Here's the maths most calculators get wrong Most freelance rate calculators are wrong. Not buggy — conceptually wrong. They take your income goal, divide by hours, and hand you a number that will quietly lose you money all year. I got tired of explaining the correct calculation to freelancer friends, so I built a tool that does it properly. Here's the logic behind it, and a bit about how I built it. The flawed formula The typical calculator does this: hourly_rate = annual_income_goal / annual_hours_worked So if you want $80,000 and work 2,080 hours a year (40 × 52), it tells you to charge ~$38/hr. This is wrong in three separate ways. Fix 1: Tax is not optional Your income goal is a net number — what you want to keep. But you're taxed on gross. So the first correction is grossing up: const grossIncome = netTarget / ( 1 - taxRate ); // $80,000 / (1 - 0.28) = $111,111 That's already a $31,000 gap the naive formula ignores. Fix 2: You don't bill every hour you work This is the big one. Freelancers bill roughly 55–65% of their working hours. The rest is admin, proposals, invoicing, sales calls, and learning. const totalHours = weeksWorked * hoursPerWeek ; // 46 * 40 = 1840 const billableHours = totalHours * billableRatio ; // 1840 * 0.6 = 1104 So your real billable capacity isn't 2,080 hours. It's closer to 1,104. Pricing on the wrong denominator is how people end up working 50-hour weeks and still missing their income target. Fix 3: Business expenses come out of gross Software, hardware, insurance, courses — all real costs that need covering before you pay yourself: const totalNeeded = grossIncome + annualExpenses ; The corrected formula Putting it together: function minimumRate ({ netTarget , taxRate , expenses , weeks , hoursPerWeek , billableRatio }) { const gross = netTarget / ( 1 - taxRate ); const totalNeeded = gross + expenses ; const billableHours = weeks * hoursPerWeek * billableRatio ; return totalNeeded / billableHours ; } minimumRate ({ netTarget : 80000 ,

If you’ve ever spent hours debugging slow EC2 workloads or getting sticker shock from unexpected EBS IOPS charges, you’ve probably wondered if there’s a better storage option for temporary, high-performance data. AWS EC2 Instance Storage (also called Instance Store) is one of the most underutilized but powerful tools in the EC2 ecosystem—if you know how to use it correctly. This guide breaks down everything you need to know: core concepts, performance optimizations, use cases, limitations, and how it stacks up against EBS. By the end, you’ll be able to cut storage costs, boost workload performance, and avoid costly data loss mistakes. Table of Contents What Exactly Is AWS EC2 Instance Storage? Core Concepts of EC2 Instance Store Key Features That Make Instance Store Stand Out Which EC2 Instance Types Support Instance Store? Deep Dive: NVMe SSD Instance Store Volumes SSD Instance Store Performance Best Practices EC2 Instance Store vs EBS: Head-to-Head Comparison Top Real-World Use Cases for EC2 Instance Store Critical Limitations to Avoid Costly Mistakes Production-Grade Best Practices for Instance Store Root Volume Options: EBS-Backed vs Instance Store-Backed Instances EC2 Instance Store Pricing: No Hidden Costs Conclusion References What Exactly Is AWS EC2 Instance Storage? EC2 Instance Store is temporary block-level storage that is physically attached to the host server running your EC2 instance. Unlike standalone storage services like EBS, EFS, or S3, it is part of the EC2 service itself, with no network overhead between your instance and the storage disks. Its defining trait is its ephemeral nature: data stored on Instance Store only persists for the lifetime of the associated instance. If you stop, hibernate, or terminate your instance, all data on Instance Store volumes is permanently deleted. Core Concepts of EC2 Instance Store Before you start using Instance Store, make sure you understand these foundational rules: Device naming : Instance Store volumes are

PostgreSQL Error 2200D: invalid escape octet The 2200D: invalid escape octet error occurs in PostgreSQL when a bytea value contains an invalid escape sequence. This typically happens with the legacy escape format for binary data, where octet values must be represented as three-digit octal numbers in the range \000 to \377 . If the escape sequence falls outside this range or uses non-octal digits, PostgreSQL raises this error immediately. Top 3 Causes 1. Out-of-range octal values in bytea escape literals The bytea escape format only accepts octal values from \000 to \377 (decimal 0–255). Using values like \400 or non-octal digits like \9 will trigger this error. -- BAD: \400 exceeds valid octal range (max is \377) SELECT E ' \\ 400' :: bytea ; -- ERROR: invalid escape octet -- BAD: \9 is not a valid octal digit SELECT E ' \\ 9AB' :: bytea ; -- ERROR: invalid escape octet -- GOOD: valid octal escape sequences SELECT E ' \\ 377' :: bytea ; -- decimal 255 SELECT E ' \\ 101' :: bytea ; -- 'A' character SELECT E ' \\ 000' :: bytea ; -- null byte 2. Using escape format strings with hex output format Since PostgreSQL 9.0, the default bytea_output is hex . Applications that mix hex -format output back into escape -format input processing can generate malformed escape sequences. -- Check current bytea output format SHOW bytea_output ; -- GOOD: Use hex format (recommended for all new projects) SELECT ' \x DEADBEEF' :: bytea ; SELECT ' \x 48656C6C6F' :: bytea ; -- 'Hello' -- GOOD: Use encode/decode for safe conversions SELECT encode ( ' \x DEADBEEF' :: bytea , 'hex' ); -- output as hex string SELECT encode ( ' \x DEADBEEF' :: bytea , 'base64' ); -- output as base64 SELECT decode ( 'deadbeef' , 'hex' ); -- hex string → bytea SELECT decode ( 'SGVsbG8=' , 'base64' ); -- base64 → bytea 3. Incorrect escaping during data migration or manual SQL When migrating binary data from other databases (Oracle, MySQL) or writing raw INSERT statements manually, developers often confuse octal and

