hacker news with inline top comments    .. more ..    22 Dec 2016 Ask
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144 points by TXV  7 hours ago   84 comments top 22
1
rm999 6 hours ago 9 replies
Speaking for NYC, but I imagine silicon valley is similar.

The supply-demand dynamics have changed a lot in the last couple years. I'd roughly break it out into two groups: people with work experience + strong software development skills, and those without. The first group is in higher demand than ever, and tend to add a lot of value to companies that really need it.

The second group has gotten extremely crowded, especially from STEM graduates - usually with a masters or phd - who have completed MOOCs or bootcamps. Supply keeps growing while demand is flat or shrinking (especially as executives get burned by "data scientists" who don't know how to help them build things of value). There's a huge crunch here; a lot of people I know in this group have been searching for jobs for months, eventually settling for a low quality job or giving up entirely :(

2
hardtke 6 hours ago 4 replies
I hire machine learning engineers and data scientists. In my opinion there is a great shortage of truly qualified machine learning engineers. A lot of people are entering the market with a general knowledge of machine learning tools. These people should be considered analysts or product data scientists. When it comes to people that can build machine learning systems that work at scale, they are very rarely available for hire and often are the subject of bidding wars by multiple companies. The key difference is whether the candidate truly understands the mathematical and statistical basis of machine learning, has the programming skills to execute their ideas, and is able to write code that can be used in large scale production systems and can be leveraged by others.
3
vogt 21 minutes ago 0 replies
I'm a designer but work for a data science company (LMI specifically). All of our data work is done in D, which I never even knew existed until I started working here.

I can't speak to anything regarding ML, but for whatever it's worth in our segment of the market we have seen a lot of competition emerge in a big way the last few years. Former academic-type firms who specialized in bespoke economy analysis reports are starting to build software around all of the data that is out there since it's never been easier to collect and normalize it. I think it's a stretch to say the market is approaching saturation for us, though.

4
PLenz 6 hours ago 0 replies
I've been working in DS role for a few years now in NYC - and I definately feel the role is more valued on the east coast over SV. SV has a focus on consumer facing applications that are in many ways fancy CRUD. DS roles have thier place but aren't the core of the business. East coast has a b2b / infobroker focus where DS is the product. Media (especially adtech), finance, government consulting are over on this coast.

I think you also need to not confuse the growing ease of machine learning tools with the role becoming more accessible. There is a wide gap between tooling and knowledge to use those tools appropriately and creatively.

And may I never write another HN comment on my cell phone again.

5
aub3bhat 6 hours ago 1 reply
Stack overflow salary calculator shows a significant 50% premium over Developer salaries, all other things remaining the same. [1] Even though in my opinion the tool is flawed and actually significantly underestimates (stackoverflow underpays) salaries in SV/NYC. It is still a good indicator.

The major issue is that Data Scientist is a very fuzzy term with it being applied to everyone from undergraduates with Stats degree and to those with PhDs and papers at KDD/ICML/NIPS/CVPR.

However rather than doing a Frontend or Mobile developer coding bootcamp, a data science bootcamp is likely to lead to more transferable skills in case you wish to get an MBA etc.

6
nl 23 minutes ago 0 replies
I'm in Australia.

I'm hiring 6 people in a range of roles between "pure" data scientists to more data engineer/SWE roles. The exact mix depends on who we can get.

The ability to find good people is the biggest constraint on the work we do.

Our current team ranges from applied mathematicians (as in they are Math professors) to people with traditional SWE backgrounds. Basically we are a long long way from saturated.

7
caminante 6 hours ago 1 reply
Currently, Gartner analysts place ML at the "peak" of its Hype Cycle for Emerging Tech [0] with a runway of 2-5 years for mainstream adoption.
8
stared 6 hours ago 1 reply
I have only anecdotal experience (I live in Warsaw, but do contracts mostly for Poland, UK and US).

General data science is in need. I can get contracts easily, I know that people looking for competent people need to wait; especially as it is a skill much harder to pick than, say, front-end web dev (unless someone starts from a highly quantitive background like physics, modelling in biology, etc). My general impression are:

- ML (especially practical one, like logistic regression and random forest) is often integral parts of many data analyses (or at least a plus),

- there are not as many jobs solely focused on ML; and if so, often they require some specialistic expertise,

- and even less only for deep learning (also, for DL there is relatively high threshold for having skills at "hireable" level).

Some of my tips on how to learn data science: http://p.migdal.pl/2016/03/15/data-science-intro-for-math-ph... (on purpose I put the emphasis on general data exploration/analysis before machine learning).

9
vtange 6 hours ago 0 replies
The startup I work at really favors their data scientists, though I am not one of them (I'm a frontend guy). The CEO and CTO pretty much keeps a personal eye on those guys' work.

Right now however the theme I've heard from the higher ups has been profitability, and this applies to all tech companies in general. Easy capital is gone and now companies are in the spotlight for not making profits.

So at least from my company's perspective, it's not that data science is saturated, it's that we're trying to not break the bank and hire too much.

10
TYPE_FASTER 6 hours ago 1 reply
In my limited experience, there's a difference between a data scientist who can process data given data and a set of questions about it, and a data scientist who can figure out what data you need, and the questions that need to be answered.

I think making the transition from the first role to the second role comes with experience, both with the toolsets, and thinking about the problem as a whole.

11
simonhughes22 3 hours ago 0 replies
I am the Chief Data Scientist of Dice.com. If you are interested in working as a junior Data Scientist, and are smart and hard working, please apply here: http://careeropportunities.dhigroupinc.com/. The position is a telecommute role. We will absolutely consider people with no data science experience, so long as they demonstrate an aptitude for data science \ machine learning and can code.
12
numinary1 39 minutes ago 0 replies
If you're seeking work: If you want to be in demand, be the machine learning person for __________ , electric energy revenue protection, or healthcare payer fraud detection, investing, or supply chain. Pick a specialty.

If you're hiring: Get the above out of your pathetic small minds and start hiring the smartest people you can find. Look for successes in any industry. Your business isn't that unique. The best people can learn it much faster than you did.

13
platz 6 hours ago 1 reply
I considered a graduate program in data science, but compared to average programmer salaries, it doesn't seem like data science pays all that much (excluding data science jobs for PHD's in silicon valley). It's more interesting that programming, but seems like a much tighter market with no discernible demand driving salaries up.
14
wjn0 6 hours ago 2 replies
I'm an undergrad at a big university known for CS in Canada. The CS program here has several possible 'focuses'; 4 of 9 are related to ML/AI directly (computer vision, NLP, AI, scientific computing). 2 others require AI/ML/NN courses.

The bias might stem from the fact that we have some huge names in AI doing research here, but the data points seem clear (we say undergraduate education is slow to catch on, right?): the topic as a whole isn't overrated.

However, there seems to be a lack of understanding by people working in tech of the differences (in uses, theory, implementation) between ML, AI, NN, DL, etc. This might stem from a lack of understanding of the foundations of these topics (ex: statistics, vector calculus) or simply because we can abstract a lot of this away (ex: TensorFlow).

15
androck1 1 hour ago 0 replies
Is there a market for competent developers without professional/academic experience in data science or machine learning? Perhaps just a MOOC or some Kaggle projects?
16
plafl 5 hours ago 0 replies
I can speak for Spain, although I sometimes get calls from other European countries. Relative to the pathetic Spanish work market data science/machine learning is doing great. I think right now there is too much hype, which is going to stay for a few years. After that I suppose it won't be a hot thing but I don't think it's going to disappear. I hope I'm mistaken and we are really seeing some AI revolution, but after all my job is putting the trust on the data, and past data says fads come and go. If that happens I will keep with me the math, the statistics, any development skills I can learn meanwhile and of course the challenge of someday achieving true AI.
17
user5994461 6 hours ago 0 replies
Like about everything on HN... You're either in the Silicon Valley or it doesn't apply to you.

In my opinion, you could start by defining what is a data science, a quant, or a machine learning job. Because that's not clearly defined. It means different jobs to a lot of people, jobs that are all hard to learn and absolutely NOT interchangeable.

18
DrNuke 6 hours ago 0 replies
Worth a serious effort if you are going to use it originally in your own niche / industry, otherwise statistics will still help you more in any given market. So just learn statistics very very well and then ask again.
19
riqwant 2 hours ago 0 replies
People with acquired skills are plenty and not really up to scratch most of the time. So people who have these "acquired" skills have a high likely hood of being scrapped at the CV stage.

If you're serious about machine learning - build a blog or online repository of quality work and use that to get a job instead

20
lowglow 4 hours ago 1 reply
We hire applied ML/AI specialists. For me it's not just an understanding of mathematical concepts, but also being able to apply new ideas to new problems.

This depends quite a bit on critical thinking, a good fundamental ability to analyze a problem and understand its parameters, then manage the logical operations required to deliver the feature and solve the problem.

As for why I think it's on HN every day: I also like to think of an innovation pipeline happening something like this:

 [---------explore------|----------exploit-----------] ,->developers -> engineers/scientists -> data scientists->--, /----------<----------------<--------------------<----------/
We're now in some sort of refinement cycle of innovation, where the current medium has been saturated on some level and there is a lot of push to mine value from the discoveries.

21
whenwillitstop 6 hours ago 1 reply
I am curious about this as well. I think the difference between machine learning and software engineering is that companies may only need a few dozen machine learning engineers. They may need thousands of software engineers. There may be increasing demand, but the demand will never reach the demand of software engineering. Except at the premium ultra competitive level, where a data scientist who is globally known can have a massive impact on the companies bottom line. But we arent talking about those types of jobs.

I also believe that most traditional companies do have data scientists, but they havent really start incorporating machine learning into their products, they are analyzing information about their customers, but their products are not reliant on using data. Once that becomes more common, things will pick up.

22
payne92 6 hours ago 0 replies
Machine learning PhDs >>> everything else.
4 points by tmaly  1 hour ago   1 comment top
1
swuecho 26 minutes ago 0 replies
once you get the basics. the official manual is pretty good.

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/index.html

I did not find a very good book on advanced level.

37 points by tuyguntn  16 hours ago   13 comments top 6
1
jetti 13 hours ago 1 reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13167156 I was asking if a one man development company micro ISV) is still viable in this day and age
3
jstimpfle 14 hours ago 1 reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851 (Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today)
4
rwieruch 14 hours ago 0 replies
It was quite recently and I am still overwhelmed by the reaction:

- The Road to learn React - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170837

5
montbonnot 9 hours ago 0 replies
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11456060

It was a fun distraction on a Friday...

6
jamesmp98 14 hours ago 1 reply
3 points by namenotgiven  3 hours ago   2 comments top
1
mindcrime 3 hours ago 1 reply
Maybe Apache UserGrid?

http://usergrid.apache.org

7 points by ArlenBales  4 hours ago   3 comments top 3
1
schappim 2 hours ago 0 replies
I have the Bose Quiet comfort i20s (for air travel), QC35s (for development mode), the PowerBeats 3 (I wanted to say for working our, but in reality it was to experiment with the W1 chip that's also found in the AirPods), and now AirPods.

The AirPods are by far my favourite.

The newer EarPod design (the ones that aren't the oblate spheroids) fit my ears really well, and so do the AirPods.

I find them much more comfortable than the PowerBeats (which uses the same W1 chip).

The pairing felt much better with the AirPods.

Re: Expectations

They surpassed my expectations. iCloud syncing of bluetooth pairing information is nice. Being able to hear the sound in my environment is also good when exercising.

Invoking Siri is so much faster using the EarPods an it is with the Apple Watch.

You can also double tap the side to answer calls (which I didn't hear about in any of the reviews).

We use SIP phones at work, and I've found an app called Groundwire (https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/groundwire-business-caliber/...) that integrates with call kit.

Re: Having them fall out.

I have not been able to get them to fall out, even when trying.

2
photoGrant 4 hours ago 0 replies
I like them. They're cool. They're not as effortless as they pegged themselves to be. Sometimes I hear that digital 'noise' that happens with wireless audio... And they hurt in my ears after half an hour. Something I feel I'll get used to.

All in all, a worthy purchase, a few :O moments, and the ability to wrestle with my dog and forget they're in, but still be listening to music... Pretty fun moments.

3
IanDrake 3 hours ago 0 replies
I don't have these, but I do have a cheap pair of wireless around-the-neck kind. Even those work well.

But the main thing that no one but apple seems to get is the "recharge story". It's obnoxious to have to plug these things into a micro USB.

The Apple Watch and AirPods are how everyone should be doing recharging - a cradle that stores your device while it charges it.

8 points by chuckus  4 hours ago   5 comments top 3
1
was_boring 21 minutes ago 0 replies
What is large scale? Does it just mean lines of code? I'm in charge of a Python app that has about 75,000 lines (not including comments, blank lines, imports, generated code or tests), and been doing it for 4 years.

Would I recommend python for something the size I do now? No. I would recommend any other language that has strongly enforces types and compile time checks (like Java). They add an extra layer of safety on unit tests. I have dreams of rewrites that are in C# or Java.

Just today I fixed 2 bugs because of unexpected types being used.

2
solomatov 1 hour ago 1 reply
The main advantage of Python for you is that you know the language and the libraries, and when you start something new, it's critical that you work on the project, not on learning a new technology.

The main advantage of JVM and CLR for large scale development is support for static types. But, Python has a standard for type annotations (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/) which allow you to have all the language services which are available for static languages (refactoring, completion, etc) available for the Python. Not all libraries have these annotations, but you can provide it yourself, or separate code with annotations from code without annotations.

