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Title: It's so cute (to look at)!
But it seems to be utterly useless for just about anything I thought I might be able to do with it..
This 4 gigabyte memory, almost 2 ghz quadcore machine seems unable to do much of anything, browsing the web is an utterly horrid experience..
Playing a game of Quake 3 is impossible.
Doom can run, but only at 320x240 unless you don't mind terrible lags.<p>I'm considering what I can do with it..
For once, I can run an IRC client on it, but what else?<p>Have you found something to actually use this for?
Upvote: | 93 |
Title: What are some things you'd like to get this holiday season? What are you getting for the techie/nerdy/hn people in your life?
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: Hey HN! We’re Alex and David, the founders of Parade (<a href="https://getparade.com" rel="nofollow">https://getparade.com</a>). Parade uses software to guide founders through early branding decisions, including designing a basic logo, selecting fonts, selecting colors, and defining their company’s overall aesthetic.<p>A lot of early stage founders are incredible engineers, but lack the ability to make things look “right”. We’ve seen a bunch of our friends launch products to no reception, some of which seemed due to poor design decisions (like, making buttons hard to find or a landing page that looks like it might steal your credit card).<p>Two years ago, two of my closest friends started a company, raised a small round, and spent tens of thousands of dollars on their initial branding. That was a substantial percentage of their funding, and then their brand entirely changed once they learned more about their customer. After I saw them waste a ton of time and money on this, I realized that it ought to be possible to build software that could have done just as good of a job as the design agency. At the core of it, the designers asked my friends a bunch of questions about how they want their company to be perceived by customers, offered them colors and fonts and a design aesthetic that conveyed those feelings, and then created a mockup of a website that incorporated those elements. So, I decided to build software to do just that.<p>With Parade, we have taken a traditional brand design interview and turned it into a self-serve software product. You answer a series of questions about how you want your brand to be perceived and receive design aesthetic suggestions based on them. We use machine learning to identify design elements (such as fonts, colors, layouts, use of color, density of information, line and button styles, and visuals) that project the way you want your brand to feel, then present them to you as simple choices. To power the suggestions, we collected training data from both designers and non-designers to understand what emotional reactions these design elements evoke. Because of this technology, we are able to identify the design aesthetics that you want without having to iterate repeatedly or spend hours searching for inspiration. After you make your choices, we use the math behind design theory (such as an algorithm to expand one color into a range of colors that accounts for the difference in perceived contrast based on hue, saturation, and lightness) to flesh out your brand [0].<p>Right now, after onboarding, you are able to access all of your design elements in a style guide for free through the dashboard. It includes your colors and your fonts, plus a place to download your logo and icon in a few colors. You can see an example of what this looks like here: <a href="https://app.getparade.com/hackernews/style-guide" rel="nofollow">https://app.getparade.com/hackernews/style-guide</a> or here: <a href="https://app.getparade.com/hooli/style-guide" rel="nofollow">https://app.getparade.com/hooli/style-guide</a>. This is similar to the output startups get from a first engagement with a designer, which helps you set up basic, consistent styling for your website and social media profiles.<p>At this point, we’ve helped thousands of companies create their brands, including YC-backed companies like WellPrincipled (<a href="https://www.wellprincipled.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wellprincipled.com/</a>), Enable (<a href="https://www.enable.us/" rel="nofollow">https://www.enable.us/</a>) and MeterFeeder (<a href="https://www.meterfeeder.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.meterfeeder.com/</a>).<p>The next step beyond style guides would be to automatically generate brand assets—things like pitch decks, landing pages, and social media posts. We're working on that. We haven't completely automated it yet, but we are able to create these assets with very rapid turnaround time. Once we get it fully automated, we plan to add subscription features that enable founders to make ready-to-use assets themselves.<p>In the meantime, we run an agency, serving customers using our work-in-progress software. It’s different from a traditional agency, though—while traditional agencies spend many days asking you about how you want your brand to look, seeking inspiration, and iterating based on your feedback, we are able to capture what you describe through our onboarding survey and create assets with your design elements algorithmically. We are able to deliver most designs within 48 hours, and almost all of our customers have been satisfied without any iteration. Right now, a lot of the algorithmic design work happens via an in-house Figma plugin, which we plan to move onto our platform in 2022 and open up to self-service.<p>Something that’s surprised us while working on this: we’ve found that our users don’t always believe that their choices are really great. Design is intimidating—you’re aware that there is some psychology of color and also some color theory rules, but aren’t exactly sure what they are. You’ve built things in the past that just didn’t look quite right—how can you be sure the choices you made on Parade are good? Oftentimes, designers will even use words to make themselves seem to know some secret you don’t. We’re trying to reassure our users by surfacing more of the science behind the suggestions we make, and to make sure we encode rules that prevent certain common mistakes.<p>We would love to hear your thoughts, questions, concerns, or ideas about what we’re building - or about your experiences with automating design in general. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions!<p>[0] See <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/AERT/#color-contrast" rel="nofollow">https://www.w3.org/TR/AERT/#color-contrast</a> for math on color contrast, or <a href="https://alienryderflex.com/hsp.html" rel="nofollow">https://alienryderflex.com/hsp.html</a> for a good writeup on perceived brightness.
