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jcateron Show HN: Stencils.io – Graffletopia alternative for free OmniGraffle stencils

This is a great idea! I was shocked to see the stunt pulled by graffletopia given the community goodwill it had. Hopefully you can fill the void left by their dickish move.

FYI, clicking on "Submit a free stencil" takes me to a warning:

> We're sorry. This document is not published.

jcateron Amazon Accused of Cheating Customers Through Shipping Costs

> I mean really people, I hate to sound condescending, but... when you do a "buy one get one free" do you really think you got something for free?

To reiterate the parent comment: No, but we are paying a non-trivial fee for Prime membership every year. Is it unreasonable to have thought that part of that fee would go to offsetting shipping fees to the original seller?

I found your post informative in that, no, in fact it does not. That was definitely news to me. But no need to be condescending about it.

jcateron Making Remote Work Work

It's funny, I've been a full-time remote worker for over a year, and it never dawned on me until last week to do exactly what you described. I'm on week two of having separate user accounts, and it really does make a huge difference in defining your current "role".

jcateron Using Data to Pick the Optimal Name for Your Startup

> Thanks to @milesgrimshaw who inspired this reminder not to believe everything you read, even if there's seemingly cohoret data to support the argument.

I was reading the article thinking what crap this is, then came to the end. Well done.

jcateron Announcing Two Scoops of Django 1.6

Really? That's the last point of three. I gave more weight to this one:

"Creating and proofing each ebook format is not a trivial effort. It involves reformatting every code sample to work on every ebook reader, accounting for differences in screen contrast, accessibility testing, and proofreading the text and code samples several times on each device. Instead of spending our time struggling with reformatting, we're choosing to focus on improving the technical material."

jcateron Nagios-plugins web site taken over by Nagios

Been done.

https://www.icinga.org/faq/why-a-fork/

jcateron Python 2.x vs. 3.x survey results

Where do you come up with 22% of 60% as sticking with it? The 22% I assume came from the question of which do you program in most. I program in Python 2 most currently too because of legacy projects. But I also do a lot in Python 3 as well, just not "most".

jcateron Python 2.x vs. 3.x survey results

I find these responses promising. I see some negativity here that after 5 years, over half of the devs are still on Python 2. But reading some of the threads in the last few weeks, you would assume that fewer than 5% of all people attempting Python 3 stuck with it. And this survey, if it is representative of the community at large, obviously doesn't show that.

Sure, more people use Python 2 than 3, but is that really surprising with the legacy code out there? The point is that Python 3 is also being used quite a bit.

jcateron Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2014)

SteepRock is seeking a full-time, experienced Python engineer based in the US to help us deliver high quality applications to the pharmaceutical industry. This job is REMOTE only.

We are a fast-paced, client-focused company; we want to continue our success and don't mind working hard to get there. We're looking for someone who's got great attention to detail, loves writing Python code and solve challenging problems on sometimes challenging deadlines. Sounds good? Please apply to join our energetic team!

SteepRock (http://www.steeprockinc.com) is an established software and services firm in the Pharmaceutical industry that has an immediate opening for a Python developer. In this position, you will be working closely with the CTO and other senior developers.

REQUIREMENTS: - 2+ years of enterprise scale software development experience. - Extensive direct experience developing, delivering and maintaining a multi-user browser-based application - Commercial Python experience and complete command of the language - Ability to write and read SQL, including complex joins and optimization - Solid understanding of JavaScript fundamentals - Solid understanding of HTML and CSS

Apply to jason.cater@steeprockinc.com. Please include resume and salary expectations.

jcateron How to successfully increase your SaaS prices

Out of curiosity, are you using a home-grown, in-house billing system to do this kind of stuff?

jcateron How to successfully increase your SaaS prices

"No apologies about the price increase. No salesy explanations. No BS. Just give it to people straight: We’re increasing pricing. Here is what it will be. Here is how it will affect you. Let us know if you have questions. Thanks."

Then:

"We just increased our prices for all plans... but not for you!"

I guess I was expecting more on how to (or even whether to) raise prices on existing customers. They simply grandfathered everyone in at existing plan prices.

Congrats on your success, but I'm not sure what we're supposed to get out of this article.

jcateron What It's Like to Fail

That was my take as well. It seems he wants that long-term, corporate job, but it's just not there for the taking. The startups seemed to be the step-up from the Craigslist gigs.

jcateron Explicit bootstrapping of pip in Python installations

It looks like they're taking a new strategy with this move. Pip isn't actually going to be moved to the standard library to live; rather, a new "ensurepip" command that installs "pip" will be a part of Python proper.

