lucasvo

It makes me happy and sentimental to see this post show up on hackernews. I was a contributor to the Ronja project in my teens. Karel (`clock`) taught me so much about open source and truly believed in pushing open technology forward. I was 14 at the time and he just finished university and taught me a ton mostly late at nights on the swiss linux user group's IRC channels.

A lot of the replies point out that cheap PCBs were not readily accessible. Clock and I were both living in Switzerland and prototyping PCBs especially in Switzerland was very costly. This kept us away from developing PCBs for a while.

We did want to build a 100mbit version and that was significantly easier using SMD components and a multilayer PCB so we started working on that. When we had the first prototype I actually took a train to Prague when I was 14 years old and went to a PCB fab to pick up 50 or so along with all the parts. This saved us a few thousand dollars and we tried to recoup the cost by selling kits. Fun times :)

The philosophy of the project was also to build it only with open source projects (something that wasn't feasible for the PCB design - we used Eagle which at least was free to use). The dead bug style worked very well and was extremely simple but of course not aesthetically pleasing when compared to what you can order online today. But it also meant that you could build it yourself without the need to order a PCB.

We used a local community run welding shop to build some of steel mounts: http://images.twibright.com/tns/1a52.html

Ethereum EIP-999 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843991 and https://github.com/5chdn/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-999.md) is exactly that, a discussion of patching Ethereum to unlock a a few hundred million dollars that are inaccessible due to a software bug.

We have had some success with hiring out of General Assembly. Last summer we hired 3 interns out of GA who each first started off with a simple throwaway project and then proceeded on to some easy tasks learning our stack (Java/Groovy). We're not a ruby/python shop and a lot of our work is backend heavy. This was quite different to what these students were taught. During this period they got an internship salary. Out of the three we were interested in keeping two. The third person couldn't catch on to it fast enough. About a year later they are at about the level of a junior dev out of college. Their development since has been comparable to other junior devs. I count that as a success.

We'd probably do it again at some point but our engineering team is not big enough to absorb too many junior devs and train these. GA helped in building a foundation, we wouldn't have had the resources to do this training on our own.

And no, we were not paying 100k to people right out of the program.

Your second example though exists in exact the same way in python and ruby. Some people prefer to hunt for missing comma's and brackets, others for spaces.

I think that's a matter of taste. Coming from python, I've quite enjoyed coffee-script's syntax and I've actually done something in between, using brackets for objects just because I like the readability of it, but avoiding all semicolons and taking advantage of the indentation for code blocks.

I think you don't get the humour behind it. They're making glowing plants because, come on, who doesn't like to have a glowing plant?!

I know some of the guys behind it. And making growing plants is only a way to show off, what they're working on that is much bigger. Creating custom dna sequences is a pretty tough challenge.

I can agree with what you're saying though I want to share an anecdote from Moscow where there is pretty much no regulation and pricing varies by car company. Instead of having a meter you negotiate the price in the beginning.

To help users out with ordering cabs Yandex released an app that actually let's you order cabs and shows you pre-negotiated prices, you can pick whichever one you like (economy, premium, luxury). They include user ratings and some sort of due-diligence for taxis to get accepted to their network.

But apart from that, a Lyft-like system has existed in many cities for years. In Moscow just holding up your hand on the side of the street prompts anyone to just drive over to the side of the street and offer you a ride. Most of these are full-time or part-time drivers, but also people getting home from work who don't mind a small detour for a bit of extra cash. At a fraction of the price this is the most popular way for people to get around, although some cars look like they date back into the USSR era.

This is a perfectly acceptable scenario and I think with modern technology the market will start to regulate itself.

We built this in less than 24hours at angelhack.

It's using mechanical turk to present real humans both versions and ask them to answer the question asked by selecting one of the images. It should be a good second opinion but obviously it's not comparable to an actual A/B test on a live website. At that price, you probably can't get cheaper feedback. Considering what average CPCs are for Facebook and Google, this is a pretty good deal.

What most people don't know about this clock design is, that the Swiss Railways are licensing it to a watch manufacturer who sells them in retail. The watch with the exact same design is available commercially. Therefore suing Apple and making Apple pay is something the actually have to do without risking their other licensing deals.

I think the focus is not enough, though I have to say it also took me some time to get used to the pink. We could actually make that into a pretty easy setting... Maybe I'll do it sometime when the pink pisses me off too much.

That's pretty cool. How have you worked around issues such as breaking keyboard shortcuts for Gmail?

Why do you like this approach better than what vimium does? that was already to complicated for me.

Also: I love the way you demo the functionality on the site!

The problem is, that this only works because it's so completely different from all the other ads and because of that reason escapes some of the banner blindness.

We've had similar results when we modified our logo and added mistakes. For example a rectangle Google AdSense Banner with a mirrored version of our Logo or just some crazy saturation affect applied on top of it actually got excellent CTRs. Even though it was kind of unnerving to have all my friends tell me about the mistakes that were in our ads...

You mention product managers here, while I certainly agree with you that this isn't a technical job per se, most job ads mention a CS-related degree as a requirement. I'm always looking at PM positions in the valley, but I can hardly find a job opening that does not require a BA in CS.

