tomorrow" strategy, but it does work: start blogging how you solve the problems of the people whose problems you want to solve. Continue blogging for a few years, gradually building up a reputation for yourself as a topical expert in the community.You'll have to beat off o... |
Where do you find clients? | rama_vadakattu: The new way to find clients is by following the below principles ...........1.Start a blog2a.Write the content which showcases your expertise2b.Identify pain points and share your expertise in those
areas2c.publish the interviews of various persons who are (experts / kind of popular ) in the area... |
Where do you find clients? | stuartk: If you're looking at the higher end of the market, perhaps 10-20k per project or more, referals and relationships is where it's at.Think about how you would select someone for a project if you had £50k to spend on a project. Would you search the web and pick the company with the nicest website or most blog ar... |
Where do you find clients? | olegp: I agree with the comment saying that for the type of work you do, it's all about word of mouth & referrals. From what you're saying about getting leads through your professional contacts, it seems like you've already figured this out.You should probably be quite open about giving anybody who brings you a paying ... |
Where do you find clients? | clistctrl: For the company I work for we build websites in the 100k - 500k range. Our first clients came from a professional relationship my boss had before he started the company. Then gradually as the company did work we gained a reputation for the sector, and in the products of our core compentencies. Now we have... |
Where do you find clients? | Edinburger: A common strategy is to engage a salesperson who has worked for similar companies, get them to use their book of contacts to sell your services. If you advertise for the salesperson, you should be able to find someone who will work on a freelance/commission-only basis. |
Where do you find clients? | shafqat: Conferences are great - we've had a lot of success nailing clients in tech/industry conferences. Of course, you should be selective on the ones you choose to attend (avoid the high price/high BS ration ones).Also, cold e-mails can work surprisingly well if you can lead with a warm-ish intro. Follow them on twi... |
Where do you find clients? | Alex3917: Good rule of thumb: You should be meeting at least two new people every day. And for every person you meet, you should be making three introductions. Figure out who the 5 best superconnectors are in your city, and then have them each introduce you to thirty of their friends. Then have each of those 150 people... |
Where do you find clients? | robfitz: I think the true purpose of an advisory board is client contacts. You can build a top notch virtual salesperson with the right board with no financial cost and only a small equity cost. |
Where do you find clients? | edw519: have managed to find some leads mainly through our professional contactsGood. Keep doing that. Then get referrals from your referrals. This has always worked well for me.RFPs
I never do. You have little control and have to compete. Look for opportunities where there is no competition.hit the streets?
Absol... |
My HN has vanished | astine: I assume that you can get most of the rest of the web through your new connection normally? |
Where do you find clients? | NoBSWebDesign: Agreed that personal contacts and relationships are your best bet.Beyond that, we use Google Alerts to RSS feed + LeadNuke for a continuous stream of new client leads. (disclosure: I developed LeadNuke expressly for this purpose) |
My HN has vanished | ScottWhigham: Have you or your neighbor recently installed the greasemonkey script that gets people banned? I don't have it handy but answer this: "Have you recently installed a new greasemonkey script for using HN?" |
My HN has vanished | thaumaturgy: Can you connect to other sites containing the word "hacker"? |
My HN has vanished | jeroen: The Bug Fixer could probably tell you if you have an ip-non-grata. Such a list does seem to exist:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=ip+ban+site... |
My HN has vanished | sachinag: This happened to me; something weird was going on, so PG blocked my IP. E-mail him with your IP address and username and let him know what's up. |
Where do you find clients? | qeorge: I have a similar business, we're nearing our third year. We've found most of our clients through word of mouth and referrals, but don't let that discourage you. You'd be amazed how many people need web work and haven't taken action because hiring a web firm is so intimidating, and its hard to know if you're get... |
My HN has vanished | blhack: Guys, if he can telnet into port 80 and do a get, that means that he isn't blocked (either by HN admins, or by his ISP).What browser are you using? Some browsers (like chrome) do weird DNS caching that can, sometimes, cause problems.The fact that you can get it from telnet, but not from your browser, means tha... |
My HN has vanished | bsaunder: Have you installed the recently posted greasemonkey script:http://github.com/brainkarma/hnreputation/tree/masterThis may have triggered an automated block... It seems like a rather abusive script. |
My HN has vanished | noamsml: If you have a bad IP address, why not disconnect and reconnect? On many connections that should give you a new address (unless you've got a static address). |
Where do you find clients? | NyxWulf: I wrote this article, and found these strategies to work for me.http://procnew.com/10-cheap-ways-to-get-clients-for-freelanc... |