However, a distributable version of pip will be included with each release so that ensurepip does not have to contact the PyPI servers during an install. And with each maintenance release of Python, this pre-included version will be updated to match the then-current pip release.

But, the bottom line is that pip still lives outside of the standard library. Python 3.4+ is just guaranteeing that you have a version installed.

jcateron Nest introduces their Smoke Detector

Then you probably already know your house is on fire?

jcateron Airbnb makes small admission on tax issue, saying its hosts should pay

That's interesting, because I swore when I had a tax license in my old state (MS), there was wording to the effect of all money collected that was listed as "State Tax" to the end customer had to be remitted to the state, even if it was greater that what should have normally been due. I think this was to avoid this exact situation of companies trying to make money off of taxes.

Maybe that was specific to my state, but I would be highly surprised.

I'll have to dig up that WSJ article. It sounds interesting.

jcateron Postmodern Programming

Sounds like your reading hit a dead end.

jcateron AngularJS is amazing, and hard as hell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_Man

A movie from the 80s about an autistic savant.

jcateron Data Broker Lets You See Their Dossier About You Starting Today

Is a 4 digit SSN number suffix really enough to be helpful to them in that regard? I guess they could find all "jcater"s with those 4 digits and make assumptions, but that is far from unique.

jcateron Loyalty and Layoffs

Unemployment insurance doesn't work like you think it does, at least in the states I've run companies in.

He could be 100% liable for unemployment benefits made against his company in the form of increased benefit charges.

Here's a quote from Georgia's handbook:

"Experience rating is a system which relates employer taxes to the cost of providing unemployment benefits to its employees. Lower rates are earned by employers whose unemployment experience costs are less, and higher rates are assigned to employers whose experience indicates greater costs.

"Under experience rating, benefits paid are charged to the claimant's separating/most recent employer, provided the employer has paid wages of at least 10 times the claimant's weekly benefit amount and the separation was under allowable conditions as defined by the Employment Security Law. The employer most directly related to the claimant's unemployment will be charged for benefits paid and thus reflect a true experience rating. This system helps to maintain an adequate reserve fund from which future benefit payments will be made.

"No employer's account will be charged more than the amount of wages that employer paid the claimant and the employer will pay only for the period of unemployment attributable to the separation from his employ."

Employers directly pay for state unemployment benefits; it does not come from the public tax pool.

jcateron Don't be a front rudder

Glad I wasn't the only one having trouble reading that. Which is a shame, because it's an interesting analogy.

jcateron In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

That's not at all consistent with my experience. I'm from rural MS, but was educated in Memphis. I went back to a small town (population: 4,500) to run a business there. Before I moved on, we had built it up to just over 40 employees. Except for technical jobs (finding programmers was damn near impossible), general labor jobs were easy to fill with a variety of skill levels.

The people we paid $35,000 were quite well off in that in that town. Hell, I rented one of the largest houses in the area when I moved, and only paid $800/mo (for 4,000 sqft). Nice two bedrooms ran $400-450, with three bedrooms running a hundred or so more.

The single wide culture fell into three main camps, as far as I could see:

1) Those who bought land and put a single wide on it, so they could own their place. Usually the intention was to some day build a house. Not a horrible decision.

2) Those who were renting, and opted to have a smaller trailer on a lot of property (to be able to have horses, etc), instead of going for a real house in town. I can respect that decision too.

3) Those trapped in the "pay weekly" rent treadmill. I feel bad for this group, because they're paying as much or more overall for their trailer rent as a decent rental house ran. But it's almost as bad as the payday loan treadmill .. once you get on, it's hard to get off.

jcateron Microsoft Research turns Kinect into sign language reader

I wonder how it would distinguish between the many dialects in use in the US. Granted, a lot of the adult population does use ASL [1], but lots of times children grow up using one of the Signed English[2] variants, which vary from state to state.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_Exact_English

[Edit: links]

jcateron McDonalds’ suggested budget for employees shows how impossible it is to get by

And unmarried without kids.

jcateron Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2013)

SteepRock is seeking a full-time, experienced Python engineer based in the US to help us deliver high quality applications to the pharmaceutical industry. This job is REMOTE only.

Apply to jason.cater@steeprockinc.com. Please include resume and salary expectations.

jcateron Introducing human.io

Human.io: The real-world interaction engine.

Human.io provides a robust platform for creating mobile activities for people to perform in real life. Quickly create interactive apps that take full advantage of mobile GPS, video, and photo capabilities, promoting rich responses to surveys, games, or contests. Plus, using our integral filtering API, you decide exactly who gets to see and run your app. Push out your app to people based on location, demographics, or your own custom filters.