Upvote: | 179 |
Title: With news like [1][2], and problems I’ve had in the past, I would like a TV with a modern resolution, but just inputs and a tuner, no “smart” features. Does anything like this exist?<p>[1] https://hackaday.com/2021/11/29/samsung-bricks-smart-tvs/<p>[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-advertising-inscape-data-privacy-q3-2021
Upvote: | 436 |
Title: Recently I interviewed with Stripe for an engineering MoM (Manager of Managers) for one of their teams. I interview regularly, so I am used to many types of processes, feedback mechanisms, and so on. I won't go into details about the questions because there's nothing special about them, but I wanted to share some details of my experience for people thinking of interviewing there.<p>1) About 35-40% of the interviewers started their questioning by saying "I will only need 20 minutes for this", while emphasizing it is an important leadership position that they are hiring for. So 20 minutes is all needed to identify "important, critical leaders"? What a strange thing to say - also a GREAT way to make candidates feel important and wanted!<p>2) There is significant shuffling of interviewers and schedules. One almost has to be on-call to be able to react quickly.<p>3) For an engineering manager position, I only interviewed with only technical person. To me it hints that Engineering MoM is not a very technical position.<p>4) Of all the people I spoke to, the hiring manager was the one I spoke the least with. The phone screen was one of the "I only need 20 minutes for this" calls. The other one was quite amusing, and is described below.<p>5) After the loop was done, the recruiter called me to congratulate me on passing, and started discussing details of the offer, including sending me a document described the equity program. Recruiter mentioned that the hiring manager would be calling me to discuss the position next.<p>6) SURPRISE INTERVIEW! I get a call from the hiring manager, he congratulates me on passing the loop, then as I prepare to ask questions about the role, he again says "I need to ask you two questions and need 20 minutes for this". Then proceeds to ask two random questions about platforms and process enforcement, then hangs up the call after I answer. Tells me he'd be calling in a week to discuss the position.<p>7) I get asked for references.<p>8) After passing the loop, have the recruiter discuss some details of the offer, have the hiring manager tell me they'd be calling me after a week, I get ghosted for about 3.5 weeks. References are contacted and feedback is confirmed positive.<p>9) I ping the recruiter to see when the offer is coming - it's not coming. They chose another candidate. I am fine with it, even after being offered verbally, but the ghosting part after wasting so much of my time seems almost intentional.<p>10) I call up a senior leader in the office I applied to, an acquaintance of mine. His answer: "don't come. It's a mess and a revolving door of people". I was shocked with the response.<p>11) I get called by the recruiter saying that another director saw my feedback and is very interested in talking to me and do an interview loop.<p>Guess I'm not joining, then.<p>I am ok with passing loops, being rejected, I've seen it all. But being ghosted after acceptance is a first. What a bizarre place this is.
Upvote: | 1703 |
Title: I've worked at my current company since my college internship in 2012, and have not sought a new gig in all of that time. The company was a travel tech startup that I joined as an early employee, and it was acquired a few years ago. The app is still active and supported, but it feels time to start exploring what else is out there.<p>In case it matters, my background is largely in various QA and product roles, most recently transitioning from project management to product management.<p>Are the traditional places like Linkedin and Indeed the best places to upload resumes, update skills, etc.? Do I need to fully dive into the job-hunting waters and network with recruiters to get a good idea of where I "stack" so to speak?
Upvote: | 159 |
Title: Hi HN, I’m Christian and here together with my co-founder Christian (no typo!), we are the founders of Kitchenful (<a href="https://www.kitchenful.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.kitchenful.com</a>). Kitchenful is an app for personalized recommendations of recipes that also gets you the ingredients delivered from a local grocery store.<p>My girlfriend and I asked ourselves the question “What should we have for dinner?” nearly every day. It was annoying for both of us, and on top of that, after a long discussion about what to cook, I was the one who would go out and get the groceries. We never managed to meal plan a couple of days in advance, so the situation repeated itself every 1-2 days, and the result was often to either eat the same meals over and over again, or do impulsive shopping that would include unhealthy snacks or expensive takeout orders.<p>Our first breakthrough was to sketch meal plans on the weekend and order via REWE (largest German grocer) for home delivery. This changed our whole mood and feeling throughout the week. We had recipes ready to go and the question was answered immediately each day what we could do. We found ourselves eating better and feeling better in the process. However, meal planning and placing the related order still took me hours. With a technical background, I was interested in automating the process as much as possible so we could stick with it.<p>I worked at HelloFresh (a popular meal kit service) for over 4 years, but as a customer I found the offering wasn’t flexible enough to support our specific dietary needs and it didn’t relieve us of shopping for breakfast, snacks, beverages etc. at the grocery store. Since I’ve spent my professional life so far in the startup space, it came naturally to start a company to tackle this problem.<p>Our users receive a curated menu of recipes according to their dietary preferences and requirements each week. These recommendations are made based on information from the user (diet, ingredient preferences, nutrition goals, location, grocery options, etc.). Users can easily choose recipes and add additional products from their grocer’s inventory to the cart (you can also deselect ingredients which you already have at home). Our team takes care of organizing a grocery delivery from your favorite grocer. In the process, we optimize for reduced food waste/leftovers and the best price/quality ratio by choosing the most suitable products for the required ingredients.<p>Making good dinner recommendations is a surprisingly complex problem. Factors include the user’s mood and energy, not wanting to overwhelm them, and also understanding that even if they aim to live healthier, comfort food is sometimes needed. We therefore include real humans in verifying and quality-checking the suggestions that are made. Additionally, learning fast about the individual user is tricky: what do they like, how experienced are they with cooking, etc. so that we can recommend recipes which are similar to their favorites but not the same. Similarity to the user's tried-and-tested recipes is important to capitalize on existing cooking skills and taste preferences.<p>We’ve partnered with grocers such as Walmart, Kroger, and Target to be able to handle order placement and to know which products are currently available via their partner APIs. To map ingredients from recipes to suitable products we’ve created mapping tables which we use to generate shopping carts. As inventories don’t change that often, we match products to ingredients via scripts, but are able to review those mappings manually. We are fans of the Spoonacular API which helps us to parse structured recipe data. We are in the process of building a recommendation engine to create weekly menus for each of our users. Right now, those suggestions are created by rules using tags on the recipe data, and then reviewed and edited by our culinary experts.
We launched our service in Berlin/Germany over the summer as part of the YC S21 batch, and were fortunate to get a lot of early adopters using Kitchenful as their weekly solution for meal planning and grocery shopping. We have now started serving US customers.<p>We’ve also set up a 14-Day free trial period for everyone who’s interested so you can try it out: <a href="https://www.kitchenful.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.kitchenful.com</a>.<p>By helping people to eat better <i>and</i> save time and energy on meal planning and grocery shopping, we believe we can help them feel better and have more energy for family, friends, work, and hobbies.<p>We’d love to hear about your own experiences with cooking at home throughout the week and discovering new dishes. Any ideas/feedback/questions you might have about what we’re building are more than welcome! Thank you!
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: I used to have better time googling in the past. I struggle to find things I remember finding in the past using google. I think I might be stuck in some old habits of googling and I've lost touch with modern google.<p>For example, google seems to want full sentences instead of just keywords now. "How do I do X?" seems to get me better(?) results then "X + some relevant keyword". But I can't seem to get past this "most popular responses" google things I need. I do appreciate youtube videos marked at certain times but watching video isn't always what I want to do.
