Hacker News Reader

up_and_upon Robot Crop Pickers Means Fewer Farm Workers

I have friends that have lived, worked and farmed in Watsonville, CA for a long time. My wife's grandfather has also farmed in MI for decades. The consensus is that farm-workers are getting harder and harder to come by. There is a labor shortage. This shortage has encouraged the investments and greater interest in picking technologies.

So to reframe, there are fewer farm workers anyway, due to better border control, lack of interest, or whatever and the picking technologies become more useful.

up_and_upon NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

Do you think peoples ability to behave/drive responsibly vs recklessly could be at all linked to their demographic profile? I am talking statistically, not looking for anecdotes...

up_and_upon Just how smart is an octopus?

> I would love to see that footage.

Different footage but a similar crazy feat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPJaPZCwZo4

up_and_upon Just how smart is an octopus?

Smart enough to hunt on BOTH land and sea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar5WJrQik2o&feature=youtu.be...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFzpC_e44Tg

up_and_upon Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

Agreed. My parents gave me nothing. Had to pay for school and save up for home loan, car etc.

up_and_upon Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?

> it's not necessary to make $100k+ a year to have a solid middle class life

Depends on your circumstances. 100k with one salary?

up_and_upon Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

Indie Hackers has some great solo-founder stories: https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses?numFounders=Solo%20F...

up_and_upon Rise of the High-Profit Micro Farm (2016)

Do you have a daughter? Any concerns re early puberty? http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/10/05/hidden-hormones-can...

All the excess hormones in some milks and meats can cause issues.

up_and_upon Rise of the High-Profit Micro Farm (2016)

> They are using no-till methods, the only input is compost and earth worms do the tilling work.

Actually they do use tillers. They use walk-behind tillers like BCS which are common in Italy. These dont compact the soil as much as a full tractor and are cheaper.

My wife and I have a 1000 sqft garden and have been watching Curtis' videos as well. We are considering building a mini-farm business on our property. Other good resources are Jean Martin's farm (http://www.themarketgardener.com/) and Eliot Coleman's (http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/)

up_and_upon Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started

> Corporations don't have the ability to fund pensions any longer. Margins and benefits have thinned out.

That's true. Interesting then that executive pay, golden parachutes etc keep climbing...

up_and_upon Carmakers Are Learning Japan’s Tech Talent Doesn’t Come Cheap

If you charge $150/hr and work a 2 week blitz for 100 hours/week.

It's possible.

up_and_upon Why I Only Work Remotely

> only to have the projects scrapped because they weren't what the business needed.

That is most definitely not the programmers fault whatsoever. Scope, feature set, product/market fit, and current status should be reviewed on a weekly basis by a product owner or project manager. If a general contractor builds you the house you demanded 6 months ago but your not happy with it now, who's fault is that?

> remote meetings are simply worse than in-person meetings

You give no explanation as your reasoning for this. Generally speaking, all meetings need to have an organized flow. I work on a team of 15 people where we can easily cover all our checkins remotely in under an hour. One meeting per week.

up_and_upon New XPS 15 Laptop

Where are the buttons to `Buy Now` or `Customize`? Seems like a sales funnel mistake.

up_and_upon Map of gang territories in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley

I used to live on Apgar Street in North Oakland. I can confirm, at that time, the North Pole Gang was active. A shooting happened right in front of my house.

Other than that, you would see people hustling but they didnt really bother me or my housemates besides asking for a smoke now and again.

For the record, in two years, we were never burglarized, mugged or otherwise. The worst that happened to me is I was attacked by a juvenile pitbull that was being trained to fight. The owner apologized.

Were we just lucky? Seemed like most of the violence was gang on gang violence.

That being said, my (future) wife, who lived on 55th came home one night to greet the SWAT team at her house. Someone had been running around the neighborhood with an AK-47 and they thought he might be hiding in her backyard.

College.

up_and_upon Lego Is the Perfect Toy

Thats somewhat true. But my kids always build the themed project first, play with it, then bust it apart and the pieces are merged into the greater pool for general builds. My kids come up with some crazy uses for those specialized blocks!

up_and_upon Ask HN: What’s the best city/state for self-taught web devs without a degree?