You should also take into account that JVM, and CLR have much better runtime performance than Python, almost on par with C++, so you should think about this if it's important for your app to use resources as efficiently as possible, but typically it's not as important for SaaS projects.

3
CC_ing 4 hours ago 1 reply
I've the same problem, but instead of python is ruby(with rails) vs python/node.js(that perform a better than ruby)
4 points by RyM21  12 hours ago   4 comments top 4
1
peller 10 hours ago 0 replies
It depends.

If you're doing development in a dynamic language, just about anything half-modern is more than sufficient. Faster clock speeds matter more than the number of cores (ie, prefer a 3.5GHz dual-core to a 3GHz quad-core).

If you're compiling large code bases, the more cores/cache you can get, the better. (You won't find "the best" in a laptop.)

A lot of AI development requires GPU hardware. Again, you're looking at a desktop workstation for the best results.

RAM - I say get as much as you can afford. (You can always set up a tmpfs for maximum awesomeness when doing IO-bound operations.)

As for SSDs, the measure you care about is random 4k writes at low queue depths (QD <= 4, typically measured in IOPS as opposed to MB/s).

Also consider the importance of human interface devices. If you're not 100% happy with the keyboard, mouse and screen, it's not worth your trouble. Those things have a far greater impact on your productivity than you might realize.

2
nickjj 10 hours ago 0 replies
Depends on what you're developing.

A few months ago I bought and modified a Chromebook[1] to run Linux natively and it works great for non-compiled language development.

Here's what you get for $350: - 1.7 GHz Celeron 3215U (or an i3 for$45 more)

- 4GB of RAM

- 13.3" 1920x1080 IPS display (165 PPI)

- 128GB SSD (or a 256GB model for $50 more with room to grow) - Full size SD card - 2.9 pounds Full review and write up can be found below: 3 codegeek 10 hours ago 0 replies Almost every modern laptop is good enough for development in terms of CPU and RAM. It just comes down to what you prefer. For example, macbook Pro is solid in terms of hardware and performance. But then so is Dell XPS or Thinkpads. But if you do need minimums, I will say 8-12 GB RAM at the least (I like 16 GB) and CPU is anyone's guess. For me, a few things like fan noise (which is almost none in my macbook pro), size of screen (I don't like large screens like 15 inch or more), keyboard and trackpad behavior etc are what matter most. 4 informatimago 11 hours ago 0 replies There's no minimum: you can use pencil and paper, use the force, Luke.There's no maximum: there are AI debugging systems that can debug at the cost currently of$8 a bug on AWS. So if you have a massive cluster, you can put it to work toward your programming goals.

Otherwise, just get a MacBook Pro, a high end MacMini or an iMac; you will be able to develop for all the major platforms (even Microsoft Visual Studio is being ported to macOS!).

35 points by bsvalley  1 day ago   50 comments top 28
1
garethsprice 11 hours ago 0 replies
1. Pay off any debts I had.

2. Keep 6 months reserves in cash (maybe 12 depending on my view of the current political outlook)

2. If I had plans to staying put for at least 3-5 years, a down payment for a modest home in a good neighborhood, possibly a fixer, something I could rent out in a few years if I moved. I am young(ish) and have good earning potential so am confident that taking out a mortgage at current historically low rates and investing the rest in the stock market will provide higher returns in the long run than paying a house off immediately.

4. Put the rest in low-fee index funds.

If you don't already have a burning passion to pursue something that this money enables you to do and you have other sources of income already, don't go looking for a hole to throw your money down.

Unless it's money you can afford to lose, your investments should be "boring banking stuff".

2
auganov 1 day ago 0 replies
I hate to be dismissive but if it's your entire equity and you want low-risk just settle for the "boring" stuff. And get on with your life. You don't want to keep thinking about that money. You won't beat the market. If you can beat the market then go do that professionally (and still invest in the boring stuff personally!!).
3
ThrustVectoring 1 day ago 0 replies
Honestly, you should probably ask what you want to accomplish with the invested money before deciding how to invest it. Are you planning on mitigating variance in income/employment? Then you're much more adverse to variance and illiquidity. Are you planning on setting yourself up for financial independence? Then you can probably handle risk much better and something like an equity index fund would work well. Want to make sure your child can go to college? Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_Education_Tuition_P... would be an excellent choice. Want to generally make the world a better place? Investing may have superior alternatives, such as donating to an anti-malaria charity.
4
sfrailsdev 1 day ago 2 replies
I'd start with 10k inflation adjusted personal Series I savings bonds from the US treasury, which pay quote a bit more then any available CD in terms of APY, and have a 3 months interest penalty for 5 years after purchase. I'd probably wait until after april 30th, since the fixed rate interest rate on them is currently zero but will hopefully go up. You don't pay state or local taxes but you do pay federal taxes.

That leaves 490k. I'd put 100k into wealthfront, so they will use individual stocks instead of etfs for tax loss harvesting.

I'd take 90k and invest it in AA or A rated municipal bonds, if you are in a state where gains are tax free, creating the beginnings of a bond ladder. We expect the fed to raise interests rates 3 times next year so I'd probably split this 15k for the first raise, 25k for the second raise and 50k for the third raise.

if I have a 401k I'd invest the maximum 18k in 2016 and contribute the 18k in 2016, making purchases immediately after interest rates go up in dividend stock etfs, reit etfs, broad market etfs, and a small cap etf. Likewise 5500 each ear for an ira, or possibly a roth IRA, depending on current income levels.

I'd save 153k in a savings account like synchrony bank with 1.04 apy interest. Part of that should be a year's expenses, the rest used to purchase stock in solid companies if the market crashes. I'd want to adjust this after a market crash year.

Then I'd split 300k into 100k for a broad based index etf, 50k in a small cap etf, 25k in a midcap etf, 75k in a large cap etf, 25 k in a bond etf. I'd spend 5k on individual stocks using a robinhood account, so I could get a feel for the market. The remaining 20k would be for taxes on any dividends, idly playing the market so I wouldn't touch the bigger investments, and an emergency fund, again placed in a synchrony or equivalent savings account.

5
davismwfl 1 day ago 2 replies
Honestly, I'd leverage it to purchase real estate split between some rentals and rehabs when the right opportunity came up. For me the passive income of rentals and being able to leverage the $500k into far more is just to attractive. If you just put$500k into the market or business ideas, your level of risk varies more and the payoff is far into the future if ever. People are scared of real estate still some because of the last bust, but the reality is it is the single greatest generator of sustained wealth. Even people that make their money in other places like a startup, eventually find out that leveraging liquidity to enter the real estate market pays back in huge ways.