Tangentially, has youtube search been integrated to youtube search or something now? I used to be able to search obscure music in youtube. "Sal dulu a" would both recommend "Sal dulu antasma" and list it but now unless i search for that particularly, it doesn't show up.<p>Any pro tips on how to google (or use search engines) like a modern human would be appreciated. Or modern version of google dorking (which also seems to not work like it used to for me). Thank you.
Upvote: | 755 |
Title: I am looking to learn more about 3d printing and how to create things for my place. I also would like to learn a little about Unity 3d programming.<p>I am curious what skill you want to learn in the coming year?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: Or to elaborate: how does one make time for it all? I understand that this might sound trite and a 'normal' existential crisis in a cliched way but I am genuinely interested in figuring out how people go about deciding what to do with their time? Is it all about one's job or family? How does one balance the pleasures and stimulation of good art in the way of books, movies, tv, music, games, etc alongside more rigorous dives into subjects that might interest one (and potentially not be related much or altogether to one's profession fortunately/unfortunately) such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, literary theory, etc as well as producing one's own 'art' whatever that might be? Add to this concerns such as volunteering, a social life, taking care of one's physical and mental well being, fulfilling obligations to those around us, paying at least some attention to world events, etc. As a person with eclectic tastes/interests, limited time to pursue them and a finite (atleast last time I checked) lifespan, I have found it increasingly difficult to figure out how to spend my time and seem to end up with an overall feeling of being overwhelmed and settling for the easiest activity at the time. Is it just a question of time management and prioritization?<p>As a person who is moving from the 'conventional studies' portion of their life to that portion which consists more of 'work' and when people increasingly enter into more serious relationships and make important life decisions such as marriage,children,etc, and is also increasingly aware of the paucity of time and what one can possibly do with it, I wanted to hear people's take on how they manage it all or have learned to manage it over time. I understand that making the most of one's life is a relatively common concern and that answers to this question can be wide ranging and often verge on the abstract but I am open to all manner of answers ranging from the practical to the philosophical. Keeping in mind the typical audience on here, it seemed like a question worth asking.
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER,
your location, and whether remote work is a possibility.<p>Bonsai (YC W16) (<a href="https://www.hellobonsai.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.hellobonsai.com</a>) offers freelance contracts, proposals, invoices, etc.
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format:<p><pre><code> Location:
Remote:
Willing to relocate:
Technologies:
Résumé/CV:
Email:
</code></pre>
Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities.<p>Searchers: try <a href="https://seisvelas.github.io/hn-candidates-search/" rel="nofollow">https://seisvelas.github.io/hn-candidates-search/</a> or <a href="https://hirehackernews.com/" rel="nofollow">https://hirehackernews.com/</a>.
Upvote: | 101 |
Title: Please state the location and include REMOTE, INTERNS and/or VISA
when that sort of candidate is welcome. When remote work is <i>not</i> an option,
include ONSITE.<p>Please only post if you personally are part of the hiring company—no
recruiting firms or job boards. Only one post per company. If it isn't a household name,
please explain what your company does.<p>Commenters: please don't reply to job posts to complain about
something. It's off topic here.<p>Readers: please only email if you are personally interested in the job.<p>Searchers: try <a href="https://kennytilton.github.io/whoishiring/" rel="nofollow">https://kennytilton.github.io/whoishiring/</a>,
<a href="https://hnhired.com/" rel="nofollow">https://hnhired.com/</a>, <a href="https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com" rel="nofollow">https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com</a>, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313519" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313519</a>.<p>Don't miss these other fine threads:<p><i>Who wants to be hired?</i> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29405054" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29405054</a><p><i>Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?</i> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29405055" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29405055</a>
Upvote: | 304 |
Title: Whenever i am trying to google a code issue i have, there is countless low quality sites just showing SO threads with no added value whatsoever.
It is so annoying it actually drives me mad.<p>Does anyone know what's up with that?<p>I am really disappointed because the guys creating these sites (i guess for some kind of monetization) must have some relation to coding. But i feel this is an attack against all of us. Every programmer should be grateful for the opportunity to find good quality content quickly. Now my search results are flooded with copy & paste from SO.
They are killing that.<p>Am I the only one experiencing this or being that annoyed by it?<p>P.S: I don't name URLs because if you don't know what I am talking about already, you probably don't have that issue.
Upvote: | 594 |
Title: I am considering buying a house or multi family property here in CA and would like to know what sources for real estate statistics you are all using, and what your thoughts are on what the best, unbiased sources are to do your homework? I do not want to rely on what realtors say as they always say "the market is going up" and "pay cash over asking price".
Upvote: | 47 |
Title: Enjoy reading today's date from either direction!<p>Edit: thanks to taneliv for noticing it works both ways! (original post only showed one way)
Upvote: | 83 |
Title: By personal start page, I mean a custom-made web page that you would set as the home page in your browser and use it as the starting point of doing things in the browser.<p>I'm considering building something with Next.js or Gatsby that I can self-host, but I'd love suggestions of the most customizable tools that would allow me to quickly integrate data "widgets" from diverse sources like Nextcloud, Fastmail, RSS readers (Inoreader, maybe), CalDAV, bank accounts, etc.
Upvote: | 147 |
Title: I seem to recall that Google consistently produced relevant results and strictly respected search operators in 2005 (?), unlike the modern Google. And back then, I think search results were the same for everyone, rather than being customized for each user.
Upvote: | 398 |
Title: Finding it a bit hard to separate the noise from the signal when it comes to learning web design/UI/UX. I'm looking to level up enough to be able to use design tools well + have an intuition for good vs bad design + be able to (hopefully) design well myself. Please assume I'm a complete noob. thanks in advance HN!
Upvote: | 197 |
Title: "Google couldn’t verify this account belongs to you."<p>I clear cookies once in a while and usually can recover my account but this time, no option to recover:
https://i.imgur.com/vb1mliN.png<p>Even if I have the correct login and password.<p>Luckily, I forward all my emails to a 3rd party so I should still be able to read my new mail but I lost access to a lot of other stuff.<p>Edit: Account recovered. I used chromium to login (which I never do) and then back to Firefox.
Upvote: | 150 |
Title: Hey HN,<p>I know some of you have been down this road already. My dad is 86, my mum is 79 and my dad refuses to leave his house until he dies. It's our family home from when I was growing up, 2 stories and my dad currently crawls his way up the stairs each day to use his computer. He won't even consider moving down to the first floor (stubborn).<p>I have my own young family and my partner and I have jobs, so I'm basically looking for how you juggled your way through this part of life and if you have any pointers. I'm 41 btw.
