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aggiebenon Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

Ah - I didn't think of this angle, but I like it. Thanks.

aggiebenon Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

I'm pretty interested in shifting into a product orientation, so that would be fine by me ;-)

aggiebenon Ask HN: What sites do you use to find contract work?

Don't charge by the hour but by the value

This sounds like a recipe for disaster to me without a lot more explanation. Time is the main cost to a provider, so it's very natural that time would also be the driver for billing. "Charging for value" sounds like you're trying to say "fixed price" without actually saying it. I have many, many issues with trying to do fixed price projects of any appreciable size (say, more than 20-40 hours).

What do you mean, precisely, by "charge by the value"?

aggiebenon A reply to Russell Okung

> we need to make sure that those at the top don't capture the government

We should do this by reforming (limiting and distributing) the government, not by destroying wealth.

aggiebenon A reply to Russell Okung

+1 for being well put, but I find the talk of "how much inequality should we tolerate", or "where the multiplier should be", or if it's "necessary that they have that much" to be much more bothersome than inequality itself, as though we should have a right to decide how much someone can earn.

I don't think we do (and by "we", I include government).

aggiebenon A reply to Russell Okung

Would investors have invested if the possible return had been a fraction of what it was? That's a far more dubious prospect.

aggiebenon Sense – A Smart Monitor for your entire home

I see this advertised a lot on Facebook. I'm pretty skeptical of this, though. It attempts to detect energy consumption for particular appliances by the pattern of current load, but I can't imagine this being accurate for most people. Different appliances of the same type will generate very different patterns, and residential power distribution can be _extremely_ noisy.

I think it's an interesting idea, I just doubt the practicality of it.

aggiebenon Computer Science from the Bottom Up

This isn't really a "computer science" book in general, it's more of a "computer systems" book. A necessary component of component of computer science to be sure, but this title should be changed.

aggiebenon $250K a Year Is Not Middle Class

Yes, that, and it also depends on what state taxes on business look like, and you would also pay taxes on any of it that you put back into the business.

The point is just that there are many people with arrangements such that they might have to file on $250k+, but never realize that as personal income.

aggiebenon $250K a Year Is Not Middle Class

I'm a bit astonished that it doesn't seem to be pointed out in these comments (and even a bit more astonished that it's not mentioned in the OP) that there are a great many people whose income tax returns will say $250k+, but they are paying taxes on a small business and may not be realizing anywhere near that much gross income personally.

aggiebenon Don't bother creating a mobile app

Very different, and I imagine probably even more frustrating than a high-friction data entry form. It would take a lot of convincing for me to think submitting an expense report via bot would be better than, say, putting receipts as attachment in an email and sending to a person.

aggiebenon Don't bother creating a mobile app

The way I track expenses is using Scannable (it's an Evernote app). The main point there is to capture the receipt - and it's really, really good at that one thing: capturing.

Then I throw away the receipts and fill in the expense report later in whatever system I'm told to use.

I can't imagine an easier way to digitize a receipt, short of a receipt that's emailed to you from the get-go.

aggiebenon Don't bother creating a mobile app

This was a great read, and I was right with the story line.

Yep, you're right. It's hard to get to your target market from the app store. Yep, they forget about your app. Yep, Yep, Yep.

Oh look, there's a link at the bottom to the new Birdly! Let's see what their new approach is!

It's a.....slack bot? Wut?

Just being honest here: I think that's one of the stupidest pivots I've ever seen.

aggiebenon Open Source .NET – 1 year later

I think Microsoft is at it's best when it thinks it's in second place.

aggiebenon Open Source .NET – 1 year later

Nicely done, OP. I too, am excited about the new .NET landscape.

aggiebenon 1984 – When women stopped coding

Can someone post the TL;DR (uh....TL;DL?) from the podcast here? Looks like a decent discussion going on, but can't tell that anyone actually listened :-)

I'll cop to the fact that I'm just not going to spend the time, though I'm interested in the conclusion(s).

aggiebenon This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

1. I said "effectively" a tax on death, because it's levied at the time of wealth transfer, which is almost always at death.

2. There is blaring, obvious religious justification for considering conception to be the beginning of life, and it has a high degree of consistency in logic and basic medical observation. Arguing that life begins at some other (arbitrary) point is a loser's game, my friend, and it comes right out of a post-modern nihilistic nonsense. Being anti-abortion has everything to do with protecting the rights of the child because that child is a person, and nothing whatsoever to do with controlling women, except to the extent it's required to protect the life of the child.

3. Because....what? If that's not manufactured outrage, then I don't know what is. Seriously. I think it's highly likely that most people refer to the Democratic party as the Democrat party because "democrat" is the noun that the adjective "democratic" comes from, and is the grammatically proper way to refer to someone who is a member of the Democratic party (as a "democrat").

