portman

28 ms·

241.
by portman 16y ago
This. I vividly remember the day that I woke up and decided that from now on, I would charge $175/hr instead of $125/hr. Bookings actually increased . Just keep raising your rates until (a) You can't get any more gigs, or (b) You feel too
242.
by portman 16y ago
You have definitely been undercharging. $75/hr is the low end, and $200/hr is the high end. As one data point: when I ran an independent consulting practice from 2002 - 2006, my prices started at $125/hr and grew to $225/hr.
243.
by portman 16y ago
I'm in the Washington DC area, in which salaries are typically lower than NYC but higher than most other metropolitan areas in the US. The highest-paid non-management developer that I know of had a base salary of $185k. That may or may no
244.
by portman 16y ago
For starters, more people could support the Facebook Developer proposal at StackExchange. http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7285/facebook-deve... Personally, I think the StackOverflow engine would be a great way to build up a crow
245.
by portman 16y ago
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm not saying that forcing Facebook will 100% eliminate fraud. But forcing Facebook can reduce fraud, by several orders of magnitude. Authentication isn't -- and shouldn't be -- a one-size-fits-all problem. For us,
246.
by portman 16y ago
A service with an addressable market of the entire Internet is very rare. Usually your addressable market will be something like: "English speakers over the age 22 with household income of at least $30,000 per year." And then suddenly mor
247.
by portman 16y ago
Several ways, none of which is individually full-proof, but taken together they are a very good indicator: - Does the user have a profile photo, or is it the default user icon? - How many friends does the user have? (Generally 0, 1, or 2
248.
by portman 16y ago
I think he meant "token" as in "trivial", not as in an OAuth authentication token.
249.
by portman 16y ago
I have a site that requires Facebook to login. For this site, user fraud is a big concern. I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that. If my market size goes from 1.5B to 500M beca
250.
by portman 16y ago
Would it really? Since the signal:noise ratio on the /new page is pretty darn good right now, I don't think that featuring one of the new submissions on the homepage would change that much. Also: this proposal would only lead to more impr
251.
by portman 16y ago
Hm, interesting. You can scale anything , though. For example, a pair of reverse proxies in front of the single "share nothing" app server could reduce the load on that one machine. I'm sure the collective brilliance of the HN readership c
252.
by portman 16y ago
Paul, have you considered asking the community to volunteer resources? You've mentioned several times that the site is on one server and that performance is an issue at times. I would donate time/money to make those problems go away, and I
253.
by portman 16y ago
Congratulations on your engagement! And seriously. Waffle maker. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
254.
by portman 16y ago
Have you viewed more than 300 pages on the facebook.com domain in your lifetime? If so, they've gotten a dime from you. 3 ads per page, each ad selling at a $0.10 CPM.
255.
by portman 16y ago
Speaking as someone who has spent $30,000 on Facebook ads in the last several months: Facebook advertising is fantastically targeted as well. Google ads work when there is so-called "purchase intent": I know I want a new waffle maker, so I
256.
by portman 16y ago
Farmville is a perfect example of the self-actualization tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. [1] The people playing Farmville are enjoying themselves and expressing themselves. Would it be better if they deployed that cognitive surplus and
257.
by portman 16y ago
You're right. I had the Starcraft 300 action/minute metric in my head, and I've definitely seen Farmville players at that level, but the average is probably much closer to 60 actions/minute. My original point was less about the actual numbe
258.
#162 Wealthiest American is a cheese distributor(forbes.com)
3 points by portman 16y ago|1 comments
259.
by portman 16y ago
Downvoted for not thinking through the numbers. When Zynga launches a new game, they can get over 1M new DAILY players on that game within the first week. [1] For their games, it seems that 7% of daily players are online at any given time.
260.
by portman 16y ago
Yes, it's an allegory related by Cyril Parkinson, originally in his lectures, and then eventually in his eponymous book. I'm familiar with it. My question is: why is the subject of this thread "The Original Bike Shed Email", when there were
261.
by portman 16y ago
Is there an inside joke here? Because I'm quite certain that Parkinson's bike shed allegory was commonly used among software development teams well before 1999.
262.
by portman 16y ago
You would not find it insane if you had spent a lot of time in the southern USA. For a "guns-in-school" story just Google "University of Virginia John Davis shot". The TL;DR; is that on November 12, 1840, a rowdy bunch of college students w
263.
by portman 16y ago
That may very well be true for you, but over 35,000,000 iPod Touch customers disagree with you.
264.
by portman 16y ago
Anyone who can manufacture an iPod Touch competitor can also manufacture an iPhone competitor. So, in order to choose to compete with the iPod Touch, the manufacturer would have to believe their profits would be higher than if they built a
265.
by portman 16y ago
Huh? It's an iOS device, and as such, supports 250,000 apps. It's hardly "just a music player".
266.
by portman 16y ago
I'm a dual citizen of the UK and US. Among my close friends, I know Canadian, Israeli, and Australian dual-citizens. I've never heard of having to "renounce all other allegiances". (Note: it's entirely possible that there is some obscure me
267.
by portman 16y ago
I know this isn't what you asked, but I would recommend using PayPal for your pre-order page. First of all, your merchant account application will take at least 10 business days to process, and secondly you're probably looking at some kind
268.
by portman 16y ago
Source: http://www.domainnamenews.com/registries/verisign-registry-i...
269.
by portman 16y ago
Reminds me: on in-flight WiFi, you can set your computer's user agent to be that of an iPhone, and you get to purchase less expensive WiFi. ($5.95 versus $9.95 on my most recent flight)
270.
by portman 16y ago
Was this story broken here on HN? I can't find any other stories on Google News. If so, well done jakewalker. Makes me wonder if HN can become a primary source for news in addition to an aggregator.

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