Upvote: | 291 |
Title: Hi Hacker News! We’re Gokul, Dhanush, and Pete from Demigod (<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/demigod/id1501287553" rel="nofollow">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/demigod/id1501287553</a>). We were inspired by atomic habits to build a system for progressing towards your goals.<p>We help you be more effective with your time by adding habits and tasks to your calendar. We pair that with data reports, sharing with friends, and a professional coach in the loop to review and reset goals.<p>While working on an earlier version of our startup with unstructured time, ambitious goals, and an uncertain path, we realized getting started and being consistent with creative projects is daunting. We needed a system to guarantee consistent progress and avoid random procrastinating. We found James Clear’s Atomic Habits [1] and it just clicked.<p>With the pandemic and shutdown, everyone’s regular routines were thrown off. We were forced to think about what we had been doing and if it resonated with our real goals versus what addiction engineering [2] was prescribing. We took the chance to rebuild our system with intention.<p>We’re starting with the Calendar (a first order approximation of how you spend your time). We’re adding levers to make it easy to be intentional with your time and hit goals. We begin by prompting you to plan your day. We add weekly data summaries with habit progress data to help visualize progress. We also include friend challenges and completion wagers for accountability. Finally, we offer a weekly call with a coach to review your data and plan your next week. (<a href="https://youtu.be/qKqGLhOZmfE" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/qKqGLhOZmfE</a>)<p>Setting goals, seeing progress, and making material changes to your external reality are crucial for your wellbeing. This is how we've designed the experience:<p>Step 1: Describe your objectives - Set up comfortable daily flow (personalized onboarding call available)
Step 2: Add your calendar - Link all of your calendar account and swipe through your day with the slick controls
Step 3: Add habits you want to cultivate - for example: sleep schedule, reading, meditation, deep work/emails, exercise, planning sessions, or just having free time.
Step 4: Make them easy - Start with the smallest unit of progress for each habit you create. Shape your environment, stack habits, and reward completions.
Step 5: Set up your system - Add you friends for accountability to build durable streaks. Weekly check-ins to increment, decrement, remove, or create habits. Easy resets for when you fall off.<p>Our first engineering challenge was adding complex metrics for goal tracking into a functional calendar. Our vision for the future is that everyone will have a context aware conversational assistant that is proactive rather than reactive. We think that the rapid advances in generative language models like GPT-3 will power a new way of interacting with our data and devices.<p>We’re excited to share what we’ve been building with you! We want to hear about the systems you use to get organized and stay productive. Let us know any other thoughts or ideas, and we’ll be active in the comments today.<p>[1] <a href="https://expertprogrammanagement.com/2018/11/book-summary-atomic-habits-clear/" rel="nofollow">https://expertprogrammanagement.com/2018/11/book-summary-ato...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://twitter.com/naval/status/1084739181593559040?s=20" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/naval/status/1084739181593559040?s=20</a>
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: Got an email from eBay this morning:<p>"
Hello brokeninfinity,
We wanted to let you know that your eBay account has been permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk. We understand that this must be frustrating, but this decision was not made lightly and it’s important that we keep our marketplace safe for everyone. Learn more about how and why accounts can be suspended...
"<p>I'm a long time, infrequent eBay user, mostly buy stuff, 331 stars, 100% feedback rating. Haven't used eBay recently, no idea what just happened. Maybe someone was trying to hack my account? The suspension email has no reply address. I tried contact eBay through their web chat, and they say 'Sorry Scott, live support's currently unavailable.'<p>I guess I'll stop using eBay now. The summary execution with no explanation and no escalation path and no appeal is not endearing. Count me added to the chorus of folks calling for regulations that will eliminate this sort of abusive behavior against consumers. We need some sort of 'due process' required of companies that operate above a certain scale. I mean, I shudder to think of the position I would be in right now if I depended on eBay for anything important. Thank goodness for me that I do not, but not everyone can say the same.<p>What do you think?
Upvote: | 211 |
Title: Hello.<p>This year I dived into UI/UX area and at the same time I work as a web developer. I sincerely love making good UI. But at my full time job it's not always possible due to different reasons =\<p>So I've been posting random UI/UX staff on Twitter, then I made a free book that had 50 tips (posted it here as well).<p>I decided to finish this year by collecting everything I learned and here it is: <a href="https://akcium.gumroad.com/l/ui-ux-tips" rel="nofollow">https://akcium.gumroad.com/l/ui-ux-tips</a>.<p>This time it's a paid one. But, you can check ~20 pages of it, just go to <a href="https://akcium.gumroad.com/l/ui-ux-tips-sample" rel="nofollow">https://akcium.gumroad.com/l/ui-ux-tips-sample</a>, put 0 in the price and download it for free.<p>I tried to illustrate almost every tip and provide some additional links.<p>This is especially useful for devs and founders who cannot afford a designer or just want to make their UI look decent.
Upvote: | 198 |
Title: Shopify uses a modular monolith architecture built with Ruby on Rails and MySQL.<p>2021 was their biggest Black Friday Cyber Monday Together with the Google Cloud infrastructure team, they achieved near-perfect uptime while averaging ~30TB/min of egress traffic across our infrastructure. That’s a massive ~43PB/day!<p>Here are some of the most interesting stats<p>https://twitter.com/ShopifyEng/status/1465806691543531525
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: Hi HN!<p>During the last few years, I worked on a few applications built with Go, running on AWS Lambda.<p>As I got to know the platform better, I started to find Go & Lambda to be a really productive combination. The applications were fast, and they ended up being much cheaper to run than what my team & I had built before. It’s probably not the best platform for _every_ application, but I was surprised at how much of our workload worked well on it.<p>As we brought new engineers on to our team and helped them get up to speed with the stack, I found that we were covering a lot of the same topics over and over — especially things like performance, testing and monitoring. Since this knowledge turned out to be very useful for our team, I decided to gather it into a book that will hopefully also be useful to others.<p>This is my first time putting something like this together, so I'm grateful for any feedback!<p>The book is at: https://kevinmcconnell.gumroad.com/l/lambda-go-book/hn (with HN discount ;))<p>There's also a link on that page to a free sample that you can download without registering.<p>Thanks!<p>Cheers,
Kevin
Upvote: | 103 |
Title: Can’t make myself do anything anymore<p>Im not achieving anything, no matter how hard i try<p>On my 6th month of doing barely anything and it’s already December<p>I’m regretting that i didn’t use the time to achieve something meaningful<p>I have money, yet i’m miserable and unhappy<p>I feel ashamed of being that guy who is always depressed, angry and sad<p>All i dream of to make a contribution and make an impact<p>Yet i struggle to find anyone who needs my help<p>I’m thinking my (dead) grandparents would be embarrassed of me being such a loser<p>I’m trying all my best to be a good person, yet i’m still not good enough for myself<p>I used to think it’s not that bad: i’m not hungry, have a warm place to stay and guaranteed inheritance<p>Yet, i feel like i’m a useless parasite, nothing i do brings joy to me
Upvote: | 72 |
Title: will only do 3 sites (in a span of 180 minutes); will do max 5 pages per site. Post link in comments, feel free to link ANY site, it doesn't necessarily need to be yours.<p>(i'll reply with Netlify links to the redesigned, chaotically-coded, static pages)<p>!for fun!
