maratd

> Even after 12 months of making 4-6 payments for the entire credit limit throughout the month (we max the card out every week at least), they still won’t give us the limit we need.

Had the same experience with the same card, asked multiple times for a credit increase ... which they denied. Then they increased it months later when I didn't ask. Go figure.

> If you want reliability you pay for it by buying the commercial/industrial version

It is frequently very difficult to find the commercial/industrial version, even when you're in the know and actually want it. I'm typing this on a "Pro" laptop.

Marketing sticks "commercial grade" on pretty much everything. You have to know which brands service commercial and what their commercial lines are. That's not information that's always easy to find.

Nobody cares about visiting. They can craft their policies to entirely exclude or screw over states that aren't worth their time. For example, favor specific industries over others that are heavy in one state vs another. They'll do that anyway, but may think twice if they need to build a coalition of smaller states vs just winning the popular vote.

> They all need technolgy and came about because of the powerful handheld mobile device.

I'm not sure why Uber is a tech company because you can order a taxi using your phone, but WeWork is not ... because you can reserve a room or space using your phone?

Not all members pay for an office. Some of us are nomads and stay at whichever WeWork is convenient. We make reservations for space using our phone.

> Studies have shown that in liberal democracies, state run media tends to be the least editorially biased

Rather than pretending to be unbiased, I'd rather my news sources disclosed their biases clearly so that I can take them into account.

Ok, explain triplets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_birth

I'm not sure I understand your distinction. From a gene-based perspective, the gene, whether in the child or in the parent, is the same. The selection pressure is on a gene level, not on a species or individual level.

If it was advantageous for us to have lots of children, then women would have a dozen at a time, rather than one. There are plenty of mammals that do that. There’s clearly a tradeoff there and the selective pressures for humans tend to lean toward fewer. Not sure where we’ll end up, but time will tell.

I reject your premise?

Pretty sure there's a big difference between being detained for an act and being detained for just existing.

The US has concentration camps? Do tell.

Yes and no. Yes for the smaller manufacturers, which is why I never buy cloud-anything from them. For the larger ones, they never go bust, but they do cancel. They have enough of a user base that things get rooted and custom solutions are available after death.

> user-agent check ... don't assume any ill intent.

A user-agent check is ill intent for exactly the reasons you state:

> we've known for years that feature detection is preferable to user-agent detection

Wasn't Google the company that pushed this in the early days of Chrome?

Wait, what? I think you means the opposite. If it's got CORS enabled, then you can't do anything unless the request is originating from the relevant domain.

Anyway, do not rely on firewalls (and CORS is a firewall) as the sole security measure. Do not create unauthenticated endpoints unless you want everybody to use them.

> My question is: What is the risk of running one of these servers and then visiting some random web page?

It depends on what you're exposing on those ports. If it's something sensitive, stop. Any web page can run javascript and as such, any web page has access to every port and service that your machine has access to ... because at that point, the web page is a program running on your machine with full network access.

However, this entire "vulnerability" makes no sense to me. Even if I'm running something on my machine or local network, I am not going to rely on the firewall as a security mechanism. That is profoundly stupid and is well known to be profoundly stupid. So all those servers, including the ones I am creating and running, will have their own security mechanisms. So you can ping my server? So what?

> I am kind of surprised that neither Deutsche Post[0] nor ZTO[1] nor SF Express[2] shares are up on the news.

Why would they be up on the news? They're just as likely to be engaging in the same behavior, only for a different set of government actors.

What bet am I making when I buy an entire stock market index fund?

> Demanding perfect time-boxing ahead of time is a recipe for disaster.

Dear client, this task will take 2 to 6 hours. If I find out it will take longer than this, I will reach out.

Dear client, I am 1.5 hours into this task. Based on my experience, it look like it will take 7 to 10 hours instead. Should I continue?

For all of this to work well, you need to have experience in estimating well and also understand that whatever number pops into your head, multiply it by 2 and tell the client that. I have never had a client be pissed at me because I finished something for less time/money than they were expecting.

That said, this sort of thing should really be used for highly indeterminate tasks, like fixing bugs.

> So don’t say “yes” to things that are out of scope.

