Hacker News Reader

tedshroyeron Show HN: Build optimized Python AWS Lambda layers

I believe you could add the -t /some/path option (--target) to your pip install and avoid some of your cleanup steps.

Also, if there are binary build steps, you may want to consider using an ec2 instance for the build. (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-runtimes...)

tedshroyeron Remove default "terraform" partner_id

I believe you are mistaken. It appears to inject a tracking token. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/marketplace/azure-par...

tedshroyeron Ask HN: Will there be an easy/safe way to replace Python 2 with Python 3?

I haven't done any research on this, but off the top of my head I would expect the distro upgrade process to handle this and I wouldn't remove python2 manually.

tedshroyeron The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog

I think it would overwrite, but it seems like all the names were unique

tedshroyeron The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog

    curl https://eblong.com/infocom/ | grep href | grep -v http | cut -d '"' -f2 | awk '{print "curl -O https://eblong.com/infocom/" $0}' | bash -x

tedshroyeron Show HN: Scar – Static websites with HTTPS, a global CDN, and custom domains

The technical reason to use a CDN with aws s3 is so that you can have a custom domain name with https. s3 will do http custom domains, but to get https you proxy it. In this case, you can think of Cloudfront as the proxy.

tedshroyeron Ask HN: What was your experience starting a tech consultancy?

Here are a few things I would recommend:

- Never do a fixed bid. Not even when the job looks small or you are desperate for work. Any time a fixed bid goes wrong, not only do you lose money and time, but it's unbelievably demoralizing.

- Hire people. If you do it all by yourself, you'll end up doing all the jobs. Fun for about 1 month and then exhausting.

- Be honest. This is the one thing I feel like I got right. When I didn't know how hard something was, I would just tell the prospect or customer that while simultaneously telling them how we were going to figure it out. This approach always got me customers that I could work with and who were patient with me when I was consulting.

- Net 30 or better terms. Cashflow on Net 60 or Net 90 is brutal.

tedshroyeron China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

Chattanooga has operated electric buses since the 1990s. I would be surprised if this wasn't known by many municipalities in the US, but still it hasn't taken off. Numbers from late 90s indicate that fuel and maintenance costs would be about 1/4 the cost of diesel( https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/chatt_cs.pdf). I guess range has been the problem stopping adoption.

tedshroyeron Ask HN: What keyboard do you recommend?

https://www.daskeyboard.com/daskeyboard-4-professional-for-m...

tedshroyeron Automatically Backup and Host Your Delicious Bookmarks

https://secure.delicious.com/settings/bookmarks/export

tedshroyeron 5 foods it's cheaper to grow

Almost every property you purchase in the United States will have setbacks and easements on it which make a large portion of the land unbuildable. For example, a typical suburban lot in my area will have a 5 foot utility easement along the sides and back, then a 20 foot front building setback. It seems to me that you're decreasing the effectiveness of your mortgage payment by not doing something with that area like gardening on it.

tedshroyeron Credit Cards: Who Wins, Who Loses?

I guess the paper is using merchant fees to just refer to the transaction fee and base transaction %. Rewards is an additional % on top of the base transaction % and differs for each reward program. I would price my merchandise to cover all costs so I don't understand why this paper is making a claim about subsidy. It should just make a claim about cash customers being penalized (and maybe even some credit card customers who don't have rewards being penalized).

"... cash buyers must pay higher retail prices to cover merchants' costs associated with the credit cards' merchant fees. Because these fees are used to pay for rewards given to credit card users, and since cash users do not receive rewards, cash users also finance part of the rewards given to credit card users."

This doesn't make sense to me at all. What merchant would gamble on having enough cash customers to subsidize his credit card customers? Merchants make the money. They just make more money on cash.

tedshroyeron Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2011

Interesting that Radio Shack is only changing their name and image now. They objected to Auto Shack's name in the late 80s forcing them to become AutoZone which really took off after the rebranding. It seems like they would have seen how well AutoZone did with a modern sounding name and done the same before now.

tedshroyeron IE6 – The End is Near

On a commerce website I help with, 6% of the visits in the last 30 days are IE6, which is 7% of the revenue. Those numbers are about 50% of what they were during the same period last year.

As an interesting note, the site still has a user on IE5.01 that orders every few months.

tedshroyeron Ask HN: Review my startup - Scribd (YC S06)

I think if you could do a left-right layout or ajax one at a time for the document pages, then it would feel more like reading a book and increase the likelihood that users will notice the bottom tool bar and use it for navigation instead of the side scroll.

tedshroyeron Health insurance options for startups

It's definitely riskier than having a permanent policy, but when I made the decision I felt like I would give the startup thing a year then find a regular position again.

tedshroyeron Health insurance options for startups

I would recommend getting short term health insurance. I had a 1 year policy from Assurant health which cost me about $50 a month.