Upvote: | 54 |
Title: I am looking for a comprehensive resource on data visualization. There are many individual resources that have been posted over the years (such as in blog posts). However, as a non-expert I am not sure which advice is good to follow (e.g., many blogs are published by companies trying to sell me a particular product or package).<p>Not sure if the book is the ideal format for this, but it seems to have the highest chance of being competent, unbiased and comprehensive. For the latter point, I think important topics are<p>- Colors and accessibility<p>- Concrete examples of color schemes<p>- Pros and Cons of different visualizations vis-à-vis data<p>- Print versus digital<p>- Fonts and layout considerations<p>- Perhaps short insights into the research on these points<p>But perhaps there are other things not on my radar that are current or interesting?
Upvote: | 105 |
Title: I'm getting on (I'm nearly 50) - not a software dev (thank god) but more a project manager. I do a lot of the "knitting together" type work between developers, UX people, designers, content owners, etc.<p>Until recently, we used to do things like write cheatsheets and other help docs for our clients for tools like Google Analytics. This was all fine, and they were appreciated, as clients just don't know how to use these tools.<p>But recently, the rate of change has just made this untenable. I'd log into a tool like GA and the whole thing would be different. Not just the upgrade to 4, but then incremental changes there, too. So cheatsheets, training workshops, anything around support - just becomes untenable.<p>Another example: I log into Teamwork (my project management tool of choice) - and they're "retiring" the plan I've been on (and very happy with) for years. Instead I have to choose "Growth" and now my dashboard is littered with a whole bunch of stuff I neither want or need. Nothing is where I'm used to it being.<p>And: we do a bunch of work with Wordpress. The rate of change here is insane, too - every single update brings new features, none of which is documented, bedded in or understood. None of which can be written about, supported or workshopped.<p>And: Trello. It was fine. And then Atlassian bought it and it became this horrific behemoth of "features", all of which just clutter everything up, none of which seems to actually do anything useful.<p>And on, and on.<p>Is this rate of change supportable? Am I just too old? Help me put this in context, HN!
Upvote: | 513 |
Title: Like anyone else these days, I am spending 8 hours for work, couple of hours for entertainment and social in front of the monitor. As I age I can see the stress and strain on my eyes. No issues as of now but I want to take care of them before anything happens.<p>Couple of things I am doing right now. During the day, moved to single monitor and immediately noticed less strain on the eyes and neck. During night started spending at least couple of minutes in a room(not bedroom) with out any major light source either meditating or chatting with partner, it provides major relief.<p>What tactics are you following and any resources which talks about practical eye health.
Upvote: | 153 |
Title: I knew Google's automated processes were pretty bad from earlier stories here, but today I got hit by it myself.<p>I participated in the totally legit EthGlobal "Hack Money" hackathon (<a href="https://hackathon.money/" rel="nofollow">https://hackathon.money/</a>) earlier this year and one of required submissions of that event was a video describing your work.
I made one and uploaded it to Youtube. The hackathon went great and we won some prizes but that's not relevant to this story.<p>Yesterday evening I received an email from Youtube that they've removed my channel because "Spam, scams or commercially deceptive content are not allowed on YouTube.".<p>I thought this certainly must be an error so I used the attached appeal link and got a response within less than 15 minutes that they appeal has been rejected and that no further replies will be processed.<p>I am a paid Youtube Music subscriber and I can't login to even listen to my own music anymore. Amazing.<p>I would like to think that Google's AI systems are smarter than just videoTitle.contains("hack") && videoTitle.contains("money"), but apparently not.<p>If anybody has connections who can help get me unsuspended that would be highly appreciated. The google cache of my channel is still available here:
<a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gcYJ--i6UYgJ:https://www.youtube.com/c/MathijsVogelzang+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gcYJ--...</a>
Upvote: | 639 |
Title: Life is too short to read crummy books. So after reading the review on Blade Runner 2049 which touched on PKD and Nabokov I have decided get <i>Pale Fire</i>. I am curious what you would recommend on top of that (I was also planning to get <i>A Confederacy of Dunces</i>). That said, take a penny leave a penny, if you haven’t read <i>A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again</i> or Gibsons’ <i>Neuromancer</i>, try and make time. They’re exquisite!
Upvote: | 66 |
Title: As of Oct 2021, the inflation rate is 6.2% and it can get worse. In this unusual environment, what should founders do to protect their personal savings and startup cash from the inflation while also maintaining liquidity?
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: My partner was diagnosed with a rare condition/disease with unclear cause/pathology.<p>I feel like it would be impossible for a doctor to stay abreast of all of the possible links/data unless they focused very narrowly on a patient.<p>I'd like to try and fill that gap - look at the data and relay any potential links/causes to the providers.<p>We have the full genome in CRAM, CRAI, FASTQ, VCF, and TBI data - is there a way that me, a medical layman but well informed person could leverage this data to mine for possible matching genetic variants?<p>e.g. I have started finding genes associated with my partner's condition in the NCBI website and the ClinVar Miner (https://clinvarminer.genetics.utah.edu/variants-by-condition)<p>Is it sufficient to identify variants by searching for the SNP string (e.g. "rsXXXXXX") in the VCF file?<p>Are there "hacker's guide to genomic analysis" resources out there?
Upvote: | 262 |
Title: Hi HN folks,<p>I was browsing Aaron's blog [<a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve" rel="nofollow">http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve</a>] when I noticed the footer links out to <a href="http://theinfo.org/" rel="nofollow">http://theinfo.org/</a> (last updated March 2008). However, none of the links are still alive, and I couldn't find any pages that were backed up on Archive.org.<p>I figured this would be the best place to ask - does anyone have an archive of these pages?