Real estate isn't risk free, but even in down cycles you don't lose all your value, e.g. a $200k house doesn't become worth$0. The key wealth generator (not get rich quick scheme) in the history of the US and most Countries is real estate (land/property etc). This means finding and buying in the right areas and not being afraid to cross state lines etc. Leveraging the $500k in California won't get you really far, but doing it most other places will let you really do quite well and you can have passive income coming in within a few months. Also, done right, you'll still have a significant amount of the money to invest into other things like the stock market to diversify yourself. 6 aproductguy 1 day ago 1 reply How you invest depends on what your goals are. You need to define the "why" before you can move on to the "how". 7 maxander 1 day ago 0 replies There's really only two dominant choices here; "boring banking stuff," e.g. a well-diversified hedge fund, or cutting-edge financial engineering that you'll have to earn (or hire) a specialized PhD to implement. Anything in between and you're just playing out of your league; your cleverness won't win against the army of brilliant quants that have devoted their lives to this sort of junk. 8 nodesocket 1 day ago 1 reply I've never tried it, but take a look at the investment strategy called the trident portfolio. It claims a consistent 11% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) for the last 40 years. Trident consists of the following:  1/3 VBR 1/3 GLD 1/3 TLT You'll have to rebalance to keep the ratios all 1/3 approximately once a year. There is a great response on Quora by Milos Baljozovic that I highly recommend related to the trident strategy. https://www.quora.com/I-won-the-lottery-and-have-5-million-i... Honestly, you'll probably be ok just buying a standard ETF such as SPY or QQQ (more volatile), waiting 5 to 10 years without doing anything and cash it in. 9 greydius 1 day ago 0 replies I'd buy as much property as I could in the middle of nowhere and build a cabin. 10 cdevs 1 day ago 0 replies Take my aviato money and start my own incubator. 11 id122015 7 hours ago 0 replies I think you'd rather want an answer that you'd be able to follow. If someone told you about their experience with stocks or with business and you didn't have that experience how much useful would that be to you ? I'd invest it by buying some books about investing first. 12 zw123456 1 day ago 0 replies Another option to consider is something like Betterment.com or Wealthfront. These are automated investment services and allow you to tune your investments based on your goals. I use one of them and it has worked out well for me. 13 sharemywin 1 day ago 1 reply I have my 401k in a "cash option" right now. pretty worried trump gets us into a trade war and huge global market crash. just not sure on timing. of course if he gets a tax decrease through congress it could back fire on me. 14 keefe 1 day ago 1 reply I would probably buy a house in the outskirts of seattle or denver for maybe 250K - tons of houses around 3beds, minimum 1500 square feet, if you expand the search. Then, start a private repo doing an MVP based on my open source project, then try to find a product manager type to bootstrap a startup, somebody hungry who would live in the 3rd bedroom and go full throttle for half a year or so, then if that fails when I'm down to say 100-150K, I put that money into TBills and get a job if I can't find revenue or funding. 15 atsaloli 1 day ago 0 replies I would invest in my business. Quit consulting (which pays bills day to day) and focus on expanding our training catalog (I love training and we are really good at it). Expand Sales and Marketing activities. 16 AznHisoka 1 day ago 0 replies I would write a crawler that crawls amazon and stores number of reviews for major consumer brands like Fitbit and GoPro. then go long on those that have a spike in reviews before earnings. and go short on those that have declined 17 mozumder 14 hours ago 0 replies The answer depends on whether this is "play money" or "my entire life's savings".... 18 jotato 13 hours ago 1 reply Pay off my house, and put the remaining ~200K into buying a rental 19 sharemywin 1 day ago 0 replies Some depends on age and planned retirement age. 55 or greater. I'd pay off house. pull out 25-50k each year I got closer to retirement and let the rest ride in stock market. under 55, I'd keep 400k in stock market. 20 tmnvix 22 hours ago 0 replies I would buy myself a lot of time and then give some serious thought as to how to spend that time productively. 21 sayelt 8 hours ago 0 replies Buy Bitcoin and HODL. 22 johnsmith21006 1 day ago 0 replies Or Domain Names 23 sharemywin 1 day ago 0 replies here's a neat article on playing a stock market dip with options. https://www.thefelderreport.com/2016/08/15/worried-about-a-s... 24 wcummings 1 day ago 0 replies Index funds 25 bbcbasic 1 day ago 0 replies Probably chuck it at real estate. Maybe bet a bit on raising interest rates as a hedge. 26 fiftyacorn 1 day ago 0 replies Some in cash , then a Vanguard LifeStrategy fund matched to your age 27 steve1011 1 day ago 0 replies Gold and silver. 28 johnsmith21006 1 day ago 0 replies Google 37 points by hidden_forest 1 day ago 8 comments top 6 1 finid 1 day ago 0 replies I haven't used OpenBSD in a long time, so this is worth a go. 2 iyn 1 day ago 1 reply Can somebody comment on how good/bad is the driver support in the BSD land? I'm interested specifically in wireless and graphics. 3 vectorEQ 17 hours ago 0 replies just started playing with OpenBSD. really nice project. Thanks for posting this, interesting to play around with for sure and get oriented a bit in BSD land! 4 ullarah 1 day ago 1 reply Any reason why you chose Lumina over many of the other ones? Just curious. 5 KiDD 23 hours ago 0 replies All my servers run FreeBSD so why not! 6 Zelmor 20 hours ago 0 replies Sure, but why? 3 points by dabeeeenster 9 hours ago 5 comments top 5 1 rwieruch 8 hours ago 0 replies We used Mixpanel [0] in our frontend some time ago. But there was no real business strategy behind it. That's why it got abandoned eventually. Now we experiment with Keen.io [1] to track events for different/new features in our tool. We started to track events from our backend, but for user behaviour we would use it to track events from the frontend as well. [1] - https://keen.io/ 2 tedmiston 8 hours ago 0 replies Depending on your particular use case and integrations (especially how many you use), there are two alternative hubs that come to mind: Astronomer [1] and mParticle [2]. Astronomer is more focused on building a router for any type of data and enterprise-level use cases. I have not used mParticle personally, but founders from Segment and mParticle gave thorough answers on how they differ on this Quora question [3]. Disclosure: I've done dev work for Astronomer. 3 jackgolding 5 hours ago 0 replies Snowplow and GA. Used KissMetrics, not a fan. I'm interested in how people use a combination of server side and client side tracking. Everything in my jurisdiction is front end. 4 Nilef 5 hours ago 0 replies 5 iamdave 8 hours ago 0 replies It's not for everyone price wise, but we use NewRelic and I absolutely love it. 5 points by mobitar 9 hours ago 4 comments top 2 1 id122015 7 hours ago 0 replies What I'm interested in: I'll either build it myself when I'll have time, or you can share the idea. A notes server that I can install myself, not relying on external servers. And if can keep the content encrypted, it would be even better. 2 miguelrochefort 8 hours ago 2 replies I can think of 100 different decentralized [insert use case] ideas. Does that mean we'll need 100 different server and client implementations? I hope not. Your specific note-taking use case is not special enough to justify investing in your solution. If you introduced a general-purpose platform to build decentralized apps, you would have more of my attention. Please note that this comes from someone who dismisses any solution that don't aim to solve everything. 16 points by blizkreeg 1 day ago 13 comments top 7 1 Mz 1 day ago 1 reply At first glance, this existing site: https://startupsanonymous.com/ looks incredibly depressing. Over the years, I have participated in various kinds of support groups for various things. They are often incredibly depressing and are often drama fests where it is difficult to really talk about solutions. Social pecking order and "respecting" the pain of people who can't get their act together becomes far more important than actually being useful to people who desire to move forward. This means anyone with real answers is shouted down by the folks saying it cannot be done. So, I will suggest you put some thought into how you intend to keep the focus on problem solving. It is all too easy for "support" groups to just become places to vent and not places to get real solutions. I am semi interested, but I am not going to give you my city and I am not sure I am a good fit for your group. But I would be happy to exchange a few emails. (And I have posted this HN discussion on my blog.) Best. 2 jf22 16 hours ago 0 replies Its better to have a good mastermind group instead of a large community. Masterminds allow you to really dig into your issues and get to know people on a personal level. The moral support from your mastermind buddies is worth so much more than what a forum or slack member could give you. I used to be part of a couple of communities like this and while they are amazing a mastermind is a thousand times better. http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/ https://www.foundercafe.com/ 3 santa_boy 17 hours ago 0 replies I respect your idea and understand where you are coming from. However, I think being genuine and "non-anonymous" is very important for someone at this stage. I can imagine the fear-factor while bootstrapping but on aggregate I feel people are supportive to those who try and the honest dialogue is way more practical with a real virtual person. Just my experience. 4 blizkreeg 1 day ago 0 replies Link to Typeform for whoever is interested and relates to this: https://blizkreeg.typeform.com/to/A79l8I 5 sharemywin 1 day ago 2 replies I just wish I could use karma I've earned to ask questions and get answers. surveys etc. I doubt there enough people in my city for an actual physical group. 6 supernormal 1 day ago 0 replies Thanks for starting this. It's a hard balance many of us are tackling, mostly by ourselves. Looking forward to see what comes out of it. 7 poirier 1 day ago 1 reply Best of luck. 5 points by kryptonic 14 hours ago 12 comments top 7 1 hunglee2 10 hours ago 0 replies Hey man, I can help. I've been a recruiter for tech for 10 years and now run Workshape.io, a job discovery platform for software developers. Reach out to me on email hung at workshape.io. 2 blowski 14 hours ago 1 reply I'm happy to have a read (no cash necessary). Contact details are on my profile page. 3 suaveybloke 13 hours ago 0 replies I would be happy to take a look at your CV if you're still looking for a critic. No payment necessary! 4 gentleteblor 10 hours ago 0 replies I'm happy to take a look as well (no payment needed). Email in profile. 5 JSeymourATL 12 hours ago 1 reply How visible are you in the marketplace? Can you be found on Github? Linkedin? 6 tapan_k 14 hours ago 1 reply I can take take a look. (Thanks for the$10 offer, but no thanks).
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miguelrochefort 8 hours ago 0 replies
I'll do it for $10. Contact information in profile. 9 points by Solp 16 hours ago 4 comments top 4 1 verganileonardo 15 hours ago 0 replies I read The Struggle http://www.bhorowitz.com/the_struggle Then I remember that it is normal/usual for a startup and move on as fast as I can - easier said than done :) 2 atsaloli 7 hours ago 0 replies I talk to my mentor and to my business coach. 3 AznHisoka 12 hours ago 0 replies Focus on something else in your life that you're grateful for. 4 sherm8n 14 hours ago 0 replies Lean hard on your co-founders. You're in an incredibly difficult journey together. I think they should be happy to pick you right back up. Is there anything specific I can help with? 36 points by suaveybloke 1 day ago 34 comments top 22 1 adpoe 1 day ago 1 reply It's never too late. What matters most is that you are good at the work and can produce results. For me, I went back to school about 5 years after a liberal arts undergrad to get a BS in computer science, and it has worked out. I was about 27, but there were numerous men and women in my classes in their late 30's and early 40's, all making the switch to CS to keep their skills sharp and better support their families. Some had been lawyers, accountants, and other white collar jobs--and they decided to make the change anyway. So, yes, it's common, and employers understand that people are coming to programming from many different paths/backgrounds these days. (At least the ones who aren't snobbish.) Most importantly: use what you perceive as your weaknesses as your strengths. You know a ton about accounting. Use that! Doing programming work that overlaps with your previous career will probably yield the highest immediate pay, since you have domain knowledge in that area already. (And why waste it?) That would be my angle to get into programming: find a company that programs accounting systems/financial software of some sort and offer your skills. Their end-users are accountants who have the same problems/frustrations as you. Why not discuss with them and help solve those problems directly? Offer them what they don't have yet, and only you do. 2 saluki 1 day ago 1 reply I made the switch from civil engineer to full stack developer in my thirties. I knew some HTML, CSS and PHP and had been setting up websites for family and friends. I started freelancing in addition to my day job. Moved to creating PHP web applications and taking on more and more advanced work. I slowly picked up larger projects, better clients until I got to the point where I was freelancing full time. Now I have a few clients that keep me busy working remotely. I have had a few contract positions 3 to 6 months at a time but mainly it's been freelance since I made the switch. It's lots of work, you're constantly learning and trying new things. If you enjoy that and have a knack for programming go for it. I have interviewed with some local companies I wouldn't say I was passed over for younger employees, mainly just not a good fit not enough experience. I can see where some companies would prefer younger candidates. I would say GO FOR IT but maybe learn/get back in the game by freelancing/keeping your day job. Unless you can afford to quit your day job during the transition. I would also recommend learning full stack instead of just focussing on front end, it's becoming more blended anyway. Front end is moving toward React, Angular, and Vue.js and is as complex more tightly coupled to the backend. Also I would focus on learning Laravel (PHP) or Rails (Ruby) I think these are higher paying with more job openings/interesting projects. Laravel has a great ecosystem, check out LaraCasts.com. Rails is great as well. Good Luck with the transition. 3 finid 1 day ago 1 reply At 38 you're still too young to worry about stuff like this. I'd say that's the perfect age to make the switch, and with your background, you'll be asking the right questions when you're taking classes or learning on your own. You'll actually find that you'll be picking up stuff faster than younger people just starting out. Since your interest is frontend dev, your main challenge would be wading through the sea of frameworks and tools. 4 bobbytherobot 1 day ago 0 replies If you want to do front-end, don't worry about those coming out of uni/college. Front-end is a specialization that very few places teach. There is a huge range for front-end. You have people doing basically cut-up for marketing sites to people building front-ends that can scale up. My four big buckets I look for from a Front-End are: * Technical, can you make it work * Maintainable, can someone else keep it running and update it * Scalability, can you scale the solution up to millions of people (to be honest, most front-end don't need to worry about this) * "Precog", can you anticipate the issues that arise from users and their wide range of browsers + OS + hardware 5 mamcx 1 day ago 1 reply Do you have a solid business career in accountancy, and wanna switch to grunt js work? Is excellent if wanna do development, but why not apply your experience instead? Also in all this 10 years you have build some contacts to get your foot in. I know that accounting and crud apps are not "sexy" and boring. But you know what is worse and more boring? Using js! Jah, sorry, I can't resist. But honestly most "front-end" work is not amazing at all. Maybe building visualizations, charts and stuff like that. But pages and apps in front-end is alike build forms, but harder, more complicated and with less performance than native code. --- I'm in the process of build a point-of-sale app, and I will envy to have you background instead, or have a partner with that skills. So, I'm telling you: You have valuable skills that are higher than Js. Js/html/css is just a tool (that pay, because the front-end work have become more crazy and requiere more effort triying to be somethings is not made for), but in itself not become yet-another-front-end-dev when you already have a better position to offer. 6 id122015 7 hours ago 0 replies Like other said, the answer is no. But think twice!You might have the most lucky career. I dream of a job like accountancy where you do the same thing every day. In IT you solve a new problem every day, and I don't know about deadlines but ask them. The way I see it might not be how you see it. Your question reminds me about the joke with the writer who said he wants to become a doctor after retirement. - The conclusion of the joke was that to start a new career takes time. 7 kisna72 1 day ago 1 reply I would highly highly recommend you to find problems you have seen in accountancy world that you can solve with programming. You could get both of both world, satisfaction of work you want to do while benefiting from your industry experience. No programmer (not in accountancy world) here knows about the issues and inefficiencies about it than you do, and you probably have a bunch of contacts you can test your ideas on. That way you keep your advantages of being in the accountancy world, while solving the issues they have by using programming which is what you want to do. whatever you do, good luck. 8 davelnewton 1 day ago 0 replies Never too late, but you'll need to prove yourself. That's hard since you don't have a work history or things to talk about. You'll be competing with younger folks for entry-level positions. I'd consider a portfolio of code or personal projects on Github/etc. that show your style, coding and otherwise. 9 davismwfl 1 day ago 0 replies It all depends on you. I hear a lot of people in the tech industry that are 40+ complain about the difficulty in getting a job, finding a team etc. But the reality is I am in that category and yes, startups can be a bit harder cause in general the older we are the more likely we have a life, kids and obligations outside of work. And yes, there are a lot of interview techniques are lacking in finding quality people and focus on the wrong things, but that isn't everywhere and it isn't honestly new. Can you make the switch? It just totally depends on you. You will need to be aggressive in looking for work, you'll have to demonstrate you are qualified and you'll need to show people samples of work. The samples can be personal sites, little things you built, open source you contributed to whatever. You would be essentially a junior web dev, so your expectations of pay and position should be in line with that, if you accept those things and can do the work, absolutely you can make the switch. 10 dnautics 1 day ago 1 reply On hiring: I'm currently 35 and spent many years in biochemistry, and did a lot of coding on my own personal time (and am doing contract work currently). One of the frustrations is that going through the hiring process, I get a lot of accolades from the interviewers, and seem to do well to extraordinary on coding challenges - but there's something that I'm not "matching right". In several cases, I've been told that they were seeking "senior devs" even though I've been referred via an agency that should have filtered out all but "junior dev" positions. I suggest getting insight into the "unwritten rules" of hiring, which is what I'm going to start to ask about. There is a myth that the valley (or indeed the world) is a meritocracy, but in reality, you have to 'figure out the game'. Good luck! 11 angelomichel_nl 1 day ago 0 replies I can assure you, you are not too late, at least if you are living in the Netherlands. :-) What you do need is a passion or interest in this field. Age and/or work experience in other fields brings allot of advantages towards employees, something every 'totally new to working' all have yet to find out. Frontend nowadays is very awesome, it is my day to day job as well (31 yr old), and I really enjoy it. 12 taternuts 1 day ago 0 replies No. In fact, a guy on my team is a 45/46 year old guy who had been in management his whole life while dabbling with programming and decided to switch careers to being a front-end dev. He's certainly not the best dev we have, but he also shoulders a lot of managerial weight so that we don't have to and I enjoy having him on the team. 13 iampoul 1 day ago 0 replies I wouldn't say its too late, you might have a rough start with learning and everything, but there is a lot of new technologies you can specialize in and come out on top if you invest enough time into it. Keep in mind there will be uni/college folks starting at the same time as you, regardless when you start. It's just about getting things done and get started. :) 14 iampoul 1 day ago 0 replies This just popped up on HN, might be worth a read. :) https://medium.freecodecamp.com/yes-im-56-and-learning-to-co... 15 otaviokz 1 day ago 0 replies Ara you joking mate? As long as you are/get good enough (I don't mean Facebbok/Google/etc good, just able to develop usable stuff) in a relevant field, you'll find good jobs and good pay in IT in most developed countries. Not sure of how the pay compares to accountancy, but if really want to change career.... I've coded my first "Hello World" at 26yo and now at 36 I'm working as an iOS contractor and making 6 digit figures (in ) and couldn't be more thankful to past me! 16 gaspoweredcat 19 hours ago 0 replies nope, most any programming language can be learned in a relatively short time, it requires only one thing dedication, as long as you care enough about doing it theres no upper age limit. as for not being able to compete that is up to you, as long as you have solid skills and can prove it you your age wont matter. 