Are Wi-Fi network names being used for advertising? | ScottWhigham: I've never seen it other than seeing the company's name that was trying to sell me wifi access (i.e. "T-Mobile" while in Starbucks a few years ago).I would think that you couldn't switch the network name ever if you wanted traction though. (1) If you switch the network name on most routers, it kicks every... |
Cross-platform runtime for my project? | icey: Have you looked at PyQt at all? It's dual licensed GPL and commercial, so if you're writing a closed source app it will cost you money; but I've heard good things about it. |
Review my webapp (LeadNuke.com) | wmd: Your feed2lead and your supervariables videos have the same audio as your first introductory video.Otherwise looks nice so far. |
My HN has vanished | DXL: When my IP was blocked I could connect but the HTTP server wouldn't respond. The ban was caused by a userscript posted here a couple of days ago that was poorly scripted and would thus trigger anti-DDOS/anti-scraping protection. I emailed PG about it and he unbanned me. The same thing happened to at least one othe... |
How do I delete my account? | jibiki: I suggest changing your password to something you won't remember. |
Where do you find clients? | onreact-com: I get most of my clients via the Web. Far to many of them for me to handle. They find me on the Web due to my SEO or they notice me due to my blogging and social media participation. Also clients refer new clients. |
My HN has vanished | swombat: See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=789469 (pg's request for people to stop using hnreputation) |
How do I delete my account? | bockris: Not to be harsh, but by posting a submission you are making a big production of it. |
How do I delete my account? | thetrumanshow: I'm incredibly curious... what was the straw that broke the camel's back here?I get the sense that HN does lean pro-market, non-political, and unreligious (pg is just about the only person I catch actually bagging on religion, but maybe I am just paying extra attention to him). Reddit leans anti-market, ... |
Asking for a raise | mbrubeck: The biggest thing you can do to improve your chances is to look for work elsewhere. If someone else will pay more for the same work, then you have an obvious bargaining point at your current job. And frankly, it's much more likely that you'll get a significant raise by changing companies. You current emplo... |
Asking for a raise | Derrek: A few months ago I used a few psychological techniques with great success that helped me land a 10k raise.Basically, I reminded my employer of my value to the market, my value to the company and introduced the suspicion that I was looking elsewhere.A few recruiters had called the main office asking for my conta... |
Fun lures to teach a little brother to hack? | pavelludiq: The way i started hacking, was to thinker game config files, or mess with game mods and see what are they made off. I actually did dis with only one game(Lock on), because i am not much of a gamer. Lock on was a good choice because i was obsessed with russian war planes and aviation, and because it had an a... |
Asking for a raise | sachinag: You're at a non-profit? OK, let me be clear: if you leave, your NP is fucked.If market is more than the ED makes, and you want to make anywhere near market, you have to leave. They're dramatically underpaying market, and have to for structural reasons, so they won't be able to hire someone anywhere near as ... |
Asking for a raise | californiaguy: > note I'm the only tech guyThis is the #1 indicator that you are underpaid. Just ask for your desired salary and if you don't get it, quit. If you can't quit without being in financial trouble - that's your problem. You won't be getting a raise then.Don't make this more complicated than it has to be. |
Asking for a raise | gte910h: Don't ask for percentages.Ask for a flat amount. They don't pay you in %'s, they pay you in dollars. Point this out to them if they try to point out the percentage.Say X is the rate advertised for any of these places. I'm not looking, but feel I deserve a raise of at least ____ |
Asking for a raise | haseman: I've had success in asking for a raise with a technique that breaks down into two parts:First, frame the issue as a problem for you. A problem your bosses can help you with: I.E. your unhappy about the mismatch between your salary and your responsibilities. You leave step one when your bosses agree with you ... |
How do I delete my account? | icey: Just log out. Problem solved.That being said, don't let the fact that one comment got downmodded scare you away. People have opinions on all sorts of things; eventually you're going to run into the fact that people are bound to disagree with you. Hopefully you can take a few days and realize that there aren't too... |
Asking for a raise | kitcar: Before you go in to discuss your raise, first sit down and try to write down the exact economic contribution you have made to the firm - ideally link cost-savings or revenue-generation directly to the activities you have performed.This activity will serve two purposes:1) Provide you with additional confidence t... |
How do I delete my account? | dannyr: What's the negative implication if you just stop submitting and commenting on articles?Do you want your profile removed from search results? |
Fun lures to teach a little brother to hack? | rubinelli: Did I read it right? Do you really want to raise another script kiddie? There are tons of ways to teach him ethical hacking, games are the easiest and the most fun. Show him how to mod a shooter, or download something like Game Maker and show him how to create a simple platform game. Don't teach him the kind... |