To expand on this, at the end of every contract is an SOW (statement of work). This explicitly and very clearly outlines what work is to be performed, how it will be performed, when it will be performed, and how long it will take.

At the end, I like to put a small sentence. The client can always request to change the scope or add things to the scope, the consultant will provide a cost and timeline for the change and once paid for, the consultant will perform the work.

I always say "yes" when a client asks for additional work. Then I tell them how much it's going to cost in addition to what we already agreed.

The number 1, cardinal rule, always is ... never work for free. If you don't value your work, nobody else will either.

Yes. That said, there are some situations where you need to bill by time, but they should be rare.

> there can be nothing more profitable than fixed bids

This. Because you're not charging for your time, but for the value you add to the client's business.

> While you should not reduce your rate, it can be okay to write off your time.

Strongly disagree. This is a failure of communication. If you're billing by the hour, your client should have a general idea of how long something will take. A lower bound and an upper bound. Time-box all tasks.

As soon as you know you're going to break through the upper bound, stop work, inform the client, provide a new estimate, and let them make the call.

Eating the difference defeats the purpose of working hourly.

> you may not know what your rate should be. In these cases, you may want to consider flat rate arrangements.

Disagree with this as well. If you don't know what your rate should be, how can you name a flat rate? You should know what your competition is asking for and ask for slightly more, because you're better.

> our business would not be possible with prepayment

Not exactly sure how this is possible. Any mature business will split up a project into milestones. Whether payment is due at the beginning of a milestone or at the end, makes little difference to the business overall.

I prefer to charge new clients at the beginning of each milestone, starting work after they pay. Existing clients I'm happy to charge after the work is completed, because there's a working relationship there already.

Before I started doing this, I had payment issues several times a year. Since I started doing this, I haven't had a single payment concern and have never had to even think about it.

Yes, because trial and error over thousands of years of trying local flora couldn't possibly yield a solution from an eco-system that has to actively fight off fungal infections. /sarcasm

How are you so sure about this?

Things will get even more interesting during an audit if you use that company owned car for personal use. Especially if you only own one car.

See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19527078

> So basically - LLCs are unnecessary if you are the only employee.

This is not true for many reasons, primary among them being taxes and healthcare.

I'll explain taxes below. For healthcare, I use Trinet as an HR provider (since I am a company) and they allow me to get benefits (including healthcare) at corporate rates. You need to be incorporated for them to even talk to you.

> I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this, but LLCs are pass through entities for tax purposes.

Happy to explain. When you are self-employed, you pay SECA taxes on your entire income.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fica.asp

For self-employed, that means both the employer and the employee portion. Let's say you pull in 300k. You're going to pay SECA taxes on all of that.

If I create an LLC, do an S-corp election, then retain myself in the LLC for say 50k, I will only pay those taxes on the 50k. The other 250k will be passed through to my personal income and I will only be responsible for the standard income taxes.

Yes, that's exactly it. As an S-Corp the corporation doesn't pay any taxes. Well, in my case my state (New Jersey), has a minimum tax based on revenue. I pay that, but it's minimal. If it really bothered me, I could re-incorporate as a Delaware or similar LLC. All profits are passed to your individual return and you pay taxes on that.

> 1. You definitely don't need to form an LLC. I'm still a sole proprietor all this time and it's working out fine.

I did this for a while, but it starts to hurt around tax season. There are advantages to being incorporated and then hiring yourself as an employee for a minimal wage. With the way you're doing it, you're paying employment taxes on your entire income. With an LLC, you can pass the majority of it through without paying that.

> 2. Personally, I'd hold back 35%+ of your income for taxes and expect to pay taxes every quarter.

That would be the responsible thing to do. I just end up paying yearly, paying the interest penalty, and using January+February+March for taxes. Probably should get my house in order at some point.

> 3. 2 months of savings seems really low.

Agreed.

> 4. Billing style really depends on the job you're doing. A lot of my work is billed hourly due to the nature of what I'm asked to do.

Yes, but I do pretty much everything I'm able to not bill hourly. Fixed Budget > Monthly Rate > Bi-Weekly Rate > Weekly Rate > Daily Rate > Hourly.