mtbcoder

There are plenty of successful applications with bad UIs. Also, business logic is encapsulated in code - if that's borked, no amount of UI will save it.

If you are in the US, make sure you are up to speed on any county/local regulations and tax laws about running a business. Even as a freelancer and depending on your area, you may need to obtain a business license, pay gross receipts or any other such legal obligations.

An S-Corp will increase your risk of audit. Don't go it alone, make sure you and your accountant are dotting all i's and crossing all t's.

Yup, the local markets often only cater to the entry-level, casual users. That's where their profit margins are. If you need something niche/higher-end your only options are to go online. Otherwise you get the usual response: "We don't have that in stock but can order it online for you. It should be here in 2 - 4 weeks."

Eh, they do compete. Service and prices are solid and often better than competitors. There's zero need to be doling out lawsuits.

Agreed, attacking degree programs is a red herring. Also, what kind of society would we be if the only subjects available to pursue were a select list of STEM programs?

It's not true, it's just a trite, condescending right-wing talking point repeated ad nauseum all over the Web whenever a discussion of minimum wage pops up.

> Mod_php was always faster at executing scripts. There is less overhead as you don't have to communicate like you have to with fpm.

The "overhead" of communicating via CGI to a PHP process has nothing to do with the speed of execution of the script itself.

> For light scripts this is far superior to fpm. On the other hand, always loading php does have it's downsides too as memory consumption can get quite high depending on the number of threads.

It's not far superior as the "overhead" of CGI is negligible in the real world. Plus you can pool processes for better scaling. Also, if you are using prefork with mod_php (which is the most probable scenario) it means you are forking an entirely new Apache process and not just "loading PHP" with each request.

> This is was also the reason for the fpm hype a long time ago: don't waste memory on php when php isn't needed. It had nothing to do with it running php faster.

It's not hype, because for a long time, mod_php required prefork because it was not thread-safe (even now it's still a pain to manage re-compiling PHP to be thread-safe for mod_php + Apache)...which means you could not take advantage of mpm_event or mpm_worker.

Sounds like applying a Wikipedia-esque model to social media? I like it.

> I would never discourage anyone from self-employment

I would, especially if they are in their prime earning years and are trying to become independent contractors. Software engineering jobs command high salaries and benefits these days. The opportunity costs are just too high and the odds of sustaining a one-person contracting show for 5, 10, 20+ years is slim to none.

> But proven bank deposits over multiple years also counts.

That's just one factor. Banks are looking to minimize risk and from the perspective of banks, self-employment increases risk. That's not to say banks won't loan to you, just that the hurdle is much higher for you to prove that you are not a risk. Chances are your interest rates will still suffer even when a bank decides to loan to you.

> the one way street that capitalism established.

> It has nothing to do with capitalism

> But if we moved towards actual, functional capitalism

What you are making is the classic "it's the fault of faux-capitalism and not my idealized version of capitalism" argument.

> high price communities where everything works, surrounded by large swaths of shanty towns where nothing works.

This isn't something that's only attributable to CA. Economically depressed towns relatively close to highly concentrated areas of wealth are all over America. Also, the scale of poverty in places like the south, Appalachia, the rust belt, rural America often meets or exceeds that of third-world countries.

Wholesale data collection has become normalized in the US. For-profits, non-profits, it doesn't matter the industry, everyone is obsessed with capturing as much data as possible and believe it's just the standard way of business. No one outside of HN cares about PII or has an understanding of things like GDPR (it's just for the Europeans). Consumers are clueless or otherwise feel hopeless.

I think the lede is buried here, since it doesn't sound like any of them regretted their decision of seeking more meaningful work. The take-away seems to be that it may not happen right away with the first job you take and it may take some time to get adjusted (from a high-earning lifestyle).

MVC has been around since the 70s and is one of the most formative design patterns. Hardly obsolete.

I mean, the underlying code base is still PHP (granted the code base is awful) but there's a lot of Java spaghetti code out there too you know.

> PHP is horrible as a language

Eh, that's not really the case anymore either. It's made many improvements over the years. Not that I'm saying it's some wonderful language, but you can't really compare it to the PHP 4/early 5 days. I think credit is deserved to the folks who have brought PHP to where it is today.

It's corporate click-bait from Dollar Shave Club. Not sure why this is on the front page of HN. Sign of the times I suppose?

> MTB is still very tempting but the falls are more frequent.

Falls aren't any more frequent riding XC than on a road bike. I'm about to turn 40 and I much prefer the flow of good singletrack over tarmac any day.

> Vodka is a terrible spirit in most respects.

It's a terrible spirit in all respects. A good whisky is the choice of the discerning drinker. Vodka is the Budweiser of spirits. Best left to the club crowd and those afflicted with a degenerate palette.

I thought it was salient and not at all preachy. I came to similar conclusions several years ago. The lack of social safety nets in the US is a heavy burden in the long run for independent contractors and eventually the burden becomes too heavy. I think every independent contractor needs to re-evaluate their business every six months or so and be realistic with their long-term outlooks.

Is it low though? You read all the time that your average American barely has any money set aside for retirement or that they often need to leverage credit cards for emergencies. Even those that can put money aside, how feasible is it for them to max out a 401K? The barrier to entry into the stock market is incredibly high when you've only got at best $25 at the end of the month in your pocket.

Just recently: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/07/german-police-...

More desirable areas means more areas for developers to build housing. Cities cannot do more with a citizenry that is unable to keep the local economy and government institutions afloat. These cities are in a horrendous feedback loop that is seeing their economies and tax bases decimated. It all begins and ends with income inequality.

The fix is to make more areas desirable to live in by reducing income inequality and stimulating local economies (which in turn creates more desirable locations). Simply saying build "more houses" in clustered cities along the coasts doesn't solve anything in the long run. Cities are in it for the long run.

Getting shamed into acquiescence doesn't sound very healthy to me and certainly doesn't excuse the actions of this group. It's not as if this group is providing constructive criticism to say the least. Also, what if this were {insert_ethnicity}peoplehate? It's not as if the person on the receiving end can change being {insert_ethnicity}.

I'm not saying it's the single, deciding factor as to why Clinton lost. I'm simply saying that we can now see the influence fake news has on something as pivotal as a US election. Prior to this, the effects would have been written off as harmless. This is why it makes for an important story and not some attempt at scapegoating.

I think it's of interest now because you have a direct cause-and-effect scenario in place (e.g. fake news having some effect on the outcome of a US election). Beforehand, most people would have assumed that the fake news industry simply pandered to the conspiratorial crowd without any repercussions. It was harmless...not to be taken seriously. However, now we can see real consequences, which makes for a worthy story IMO.