Asking for a raise | mds: If you really want to stay in your current position (ie. you have a strong desire to contribute to the goals of that organization), another option would be to negotiate reduced hours for the same pay (say, 20 hours/week).Depending on the organization, you might be able to recruit some part time volunteer or intern... |
Asking for a raise | zck: Think of it this way -- the difference between your salary and your market value is effectively money you're donating to the nonprofit. If you don't want to donate that much, either ask for a raise, or quit, get a new job, and write a check to the nonprofit. |
Fun lures to teach a little brother to hack? | swolchok: You may be able to bait him into learning how to program by showing him what the effect of a successful exploit is (i.e., remote shell). However, I think it takes too long to learn how to program alone to attempt to teach someone to program for the first time and teach security at the same time. Nonetheless, ... |
CMS and Shopping Carts? (from the view of a web developer) | SwellJoe: I've been through the CMS selection process five times now, and it's always turned out bad, until the most recent selection. I've heavily used (as in, built and launched a site used by thousands of people every day) Zope, Plone, OpenACS, Joomla, and now Drupal, and experimented with (as in, installed and tin... |
CMS and Shopping Carts? (from the view of a web developer) | yannis: If I was you I would take it just for the experience. I would use Drupal for the CMS. From what you describing should take you two-three weeks to learn Drupal and redesign the site. |
Asking for a raise | chriseppstein: Salary is important and in more ways than just having more money. Titles vary at different companies and have different meanings, so salary is the easiest way for a bigger company to place you into a title at that company. Once you're in the company, sadly, title matters since most people at a company do... |
Asking for a raise | trevelyan: No-one else is posting from the perspective of an employer, so let me point out what seems obvious to me. No-one who works for a non-profit is going to be making what you refer to as "market rates". You signed up for a lower salary when you joined, and so unless you get satisfaction from the mission of the n... |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | jacquesm: You may have a stuck key or a fouled up contact layer... happened to me on an older keyboard as well, suddenly I'd get crazy input. A while later somebody fessed up to dropping their drink into my keyboard :(Try another keyboard, see if it goes away. |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | trickthat: If the keyboard doesn't work, Google hijackthis and download it. When you run it, you can click on the items it finds in the report to learn more about what junk is in your trunk, and how to get rid of it....then you can hit up one of the online scanners to make sure your Antivirus didn't get compromised. |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | rms: I hate to be that guy, but...http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | bockris: Do you have a wireless keyboard and do you live in close proximity to other people who do? (roommate, dorm, apartment buidling) |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | rokhayakebe: Someone else may have gotten hold of your computer, and s/he is trying to drive you nuts. |
Asking for a raise | auston: From what I have seen, it's either going to be really tough to get a raise, OR very easy.I've tried to use bargaining chips like having a job that paid significantly more to try and hike up my salary (didn't work in 1 case, worked very easily in another).Simply asking for a raise while alluding to your value in... |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | philwelch: Perhaps you or someone with access to your machine have enabled a remote desktop server and one of your friends, or enemies, is having his jollies at your expense. |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | uptown: Could just be some fried circuitry. Since it's a laptop, you're kinda in a jam. I had this once when a mouse was going bad. It started phantom-mousing around the screen. See if there's any diagnostic software for your laptop and run all of those scans to see what you come back with. |
What determines whether I can reply? | yan: Time proportional to the depth of the comment. |
What's your Startup Motto? (or just yours) | cperciva: Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid.Myself: Strive for excellence. |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | ErrantX: If you reinstalled XP the only remaining common theme would be, well, the keyboard. |
What's your Startup Motto? (or just yours) | stuntgoat: "I don't know if I am going to be able to do this" never gets old. Also, "I hope this isn't going to crash the server someday" gives me a warm feeling late at night. |
Has the advertising model worked for anybody? | babyshake: Only if you're publishing (republishing, cough cough) content about certain areas of medicine or law where adsense payments go through the roof. |
Has the advertising model worked for anybody? | philwelch: Before online gambling was cracked down on in this country, I knew a blogger who made a lot of money through gambling affiliates. As I recall, she saved money by living in Costa Rica at the time, but she had a good year or so. |
What's your Startup Motto? (or just yours) | roberte3: "If the fucker doesn't cost your your life, it isn't a quest." Which I lifted from gapingvoid.com |
What would you ask Mayor (of NYC) Bloomberg? | p01nd3xt3r: Will you fund my startup? |
What's your Startup Motto? (or just yours) | Mankhool: Nil alivd quam pictura mota.
Lit: It is nothing less than a moving picture.