Your agent nailed every test case. You shipped it. Within 48 hours, users report hallucinated outputs, silently dropped tool calls, and responses that bear zero resemblance to what worked on your machine. You reload the same prompt locally. It works perfectly. Welcome to the most predictable failure mode in AI engineering: the dev-to-prod gap. This is Crucible C01. We dissect the five failure modes that kill agents in production and give you the tools to catch them before your users do. The Idea (60 Seconds) Developers test agents in idealized conditions: deterministic inputs, warm context windows, generous API latency budgets, and sequential tool calls. Production exposes the opposite environment: cold starts strip context, rate limits compress timing, and parallel calls introduce race conditions. The agent that performed flawlessly at temperature 0 on a 2k-token context window collapses at temperature 0.7 on an 8k-token window. The five failure modes are temperature drift and context window overflow first; silent API errors and prompt drift follow; race conditions complete the set. Each one has a detection pattern and a fix, and this article delivers both plus the CLI tool to automate the detection. Why This Matters AI agent failures differ from traditional software failures in one critical way: they are stochastic. A web API either returns 200 or 500. An AI agent returns something that looks plausible 90% of the time and is catastrophically wrong 10% of the time. That 10% is invisible in manual testing and devastating in production. The economics compound fast because every failed agent interaction wastes tokens, and wasted tokens cost money. At scale, a subtly broken agent burns budget faster than a working one because it retries, loops, and rephrases instead of succeeding. A single temperature drift bug can double your API spend. Reliability is the differentiator. The market is flooding with AI wrappers. The ones that survive will be the ones that work consiste

OpenAI launches the Economic Research Exchange to study AI’s impact on jobs, productivity, and the economy. Applications are now open for selected research projects.

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-troops-families-adjust-to-new-normal-iran-war-2026-06-07/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48439709 Points: 10 # Comments: 2

This is a submission for the June Solstice Game Jam What I Built SOLSTICE — The Longest...

We've seen Axiom Space and Prada's collaboration on the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit. Now the company has revealed the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG) that astronauts will wear underneath it when Artemis IV returns humans to the Moon in 2028. The LCVG is the all-important base layer that will keep the crew […]

GitHub热门项目 | 🤱🏻 Turn any webpage into a desktop app with one command. | Stars: 50,088 | 72 stars today | 语言: Rust

I haven't written articles in quite a while and I recently decided to come back to it. At work I use AI daily, so a big part of my coding tasks are delegated to agents. I try not to do the same when it comes to writing text but I don't have a clear reason for that (or maybe I do and I don't want to admit it). I am sure people can take advantage of generating text with the help of AI but at the moment I feel like prompting would not save me any time and writing the text myself would be faster. What about you? Are you using AI to write your articles? Image credit - jessica olivella, on pexels

It's 2am. A pipe just let go behind a kitchen wall and water is coming through the ceiling into the room below. The homeowner is standing in the dark in a panic, phone in hand, Googling "emergency plumber near me." They tap the first number. It rings four times and drops to voicemail. They don't leave a message. They tap the second number. You were the first number. You were asleep. And you just lost the most profitable job you'd have booked all week to whoever picked up on the second ring. This is the part of running a plumbing business that nobody puts on a P&L. The call that matters most arrives at the exact moment no human is there to answer it. And in plumbing, unlike any other trade, that's not the exception. It's the majority of the work. Plumbing's problem is different from every other trade An HVAC shop bleeds during summer rush. A roofer loses jobs to slow follow-up over a three-week sales cycle. Plumbing is its own animal, because plumbing is emergency-driven, and emergencies don't keep business hours. Industry call-tracking data tells the story. Depending on the source, anywhere from 40% to over 70% of home-service calls land outside the standard nine-to-five window, and for emergency-driven trades like plumbing it skews to the high end of that range. Either way the takeaway is the same. A huge share of your inbound isn't coming in while someone's at the desk. It's coming in at night, on a Saturday, on Thanksgiving morning when a basement is filling with sewage. If you're staffed to answer the phone nine to five, you are structurally set up to miss a large slice of your own demand. Not because you're doing anything wrong. Because the work shows up when the lights are off. And here's what makes it brutal. The after-hours emergency call isn't just any job. It's your best one. Why the missed emergency call costs more than the tech A routine daytime service call, a dripping faucet, a running toilet, runs a couple hundred dollars and the customer is happy to

