Hacker News Reader

merakuon AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

Same here. Usually $0.15 per month, current bill is $15.4 billion.

merakuon Thanks FedEx, this is why we keep getting phished

This drove me absolutely crazy as well and I was equally shocked that anyone thought it was a good idea. Ended up going through several rounds of password resets before figuring it out. Further reinforced the perception that PayPal is a crap company and continue to avoid using them as much as possible.

merakuon I think my BBQ just offered to be my default browser?

This has been bugging me as well for years. Only found an app called Sharedr recently which replaces the sharing dialog. It's not perfect and has a limitation with sharing files, but it's a million times better than the default option.

merakuon Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

Another happy PushBullet user here. Extremely useful for receiving text messages from my phone while on my laptop, especially for web apps that insist on sending security codes that way instead of TOTP.

This sort of behavior from Google really is infuriating. How they can just decide to boot an app from the Chrome Store that is installed by over a million users is mind-boggling.

It's a pity that Chrome doesn't allow extensions to be installed from the new Edge store, like Microsoft allow Edge to install extensions from the Chrome store. With both built on Chromium, that could've potentially been a workaround (though you may want to consider adding this extension to the Edge store anyway).

Hopefully someone from Google will see this and stop the madness or be able to provide more details on exactly what needs to be done, though I wouldn't bet on it.

merakuon JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised

Same here. I wish everyone company with a subscription based licensing model did it this way. It should be noted though, when Jetbrains initially decided to move to this type of licensing, it was a bit different and they got a lot of backlash from existing users (including myself), but credit to them for listening and amending it to something better for customers.

I've been a happy customer and Resharper user for many years and it makes my life much better, so it's great to see the company doing well.

merakuon Having Kids

You're not alone. My kids are 4 and 9, and I've got a similar experience. Used to try and take on freelance work, but after missing some commitments, I've stopped doing that now as I don't have the time or energy for it, and take on very little freelance work now.

Still have the desire to build stuff and learn new technologies, and find myself watching random tutorials on YouTube sometimes late at night if I don't feel like watching anything on NetFlix.

It's been a challenge to get my kids into a good bedtime routine, so by the time they are asleep, I've usually got little desire to sit back down in front of the computer and actually work on anything else, including actually working through those tutorials.

Hoping things get easier when they get older and I have more time to myself again (and hopefully more energy) to work on side projects. Combined with working on stuff in my day job that isn't particularly fulfilling either for most of this year, it's a bit of a depressing predicament in some ways.

merakuon Ask HN: Who are your programming rockstars, and why?

John Resig does deserve a lot of credit for his work on jQuery and at Khan Academy. Small correction though, he wasn't a founder of Khan Academy. It was started in 2008 by Sal Khan, and Resig joined later in 2011.

merakuon Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

Might not necessarily mean they are _physically_ stranded.

Booking holidays often means scheduling time off work, around children's school holidays, when prices are reasonable, etc. Not always a trivial task.

Having those plans abruptly cancelled in this manner where they need to not only get a refund for any money paid, but to also try and make alternative arrangements on their own and cover any difference in cost out of their own pocket is effectively leaving them stranded in a sense.

merakuon Show HN: We Work Contract – London Web contract jobs with day rates

Looks good, though no category for .NET? Would've thought that would be an in-demand skill in London.

merakuon Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

Female genital mutilation doesn't actually have anything to do with Islam, as Reza Aslan points out in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV0QXO6YfzA

merakuon Hangout: Becoming a freelance developer

I was a freelancer for nearly 6 years, but eventually got tired of the inconsistent income and the type of work I was doing also got boring, as well as time and energy spent dealing with issues like invoices, taxes, accountants, etc.

One of the things I also missed was being part of a development team, where I could learn from others and work on projects that would be difficult for me to take on alone. Being a freelancer for so long, I also found my skills stagnating, and it was hard to try and pick up new skills when working on new projects that always had aggressive deadlines.

Fortunately, health insurance wasn't a problem at the time as it was available through my wife's job, but being older now and with a growing family, it's definitely something that is a much more important factor.

I've been in a regular job for just over 3 years now, and it's had both good sides and bad. Although being a freelance developer is not something that I particularly miss, I do want to be the master of my own destiny. For that reason, I can't see myself remaining an employee for the long term, though I'm not sure whether that will mean returning to freelancing or something else.

merakuon Google Design

I'm also wondering the same thing. This new trend of putting a create button in the bottom right of the screen seems counter intuitive and annoying. Fortunately, both the Mint and Reddit apps allow it to be turned off, but I'm not looking forward to seeing this spread to other applications.

merakuon Talking About Money

Most important takeaway about salary negotiation, by the way: disclosing a previous salary is almost always against your interests because it pegs your new salary to that plus 5% rather than your value to the new firm minus a discount, which is a brutal mistake

Completely agree with this, though I made a mistake that was even worse than this. A friend hired me a couple of years ago to join his small company as the first developer, during which I disclosed my salary and also mentioned that I was willing to take a pay cut (as I wasn't happy where I was, and he was a tiny company still finding his footing). Fortunately, he matched my salary, so I didn't end up making less money as such, though it also didn't take into account of the value that I brought to the business, being the only developer on the team.