Col: It's only a movie! |
What would you ask Mayor (of NYC) Bloomberg? | lionhearted: I'd be curious how he balances his wealth and investments with being publicly elected - I know the U.S. President has to put most of his investments into a blind trust or some such once elected, what's it like for the mayor of NYC? Lots of old associates must want his council, lots of people must want him ... |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | yan: Fantastic question that I've been musing over myself recently.I've not understood anything specific that led to this (as far as my tired mind remembers), but my hunger for some specific statistics grew. For instance: Partitions of US workforce into industry, median wage, median age, geographical locations, etc. Tr... |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | gregp: Learning how to learn. |
iTunes vs Device Earnings? | byoung2: It's hard to tell where revenue comes from by looking at their earnings reports, since they aren't broken down by product/service (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/07/21results.html). Clearly they make more from selling Macs, but if you did a strict iPod/iPhone vs iTunes, it would be close. |
iTunes vs Device Earnings? | brk: Based on:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/06/itunes-sells-6-billion-...iTunes has sold 6 billion songs. That probably includes full album sales as well as singles. Guessing an average per-track price of 80 cents then, or 4.8 billion in revenue.According to:
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:OuySBgKhHGIJ:www... |
iTunes vs Device Earnings? | sama: If you believe that they make $200 per iPhone and have sold 35M iPhones, that'd be about 7 billion in earnings. It's a bit weird because they take the earnings over 2 years per device (or something close to that). Most estimates on profit per song sold are around 10 cents (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/0... |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | brk: For me it was simply getting out in the world at a relatively young age at a variety of levels.I never really got any allowance, mostly just because my old man was a bit of a cheap-ass and a control freak. It was easier to earn my own money instead of having to be beholden to him and account for where my spending... |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | dimarco: Kerouac and traveling. |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | scarface548: Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins |
Has the advertising model worked for anybody? | davidu: We have about 20 people and are profitable. All advertising driven. |
What is your favorite application of Graphviz? | makecheck: I use it indirectly from Doxygen regularly. I've also had data in custom formats that is naturally graph-like, and it was trivial to produce visualizers by writing scripts to convert the custom format into "dot" syntax.One idea I have is to use "dot" to give auto-layout capabilities to a GUI that has a simp... |
WHy is my computer typing by itself? | gmiller: Maybe someone like me got ahold of it. I wrote an app that I put on one of my coworkers machines that would start to slowly move the mouse to the right side of the screen if it sat in the same spot for more than 30 seconds. |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | zeynel1: +Newton's Principia as a masterpiece of marketing and for creating the modern scholasticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia...+Descartes' Geometry where he declares that you can choose any line as a unit to measure other lines (your knowledge depends on what you already know, your ... |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | bsaunder: I've been pondering information architecture a lot lately. I've found that much of Gödel, Escher, Bach resonates well with my thoughts.Particularly I've been contemplating the relationship between transformation and efficiency, as well as parallel processing and recurive architectures. |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | pasbesoin: Years ago, a brilliant if eccentric friend had one of those one-pane comics on his bulletin board. It depicted a figure walking down a city street. All the forms of communication around him -- I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but remember particularly items such as a bus stop bench, perhaps a TV in a shop w... |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | Maven911: Wow! I always thought it strange that I felt I was the only one who was truly obsessed about "how the world works". It always amazes me that people under 20 don't even bother to watch news to stay up to date with current events or special information reports...Me personally, I would say the newspaper. I would... |
Rate my idea | dryicerx: http://www.tokbox.com ? |
Hot & Useful software skills for novice converts? | kleintjie: Try and learn the basics of good software design.
These inlcude and not limited to:
Design patterns, OO concepts, separation of concerns, testing to name a few.In addition, it a good idea to havea clear understanding of different software methodologies (waterfall vs agile)The programming laguage is importa... |
What is your favorite application of Graphviz? | thristian: My most useful GraphViz hack so far has been a script that reads the schema description out of a PostgreSQL database and turns it into a vaguely Access/SQL Server-like database diagram (a node for each table, arrows representing foreign-key relations).Someday I'd like to set up a script that takes the query-... |
What is your favorite application of Graphviz? | jbr: I just ran into http://diagrammr.com/ tonight. Pretty sweet little mini-app that looks like it's built on graphviz/dot. |
What accelerated your understanding of how the world works? | Tichy: I liked the books by Alice Miller, at least the earlier ones. I am not sure if the later ones are still good (the made up examples seem strange). I think "The Untouched Key" was one I liked.Made me wish everybody would read them at least once. |
What would you ask Mayor (of NYC) Bloomberg? | orbyt: I'd ask him what it was like to start bloomberg, how he did it, and when he knew he was succeeding. An old friend of mine was employee #60 at bloomberg, and he said it was a great - but very intense - place to work. |
What is your favorite application of Graphviz? | hippee-lee: We had to write an awk script for a class a while ago that used the output from du for a given folder. The output from the script was a dot file with the directory structure and memory used for each node below the given directory argument. Mine was pretty simple but one student figured out how to make each ... |
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