albedo

Not just trust, but also social proof. Humans are hard-wired to find interesting what other humans seem to be interested in, regardless of whether it's a positive or negative interest.

The size of the pool is the total number of people you expect to evaluate for a given decision.

Yes, we're US-only for the moment, although we can work with anyone who has a US corporation.

SEEKING FREELANCERS - NYC area

Lambda is a talent agency for freelance developers and designers. We help you find clients, negotiate for higher rates, and take care of the business side of freelancing.

  - Exceptional talent only: $100/hr minimum rate.
  - No recruiters or spam. We're developers too and we only match consultants with projects that fit their expertise and interest.
  - Serious clients only: Wanna hear about a disruptive social network for cats that "just needs a coder"? Neither do we.
  - Freelancers with side projects or startups are especially welcome!

If that's appealing, you can read more and sign up at: http://getlambda.com/

We've posted about this on HN a few times and have been amazed by the response. I apologize in advance if it takes a while for us to get back to you -- we interview everyone personally and are still ramping up the process.

Right now, we're particularly looking for NYC-based iOS and Android devs, as well as designers.

SEEKING FREELANCERS - NYC area

Lambda is a talent agency for freelance developers and designers. We help you find clients, negotiate for higher rates, and take care of the business side of freelancing.

  - Exceptional talent only: $100/hr minimum rate.
  - No recruiters or spam. We're developers too and we only match consultants with projects that fit their expertise and interest.
  - Serious clients only: Wanna hear about a disruptive social network for cats that "just needs a coder"? Neither do we.
  - Freelancers with side projects or startups are especially welcome!

If that's appealing, you can read more and sign up at: http://getlambda.com/

We've posted about this on HN a few times and have been amazed by the response. I apologize in advance if it takes a while for us to get back to you -- we interview everyone personally and are still ramping up the process.

Right now, we're particularly looking for NYC Rails, Django, and iOS devs.

Hi, this is Ken. Sorry we didn't get back to you -- we've been getting a lot of interest and it's been difficult getting back to everyone promptly. I can't tell who you are from your HN handle, but I'd be happy to get in touch today if you shoot me another email.

The proportion spent on fundraising isn't a good indicator of effectiveness either. Generally, the metrics tracked by Charity Navigator are easy to measure, and aren't very useful.

GiveWell is a much better evaluator of charity quality. Since they spend much more time on analyzing each charity, they cover way fewer charities. They are quite strategic about prioritizing which ones to interview. http://www.givewell.org/international/process

The overhead ratio is a pretty poor indicator of a charity's effectiveness. http://overheadmyth.com/

Yes, we're currently looking for Rails, Django, js, and iOS.

We get about 15 qualified leads a month (on average, each project is worth about $25k). We're focused on the US and Canada only for the moment.

We posted on this thread already, so I hope this isn't spammy, but we're http://getlambda.com and we personally screen all devs for quality.

Our company Lambda (http://getlambda.com) helps negotiate contract work for our freelancers. We often set up the following arrangement: the client pays in advance for a week or two of work, and we agree that "a week" contains X hours of developer time. If there are hours unused by the end of the contract, we refund the money. It's an elegant way to avoid most payment issues.

Sorry about that. We'll cut back and be more relevant next time.

College is also a really good place to meet and work with people who could eventually become your technical cofounders, the scarcest ingredient for most startups.

Agreed, and this is basically what we do for devs who want to do contract work -- help find clients that pay well and don't suck. (http://getlambda.com)

We'll certainly have conversations with devs who are interested in the concept.

Our clients are primarily located in SF and NYC. I'd say about 20% of our clients are okay with remote work though.

Our current thesis is that job boards are painful to wade through, especially for experienced devs looking to freelance.

Our current model involves connecting devs to good clients (i.e. people who've done this sort of thing before), who we screen ourselves (and because we've done freelance development ourselves, we know what to look for).

Check out http://getlambda.com if you're interested.

Check out the Center for Applied Rationality (http://rationality.org/) for workshops on overcoming cognitive biases, building habits, achieving your goals, making better decisions, etc. It's a non-profit that my friends are running.

Almost all of our clients are based in the US, and we already have a lot of devs who are willing to do remote work.

SEEKING FREELANCERS - NYC or Bay Area preferred - Remote is okay

Lambda is a talent agency for freelance developers and designers. We help you find clients, negotiate for higher rates, and take care of the business side of freelancing.

  - Exceptional talent only: $100/hr minimum rate.
  - No recruiters or spam. We're developers too and we only match consultants with projects that fit their expertise and interest.
  - Serious clients only: Wanna hear about a disruptive social network for cats that "just needs a coder"? Neither do we.
  - Freelancers with side projects or startups are especially welcome!

If that's appealing, you can read more and sign up at: http://getlambda.com/

We've posted about this on HN a few times and have been amazed by the response. I apologize in advance if it takes a while for us to get back to you -- we interview everyone personally and are still ramping up the process.

Right now, we're particularly looking for NYC Rails devs and SF iOS devs, but anyone else based in the US is still welcome to apply!

Yes, freelancing is very lucrative, if you're a good developer with the right skillset. People are generally willing to give up a lot of money in exchange for a steady income guarantee.

This is part of what we were trying to avoid while starting Lambda (http://getlambda.com). Do contract work to bootstrap your company, especially for technical founders. It's very much worth it to take 1-3 months off to freelance, make ~$20-50k, and keep your entire company.

We just launched a talent agency for startup founders who aren't interested in full-time office positions, but are willing to take on contract work that can be done part-time and remotely. We got over 400 signups in the first 5 weeks. It sounds like this could be a good fit for you. Check it out at http://getlambda.com

GS doesn't use it for applications that require massive scaling, they already have their own infrastructure in place for that.

The way that adaptation works (warning: simplifying a bit here) is that your brain wants you to get restful sleep when you aren't allowing it to. In this situation, its default strategy is to cause you to feel the effects of sleep deprivation in order to induce sleep. If you successfully resist this urge, only going to sleep at certain times, and follow a schedule fairly strictly, then your brain will give up after a week or two, and will learn to just take whatever it can get during those time slots (i.e. go directly into REM sleep).

After a while of doing this (adaptation), you will get most or all of the sleep you need, just from naps, and you will no longer feel sleep deprivation.

Check out the book "Ubersleep" written by Pure Doxyk, someone who has successfully done long-term polyphasic sleep, for details on this model of sleep.

I think a lot of people think about this the wrong way.

The way I see it, if you're able to successfully adapt to Uberman, you get an additional ~6 hours a day. Any negative effects you would experience from being on Uberman need to be collectively greater than getting 6 hours of additional life per day, in order for it to not be worth it.

6 hours per day is really awesome. It's not just additional productivity. It's additional life. And it's not additional life at the end of your life, it's additional life now, when the value is likely to be very high.

A useful test for these sorts of things is to ask yourself whether you would make the same trade if it were to be reversed. If you had grown up on polyphasic sleep, would you give up 6 hours of your life per day in order to feel mildly more productive on average, and to gain some additional flexibility in your schedule?