What would you suggest to do as a non-technical person trying to get into PM? Could anyone share a story/some tipps here?

I agree with you. Though I would still say, the average consumer doesn't need a tablet. The UPS guy could use a tablet, you could use a tablet for grocery shopping at the super market, a mechanic could use it to diagnose a car...

but for reading the newspaper or surfing on your couch, I doubt that it's so much of an improvement over a notebook.

I think it is a very valid point. A tablet makes sense for the medical application but they have been around for years on the consumer side and nobody really used them. Why not? Surfing hacker news is cool on a tablet in my bed, but writing this comment while I'm in my bed would be impossible with a tablet. Same thing about most of the other browsing, text input on a table it not very practical. (I used to own an HP tablet pc)

The form factor is also quite big, it's not something you're going to put in your jeans. And when you have to carry it around in a backpack, most of the people will probably just take their notebook because when it comes to serious work, emailing and actually creating content a keyboard is a lot faster.

The tablet can't be much smaller than the macbook air and even if it is, I think a lot of people would go for the MBA.

For consuming media, a tablet is great, but epaper is even better and we haven't heard any rumours about epaper being used. Now for music you already have an iPod, and just for watching movies and reading blogs in color, I think is not enough to convince people to buy another device.

Remember a tablet would completely change the way people behave, the iPod replaced the walkman, the iPhone replaced a cell phone. A tablet is neither replacing an iphone nor a notebook, so at a 1000$ price tag, I think the value it brings is not enough.

One of the success stories of this business model is probably cyberduck (http://cyberduck.ch) I have heard from friends that the guy makes decent money with his "donation"-business model. Though it's more like shareware than actually just placing a donation button on your website.

I just tried out the service. As someone who isn't a full time coder it's great to have someone with years of experience on the back to share some tricks with me.

Plus I regularly hire freelancers and while making it simply into a freelancer market place would be a horrible idea, I would definitely say that I would hire someone who has been able to help me out with a problem in 30 mins. And I think it's also a good way for developers to see if their potential clients are complete idiots or if they're not too bad themselves.

It looks more like you're asking from a providers point of view... I'm usually a buyer so I'll tell you about my experiences as a buyer:

I've been working with numerous freelancers for quite a while. It took me a long time to figure out how to choose my freelancers and I've had several failures along the way. The first things I outsourced were website PSD to HTML conversion ("slicing") and php scripts. These projects were usually somewhere between 50$ and 200$. While I did check their references and their ratings, I always tried to take one the cheapest providers. The projects grew and my average project size currently is 1000$, with the smallest ones still 100$ and the bigger ones 15k USD. I have changed my criteria since then and now look for the following things:

1. If you need a special skill (i.e. I once had a project that involved a lot of work with the google maps api): I most often search these sites my self and usually invite only the people that actually have that skill mentioned on their profile page. That way you can be sure that they actually know what they're doing and that they don't have to learn it while working for you.

2. Average hourly wage & price is the most reliable predictor about the quality. Usually providers will try to be as cheap as possible, providers who have enough work and who are confident enough that their work is really valuable however won't play this game and usually charge more per hour. I usually pick developers who charge more than the average.

3. It may look like you'll get a great deal but most of the time you won't. If someone is bidding 200$ on a project that even a non techie like you can say that the project won't be just a 3hour job but weeks of work, then don't pick this bidder. Most of the developers quickly loose their motivation to do anything after they have exceeded their own budget for this project, start to do sloppy work, or argue about not implementing required features.

4. Don't trust the ratings. There are some providers that go out of their way to get good ratings even after they screwed up big time. I've had people begging me not to give them bad ratings even offering me a refund. When looking at their ratings the valuable information is usually in the buyers comments not in the 5-star "grades"

5. Always check the code they're writing. I've had freelancers who screwed up you couldn't even imagine. Like putting and SQL query into a GET variable and then execute it on the server unfiltered.

This is when buying from one of these sites. By now I more or less figured it out but especially in the beginning I burnt my fingers quite a few times when working with freelancers. It's something that takes time to master.

I agree with ankeshk, I've had the best experience with odesk because their workforce is better qualified and the hourly billing is ok for me. I also oftentimes use elance for some projects.

Another helpful tip: I was working on a project where I needed a twisted proxy to translate something for me. I started reading the documentation of twisted and after a few minutes I decided that I'll try my luck in their IRC chat. I went in there and basically just said: I need some help with twisted, would anyone be interested in a small half day project and earn a few bucks? and worked with the first guy to answer in the chat. It worked out quite well.

I've also hired people from djangogigs.com and it worked out ok however you have to watch out that these people really are freelancers that want to do freelancing, I've worked with a few who said after a couple of weeks that they couldn't do it after all because they don't have enough time after their normal workday to do freelancing.

There are outsourcing companies like Itteco.com and x-minds.org which I can really recommend for bigger projects and longer lasting partnerships. I have worked with both of them, I don't know all of their developers but they certainly have good developers. If you decide to work with a bigger company I would usually only do that with a personal introduction and/or careful due diligence.