17 carsongross 1 day ago 0 replies Mentally you probably have the tools if you have done accounting, but it will be difficult socially unless you look the part. It is not something I would pursue on a whim: the grass is always greener and I assure you front end is a complete shit show, as sexy as it seems right now. 18 tyingq 1 day ago 0 replies You'll find less friction if you look for IT jobs at non-tech companies. Places like manufacturing, airlines, retail sales, and so forth. Ageism seems less prevalent in these places. 19 BillSaysThis 1 day ago 0 replies I was older and so far working well for me ;) 20 dba7dba 1 day ago 0 replies Few random thoughts as I've gone (and am still going) through same experience. 1. Zed Shaw of the "Learn Python the Hard Way" said programmers are dime a dozen. What's really valuable is a programmer who has experience from another domain such as history, engineering, medicine etc (and accounting in your case). I cannot recall exactly where he said it but I remember reading it and chuckling to myself. 2. Are you sure you want front-end dev work? Why not back-end? Exactly what skills are in demand?I recommend you watch this video on state of tools available in web dev including front-end, back-end, and DevOps as of 2016.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBzRwzY7G-k I should warn that the shelf life of front-web dev skills seems to be much shorter than IT. In fact here's a list of tech skills, ordered with longest to shortest shelf life IMHO. Not sure about DevOps but my feeling is it has longer shelf life than programming... IT > DevOps > Back-end > Front-end Going into IT years ago, I knew I needed to keep learning new stuff to stay relevant. I slacked off a bit (due to family situation) and paid the price. With dev work, you need to spend even more time to learn new stuff to stay relevant. Often, you will have to spend your personal time to do so. 3. You should keep your day job as you try to break into coding. You don't want financial pressure to stress you out. And that means you will have to squeeze out every available hour of your life and devote it to studying/practicing. That means no weekend activities, no TV/video-game at night, etc. The less you do such things, the faster you can switch into dev career. 4. Do you have the environment that will allow you do real productive studying/coding/studying? If you have kids, can you avoid school pickup/dropoff? Will you have big chunks of time daily to devote to coding practice? Personally I need at minimum 30min - 1hr before my brain switches on and gets productive. Basically your family around you have to pretend as if you had 2 full time jobs or you were studying for Bar exam or in med school. And they should expect what 6 months to a year of this. Do you have a desk where you can set up 2 x 24" monitors and your laptop with a comfortable chair? Or maybe a standup desk? 5. Get github and own web server (DigitalOcean, Linode or Amazon AWS) going and start posting your work. Curate what you post on Github. I use bitbucket for personal projects and use github only to post what's reasonably presentable.You probably don't have contacts in the industry. And that means finding a job almost exclusively based on job postings. And because of your lack of prior experience in the industry, you will often get passed over for others who do. So your secret and only weapon would be examples of your work that is easily accessible to recruiter/hiring-manager. Especially for dev work as there's no certifications to get like in Windows or Linux world. Setting up github/bitbucket means learning Git. Not really coding but you will need to know it for a dev work nonetheless. Setting up website on Linux to host your code is another non-coding task but still valuable skill to have. 6. Your first job as a dev may not be that dream job. What I've learned is that jobs posted on jobsites almost always have more negatives than positives. If it was really a desirable job with good environment, someone would've referred their friend/ex-coworker. So set your expectation accordingly for your first dev work. You can either turn it into a better job or move on to a better job/company. Whether the position is discouraging or not, once you get in, kick as_. That will open more doors, either more responsibility, or a different company or even freelance work. --- Epilogue I started down the path of switching from IT to dev because I wanted freedom of remote work, freelance, start a product/website to make income on the side, etc. None of that has come to fruition except for remote work but no regrets. I no longer have to open boxes of laptops, stick on inventory tag and add it to inventory excel list, get interrupted with help requests every 10 min, or worry about where to keep spare packing material (because manager wants tidy work space but not providing adequate storage space) to have available for overnighting that laptop to replace a broken laptop of a remote worker. Well there I go, spent another hour doing something else other than practicing coding. 21 j45 1 day ago 0 replies Never too late. It's something you can do by simply getting to work learning and building stuff yourself. A front end dev is only a sliver over the full-stack developer you were before in PHP in having to deal with back end stuff, etc. 22 ccatarino 1 day ago 1 reply No. 60 points by somecallitblues 1 day ago 124 comments top 74 1 vidarh 1 day ago 3 replies Paper in big binder. I've tried for very long to find a good electronic solution. Up to and including writing my own wiki with various extensions customised to my diting style, and hunting around for every note taking app under the sun. The problem, I find, is that nothing beats the flexibility of being able to take out multiple sheets of paper and move them around, annotate them, put them back in. It creates a flexibility in workflow no tool I've tried have managed to match. The physical presence of the paper also makes it much easier to avoid forgetting a page exists. I'm not happy with it, but I keep coming back to it after each desperate attempt at making something else work better. 2 throwanem 1 day ago 1 reply Somebody's going to mention org-mode and it may as well be me. HTML export with syntax highlighting is a nice thing to have, and images linked to the document work like they should. Having code blocks be executable is a bonus, especially for showing technically minded clients or higher-ups exactly how their intentions were translated into reality. Evernote it is not: The sharing story is pretty BYOB, in that what you get out is an HTML (or whatever other format) document, and sharing it, whether readonly or not, is on you. There's document publishing functionality, but it requires some setup and an upstream host that can take files via FTP/SFTP/etc. Same goes for syncing, if that's something you want; Dropbox works for me, and there are many alternatives. Your use case sounds like it would require some tooling around org-mode to achieve. If you want something that does what you need straight out of the box, it probably won't make you happy. But you asked what we use to take notes, and for me that's org-mode; the things it does well are many, some of them unique in my experience, and that makes it worth my while to invest effort in adding the occasional capability I want which doesn't exist by default. (And for meetings where people are touchy about laptops, or realtime capture on a call, I have a clipboard and a paper tablet. But it's ephemeral; anything needing kept goes straight into an org file at the earliest opportunity.) 3 davidhunter 1 day ago 2 replies Workflowy. It's the lowest-friction tool I have used for notes and ideas. Using tags, it can be used as a great hierarchical project/task management system. I still use Evernote for quick storage and access of images, pdfs and long-form notes as the search is great. However, their tag/notebook organisation system has annoying redundencies and is clunky in places. I would love to bin it but can't find a suitable alternative. Bear is promising but not quite there. Apple notes doesn't allow linking between notes. 4 ooqr 1 day ago 3 replies To answer the question in the title, much as I love computers, nothing beats the flexibility and carefree nature of paper. I can draw diagrams, block out pseudocode, etc. I've thought about maybe a Surface would be nice for that, but haven't really tried it. I think you'll have best luck with multiple tools like you're doing now. 5 louisstow 1 day ago 1 reply Disclaimer: I'm the creator but I use Wall of Text: http://walloftext.co It's an infinite blank space of text in 2D. Also see the beta: https://beta.walloftext.co 6 jnbiche 1 day ago 3 replies I use Google Keep. It's simple and has an acceptable Android app and web interface. It also accomodates image notes. I don't think you'll find a notes application that has code highlighting, but perhaps I'm wrong... 7 TobbenTM 1 day ago 6 replies I've been a fan of the concept of Quiver (http://happenapps.com/#quiver) for a long time, but unable to use it daily as it is Mac only. I love the idea of having different notebooks, being able to easily merge text, code, mathematics and images into one note, and make 'cookbooks' out of them. Someone make it for Windows please. 8 diggan 1 day ago 0 replies Tried many different ways, usually falling back to using pen and paper. However, it limited me in the way that I couldn't search and sometimes I forgot my notebook, leading to me not finding what I wanted. So in the end I wrote my own static wiki generator (QuickWiki: https://github.com/VictorBjelkholm/quickwiki). It basically takes a folder full of markdown files, automatic links to other pages and generates a static website (that looks something like this: https://victorbjelkholm.github.io/quickwiki/home/ ) 9 circlefavshape 1 day ago 0 replies I have an action point from a meeting I'll borrow a scrap of paper and a pen off someone else, do it as soon as I'm out of the meeting, then bin it. Apart from that I haven't taken a note for the last 3 or 4 years. I had stacks of unsearchable notebooks with near-unintelligible scrawl in them, and rather than improving/indexing my note-taking I just gave up on it, reasoning that if I had gotten away with bad note-taking for 15 years then I could probably get away with none at all. Turned out I was right. Without having notes as a crutch I end up concentrating harder on understanding and remembering on what people are saying. YMMV but it works well for me 10 belvoran 1 day ago 0 replies PAPER!!! I have tried lots of electronic things, and programs. And there is still one unbeatable: paper. With pen, pencils, and fountain pens. Bullet journal is also worth checking,however I don't feel like we love each other. 11 throwaway4737 1 day ago 0 replies Vimwiki + your fav' git hosting with markdown/html-pages support. Git + Vimwiki setup: https://jarvistmoorefrost.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/snippet-c... 12 nickjj 1 day ago 2 replies Google Keep matches most of your requirements and it's what I use personally. It makes it really easy to tag, organize, share and with the archive feature you can get todo list functionality. 13 Vinkekatten 1 day ago 1 reply Meetings and information I will need to reference: One Note backed up to a network drive. It's got a nice integration with Outlook meetings, lets me start a note with info about time, date, subject of meeting, location of meeting and participants present. I also keep a password-protected file with non critical passwords here, but don't tell anyone. Day-to-day sketches and TODO's and little note lists: I keep a spiral note book next to my keyboard. I'm a leftie so it's upside down. I use the blue Pilot Drawing pens in various thicknesses. They dry instantly, so no ink smudges. Nice. In addition to these I keep a day-to-day diary in .txt documents on my computer, I just open them in Sublime text or vim and make a new one every month. I try to just write four or five lines about what I've done every day as well as what I need to do tomorrow. 14 mcshicks 1 day ago 0 replies For formal meetings I use pen and paper. For some specific activities I do where I can't take notes during the activity I use a voice recorder to take notes immediately afterwords. If I'm sitting at my computer (like on a phone call) I use org-capture. If I'm out and about and I just need to jot something down I use the google inbox reminder on my phone. I did have a livescribe (a pen that records audio while writing, synchronized to the place in your paper notes), it was really neat, especially if I was both conducting a meeting and taking action items. The downside was it was a little awkward to tell people every time the meeting ran that you were recording it. But it did that job well. I have used One Note for a while, it's pretty neat but the lack of a clean way to archive notes like org mode has was really a show stopper for me. For me at least having a couple of different ways works best. The small hand held voice recorder is surprisingly handy. The pain is transcribing them although recently I simply copy the files to my computer and link to them in org-mode. For group meetings I also liked used to use a white board and the camera on my phone, although I don't have need for this myself anymore. I would really recommend not getting stuck on one technique for all situations, but use different things that work better in different situations. The key is having one system to put it all together, and for me at least that's org mode. 15 ohstopitu 1 day ago 0 replies When I used to use Windows, I used OneNote[0] a lot! (I had over 20 notebooks with multiple sections and pages in each section). I loved it! However, recently I've moved to linux for my daily computing needs and I have yet to find something to fill a void. I'm using notion.so[1] for most notes and paper for hand written stuff. It's sad that in 2016, there's no nexus type tablet running android (with updates) that has pen support :/ 16 jason_slack 1 day ago 0 replies Good old pen and paper! I keep a paper based day planner and a notebook with my ideas, thoughts, etc in it. Recently I have been also trying to keep track using an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil using an app called Nebo. I'm not ready to switch yet. (And for that matter I have never been able to switch in 40 years). Paper to me is long lasting. I can start something in a notebook, shelve it and then pick it up again. No need to update the OS or the app I used to create it (if it still exists). 17 t27 1 day ago 1 reply I've started using Laverna(http://Laverna.cc) recently. Its a note management app built completely in Javascript and is serverless(except for storage, which is via your own dropbox), so I can host it on github pages/ AWS S3. It has a convenient Markdown editor with live previews, sorting notes by notebooks, and has web and mobile versions. The notes are stored in dropbox and your browser's local storage, also they have imports and exports for backup. Also its completely opensource and I can be sure that theres no snooping on my notes. 18 zhte415 1 day ago 0 replies Pen, paper. Hopefully there's an agenda, for a conference or meeting, so take notes on that. Take photo with phone. Send to whoever else needs to know, e.g. meeting minutes. My notepad is A4 paper cut in half (yeah, A5, but company only stocks A4) with a big bull-clip in the top. When notes are no longer needed, just shred them. 19 samuell 1 day ago 0 replies In addition to a simple binder with blank papers and a good pen for when I'm in "thinking mode", I have actually been happy with the following solution, for text note-taking on the computer (which I use almost daily as a journal, for meetings etc etc): Simple markdown files, with a script to create a new date-stamped document for each day [1], opens it in vim, and then commits the change and pushes to a bitbucket private repo for backup, after I close vim [2]. It also includes a script for converting all documents to a nice epub ebook, for offline reading, browsing, searching etc in calibre e-reader. Some benefits that made me go this direction, instead of, say evernote or the like: - Offline storage - Syncable via git (I'm keeping a backup in a private bitbucket repo) - Easily convert to any format via pandoc - Can edit effortlessly in my terminal-based environment (bash, tmux, vim) - Really automateable - ... 20 gumby 1 day ago 0 replies This sounds absurd, but hear me out: I start with paper, and then type them in. I've tried almost everything to automate paper->computer (typing rather than writing, Livescribe pen, iPad pro + apple pencil, many many devices that are now dead) and none have been as good as just a decent (not super special) pen and a notepad. I prefer an engineering pad or quadrille or in a pinch dot-grid, but really anything works as long as you don't lose it. The trick I learned was every day or so to move them into the computer, which I do by typing them in (and simply taking a photo of drawings). I usually type in Emacs or right into Evernote. I try to do it every evening as one of my last tasks, as part of reviewing my day & looking at the next day. If it's a multi-day sketch-it-out effort I wait until the few days are over. Dictation has become good enough that I can actually read aloud the relevant parts of a bunch of sheets of paper (in the order I care about) and then quickly fix them up. This is actually the only use case for dictation I've found on my computer. The benefits: First of all, typing them over forces you to review them, organize them slightly, and skip over the irrelevant stuff. This is really important after a design effort since you throw away what you think are truly dead paths, and all your cross-out go away. If I need one, this typing is often the base of my design document. Second: I've seen meeting notes I've taken that don't justify being typed in. In which case, why did I even go to that meeting? Interestingly, when I was a kid my mum told me she used this technique both in school and in work, which I dismissed as a ludicrous waste of time. Only decades later when I evolved the same approach did I remember her advice. 21 swingbridge 1 day ago 0 replies I'm quite a techno geek but when it comes to notes I've never given up good old paper and pen. 22 brute 1 day ago 0 replies Zim - A Desktop Wiki http://www.zim-wiki.org/ Mostly because it just creates a bunch of .txt files, which are easy to handle (sync, backup, read via ssh, ...), and by placing them in subdirs you get a hierarchy.It is mostly for text, but it supports links, links between notes, links to files, pictures, code, lists, checkboxes, latex, gnuplot, ... and if you really need something you can create your own tool. 23 jordz 1 day ago 0 replies I tend to switch between Field Notes and Moleskine books, I use a Japenese Kuru Toga pencil (mechanical pencil that sharpens itself while you write) and a Uni JetStream Prime 0.7mm. On the digital side I use OneNote. If anyone is interested, this guys instagram says it all: https://www.instagram.com/desk_of_jules/ 24 SnacksOnAPlane 1 day ago 0 replies SimpleNote for most things. Workflowy for more structured things. And I have a Huawei Watch that runs Audio Recorder so I can take little notes to myself when I don't have time or hands to write something down. 25 gotrythis 1 day ago 0 replies For those who use paper, I strongly recommend the LiveScribe pen. It records what you write and the audio. Then you can click text and it plays what was being said when the text you clicked on was written. Makes for fast, stress free note taking. 26 yabatopia 1 day ago 0 replies Like others already mentioned, Quiver (http://happenapps.com/#quiver), but it is Mac-only. Your a Mac-user, but I don't know how often you work with clients using another platform. That could be a problem. For Windows and Linux, there's Cherrytree (http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/). I'm not using it myself, it's just something that I found when looking for Evernote alternatives. It has syntax highlighting and can handle images. Good luck with finding a solution. 27 bogle 1 day ago 0 replies [Turtl](https://turtlapp.com/) has been my Evernote replacement for a few months now. I like having everything encrypted and I love writing in Markdown. 28 bjoernm 1 day ago 0 replies We're building Nuclino (https://www.nuclino.com/), which is inspired by Notational Velocity / nvALT.You can upload images via drag and drop and embed code blocks. Syntax highlighting for the code blocks is on the roadmap.You can either share individual pages with a client (via a public URL) or invite someone to share several pages and collaborate on them in real-time. 29 vidarh 1 day ago 0 replies I'd like to mention Ideaflip, btw: http://ideaflip.com It's intended for collaboration rather than specifically for note-taking, but it looks like it addresses some of my issues with respect to flexibility for note-taking. I'm not convinced they've got the pricing and market fit perfect yet, but it looks quite interesting. (Disclaimer: I'm having some conversations with the founder, but we've not done business) 30 blakesterz 1 day ago 0 replies Has anyone tried Bear yet? http://www.bear-writer.com/ I just recently started using it, finding it rather nice, though it still feels rather 'beta'. 