As a result, it certainly feels like I've sabotaged myself, where I should be making more than I am, with the only solution being to find better compensated employment elsewhere despite being reasonably with my current role.

merakuon Sources to Find a Remote Job as a Software Developer

Yeah, I agree with this. Been contemplating whether to invest time in learning RoR for a while now, though I've also been using ASP.NET for over a decade now, and leaving the Microsoft ecosystem would be a drastic change for me.

merakuon Sources to Find a Remote Job as a Software Developer

I'm not sure I that I agree with this. I've worked on plenty of projects utilizing ASP.NET during my days as a freelancer where I was the only developer. However, it might be that this is primarily a perception problem, where the types of companies using .NET simply prefer to have their team on-site, as opposed to companies utilizing RoR which may be younger and more forward-thinking, resulting in them being more open to remote workers.

merakuon Ask HN: Does anyone else value the comments more than the link?

Absolutely. Usually read the comments first, before the linked article. There's nearly always an interesting discussion going on.

merakuon Sources to Find a Remote Job as a Software Developer

It's a pity there aren't more Senior .NET developer positions for remote workers. The vast majority of them seem to be for Ruby on Rails.

merakuon Ask HN: Carpal Tunnel Recommendations?

I've had similar problems with pain and discomfort when using a mouse. Was using an Evoluent Vertical Mouse for about a year, which helped, until the left clicker started playing up. Replaced this with an Anker vertical mouse which costs a fraction of the price and is just as comfortable. Can't recommend it highly enough!

merakuon Show HN: Get a list of your Amazon purchases and see what you can sell them for

Asking me to enter my Amazon username and password makes this a complete non-starter. Might be the best idea in the world, but I'm not going to risk handing over my credentials for something as sensitive as my Amazon account to make a few extra bucks on some old stuff. There's just not enough risk-reward there for me (though with all due respect and in all honesty, it's unlikely there would ever be enough reason for me to hand over my credentials to some random startup)

merakuon Ars editor learns feds have his old IP addresses, full credit card numbers

Thanks for the link. That's a fascinating read. Being a Muslim man, I've been stopped and questioned by CBP numerous times when entering the US. It's interesting how they they always seem to ask the same types of questions, in a seemingly friendly manner, but always glancing at the screen in front of them and carefully cross checking everything being said. Would be interesting to get a copy of my own file and see all the notes they've written about the minutiae of my life gleaned during these inquisitions.

merakuon Freelance Inbox

Any plans to add .NET to the type of leads?

merakuon Tinkercoin Will Sell You $20 in Bitcoin, But Only Once

As justinreeves said, I choose to give that information to Facebook. It's absurd having to share all of this information to Tinkercoin so they can supposedly verify my identity to allow me to purchase $20 worth of BTC, without any indication of how they're going to use all this valuable information about me.

Stopped using Facebook auth a long time ago for this very reason and revoked access to all apps except those that I trust. There's no reason to share my entire Facebook account with everyone out there, and if that's the only way I can use their service, then I just won't use it. No big deal.

merakuon Tinkercoin Will Sell You $20 in Bitcoin, But Only Once

"Tinkercoin will receive the following info: your public profile, friend list, email address, work history, status updates, education history, hometown and current city."

No thanks.

merakuon Bruce Schneier joins EFF Board of Directors

Not Fox "News" I hope ;-)

merakuon US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

My thoughts exactly. I'm certainly going to be looking at other options, including BitTorrent Sync. As useful as Dropbox may be, it's something I'd be willing to do without if this is true.

merakuon The tiny Instagram projector

Lol, true, true. Everyone who buys one of these things will end up sending them to a landfill soon enough.

merakuon Lenticular Photo Used To Secretly Convey Hot Line Number To Abused Kids

The sad thing about this is that we're probably going to start seeing this form of advertising being used to specifically target kids with marketing messages, where the parent (or adult) looking at the same sign will be oblivious to what is happening.

merakuon Show HN: HackerNews News Recommender

Doesn't seem to be doing anything for me. Installed it, clicked on a ton of links from hacker news, clicked on "more" a few times, and don't see anything recommended. The extension is definitely installed; I can see the small icon in the omnibox when browsing HN. Is there anything else I need to do?

merakuon An ideal professional networking site. What's your vision?

If you're the one not using LinkedIn, which is the dominant player in the "business networking" space, surely this is a question which you need to answer for yourself? Why aren't YOU using it, and what features would YOU add?