Generally speaking: if you're looking for freelancers, ask people in your network, if they know good freelancers that's the best way to find them.

Same combination here. The Economist is without doubt one of the most interesting magazines and even though I usually agree very much with them, it's not boring at all. Big plus: they have podcasts (word for word read by a professional speaker).

GQ has quite a few interesting articles which are usually burried deep within the magazine between a lot of ads. But I usually enjoy looking at the ads too. It's a change from my day to day stuff.

I also enjoy reading national geographic but I haven't renewed my subscription because they don't focus enough on technology.

Check this out: http://github.com/atebits/SimFinger

I have used SimFinger and SnapzPro to record the screencast. I didn't have access to Adobe Premiere, so I used Keynote to add the titles. I created a slideshow the way I wanted it and then recorded it with Keynote's built in recorder.

Unfortunately I can't show you the result yet but it's almost identical to the style Apple uses.

Most of you miss the point. I grew up in Switzerland and have a U.S. passport because my father is american. I know countless other people who have U.S. passports but haven't been in the U.S. for years. They will never be in need of medicare nor do they care what the americans do, never the less they have to pay US taxes to pay for politics that they don't neccessarily support in a country they have never lived in.

This has been accepted by the other nations and they have tried to comply with these rules as much as possible. Switzerland has stricter privacy laws which allows people to evade taxes easily. The problem is, the swiss still pay their taxes even though they aren't forced to – and there are numerous studies suggesting that not forcing people to do something actually works better. I can completely understand nations who want the swiss to close this loophole.

Recent events, this was confirmed a friend managing relations with the U.S. at a big swiss bank, made a lot of people rethink whether they still want to keep their U.S. passports and are getting rid of them. These people are have been living in Switzerland for years made their fortune in Switzerland and plan to retire here. Is there really any reason why they should pay taxes, just because they were born in the US?

However you should read the second part, in which they start talking about estate tax. In this example he talks about non-US citizens, people who have invested their money in the U.S. Obama now wants to make a law that will tax estate in the U.S even if the owner is not in possession of a U.S. passport or a greencard. Doing an MBA in the states is reason enough to being taxed. This means that a wealthy individual who owns US property or stocks & bonds and spent some time in the US now has to pay up to 45% of estate tax in the U.S. on his U.S. property. Just because you own German stocks, should Germany get access to all your financial accounts and be able to freeze the assets when you pass away to determine if you should be taxed in Germany? This is absolutely ridiculous and as they mentioned in the letter, the additional tax revenue will not create enough tax revenue to solve the problems of the U.S. That's why they are suggesting that their clients should withdraw from investing in the US, because that 2 month vacation in California suddenly means, that they'll take 45% of your Apple shares when you pass away.

Django useses this Approach: app/ ---- models.py ---- views.py ---- urls.py ---- admin.py etc.

etc. I think it does indeed make more sense. Though the difference is not that big except for one case: Reusability of the code, that way you can easily just copy the directory to another site.

I have just graduated high school last week! Transforming from student to full time hacker!

No distraction is nice. I wonder though what impressions my customers have if they get emails from me at 5am...

My problem with going to bed at 4am-6am is that it's usually quite hard to get a good midnight snack. At least where I live and going into the kitchen is no option because I'd wake up my whole family. I usually end up eating a powerbar or cereal which probably isn't the best.

How did you manage that, how many times per day do you sleep?

How did you change your diet? I like the side-effects :)

You can't really expect to see a page with 28 links that are 100% relevant to you. Just ignore the stuff you're not interested in and don't waste your time on completely useless comments such as the above.

What is interesting about the iPhone is, that you normally get it with an unlimited data plan. As soon as 3g is included in every plan, sms will loose it's importance. but I doubt that it will be replaced.

The keyboard issue kept me from buying one. Though at my school in Switzerland about 1% of the students already have one, even though until yesterday you couldn't get them.

And how many of your friends have an iPhone? I believe it's more than 0.13%.

Facebook Messenger indeed has the potential to kill SMS. And the iPhone won't be the only platform facebook will support. Now with an iPhone that has an incredible UI and easily available thirdparty apps I'm sure motorola, nokia and samsung can't just continue to ship their rather limited OS.

What does it have to do with Hacker News if I may ask?

Great post! That rush of adrenaline probably already makes it worth creating your own startup.

Nice tips, certainly some things to consider when launching. But in the end you can probably never be prepared enough. But where would the fun be?

I was a regular reddit reader(in fact at the time I was a digg-refugee) and found HN about 6 months ago while reading about YC. Reddit started to disappoint me more and more(e.g. Ron Paul) and I started to frequent HN more often. I am kind of disappointed about reddit and digg, that they weren't able to maintain the quality of their active members. I am not quite sure if PG succeeds in protecting the value of HN without making it to a closed community with an elite group of moderators. Let's hope he'll find a way to do this.

I think the most promising method would be in limiting the weight of new users. Not giving them any weight in the voting would prohibit them from posting stories that don't fit into the topic. If they stick around long enough eventually people will find out what the community likes and will submit similar stories.