31 dadelantado 1 day ago 0 replies Simplenote!! Works on everything: Desktop app, browser, android or iphone 32 molx 1 day ago 0 replies Sublime Text. I find taking notes for me to be more about slowing my thought process down in order to zero in on issues I'm thinking through. At work we use Teamwork to organize our projects, so usually if there's something I'm working on for a client or a coworker, I'll transcribe parts of my notes into our teamwork project. Teamwork also lets you add tasks, notes, files, links, etc. We can one off people to each project, so that they can review anything we've added for their review. 33 We2soRae 1 day ago 0 replies I use https://www.notebooksapp.com/. It works with plain files, txt, markdown and WYSIWYG (HTML). It also allows you to write your own stylesheet and JS. So I have a custom template (CSS) and I write almost everything in WYSIWYG (ie HTML). Works really well for code too, as I get syntax highlighting. Other apps I have tried and used over the years: - http://www.mweb.im/ (markdown)- https://ulyssesapp.com/ (markdown)- http://lightpaper.42squares.in/ (markdown)- http://alternoteapp.com/ (Evernote GUI)- Many, many others Notebooks really stands out because it has a great iOS app, syncs via Dropbox (plain files), and handles TXT/MD/HTML + Custom CSS&JS. The Mac app is not great, but it's adequate. I frequently talk to the author and they are rewriting it to be more "Mac friendly", but that's a bit away (1 year maybe?). For the longest time, I tried to stay true to Markdown, but as I get older, I just want things to be easier, and to look nicer, and I now prefer writing everything in WYSIWYG. Since I have custom styles, I can stick to standard structure (ie H1, p, ul, ..), which is in spirit close to Markdown (ie structure only). And I can still customize when I want complicated things (I wrote a couple special classes for some use cases). Plus, it works with the filesystem, so you get folders, which I personally prefer to all this tagging BS. It makes it easier to have everything in one place: work stuff and personal stuff, and to keep it all neat and tidy. Also, because it's files, it's always available offline (iOS app too). The iOS app is like a small file manager, so I also keep pictures, PDFs, and some other docs. So I always have all my important stuff on hand, no matter where I am. Overall, I think it's a great app, which still has room to grow (better GUI on desktop, encryption, ...) 34 vinhnx 16 hours ago 0 replies In the past, I used Evernote but recently switch to Quiver and Unclutter. I also have a real notebook in my desk to sketch diagram and flow, I find it very effective. 35 rwieruch 1 day ago 0 replies In the order from brainstorming to real project it's: - piece of paper and pen - Clear https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clear-tasks-reminders-to-do/... (not only as Todo App, but also to make outlines for topics) - Sublime Editor + Markdown + (private) GitHub repository 36 jagermo 1 day ago 0 replies I have horrible handwriting. It is really bad. But OneNote and ten-finger-typing makes up for that. If I need to share it, I can easily copy it in to an email, everyone can receive these without needing another account. You might want to look into http://www.codefoster.com/codeinonenote/, a code highlighter for OneNote 37 eskimobloood 1 day ago 0 replies Paper Quiver[1]: suports markdown and syncs via Dropbox Mindful[2]: chrome extension 38 toban 1 day ago 0 replies I've ended up going from applications like Evernote to a simple Dropbox folder with markdown files for my personal notes. For me, the main draws are easy access from terminal and using my own text editor. And of course code blocks with syntax highlighting (and LaTeX with MathJax). I haven't played around with sharing, but it's easy to render an HTML page. 39 Chris2048 1 day ago 0 replies While I use zimWiki for personal notes, there are some things it lacks, like interactivity. I started a blog, using Nikola. Not perfect, but it can support markdown, rst, ipy etc, plus pretty much anything else the web can. Not exactly a TODO list, but for publishable things, it's pretty flexible if the thought isn't private. 40 kek918 1 day ago 0 replies I use Todoist for notes that are potential tasks. Some times the line can be blurry so I have to regularly clean my Todoist tasks. For the rest I use Google Keep which I've found to be quite handy. Nice UI and it's available everywhere. I've already sold my soul to Google so why not let them get my notes as well. 41 hatsunearu 1 day ago 1 reply Xournal on my x86 tablet running Ubuntu. Love having the xournal files go to my personal server that I can browse through with my laptop or desktop later on, anywhere, anytime, without having to bring around binders and notebooks. I also like that you can erase and move blocks of ink around. 42 rvpolyak 1 day ago 0 replies I use pen and paper. Well actually write everything in a sketch book and keep an index of themes on the cover and number all the pages so if I need to refer back I find the theme and page number. 43 DominikSerafin 1 day ago 0 replies The good old physical post it notes work best for me if I need to note something quickly. If there's something that I need to copy/paste later then I just have "Clipboard.txt" on my desktop. Not prettiest but it's fastest and easiest. If I need to plan something bigger then I use Trello. 44 brennen 1 day ago 0 replies 0. Leuchtturm (or Moleskine if I can't get a Leuchtturm) notebook, blank pages, the middle size. 1. vimwiki in a tmux session in an XMonad scratch buffer. Pandoc for occasional PDF output. 2. Some screenshot / screencast gif scripts around byzanz and scrot. 45 pmontra 1 day ago 0 replies Paper during meetings with customers. A5 or even A6. Faster than anything else. Big bonus for drawing diagrams quickly. The default notes app on my Samsung until I changed phone, Private Notepad now. This is for short random notes. Several markdown files on my laptop especially for work related stuff. 46 Kiro 1 day ago 2 replies Evernote. My Evernote is the only valuable digital asset I have. Everything else is exchangeable. 47 vincent91 1 day ago 0 replies I use Google Keep for short notes and TOTOs. It's handy and you can access on any device. 48 goerz 1 day ago 0 replies [GoodNotes](http://www.goodnotesapp.com) on an iPad Pro (12.9 inch) and Apple Pencil. Haven't touched paper since getting it. 49 kybernetyk 1 day ago 0 replies Short lived notes? Anything that can take text input. vim, text edit, stickies (the mac app), pen & paper, whatever is on hand. Long term notes? Evernote - though I'm not happy with them. Just haven't found a replacement yet. 50 petetnt 1 day ago 0 replies Dropbox Paper currently: syncs automatically with everyone who I want to share the notes with, saves automatically, has an advanced and simple to use editor, keeps track of changes, has comments and so on. 51 HackyGeeky 1 day ago 0 replies One Note : I'm an "avoid mouse" person & one note is the only application that provides all the features.Plus sharing is a breeze - especially in a company. 52 dplgk 1 day ago 1 reply Quiver is like Evernote if Evernote didn't suck. All it's missing is encryption. http://happenapps.com 53 feistypharit 1 day ago 0 replies I use the note station app by synology. Granted, you need a synology NAS to use it, but it works offline, mobile, and desktop. And all your data lives on your own device. 54 thecolorblue 1 day ago 0 replies OneNote on a surface. I sprung for the office suite which includes a different version of OneNote with a better UI and more features. It is worth it if you take a lot of notes. 55 amerkhalid 1 day ago 0 replies Paper. I tried laptops, ultrabooks, iPad, cellphones, for note taking but nothing beats paper so far. But I ordered Surface Pro 4 this week. So going to try OneNote on SP4 soon. 56 galfarragem 1 day ago 0 replies 57 collyw 1 day ago 0 replies Pen and notepad. Way faster than farting about typing on a tocuh screen or desktop and drawing diagrams is orders of magnitude faster and easier. 58 fumar 1 day ago 0 replies OneNote. I use it on all my devices, work laptop (ThinkPad), Surface Pro 3, and Galaxy Note 5. I prefer to take notes using a stylus. 59 srikz 1 day ago 0 replies OneNote on a Surface (for handwritten notes) and Google Keep for quick notes and reminders on phone. OneNote is quite slow to sync on Phones 60 slantaclaus 1 day ago 1 reply I used to use Apple notes but lost so much data I try not to anymore. Evernote is my main notepad these days but I still use apple notes... 61 jenhsun 1 day ago 0 replies As a Mac User, I use nvALT for my notes and monosnap for screenshots and image uploads plus sharing. ToDo List I use Any.Do for a while. 62 kNawade 1 day ago 0 replies Atom and Markdown. You can even see real time previews with "Markdown preview plus" plugin, upload it to git if need be. 63 aembleton 1 day ago 0 replies Visual Studio Code and type out notes as Markdown. This gives me some formatting as I go without being distracting. Usually though I find a pen and paper works best. 64 88e282102ae2e5b 1 day ago 1 reply I use Jupyter notebooks and write in markdown. 65 _hao 1 day ago 0 replies I use OneNote and I'm very happy with it. 66 kirankn 1 day ago 0 replies Came to know about Remarkable (getremarkable.com) which ships next Aug. Sounds interesting for paper lovers. 67 ymgch 1 day ago 0 replies Simplenote. Use it everyday. 68 rihegher 1 day ago 0 replies flat txt file + Gedit for view and edition + Cloudstation for sync with NAS and other computers or mobiles. 69 grigjd3 1 day ago 0 replies Honestly, I keep a spiral notebook. 70 pouta 1 day ago 0 replies infinity book it's available on Amazon. Imagine whiteboard + notebook. 71 Zelmor 20 hours ago 0 replies ZimWiki 72 antonis82 1 day ago 0 replies plain text file + dropbox for accessing on multiple devices 73 guilhas 1 day ago 0 replies Zim wiki 74 Heliosmaster 1 day ago 0 replies Alternote 86 points by rodolphoarruda 1 day ago 58 comments top 17 1 pc86 1 day ago 0 replies Context: I own a CrossFit gym with my wife which happens to be the largest (both in physical size and active membership) in an ~80-100 mile radius. I also have a full-time job developing applications for enterprise and government clients and I used to be a full-time freelancer focusing on custom websites and custom WordPress plugins. Our website is invaluable. We have all our ad landing pages there so it's a constant source of warm local leads. I think it's grown in importance since we tightened the integration with Facebook and Instagram. We don't really do much search/display advertising, it's all social proof, boosted posts, ads to get people to our events, "people whose friends have liked our page," etc. If the website's importance is 10/10 I'd put Facebook at an 8 and Instagram at a 5. I'd take simple website + solid FB ad strategy over flashy website + leaky bucket ad strategy 100% of the time. 2 tyingq 1 day ago 5 replies I've seen this. Google's changes to search over the years have made it increasingly difficult for an SMB website to show up in organic searches. Google seems to be biased towards big national brands in a way that they weren't in the past. That, of course, led to more bidding for AdWords, which drove the pricing up there. So, SMB owners then try to find some other way to get a presence, many of which make it difficult to use your own website. Facebook, for example, is setup in a way where your FB biz page is highlighted, but the url to your actual site is obscured and buried. Aside from your examples of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter...I've also seen SMB's move their ecommerce sales to Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and the like. 3 dpcan 1 day ago 1 reply Not in my case, our website is VERY important. I opened an escape room business in Idaho about 3 months ago, and we have a website, facebook page, google (+,mybusiness,etc), twitter, and instagram account. Our website is so important because it's how we connect people to our booking system, and for ranking in Google and we link our Adwords account to it as well. Then we send people to our website first and on our business cards, promo materials, signs, and more, because it has our FAQ, email contact form, photos, the format we want, Book Now link, the message we want at the top, details about our services, and more. I couldn't imagine just trying to manage all this with just a Facebook page or Google stuff. People would be very confused. If I said, just got to our Facebook page, you'd be surprised at how many people say they aren't on Facebook. If I say go to our Google+ page they don't even know what I'm talking about. People call all the time to book because they say "I don't do the Internet thing" (not kidding) Asking people for reviews is easiest through Facebook. I don't even know how to tell people to review me on Google. Not many folks here appear to be on Yelp it seems. But having a "Review us on..." section of our website will be nice when I add it, and then again, I can just send people to the site. Lastly, the website is where I can put company specific information like our downloadable flyer, rules and regulations, orientation info, faq, specific details about each of our rooms, some player stats, and official info about our promotions. So yes, a website for a small business is extremely important in my opinion. That being said, I have heard of people just going to a Facebook Page, but I believe these are people who don't see the value in connecting EVERY aspect of the web to maximize their online exposure, and don't see the benefits they could reap if they use all these tools together effectively. 4 afloatboat 1 day ago 1 reply I've seen and have encouraged small business to move their web presence to Facebook and Google Local Business. We've built a solid amount of websites for small businesses, and in most cases they don't care about maintenance. So in the end they spent a solid amount on a website and hosting, don't change anything for four years and build a new site. Having gained nothing in between. Having a Facebook page doesn't cost you anything, and on the plus side, if you maintain it you will get free exposure by appearing alongside organic posts on users' timelines. You'll have to work for your likes, but it's your responsibiliy to provide fresh and interesting content. The more users engage with your posts, the more visibility you will get as well. Twitter seems to be mainly for support and quick updates when you have service problems and Instagram is nice if you have something more in the graphics or design sector. In my country it's also mostly used by geeks and doesn't work if you want to reach a general crowd. However, as a customer it all depends on what I'm looking for. Want a new tap for the kitchen sink? I'm not going to look for that on Facebook, you'd best have a website with some examples and pricing. If I want to go to a restaurant I only care about their contact information and the menu. If I can find that on Facebook or the Google sidebar, I'm happy. 5 anexprogrammer 1 day ago 1 reply For most non tech SMBs a website was a necessary evil, like all advertising. Then they get caught up in an SEO scam or two and talking of promotion or online advertising is like suggesting tax fraud. Google could have dreamed up an Adwords Lite for SMBs and stop defaulting to broad match. If done well it could have made Adwords worthwhile for those who can't just hire an adwords consultant and spend 4 figures. I know several SMBs who would never touch Adwords again. The two I know who use adwords well both have someone pretty technical around. One of those does more on Etsy than their site. As @tyingq says Google's updates have mostly promoted brands and large businesses. Now add the freshness updates and they're hurting all the mainly static small sites. Facebook did much the same when they hugely cut the views pages can achieve. FB went from hugely helpful to almost a waste of time for many. It's little wonder so many aren't seeing the point. 6 rodolphoarruda 1 day ago 2 replies I do. It is happening everywhere in Brazil. Small companies see no reason in keeping a stand alone website with very low visit figures whereas their fanpages, profiles in massive social networks leverage engaged visitors. I can see many companies not renewing their domain names registrations simply because it does not matter to have a domain name. Custom branded email address? Pointless, since all comms are made inside the social network. 7 mathattack 1 day ago 1 reply Only a few samples, but: - Restaurants seem to keep them up. They need to post menus, and links to OpenTable and other reservation sites. - K-12 Schools keep their own sites - Other small businesses (martial arts schools, dry cleaners, etc) seem to be leaving their old sites on standby. Big drop in forum activity. 8 wattt 1 day ago 2 replies I have seen this happen a few times. Sometimes businesses switch to turnkey/template sites, but if all they need is an address in Google Maps it isn't necessary a lot of the time. Conversely, as a web developer, I have stopped working with this segment completely. Non-tech organizations of 1-2 people are way more hassle to deal with than larger organizations. 9 swingbridge 1 day ago 0 replies In my, completely unscientific but likely not that all inaccurate, observation SMBs are pushing hard on Facebook. Twitter is dead and people don't waste their money adversiting there. Google is still there but it's become such a mess that the difficultly of getting high rankings combined with the much less precise targeting (compared to say Facebook) has made it a lot less attractive recently. 10 ryandrake 1 day ago 6 replies Sorry, it would be nice if someone could explain what "SMB" means. To me, it's a network file sharing protocol, and a basic Google search confirms this as the top definition. 11 samuellb 1 day ago 1 reply I know a small company that shut down it's Facebook page while keeping it's website (an old one, from 2005). Probably because it's not selling directly to it's end-customers, so the web site is focused on contact info (for store chains etc) + static web pages with product information. B2B doesn't seem to use Facebook very much at all. 12 GFischer 15 hours ago 0 replies During an "Entrepreneurship" class, some classmates started investigating about SMBs web presence.. and yes, a LOT of SMBs find their Facebook page to be a lot more valuable than their website, often forgoing the website. It's been a lot worse for them since Facebook started asking for money in order to promote posts, but the ease of use and features of Facebook coupled with an audience beat a website hands down. Companies included home cooking / office meals, small design and deco items sales, nail polish and beauty supplies, even a general hardware store. I do think a website is important, but a Facebook page even more so. Another huge channel here is WhatsApp. 13 jagermo 1 day ago 0 replies It probably depends if you use your website to generate income. I currently work for a small business that sells dedicated lines, MPLS etc. They invest heavily in their website and use it to generate leads for the sales team. Myself, on the other hand, I switched from a Wordpress powered blog to a simple, html "About me" website, mainly because I didn't use it and didn't want to keep up with the maintenance. I can understand if smaller companies, that need nothing more than a business card on the web, use Facebook or some other hosted service for their presence. 14 curun1r 1 day ago 0 replies I used to work for an online booking company that supplied its SMBs with a business profile page, Facebook widget, website widget and reputation management. Almost universally, they all felt that their website was very important and spent an inordinate amount of money on it...some well into the 6-figures, which was much more than they spent on our service. However, also almost universally, they'd get almost no bookings through the website widgets. Customers overwhelmingly preferred dealing with them through Facebook and our business profile page. Also, our business profile pages showed up much higher in Google for non-name searches. I'm sure there are some SMBs that really do have a need for a website and it really is important to them, but for the verticals that we dealt with, there was a huge perception gap between the perceived and actual value of the website and a profound misunderstanding of the preferences of their customers. The question of whether SMBs still care about their websites is, to me, less interesting than the question of whether SMBs should care about their websites. 15 tezza 1 day ago 0 replies Yup I've witnessed the same migraion... food stalls like The Poutinerie are facebook / twitter only. I would've expected a website 5 years ago, but they seem fine. Google "The Poutinerie" and their 'website' comes up top billing ( London based peep ) 16 tomashertus 1 day ago 2 replies I had actually spent a lot of time researching this particular use case - creating and maintaining website as B2C SMB and their way of promoting themselves to customers. I came to the conclusion that if you are mortar-and-brick business, focused on local people, the current web is actually totally broken for you and the only feasible solution for ads are location based ad systems. In this particular case I distinguished between businesses which are location based and businesses which are able to sell their goods and services on the Internet. For those who are able to sell on Internet, there is plenty of options for e-commerce solution etc, but for local businesses it doesn't make economically sense to maintain website. During my research I talked with 50 local small-business owners in SF and each one of them had website. They all agreed that it is luxurious expense and half of them had problem to maintain the site and only 10/50 were able to update their website at least once a month. What was kind of shocking for me to find out was that around 60% of these people was paying$50+/month for shitty website and almost nobody was willing to spend more money on their website.