Self-taught web dev here. Just have a solid portfolio and solid github account. Focus on small and medium sized companies which will care less. Should not matter where you are. Two Lead guys at a former startup I was at, did not have degree. Chops matter.

up_and_upon Downside of Lower Manhattan’s Boom: It’s Too Crowded

Maybe they need to implement Super Blocks [1]. Focus traffic to specific streets, open up entire streets to pedestrians and bikes. I was recently in lower Manhattan and I was struck by the sheer number of sidestreets.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/nyregion/what-new-york-can...

up_and_upon Ask HN: How do you handle the business structure and taxes of side projects?

Its a 4 zeros business. Decent side income from freelancing. Monthly invoicing using Freshbooks. End of year accounting using TaxAct.

If things got any bigger or I went at it fulltime I would prob setup an LLC. But keeping taxes simple at this point is preferable since its just me. I have owned plenty of LLC's previously.

up_and_upon Ask HN: How do you handle the business structure and taxes of side projects?

> 1. Have you incorporated?

No I operate as a sole proprietor.

> 2. Do you pay quarterly taxes?

Nope, I pay the penalty since my income and ability to shelter it vary from year to year. The penalty is something like 3% on the total taxes you owe. Not too bad given the flexibility holding your money provides. Maybe I can load up a i401K that year or need to save for some big purchase which is more valuable then just giving the IRS the money.

> 3. Do you list it as other, unreported income on your returns?

I file a Schedule C

I do it all using TaxAct. Super easy and cheap. Helped me to understand taxes as well.

up_and_upon Myron Ebell Takes On the E.P.A.

Yeah I think China will see it as an opportunity to show leadership and it will play into their attempt to shift the balance of power away from the USA.

up_and_upon Silicon Valley Investor Peter Thiel Wins Bet on Trump

It is literal:

See "End Illegal Immigration Act" outlined here: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102...

up_and_upon Silicon Valley Investor Peter Thiel Wins Bet on Trump

> They realize, Thiel said, that Trump doesn’t really plan to build a wall. “What they hear is, ‘We’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy.’ ”

I totally disagree, they absolutely believe that he wants to build a wall and that Mexico will pay for it. See "End Illegal Immigration Act" outlined here: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102...

Peter Thiel is naive to think this is not literal.

up_and_upon Ask HN: How much do you earn on average through software freelancing?

Hourly? Yearly? Fulltime? Part-time?

up_and_upon LinkedIn launches Salary to chart what we earn

> I believe LinkedIn may have already reached its maximum potential and is on a downward trend.

Hence why I closed my account a year ago. As an engineer it provides me with nothing but recruiter spam.

up_and_upon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2016)

------------ ------------ ------------

SEEKING WORK - Michigan / Remote

* Senior Developer with 10+ years experience and excellent communication skills

* Advanced Ruby on Rails product development, React and Backbone JS development, and Sys/Devops at a reasonable rate

* MVP's for innovative products and startups

* Maintain and refactor legacy apps

* Performance and Security audits

* Fullstack Ruby/Rails development: frontend/backend/devops

* Portfolio: >>>>>> http://featlabs.com/ <<<<<<

------------ ------------ ------------

up_and_upon Ask HN: How to make a career working remotely?

Hunt for a job here: https://remotebase.io/companies

up_and_upon Macbook Pro Touch Bar runs watchOS

System76 has a variety of options that ship with Ubuntu: https://system76.com/laptops

up_and_upon New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

I have heard good things about https://system76.com/

up_and_upon Why does software development take so long?

That hasnt been my experience. Most of the frameworks I use last much longer than my tenure at a particular position. Are you saying you would really write your own django? jquery? react? chef? git? I would argue the reason some startups can now move blazingly fast with relatively few developers is by leveraging open-source in a smart way.

up_and_upon Why does software development take so long?

> Except that in software 1000's of groups have already dug 1000's of canals and yet the next group that will build a canal will insist on doing it their way.

This is why a prudent developer/team would attempt to leverage frameworks/plugins/existing API's and libraries vs reinventing the wheel. Leveraging well-vetted and popular resources should cut development time considerably.