Upvote: | 141 |
Title: Apart from network effect, and Google's Ad Monopoly, what does YT have that has made it a clear winner in this field? What would a competitor need to take on them?
Upvote: | 134 |
Title: Why do we even have status pages anymore.
Upvote: | 148 |
Title: Let's say I found a way to bring back the number of dislikes of YT videos. Knowing that some YT devs are on the platform, I'd be reluctant to share it so that they won't know about it [0] and ruin the already-ruined YT experience. It shouldn't be like this, I know. But I've lost hope in the well-intentions of some devs in the industry. I thought we were supposed to have each other's back, but apparently money makes people do anything.<p>[0]: At least for quite some time.<p>Edit: By "well-intentions" and "having each-other's back", I mean devs doing something that most devs would enjoy, not making each other's life harder. Going back to my <i>example</i>: As a dev, how many times have you watched a YT tutorial to sharpen your skills? Now w/o the dislikes count, all devs have a much harder time filtering useless videos. Whoever removed the dislike count on YT has caused millions of wasted hour-man. Then again, if they're paid well, many devs would do the same.
Upvote: | 253 |
Title: I'm curious about what most professional developers are using these days, from languages to deployment, and what they're building with it.<p>There's a lot to choose from and it seems like a few are really taking the lead. Maybe I'm biased but I prefer TypeScript, React w/ Styled Components, and PostgreSQL, all of which seem to be pretty dominant. TypeDoc is also really nice for generating clean documentation from type definitions and comments, and Jest for both front-end and back-end unit tests. I usually deploy (static) progressive web apps to Netlify and APIs to Heroku, but I'll probably try Render next.<p>If you're like me, you probably like to keep things to a minimum, optimized for a specific purpose without any bloat or unnecessary loose ends. I've built many different apps over the years and found myself repeating the same core functionality for each of them, each with their own slightly different stack and implementation as tools and ecosystems have evolved. I'd imagine this is the case for most experienced developers who enjoy building things from the ground up, without becoming dependent on an elaborate framework.<p>Last Friday I launched a project called Molecule.dev which aims to provide developers (and professional teams especially) with the most solid foundation possible for full-stack apps, skipping all of the most common tedious core functionality. It was originally built for my own purposes, but I've decided to provide it as a sort of "Foundation as a Service". Maybe there's a better way to classify it, but it isn't really a framework. It's a highly specialized codebase designed for the task at hand, complete with thorough documentation, tests, and guides, something I wish I had readily available when building apps over the years, as it would have saved me thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars.<p>Sorry for the (not so) thinly veiled advertisement, but I absolutely need feedback to turn Molecule.dev into something people actually want, and HN is probably the best place to get it. I think there is a lot of potential here.
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: Does the Easel programming language still exist and is it supported? I’m just curious, because I worked with it in 1994 at Sears. The last I’ve heard very few people supported it at the company that owned it.<p>It was event driven but not object oriented. By that I mean, code was executed based on responses from a control like a push button or when text was entered in a text area. You would have click responses to a button that would execute code written for that button. That’s why it was considered event driven. It wasn’t object oriented because it didn’t have classes. We used it for a marketing system at Sears for many years and I was wondering if the language still existed.
Upvote: | 75 |
Title: Many companies, particularly in the tech scene seem to have high expectations of their employees. These expectations go far beyond skills or shared ethics into fuzzier areas such as cultural values. In some cases a companies attempt to architect their own sub-culture and expect staff to follow.<p>There's been a few high profile cases of quite senior staff in companies standing down recently after they've expressed an opinion in the public forum that didn't align with that of the company (e.g. Google).<p>Diametrically opposed to this, there's been situations in which a large number of the staff have collectively challenged the company itself (e.g. the Netflix walkout).<p>I thought it might be interesting to ask, day-to-day, to what extent do you feel free to express yourself where you work, do you perfectly align with the companies chosen culture, and how important is this to you?
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: I'm a pretty senior IT individual in Scandinavia.<p>I've been looking for a job that suits me, a meaningful and/or interesting job, in what many call a "hot" market, and I'm at a stage where I wonder if it's raining only on me. Many would say I have unmatchable standards. When in fact, I believe my ask is fairly basic.<p>For starters, many recruiters/employers seem to get stuck on a keyword in my profile, or lack of a keyword, and want someone to help out with said keyword. It's enough to ask a simple question as "why <keyword>?" that they freeze. "What do you mean why should we X? Because that's what everyone does, because otherwise our employers will not find it cool here and leave, etc"<p>I get that teams want to redo their tech stack at times, but if they don't specifically ask for it, nor does the product/company have plans to expand/grow, then why create unnecessary work? Hire for boring maintenance. Many are happy to do just that. But more work will not make your people happier. It's just maniac managers creating work for them to manage with tech they don't understand.<p>Sometimes you like the hiring manager (which is important!) and go to the next interview only to find out that the hiring manager is actually about to leave soon, or that the manager is 100% misaligned with the team/product.<p>Sometimes you go through the entire process, get a really good offer, and they ghost you.<p>Sometimes they throw at you some shitty challenge, exactly like a school exam where they test your memory and obedience, but not your abilities.<p>Sometimes they talk so much about fit fit fit, but they don't even bother with a personality or IQ test (which as a former hiring manager, I find very valuable because it allows you to balance the team, not because you see how high/low people score).<p>Sometimes you rephrase your entire pitch to highlight what you want to do next, but nobody reads that, their eyes still fall on stupid keywords.<p>Sometimes they think you're a good match, but they dig and dig only to find something that doesn't fit, and then you catch them red-handed: actually a former employer left and now they hire for a replacement, and they are looking for the exact set of skills. A clone. Because a clone will be so happy to replace the quitter... That's some fine logic right there! Not.<p>Sometimes you get the job and when you start rolling questions and ideas, you get a "talk to the hand" followed by "that's now what you're here for". Why hire a senior person as a poster, if you're not willing to be challenged and listen to different ideas? Nobody is asking you to agree, just play ball with convincing arguments. Too much of an ask, I guess.<p>I have worked and hired at times some of the nicest, most loyal, most engaged people I'll ever know - almost none of them checked all the boxes. I hired for potential. One of them even confessed years later "I'm baffled why did you take me in without a test, knowing that I don't know the tech stack, etc". Because you had mega potential, and you exceeded everyone's expectations in the end!<p>Almost nobody seems to hire for potential these days! Everyone wants to be different, by doing the exact same thing as everyone else, and then complain that they can't find good people.<p>Am I the only one in this dark movie? Am I the only "unlucky" software engineer?