Here is couple of findings:

- When asking, why do they have a website, some of them replied that it is must have in eyes of the customer - you don't exist if you don't have website, right?

- When asking what's their monthly number of visitors on their websites, 60% didn't know.

- When asking about the most used communication channel, almost everyone said phone. One barber was actually running WhatsApp group and worked pretty well for him.

- When asking how much they will be investing into a website - the majority said that they will not increase their costs for web and ads.

From my point of view, web is actually total nonsense for local businesses, it's unnecessary expense and the owners could do much better if they orient on social media and local advertisement. The real problem for them is that they are not willing to maintain 10 social network accounts and constantly update them, because they need to run their real business as well.

One funny thing I found out was that 10 out of 50 said that old-fashioned promotional flyer into mailbox still works best for them and has the biggest response and they will spent more money on that. Kinda surprise for me in SF in the beginning of 2016.

17
sharemywin 1 day ago 0 replies

I've heard of business using those as alternatives to their own websites. To me I'd much rather own my own website site, but I think I'm in the minority.

23 points by bontoJR  1 day ago   34 comments top 9
1
wayn3 1 day ago 1 reply
Absolute shit. Its easier to get a contract from a US firm working from europe than it is to actually work remote in europe for a european company.

Besides, the pay is shit. European companies think 40k is a great salary for an engineer. Better rates to be had in murica. much better. 3-4x+ better.

2
tjansen 1 day ago 0 replies
(Germany) In smaller companies it's certainly possible to arrange it - not sure how common it is. In larger companies, this is very unusual and usually not even considered, except for contractors.

There are a million of workplace laws and regulations that are hard to apply for someone who's working from home. E.g. I have heard from people working at home that their desk and chair needed to be inspected to make sure it is compliant (ergonomics etc).

3
pyb 1 day ago 1 reply
In the UK, I've noticed remote working has become more and more common, particularly in the last 2 or 3 years.Not only are there more distributed companies, but commutes in the London area are quite long as people have to live far out.

So yes, it's happening. I say this as someone who generally prefers to work onsite...

4
a-saleh 1 day ago 0 replies
(Czech republic) - in my peer-group, fully remote work is rare, but not unheard-off (for past two years I have worked with colleague who was fully remote, even though he lives in the same country, and we are about to hire another one. Both of them were hired as senior engineers)

What is really common, is reasonably generous attitude towards working from home. Few of my colleagues have arrangement with my manager that they can work from home indefinitely and basically come to office only when they feel like it, because of ~1h long commute from one part of the city to the other. Company policy is 1xWFH/week.

5
gt2 1 day ago 0 replies
I know several people working remotely for European companies. They do complain that the pay is less, but that's probably not related to being remote.
6
mrcold 1 day ago 8 replies
In Europe software companies are more like factories. You punch in, work like a slave all day, then punch out. The socialist mindset created retarded managers. So anything deviating from the standard factory setup is seen as depravity. Europeans don't understand technology. For them software development is like manual labor. Get some monkeys, throw them some peanuts and use a whip to make them do stuff.

Overall, remote working in Europe is mostly done for US companies. EU companies are usually mentally disabled.

7
Zelmor 1 day ago 0 replies
Linux software tester reporting in from Eastern EU. I am fully remote and would not have it any other way. My client company (I'm a subcontractor) is located in the same county so it's not like I work overboard. This is pretty standard for some companies, and completely alien to others. Look for the former ones and ask during interviews.
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Heraclite 1 day ago 0 replies
Unfortunately we're not there yet.It's doable if you negociate it with your local small-midsized company.
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tetek 1 day ago 0 replies
Not sure what are you asking.Could you be more precise?
5 points by fratlas  20 hours ago   6 comments top 2
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remyp 15 hours ago 0 replies
There are agencies/dev shops that -- assuming they like your idea -- will take a piece of equity and charge a bit less.

Go with one of these shops so incentives are aligned and they truly care about building your product rather than just billing hours. I know (but don't work for) a couple and am happy to provide a referral, feel free to send me an email.

As for cost, I find Gigster's pricing examples to be pretty accurate: https://gigster.com/pricing

2
williamtaormina 19 hours ago 1 reply
Hey Fratlas, what are you trying to build? Outsourcing can be a tricky thing... I've seen it go wrong more times than right.
21 points by 8sigma  1 day ago   11 comments top 11
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tzs 1 day ago 0 replies
I tried to start one, but it didn't get any traction.

My theory was that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David were involved at one time in something very shady, and that they created the "Seinfeld" TV show as part of a plot to protect themselves in the case their past activities came to light.

Consider that the show "Seinfeld" is about a comedian named "Jerry Seinfeld", and the part was played by the real Seinfeld. The character Seinfeld's best friend was George Costanza, and it was well known that he was based on Larry David, and that many of the things George did on the show were based on real-life Larry David incidents.