All of this really kind of proves my point, I think: I nor any conservative that I know are upset that you don't describe things using our preferred terminology, but you seem to be upset (accusing me of dishonesty seems pretty upset to me) that I decline to use yours. Seems like a one-way street to me.

aggiebenon Study: Type 2 diabetes can be cured through weight loss

Speaking out of absolutely zero personal experience with diabetes, I have always been under the impression that Type 2 was basically solvable through weight loss and changes in diet. Is this study telling us anything new?

aggiebenon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2015)

remote / onsite?

aggiebenon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2015)

How about remote near Dallas?

aggiebenon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2015)

onsite / remote?

aggiebenon This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

The professor is the one who brought up the safe place terminology in this instance. Not the student.

I guess "safe space" (quoted as a term under discussion) isn't really the right term here - but the student is the one who raised the issue of "victimization", which to my mind is really more what we're talking about than actual safe spaces as you defined them. So on this point, that might actually be good feedback to that professor, because I think struggling with the terminology in this particular topic is common.

One thing to realize ...is the context of love ...in many evangelical circles

As a conservative evangelical myself, your explanation of the Christian concept of love is somewhat confusing and contradictory to me. But putting that aside, I still don't see how this student felt "victimized", unless now any negative feeling or emotion makes one a victim. Feeling guilty for failing to live up to a standard is a negative feeling, but I don't think it makes one a victim (and if it does, then I think the word victim becomes utterly void of meaning).

aggiebenon This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

Yes, exactly right. Thank you for more clearly articulating what I seemed to have scrawled out with crayons in comparison.

aggiebenon This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

Why do they call it the Death Tax?

...because the estate tax has the effect of being a tax on dying.

Why do they call the lobbying for prevention of medical treatment for women, Pro-life?

Because we think elective abortions (almost all abortions are elective) are not medical treatment, but rather a barbaric practice in which one person is killed for the convenience of the other, and in most cases is harmful in the long-term to the survivor as well. I feel strongly about this, but I'm not upset by people who want to call me "anti-abortion", because I am.

Why can't they call the opposition party by their actual name?

Uh....what? Do you mean "the Democratic Party" as opposed to the "Democrat Party"? I think that one is better chalked up to colloquial speech, regardless of what the Wikipedia article says.

But like I said - being a lifelong Republican and conservative activist, I know exactly zero people who would be upset if you didn't say "death tax", "pro-life", or "Democrat Party" (or PPACA instead of ObamaCare).

aggiebenon This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

A "safe space" is a place where you know you aren't going to be singled out and harmed (verbally or physically) by someone telling you that you're a queer faggot and deserve to die.

FWIW, this concept of safe space isn't quite what I had in mind. I think, perhaps, what I failed to articulate is that the safe space concept that grinds my gears is the kind that is an expectation carried around by people who really do just want to shut other up. Professor said something they didn't like? "Waaah...this classroom isn't a safe space". Group-I'm-not-a-part-of says something they don't like? "Waaah...they're making my school a not-safe place".

I have no problem with the idea of a physically-located place with heightened expectations of civility.

aggiebenon This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

So, this has everything to do with you not liking how this school runs itself, and not a thing to do with the claim "If you say anything negative about the religion or its teachings, you are kicked out," and not a thing to do with "safe spaces".

aggiebenon This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

Not entirely sure what all you're getting at, but you don't find conservatives running around offended that you said "estate tax" instead of "death tax" or, more importantly, trying to make others use their preferred euphemism.

Having said that, I fully admit there may be a few phrases that conservatives might be a bit sensitive to, but it would surely be a very short list.

aggiebenon This Is Not a Day Care. It’s a University

There's a stark difference between a free and voluntary association of like-minded people and a so-called "safe space", which uses a pretext of "victimization" to capriciously thought control others who simply committed the offense of disagreeing or criticizing. If you hate Christianity, why would you go to this school? If you aren't willing to follow behavioral rules, why would you go to this school? If you think philosophy should only be secular, then why would you go to this school? Schools like this generally make no secret of their expectations for students and faculty.

If you say anything negative about the religion or its teachings, you are kicked out.

Really? Citation please; I simply don't believe this. Most Christian universities that I have any knowledge of invite (or at least aren't averse to it) tough discussion, and allow for a pretty wide range of critical thought about interpretations of the Bible, how Christianity should relate to politics, culture, science, and many other subjects.

Until a few years ago, you could major in something that amounted to being a 'preacher's wife' (I can't remember the name of the major, but that was its goal).

And this is evidence of what, exactly?

"Safe-spaces", on the other hand, are cudgels of fear, handed to anyone claiming "victimization" to be capriciously used against people with whom they simply disagree and want to shut up. The reason they're even a thing is because school administrators themselves are beholden to the same fear. That's not at all like free association.

aggiebenon An unexpected social trick I learned running out of business cards

I can see the value of that when someone engages in the designs, but I think the engaging thing there is the choice, not the designs themselves. I'd be curious to know if you could create the same effect with cards that are exactly the same, but simply with different background colors.

aggiebenon An unexpected social trick I learned running out of business cards

Interesting and creative, but this guy is reading waaaaay too much into what cards people pick. My guess is that in reality, most people don't give a crap because they're going to put the contact info into their phones and then throw the card away.