Upvote: | 91 |
Title: Due to the recent Play Store changes you can no longer "add text or images that indicate store performance or ranking, or suggest relations to existing Google Play programs in the app title" [1].
You can't, for example, add "#1", "best" or "free". However, you can't also add "no ads".<p>To be precise: appending "[small, no ads]", "[no ads]" or "[without ads]" to the play store app title causes a rejection. I didn't want to test more in fear of banning, and in the end removed it.
I know you can see if an app contains ads in the app page, but not in the search results... or at least not yet, but I doubt Google will add that indication.<p>[1] <a href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9898684" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...</a>
Upvote: | 361 |
Title: I'm at the beginning of my software dev career, and as I didn't go to school for anything related (B.Sc. Chemistry), I feel like I really would like to have the fundamentals of CS down. Doubly so as I would like to go into the field of VR, and right now I'm working on my own toy rendering engine, which I feel is really exposing my lack of knowledge...<p>Anyways, any suggestions welcome. Ideally it'd be more digestible than just a plain textbook but I'm open to anything. I imagine either way it'll be a tough but great read to work through :)
Upvote: | 253 |
Title: if not alternatives
1) good for windows Linux and double boot (I have acer and is really painful install linux)
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: I've been checking in on this page [0] frequently since the recent us-east-1 outage.<p>The outage was significant and had many unexpected knock-on effects for us - despite most of our instances being in a totally separate region - so just wondering what happened.<p>Any idea how long these post-mortems typically take to be published?<p>Thanks.<p>[0] https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/technology/pes/
Upvote: | 69 |
Title: Not really sure where the good freelance and part-time software gigs are these days.<p>Upwork feels like a sh* show. There is Topal but you have to jump through all their hoops. Is there anything else where the platform doesn't keep a % and you can just find good, wholesome freelance work?<p>Where are you finding them?
Upvote: | 77 |
Title: My son got into an accident last August and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury that left him hospitalized for months.<p>In that time, I received an email from AWS warning me that my account had been hacked.<p>It goes without saying that I didn't check my emails daily when my son was dying.<p>That very small account (*$20/month) turned into several thousand dollars.<p>I contacted AWS for assistance. Although they acknowledged that my account had been hacked, they refused to waive the bill and demanded full payment.<p>If you were in my position, what would you do?
Upvote: | 76 |
Title: What are your favorite nonfiction books of 2021 (Read in 2021)?
Upvote: | 71 |
Title: Back in the 1980s I used to read Omni magazine. In the 90s, it was magazines like Wired, Mondo 2000, and Boing Boing. These all presented views of the future that I found interesting and (mostly) hopeful - even if a good percentage of their articles had no basis in reality.<p>Today, they're all gone or nothing like what they used to be.<p>What magazines, blogs, podcast, etc. do you use to discover possible positive future technologies?
Upvote: | 102 |
Title: What is your favorite thing that was built to last? This is, perhaps, a cheesy country song that speaks to the idea https://youtu.be/E4i2fC1U38s . Is "built to last" an obsolete notion? As for me, I still have my father's old original Vise Grip https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/machines_12.html .
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: Growing up I always enjoyed tech and was excited for all the problems tech can solve and all the improvements it can make and has made in my life. However, recently I had to check-in into a doctors office using a 3rd party software and the process is incredibly worse for the patient. Normally, I walk in, tell them my name and sit down. Now on my phone, I have to enter my DOB, answer a few questions, "Accept" some consent forms every time. They will not see me if I don't use the system. Then, at the end I am greeted with an advertisement for a medication.<p>Another one, recently had to call comcast as they were charging my parents $70 for what they are offering for $20, I play the call of "i want to cancel it is too expensive, AT&T cheaper". They recently "improved" their phone bot and added some "amazing" features. I am saying I want to cancel service/speak to customer service, and this thing goes and tells me it is restarting my modem.......then for the next 15 minutes I cannot reach anyone at comcast because my modem is restarting, every time I call I was getting, "We are restarting your modem call us back later GOODBYE!"......I swear things like this just make me want to go live off-grid somewhere.
Upvote: | 305 |
Title: Important is subjective, what is important to you?
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: I recall early in my software development career Borland have a strong hold in the developer tool space (and largely loved by developers). What happened to them? They were the “JetBrains” of their day.
Upvote: | 213 |
Title: Long time HN lurker, don't ever feel that I have anything that important to add.<p>I go on LinkedIn and I wan't to cry. Why so much fake enthusiasm ?<p>Do you use LinkedIn and what are your thoughts ?
Upvote: | 96 |
Title: Hi HN,<p>How would you approach the process to opensource a proprietary codebase, especially regarding things such as ensuring that no secrets are sitting somewhere in the history.<p>I'd be tempted to publish without history but I feel like a lot of important context will be lost.
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: I have owned a .com for 7+ years, a new company who has only been around for <2 years registered the .net 2 years ago and now threaten for me to handover my .com or they will sue<p>I have received a cease and desist letter from a law firm via email.<p>They claim as they client registered a trademark two years ago for the name, I must handover my .com domain to them for free, otherwise they will sue me.<p>For them not to sue me, because they have now registered trademark (even though I had the .com domain and was using it 7+ years before them)<p>They state from their solicitor that I must do all the following (long letter they sent me but here is the title/headings):<p><pre><code> 1. Cessation of Use of the Mark.
2. Abandonment of Rights
3. Future Trademark Applications
4. Transfer of Domain Names
5. Acknowledgement of Ownership and No Challenge
6. Mutual Release
7. Covenant Not to Sue
8. No Outstanding or Known Future Claims/Causes of Action
9. Acknowledgment of Settlement
10. Confidentiality of Agreement
11. Non-Disparagement
12. Agreement is Legally Binding
13. Entire Agreement
14. New or Different Facts: No Effect
15. Interpretation
16. Governing Law and Submission to Jurisdiction
17. Equitable Relief
18. Reliance on Own Counsel
19. Counterparts
20. Authority to Execute Agreement
</code></pre>
They sent this just email today, but state that I must do all of this within 3 days.<p><pre><code> "[Company Name] further demands that you provide, by no later than the close of business Pacific Standard Time on December 15, 2021, written confirmation that you will comply with these demands. You are specifically advised that any failure or delay in complying with these demands will likely compound the damages for which you may be liable. If [Company Name] does not receive a satisfactory and timely response, [Company Name] is prepared to take all steps necessary to protect [Company Name]'s valuable intellectual property rights, without further notice to you.