Note that a few years into the show, character Seinfeld and his best friend get a chance to write a pilot for NBC for a show called "Jerry" about a comedian named Jerry Seinfeld and based on the life of character Jerry Seinfeld, and that included characters based on the character Jerry's friends.

Then, after Seinfeld ended, Larry David went on to make "Curb Your Enthusiasm" for HBO, a show about a character named Larry David who was a comedian and was the Seinfeld co-creator, and real life Larry David played character Larry David. Much of the incidents in CYE were based on real-life Larry David incidents.

These two shows, especially Seinfeld when it went down the recursion rabbit hole with "Jerry", seem designed to blur the line between fictional Jerry Seinfeld and real life Jerry Seinfeld, and between fiction Larry David and real life Larry David.

It's well known that human memory is malleable. If you remember something fairly accurately, but then you hear someone else's recollection of the same event and their recollection differs, your memory can change to better reconcile your account and their account. (This can be a big problem in criminal justice matters...it is not hard for an interviewer to alter the memory of a witness by phrasing questions in a way that suggest something at odds with what the witness remembers).

So my theory was that the purpose of the Seinfeld and CYE shows was for Seinfeld and David to present alternate versions of themselves and of incidents they had been involved in many years earlier to reshape the memories of others who witnessed those incidents, to get them to forget or doubt something that Seinfeld and David did that would be very embarrassing or damaging to their careers if it came to light.

2
simon_acca 1 day ago 0 replies
Definitely the Dihydrogen Mooxide one: http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

I would add some comment but I don't want to spoil it to people that never heard of it.

It's just worth a reading :)

3
enturn 7 hours ago 0 replies
'Google moving away from Java in favor of Dart and Go because they couldn't get legal control of the Java language.' I have no solid evidence but from legal battles with Oracle and Google's focus on wanting to control their entire stack it might have some merit.
4
stevekemp 1 day ago 0 replies
Finland doesn't exist:

It's about as silly as most of the commonly cited responses, and yet oddly cute.

5
personlurking 1 day ago 0 replies
I don't have a "favorite" but I once heard a consipracy theorist discuss a supposed CIA term called "slides" which is explained below. Regardless of where the term might come from or who wrote the passage below, I think the concept exists (just look to modern-day political discussion).

An excerpt from the first Google result regarding the term:

Most people have built in "slides" that short circuit the minds critical examination process when it comes to certain sensitive topics. "Slides" is a CIA term for a conditioned type of response which dead-ends a persons thinking, and terminates debate or examination of the topic. For example, the mention of the word "conspiracy" usually solicits a slide response with many people. -Fritz Springmeier, author of The Top 13 Illuminati Bloodlines and de-programmer

6
sharemywin 7 hours ago 0 replies
more of a hoax than a conspiracy theory:

https://www.truthorfiction.com/msoffer/

7
sjs382 1 day ago 0 replies
Carly Rae Jespen is an Actual Vampire: http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/24/9189289/carly-rae-jepsen-v...

8
sidcool 1 day ago 0 replies
Mine is the one where people say we live in a simulation. Gulp
9
ndallar1 1 day ago 0 replies
Hillary Clinton had John Kennedy junior killed so she can get the Senate seat he was designated for. She definitely had motive.
10
davidgerard 1 day ago 0 replies
Project Blue Beam. I wrote about half of this (and felt stupider afterwards): http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Beam
11
sogen 1 day ago 0 replies
Old one: Bonsai Kitten
89 points by stockoptionsta  1 day ago   80 comments top 25
1
mikestew 1 day ago 2 replies
many employees don't understand the basics of stock options, hence they don't value equity as much as employers / investors do

The fact that I know the basics of stock options is precisely the reason I don't value equity as much as employers or investors do. I can count on two fingers the number of companies whose stock options put money in my pocket, and one of them is Microsoft. I would need many hands to count the number of ways a company can screw me out of a payday on options.

Point is, for the vast majority of people knowing or not knowing the first thing about stock options won't make a lick of difference in their bottom line. What people need to know about options: sign the paperwork when it's given to you, and on the outside chance the options end up being worth anything your coworkers will give you some half-assed advice, which is one's trigger to go talk to a financial advisor.

Otherwise, spend your mental energy on how to increase your 401K contribution. That's guaranteed to involve real money that you can benefit from, and you should bone up on maximizing the potential.

2
planteen 1 day ago 2 replies
Keep in mind when you say "stock options," it can mean different things. The first thing that comes to my mind when you say "stock options" is options trading on publicly traded companies. That is buying and/or selling contracts of puts and/or calls.

The second is "stock options" at private companies as compensation, which is what you are referring to. There are many variations on how this works.

I've seen companies, as a bonus, grant what amounts to a call option that can't traded and only exercised at some point in the future. This may be free or you might have to pay for it.

I was once given stock as a bonus at a startup, making me an owner. Being an owner didn't pay me any sort of dividend, but it massively complicated my income taxes by giving me a K-1 in May (after April 15th). Additionally, I owed tax on my percentage of ownership, which was really a pain. The other gotcha but I wasn't allowed to be an owner unless I worked there. So when I quit, I got cashed out at "fair market value," which was a B.S. number they made up and gave me a couple thousand dollars. I also got diluted by half while I was an "owner." The experience made me very leery of ownership. Now I just look for salary.

3
calcsam 1 day ago 3 replies
No, this is not just a problem you're having.

I was an early engineer at Zenefits and found myself holding stock options seminars to explain this stuff to the rest of the engineers.

I built optionvalue.io as a calculator to help people answer some basic questions about what their stock is worth, and I'm building it out more to answer questions (eg, tax implications and exercise windows).

I've talked to grellas and some other folks with a long, long history dealing with this stuff. There seems to be some consensus that:

(1) People now are more educated about stock options than they've ever been.

(2) That's a pretty low bar.

4
probably_wrong 1 day ago 4 replies
When it comes to stock options, HN has taught me two things:

1. They are worthless, as >90% startups fail and you won't be getting anything in that case.

2. If they are not worthless, you might not be able to afford paying for them anyway [1].

Add to that how difficult it is to get a simple, clear answer to the question "how do I invest my money?". So yes, I wouldn't be surprised if most people didn't know how stock options work.

5
jartelt 1 day ago 0 replies
Some employers don't help either. My wife just received an offer from a pretty well funded company (Series B >$20M) and all they would tell her about the options package was number of shares and vesting schedule. When she asked to how many shares are in the company (to calculate her potential ownership %) she wasn't given an answer. When she asked for a rough estimate of the current value of those shares if vested, they basically just said "trust us, this is a good package." That experience reinforced my belief that you should assume the equity is worth$0 and not factor in the stock grant when evaluating an offer (unless you are at the company super early).
6
moonka 1 day ago 1 reply
There are 2 things which people are very financially illiterate about these days. Stock Options, and how income taxes work. You've covered the former, with the later I've seen confusion with how progressive tax brackets work, how deductions work, etc. All you can do is to make sure you understand it, and be careful of the advice you get from others.
7
neom 1 day ago 0 replies
There seems to be a general rule of thumb among investors and founders I've talked to that the vast majority of options won't vest or will go unpurchased, and as a result it seems many have tried to keep things as opaque as they can. As a CEO and Founder I find this incredibly troubling and I believe it's contributing to why so few folks value sweat equity anymore. I've written a few thoughts on this before for anyone interested: https://medium.com/busyness-time/part-i-how-were-building-st...
8
chimeracoder 1 day ago 1 reply
To add to all of this, most people really don't understand the tax implications of options (whether they're ISOs, NSOs, or not options at all but instead are RSUs).

It's hard to explain those without looking at a person's individual situation (the company, the initial value, the current valuation, and the person's tax bracket), which is why there's not a lot of talk about them. But the taxation can very easily be the tipping point between "definitely worth it to exercise" and "definitely not worth it to exercise", so it's really important to understand them.

9
danpalmer 1 day ago 0 replies
We give basic details in our offer letters, are open about all the details, have an employee focused scheme (i.e. 10-year exercise window), and when we do the grant paperwork for new employees (we do it in batches because of all the government stuff involved, we're in the UK), we give those employees a talk on how it all works, set expectations, etc.

I think we're fairly good at this, and most people I've spoken to in the company know enough about it to not hit any of the issues above - i.e. their vesting schedule, strike price, exercise window, etc.

10
praneshp 1 day ago 0 replies
Add me to your example list, I knew nothing till recently (now I know a non-zero amount, still close to zero). I was talking to Docker earlier this year, and really appreciated the recruiter spending about 30 minutes (and told me several times to do additional research) just explaining how options work.

On another note, this recruiter at Docker was hands down the best recruiter I've worked with. 45 minute initial phone conversation to explain the product and roadmap before even scheduling the first phone screen.

11
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pawelwentpawel 1 day ago 2 replies
Can anybody share some info on how taking stock options in a US company differs from a UK one? A lot of the reading applies to US market. I'm wondering if any of the advice is not transferrable.

Also, I believe that this is a good read - https://blog.alexmaccaw.com/an-engineers-guide-to-stock-opti...

13
kafkaesq 1 day ago 0 replies
I think there might be an even bigger problem many employees don't understand the basics of stock options, hence they don't value equity as much as employers / investors do.

That, and for the fact that their holdings percentage-wise are, in the vast majority of cases, typically negligible. Or even if they might potentially, in theory, be worth something, almost no one has time to investigate the company's business fundamentals to a sufficient degree to determine what chance they actually have of panning out, and hence, whether it's even remotely worth the risk.

Anyway, it's definitely not just you, it's a lot of people. The HN search engine (hn.algolia.com) is really quite good; in addition to the links others will be posting here, try some targeted keyword searches, and to read as many articles as you can on the subject. While they may not be all tailored to your specific situation, gradually the general subject will become less opaque.

14
id122015 7 hours ago 0 replies
I think there is a difference between investing in stocks and receiving equity.

Since investing in stocks is so troublesome, no way to beat the market, why even bother to learn about it?And when it happen, rarely to have the chance to get equity, I think its normal.

15
Mz 1 day ago 0 replies
I will suggest it is probably not just you and your friends. I am more financially savvy than most people I meet and I really don't know much at all about stock options. I imagine I would try to find out if it were being offered as part of my compensation package, but I think stock options are a fairly sophisticated financial concept and most people will not really understand them.

I say this as someone who worked in insurance, which is a financial services industry subject to federal financial regulations, such as Gramm-Leach-Bliley. So, it is not just my opinion that I know more about finance than average, I also have relevant training. And I only have a vague, hand-wavy idea of what you are talking about.

16
hkmurakami 1 day ago 1 reply
I worked at a pre IPO company a few years ago and it was an exception to find people who understood how things worked. Hell, even I missed some details back then, and it was only after I put in hours of research that I developed a decent grasp of the tradeoffs and deadlines. I still don't really know how to do AMT though.

There are a couple of startups that make it a point to early through what their equity means with new hires. But this puts power into the hands of employers since some will be well meaning and some will mislead.

It's unfortunate that we don't have a "yo-yo" knowledge with a easy to remember URL we can point to. Plenty of great articles out there, including by prominent VCs. But it requires a lot of digging.

17
it wouldn't be that expensive to buy them

I hope you are taking into consideration the capital gains tax when it comes to the difference between strike price and the current fair market value of the stock. If a company is growing fast or takes on money, this can change alot in even a year.

The IRS doesn't care that you may not be able to actually recognize that gain because you cannot actually sell the stock, it's considered a gain nonetheless and you will owe tax on it.

I have been in a situation where the FMV of my stock changed by 10x in the span of a year and by the time I could have actually bought any stock the tax bill would have bankrupted me.

18
pfarnsworth 1 day ago 1 reply
This has always been the case. I've been in Silicon Valley for ~20 years, and even back during the dotcom days, most employees didn't know much about stocks, let alone stock options. Given the fact that it's such an important part of Silicon Valley life, you would think that people would educate themselves more, but it hasn't happened in 20+ years. It's just human nature, and some people don't care, or think it's too complicated and ignore it.
19
metaphorm 1 day ago 0 replies
let me augment this with a real world example of why knowing about stock options is important for those cases where you need to understand why _not_ to exercise.

recently I left a company after 3 years, with a decent chunk of options in my comp. the company is not publicly traded, is still deep in the red, is still trying to raise more rounds of venture capital (thus increasing dilution), and has no exit in sight for the foreseeable future.

My cost to exercise my options at their strike price would have been just over $8000 bucks, and then there would be additional taxes on top of that for whatever the face value of the purchased shares would be. These are illiquid assets, mind you, so the face value would be taxed, but there were no buyers, so it's just an outright loss. I left those options unexercised. I certainly didn't feel like donating$8000 bucks to my former boss' checking account and then paying extra taxes on it all for the privilege of sitting on illiquid assets for an indeterminate number of years (with a high probability of the stock never being worth anything at all).

Understanding the structure and fees and taxes of the options is very important specifically so you don't go and throw good money after bad in situations like this.

20
ChuckMcM 1 day ago 0 replies
In answer to your question, the answer is "Yes, many if not a majority, of tech employees are clueless about stock options." I've thought about the reasons for that, and mostly they are around actual use.

Every startup, and nearly every company, that I've worked at had "the talk" about stock options, they went over ISO, NSO, and RSO. They talk about taxes and gains and tax law. They talk about vesting and cliffs and blackouts and strike prices. They dump a ton of data on your head.