Alternately, you could get insurance policies against the sort of things you are hugely expensive/unexpected (Cancer insurance, heart attack insurance, accidental injury, etc) and put a reasonable amount of money into a health savings account for typical expenses.

tedshroyeron Ask HN: Any good books on graphing/charting/visualization?

Please keep in mind color blind people. I'm red/green blind and about 1/3 of the charts I run across are meaningless to me. Here are a couple sites with info: http://wearecolorblind.com/ http://www.vischeck.com/

tedshroyeron Daylight Saving Time Increases Suicide Rate

It seems like you could look just in the United States and compare Arizona with a state that has similar demographics. Arizona doesn't have daylight saving time.

tedshroyeron Ask HN: How do I accept all major credit cards when not based in the US?

I thought you could do a wire transfer over the phone. Is that not the case?

tedshroyeron Ask HN: Has anyone started a non tech related business before?

I have a farm with my grandmother. We grow blueberries and figs. It's very interesting to make decisions that take years to see how they pan out.

tedshroyeron Ask HN: What was the worst bug you've ever solved ?

Had an obscure picking id wrap around because a table wasn't getting cleared for debugging purposes which resulted in excessive amounts of beer being delivered to unsuspecting customers at an automated gas station.

Here's a video of part of the result: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUhLDtPnSuQ

tedshroyeron Ask HN: How to turn self-employment into employment?

I've gotten all my jobs by word of mouth. The first person that didn't pay me, I found out that he has a long list of people that he hasn't paid so I let it go after several months. Since then, I've always limited how much I would do for someone until there was a long term business relationship.

tedshroyeron Ask HN: How to turn self-employment into employment?

Two things that I found which make it easier to get paid are working on site at an hourly wage and sending your bills out weekly. Everybody gets to see how hard you are working this way and there isn't any question about value. Also, there is the added benefit of you gaining a deeper understanding of your clients business instead of seeing only a small part of it.

Sending your bills out more often will stop clients from getting sticker shock. Remote jobs I've done where I sent one bill at the end of three or four weeks when the work was done were the hardest for me to get paid on, even from people that I had success at getting paid by previously.

tedshroyeron Ask HN: How to turn self-employment into employment?

I had that same issue come up for me and I think the approach I've taken isn't terrible. I updated my resume and for years I was contracting, I wrote a seven word synopsis for each project I did during that time putting it all under a big heading of "Contracting". I sent my updated resume to some recruiters and they've gotten me several interviews. On the interviews, I've gone into great detail on the relevant projects and mentioned the companies I worked for.

I haven't gotten a job from that part yet but at the same time that I was dealing with recruiters, I called all my best clients and told them what was going on with me to let them know I wasn't going to be available for future work. During that call, I asked them to keep there ears open for anyone who needed me full time. I ended up getting a job from one of my clients with the understanding that I would be looking for a full time position. I had to give him a really low rate though but the dependable income is really nice, especially considering how many times I haven't gotten paid on jobs.

tedshroyeron The National Parks: America s Best Idea

I wonder what year the picture of the beach is from. I was at that beach in 2005 and It had a lot of sticks on it. There was also a warning sign.

  Beach: http://www.underdamped.net/Pictures/SecondBeach/SecondBeach.jpg 
  (SecondBeach_Big.jpg for full size)
  Sign: http://www.underdamped.net/Pictures/SecondBeach/LogsKill.jpg

tedshroyeron Apple's five worst products ever

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_...

tedshroyeron Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?

If Chevy or someone made a new motor and asked most people "What engine do you use?", it seems like there wouldn't be many people that knew what was in their car. Average people care about features like "miles to the gallon" for cars or "has email" for their computer. They don't care about the name of the part that does it. They just want to hit accelerator or double click on something that brings up their home page.

tedshroyeron Personal Cell Phone Jammer, $27.41

Small bit of info from the FCC:

"The manufacture, importation, sale or offer for sale, including advertising, of devices designed to block or jam wireless transmissions is prohibited. 47 U.S.C. Section 302a(b)."

http://wireless.fcc.gov/services/index.htm?job=operations_2&...

tedshroyeron 3D Printers for $750

I don't know if it's less expensive to build it yourself but I think Makerbot sells parts for repraps also.

http://reprap.org http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/PartsSupplies