The Letter VCs Are Quietly Deleting from ARR Startups are reporting revenue they haven't earned yet. VCs know it. Investors are cheering anyway. We've seen this movie. You're evaluating an AI startup. The pitch deck shows $100 million in ARR. The growth curve is parabolic. The deck says they signed $100 million. What it doesn't say is that $70 million of that is "committed ARR": contracts signed but not yet invoiced, customers who haven't deployed yet, pilots that count toward the number if they convert. Subtract the gap and you've got $30 million in actual recognized revenue hiding under a $100 million headline. This is the ARR inflation playbook, and it's running at full speed right now. The Trick Has a Name "CARR" stands for Contracted or Committed ARR. It's a legitimate concept. In industries where revenue accrues slowly after contract signing (healthcare AI deployments, energy optimization platforms, multi-year enterprise integrations), the gap between signature and recognition can legitimately take months or years to close. Reporting CARR alongside ARR, properly labeled, is defensible. That's not what's happening. What's happening is simpler: founders strip the "C" and just call it ARR. One VC told TechCrunch the gap between CARR and actual ARR can run as high as 70% [1]. In some confirmed cases the spread is 3-5x. Another investor said flatly: "For sure they are reporting CARR as ARR" [1]. The article indicates that the investor community is not only aware, but many are actively complicit. The logic follows its own warped rationality. When one startup in a category inflates, the others have to follow to stay competitive for talent and headlines. "When one startup does it in a category, it is hard not to do it yourself just to keep up," as one investor put it [1]. Spellbook CEO Scott Stevenson, one of the few willing to call this in public, described the practice as a "huge scam," adding that major VC funds are not just watching it happen but actively supporti

Including, me. There’s no question the world has experienced significant change, over just the past 10 years. You’ve got standard concerns like AI; questions around whether tech is helping or hurting us - but I want to present another side to the story: one that I’ve got direct experience in. In a new “series” I’ll be rolling out, I’ll be deep diving into my prior experience as a software engineer in this new world where everything is a metric to be improved. Laying out the problem Not to be vague, I’ve referenced the problem in the title. Companies, and by proxy, engineers at the companies, are being driven (by shareholders), to ensure you maximise the time spent on their platforms. Perhaps, that much is apparent and obvious. But, have you stopped to think recently how vehement and aggressive these practices are getting? How many services do you use or rely on that are (subtly or not), making decisions purely just to increase the time customers spend with the software open ? I’m a big believer that software can make lives better . I’ll be quick to announce, though, that as of 2025, there’s a lot of secrecy behind the scenes around why companies are striving harder to hit engagement metrics. It’s a race to the bottom, and as we continue seeing software take up more and more of our time spent, it’s worth exploring just how bad things can get when you’re laser focused on app enegagement. Making something good, isn’t good enough I worked at Flux Finance for 3 and a half years, before unfortunately being made redundant. Flux went on, only months later, to be bought out by Networth. Not terrible; acquisition complete, and everybody’s clapping. As a refresher, Flux was an app designed to make your money journey easier, and make you more financial literate, in fun ways. The motto: “helping 400k+ Aussies win at money ” - with gamification being a major aspect. For Australians, it features: a way to check your credit score articles released regularly to learn about money new

LLM-powered Learning, Handwritten Digit Recognition, and AI Career Guidance Today's Highlights This week's top stories showcase practical AI applications: an LLM-powered tool for domain learning, a cloud-enhanced handwritten digit recognition system, and an AI-driven career guide. These projects demonstrate how AI frameworks are being applied to real-world workflows, from knowledge acquisition to personalized advice. Show HN: Lathe – Use LLMs to learn a new domain, not skip past it (Hacker News) Source: https://github.com/devenjarvis/lathe This project, Lathe, presents a novel approach to leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) not just for quick answers, but for deep, structured learning within a new domain. Unlike traditional LLM interactions that might encourage skipping detailed research, Lathe aims to facilitate a more profound understanding by guiding users through a systematic learning process. It likely employs advanced retrieval augmentation generation (RAG) techniques, potentially combined with iterative prompting strategies and graph-based knowledge representation, to help users build a comprehensive knowledge base on a chosen topic. The framework focuses on transforming raw information into actionable insights and structured learning paths. This makes LLMs a powerful study aid, enabling domain experts or newcomers to grasp complex subjects more efficiently by providing tools for semantic search, concept mapping, and progressive knowledge acquisition, moving beyond simple question-answering into true assisted learning workflows. Comment: This is precisely what's needed for complex enterprise knowledge management – turning LLMs into an active learning partner, not just a summarizer. I'd explore how it structures knowledge graphs or progressive learning paths. Handwritten Digit Recognition System with Cloud and AI Enhancements (Dev.to Top) Source: https://dev.to/yohannesah/handwritten-digit-recognition-system-with-cloud-and-ai-enhancements-i4e This project