And the problem is they are dumping it onto people who have absolutely no way to connect what they are saying to their own personal existence, and so they forget all of it. It is human nature, a brain defense, what have you that when you are given information that you only barely understand and has no immediate relevance to your situation, you promptly flush it out of your brain.

That all changes once the options are actually worth money and can be exercised and sold.

Once options have value they become relevant and generally a co-worker or someone more clued in will do something like buy a new car "using their options" or even just a new bike or TV. And that will trigger the questions, "Hey I think I have options maybe I should figure out if they are worth money." Sometimes this happens when you are being laid off or fired and you are given 90 days to exercise your options or lose them.

At that time, the information you develop about options will stick in your head because you needed it to accomplish some task, which ideally rewarded you with some extra cash that you didn't know you had access to. Later in the year this action will trigger you learning a lot more about the tax code than you wanted to know :-).

21
module0000 1 day ago 1 reply
This bears posting, it explains actual stock options, not what employees/employers bandy about as "stock options".

http://www.investopedia.com/exam-guide/cfa-level-1/derivativ...

22
mabbo 1 day ago 0 replies
Can someone point me to a good guide to stock options?

I've been with a large company since graduation, with Restricted Stock Units granted to me, vesting over time as a nice bonus now and then. But in January, I start with a start-up, and I'm going to learn the reality of how stock options work first-hand. I'd like to know how to make sure I do the best I can with them.

23
bsvalley 1 day ago 0 replies
No more Stock options in large companies, they offer RSU's... meaning you have to work for a startup In order to get Stock options. If you join a startup without knowing about stocks then you should start a landscaping business instead...
24
xutopia 1 day ago 0 replies
On paper I'm worth enough to pay off my mortgage. In reality I'm most likely never going to see a liquidity event for the startup from which I bought options.

The only time stock was worth something tangible for me was when I was a bootstrapped founder.

25
Jugurtha 1 day ago 0 replies
Pardon my ignorance, but I did a search on this thread for the word "lawyer" and there was no match.

My stupid question: Doesn't San Francisco have good lawyers who are specialized in this stuff? I mean, a lawyer who's getting paid by you, not by the company.

I'm not advocating complete ignorance of the matter, but there are people who know the ins and outs of this and are aware of most of the missteps through which they can guide you.

My point is that having a lawyer also serves as a deterrent and sends a signal you're not to be hustled. It also tells you about the people you're dealing with: the company not liking it should set off your spidey sense.

I mean, the first thing someone who's hustling would do is to be offended you're taking precautions because it hurt his feelings that you don't "trust him". It's not that you don't trust him.

These things are just like prenups. People's feeling about them stems from the assumption that at the time they're activated, they'd be feeling the same for each other as they are now, which is not true. By the time a prenup is activated, people usually hate each other, and a prenup serves to protect you from the future version of them, and them from the future version of you. The versions that hate each other. There's a reason billionaires have the cheapest divorces, and artists/athletes have the most expensive ones.

14 points by doomsdaychicken  2 days ago   24 comments top 18
1
iends 2 days ago 1 reply
It probably boils down to sugar addiction. I am often hungry but too tired/lazy to make something healthy and instead eat something that is easy to obtain (processed food that's high in sugar).
2
NumberCruncher 13 hours ago 0 replies
No one mentioned TV. I went from watching terrestrial channels to streaming because I was bored by the TV ads but it did not reduce the hours I spend watching TV. Being between 2 jobs I had 5 weeks ofs so I bought an indoor cycle and putted it in front of the TV. Since than I only watch TV either during cycling or during relaxing after cycling. If I would like to watch TV but I do not want to cycle I pick my jacket and go for a long walk. Since then I feel more fit, sleep better and started doing other sports (climbing) what would not be possible being overweight.
3
Rzor 1 day ago 0 replies
What I believe to be symptoms of depression. Oddly, I think exercises would actually improve my overall state of mind, but being unemployed doesn't help get to that point. I don't think I would either, not that fast at least. I would have to do a lot of research.
4
_RPM 1 day ago 0 replies
I've recently lost 35 pounds in the last 4 months. It was challenging, but I wanted it. I currently have 20 more pounds to lose. Here are some things that worked for me: Calorie counting. Weight loss is truly the most simple thing ever. All you have to do is eat less to lose weight. I also maintain a more active life by getting exercise daily in the form of walking or running. Since I've lost weight my mile time has improved by the minutes.
5
rwieruch 1 day ago 0 replies
I have one person in my life who makes sure that I stay fit. She is enthusiastic about fitness, health and food [0]. Every month I can expect a new fitness trend to hear about.
6
RUG3Y 2 days ago 0 replies
Being busy and also being depressed, not finding the motivation to do what I know is good for me.
7
new_hackers 2 days ago 1 reply
Time, job, wife, kid, desk job
8
dreistdreist 1 day ago 1 reply
Nothing, I'm in great shape.

Understand the basics of nutrition, mainly calories in calories out. I (and many people I know) often move 5 or more kgs up or down in preparation for a tournament with weight classes. It's really no big deal if you track your calories.

I'm always surprised how people struggle with losing weight, it's really not that hard to do.

Do some sport that you enjoy regularly that covers your cardio and lift some weights. Eat somewhat healthy, but mostly watch how much you eat.

9
akulbe 2 days ago 0 replies
Another vote for sugar addiction. If I could kick that, problem solved.
10
cauterized 1 day ago 0 replies
Time. Laziness. Finding a mode of exercise that doesn't feel like a chore.
11
fiftyacorn 1 day ago 1 reply
Kids - well didnt stop me - but make it harder. In the past i would go for a 3-4 hour cycle or 1-2 hour run then get back and crash on the sofa.

I could still do the cycle or run - but it would take time away from my kids, and its not fair for me to be grumpy around them because im tired

I still do an hour a day commuting though, and an hour on the the weekend

12
kzisme 2 days ago 0 replies
Not knowing enough decent meals to make - fast food and quick snacks (in excess) are more readily available.
13
stevekemp 1 day ago 0 replies
Nothing.

If something is important enough to you then you'll find the time to deal with it.

14
1mike12 1 day ago 0 replies
It's cold as hell and I can't run, bike, or swim anymore. I don't like doing the aforementioned on stationaries because it's so artificial and boring.
15
tmaly 1 day ago 0 replies
lack of time is the single biggest factor for me. I need to make working out and eating better a priority
16
UnoriginalGuy 1 day ago 1 reply
Being overweight.

What you eat MOSTLY dictates your weight. Your fitness level MOSTLY only impacts your medium-long term health. Yes, broad strokes, but more true than untrue.

Being overweight and trying not to be overweight requires a LOT of mental energy and trying to fight the sugar addiction/control diet is genuinely exhausting.

If I got fit, I'd still be fat, and it would sap the little mental energy I have to spare that I use for weight loss/control at the moment. It may also give me a false sense of achievement. Plus if I'm not careful I could fuck up my knees indefinitely.

I look at fitness goals as something I'd do when I am in the "Overweight" BMI region rather than the "Obese" one. But even then I'd likely look at HIIT[0] because I think I'd do it more consistently than several hours at the gym (even if it has less health gains, it is "good enough").

17
forgotmysn 6 hours ago 0 replies
me
18
iampoul 1 day ago 0 replies
Cake
10 points by ahstilde  1 day ago   10 comments top 8
1
mobitar 3 hours ago 0 replies
While it's not fully ready yet, Standard Notes can in theory do all these things. It's a client based system backed by an abstract model server, meaning the client chooses how to represent data, and the server can understand any format.

There is an agreed upon client side format which is discussed in the specification[1].

It's also decentralized and encrypted which means you'll have total privacy and security. You can run your own server, or join a community server.

2
fosco 13 hours ago 0 replies
I struggled to even try using emacs org mode, but it was entirely worth it, I highly recommend it, give it a week and honest effort into learning, being able to export to html allows me to reference easily wihle on the road, updating the .org is still a challenge while on road without my laptop and ssh access.

that being said, I think like you, my struggle is with the bottleneck between my brain and these devices. it is often annoying to sit down or access my 'notebook' wherever it is and I'd rather just make a mental note and it show up in my spreadsheet.

I like workflowy, but will not use because I do not like using cloud services as I have little trust for them (been burnt a couple times now, so after learning the lesson 3 times I finally wised up)

EDIT: some typoes and adding other thoughts...

3
wolfgang42 7 hours ago 0 replies
I use Zim[1], and have been very happy with it.

> When given a note, auto-tag and sort.

I'm not sure what you mean by "auto-tag and sort", but Zim does allow you to organize pages and also search through them.

> A note can be 1) a saved web-page, 2) an image of my physical notebook [should be OCR'd], 3) text I type into the software itself, or 4) a mixture of the above.

Zim has support for attachments and embedded images[2]. It doesn't support OCR, but it would not be difficult to build a little custom tool[3] to use a separate OCR utility, so you can select an image and have it insert the OCRed text underneath. When I link to webpages, I generally just copy-paste the relevant bits into the page, but you could also save the entire webpage as an attachment. Again, a custom tool could be used to automatically save a copy of the URL on the page and/or embed its content.

> Notes should be indexed and searchable by content and title.

Zim has a search feature which works pretty well, though I sometimes have to stick extra synonyms into the text if I find that I keep searching on the wrong keyword.

> Notes should be synced across devices

> Notes should be accessible off-line

Zim stores everything in plain text files with a vaguely mediawikish markup,so I've stored the notebook in a Git repository hosted on BitBucket[4]and periodically push/pull changes between computers.This also leaves me with a history, so I can go back and git blame/git log a page to see how a project evolved.

I've also written another post on HN discussing my organizational system in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13134401

4
was_boring 23 hours ago 1 reply
I use workflowy, but mainly for task management and light note taking. The UI is cimbersome on desktop, and unusable on Android. The only thing that saves it is keyboard shortcuts.

I used to use Evernote, and still recommend them for people who want something more robust and featured. I wish they were lighter in the formatting and allowed markdown though.

Usecanvas is good if you want something dead simple.

5
rodolphoarruda 1 day ago 0 replies
For quick notes that I don't need to index nor search later I just grab a physical notebook that sits on my table. It has a pen in it marking the next empty page.

Other than that, I click a button on my taskbar to load Notepad or Gedit depending on the OS I'm using. Take notes there, but don't save it. Once I'm done, I go to Evernote and paste the notes there, give it a title and add tags.

I'm one of those people who keep Evernote with only 2 notebooks: Inbox and Archive. All possible use cases on taken notes are based on tags, which I add/remove according to my workflow.

6
MikeTV 13 hours ago 0 replies
A sub-vocalization microphone and speech recognition system that puts silently-spoken notes into OneNote.
7
dqv 1 day ago 1 reply
I like tiddlywiki. It has the potential to do all the things you want, but will require some set up.
8
shahbaby 1 day ago 0 replies
Probably not what you're looking for but as a student, the surface book w/ OneNote solved all my note taking issues.
7 points by bkgunby  1 day ago   2 comments top 2
1
seanwilson 1 day ago 0 replies
The free plans are meant to entice on you onto the paid and enterprise offerings. I'm guessing the vast majority of free sites require very few resources as well. I can't find the link but I recall reading all of the GitHub Pages sites are hosted on just a handful of servers.
2
sova 1 day ago 0 replies
some get donations from people making bank with their aid..
4 points by xook  1 day ago   3 comments top 3
1
id122015 6 hours ago 0 replies
You need to read books about careers. Its not only about IT, the following method applies everywhere:From what I've read I can tell that the way employers look for employees is not the same way employees look for work.

The number one venue for employers to get new employees, is through referrals of existing employees. If you've ever applied for a job, and there was a questionnaire asking if you know someone who already works for that company, that's how they give more credit to those.

The jobs that are published and you read are for the hardest to find roles. Most good jobs don't even get published.

Better than study books, study people. I think sometimes programmers have a hard time to understand "how people work" and wrongly assume that "people work the same way as computers work". You'd be fooled.Read history, read about betrayals, read about market inefficiencies, read about international politics, you'll get it.

2
matt_s 1 day ago 0 replies
Do stuff on your own, go to meet ups on what you're interested in. RHEL is the same as CentOS, download that and download Vagrant. Install CentOS onto a VM, if you don't know something, google it. Go to tech events and meet people, you could get referred to an opening that way. Work at a small company which usually requires many different skills, slide into doing more IT work there.
3
imaginenore 1 day ago 0 replies
That's simply not true. If you can demonstrate your programming skills, there are many companies willing to hire you as a junior developer.

If you spent your college years doing nothing besides the bare minimum, and have nothing to show, you can't count on good salaries.

It took me literally 15 seconds to find 18 junior jobs in Javascript in one city.

https://www.monster.com/jobs/search/?q=junior+javascript&whe...

You can also walk into any major agency, and they will start looking for jobs for you.

2 points by algebrax  12 hours ago   1 comment top
1
detaro 11 hours ago 0 replies
I don't think there is a dedicated archive feed for Show HNs, but as a workaround you can use the search to get a list of older entries: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Show%20HN:&sort=byDate&prefix&...
6 points by dustball  1 day ago   1 comment top
1
dozzie 1 day ago 0 replies
Congratulations. What is this GPing thing, actually? Your website is very thinon this matter, which is the single most important thing.

Also, you could have put all this lengthy news on your website and put a linkto it as "Show HN", that would have served much better.

cached 22 December 2016 05:05:01 GMT