The above is not an exhaustive statement of all the relevant facts and law.
[Company Name] expressly reserves all of its legal and equitable rights and remedies, including the right to seek injunctive relief and recover monetary damages."
</code></pre>
Is this correct? Sounds ridiculous to me.<p>If anything I would have thought they should be the ones changing their name, as I was using the name 7+ years before them with a similar product
Upvote: | 409 |
Title: Hi HN, I'd love to buy a smart watch for 50$ or less that'll allow me to develop my own apps.<p>Looks like Google is coming out with Wear OS 3 soon, so I don't want to invest any real money in a Watch until then
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: Code is an awesome book, especially for someone like me who never went to college. I am looking for similar books not just in Computer Science but in other fields as well. Please suggest.
Upvote: | 110 |
Title: I have observed the language they are using to ask for donations has become increasingly pleading, borderline begging. I am a frequent donor, but I haven't logged into Wikipedia account on my mobile. Every time I open any article on mobile, it shows a popup asking me to donate. Nowadays, it has even started showing a counter of how many 'free' articles I have read so far. Is Wikimedia foundation destitute? Why are they pushing to get capital so fervently? Are people who handle the money just looking to make themselves rich?
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: I like watching 30-to-90 minute videos to learn about some new domain, and I feel like YouTube videos could have less fillers than Netflix documentaries in that duration range.<p>Examples of videos I watched and would recommend to anyone no matter their expertise:<p>* The Secret Life of the Electric light: <a href="https://youtu.be/W79s0PsHhDc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/W79s0PsHhDc</a><p>* Fun to Imagine with Richard Feynman: <a href="https://youtu.be/P1ww1IXRfTA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/P1ww1IXRfTA</a><p>* A mind-expanding tour of the cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson: <a href="https://youtu.be/AyAK3QBnMGQ" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/AyAK3QBnMGQ</a><p>* The magic of chemistry with Andrew Szydlo: <a href="https://youtu.be/0g8lANs6zpQ" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/0g8lANs6zpQ</a><p>* The Beauty of Bézier Curves: <a href="https://youtu.be/aVwxzDHniEw" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/aVwxzDHniEw</a><p>* All about musical scales: <a href="https://youtu.be/Vq2xt2D3e3E" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Vq2xt2D3e3E</a><p>* Woodturning a modern chess set: <a href="https://youtu.be/bmTcWoXTxi4" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/bmTcWoXTxi4</a><p>* How Imaginary Numbers Were Invented: <a href="https://youtu.be/cUzklzVXJwo" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/cUzklzVXJwo</a>
Upvote: | 54 |
Title: The HN homepage has five ranks colored black rather than gray. Currently this is "Learning how to ride a bike", "Log4j: Between a rock and a hard place", "How to train your decision-making AIs", "Carolina Gold was once the most popular rice grown in America (2019)", and "Packaging for instant coffee made out of seaweed". It seems to follow the story, e.g. the bike story was #12 before and now it's #13: the color moved with it. They do not have in common a recent/old submission time, high/low score, or high/low comments.<p>The HTML difference is `<font color="black">$rank</font>` being inserted around the rank.<p>It also shows up in incognito mode with the same ones colored black, so I don't think it's account-related.<p>(Some rambling follows, I'm not actually serious about a secret hidden meaning, just a toy idea. Most likely it's something like low comment downvotes to attract attention to the story.)<p>My first thought was that the numbers had a hidden meaning as a puzzle or respect, maybe someone died who invented the equivalent of a Fibonacci sequence. Looking in the OEIS, 1,4,6,12,18 did not mean anything obvious (http://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C4%2C6%2C12%2C18). Then I noticed the numbers changed... but not pseudorandomly, but with the stories, so it seems that the numbers are irrelevant. Is it about the title? If you read the first title character of each, you get LCHPL. If you read the 1st character of the first, the 2nd character of the 2nd, etc., you get LAWKN. Not yet seeing that hidden meaning.<p>Edit: To everyone saying a hot indicator, I thought of that and it doesn't seem to make sense. E.g. go to page 3 and observe this one being black:<p>> 4 points by [user] 7 hours ago<p>There are currently (22:47 UTC) actually 3 black on the third page, which seems a bit inconsistent with what I saw earlier (earlier: first page had 4, next page had 1, next page had 0).
Upvote: | 110 |
Title: For many months if not years I've been thinking about sharing knowledge I have. That's natural order of things of course, but because of limited opportunities of face to face contacts I didn't really have a chance to listen to people's problems and challenges. I work as full time software engineer, but also I do a lot of experiments and side projects. Because of that I've accumulated lots of different impressions and perspectives.<p>So I'm asking here: what would you like to read about, what are your current doubts about programming in general or related to dreaded by many subject of JavaScript and frontend frameworks. Is there any 'next level' you'd like to reach?<p>This question can help many other people in situation similar to mine. Thanks!
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: You know what I'm talking about. Even at their best, the pop-ups for every single website to accept or choose cookies is ridicuous.<p>Can you imagine how much time in total we all lose to this?<p>And yet, these "solutions" to the data privacy questions have become widespread.<p>It's bad enough at normal times, let alone those who double triple quadruple bluff you into choosing the wrong setting.<p>This is a tech board.<p>Why have we all accepted this ridiculous situation?<p>Isn't there a better solution?
Upvote: | 445 |
Title: So I decide to build a windows 11 app. I already know some .NET and C/family from school and look through the source of C# and it doesn't seem too complicated.<p>However, building Windows apps is very complicated even when you know C++ or C#.<p>1. I wanted to build Windows 11 apps and I had to choose between Windows Forms, WinUI3, Win32 and WPF I think. I don't really know the difference between the 3 and no one really explains that (unless Win32 which is obvious).<p>2. Apparently, WUP is no longer recommended. A few years they were pushing it to the max. Bummer.<p>3. I installed Visual Studio overnight (it comes with all the tools that building apps need). It downloaded 6GB of data and used 20GB of storage. All i want to build is a hello world app.<p>4. I create a project following a guide from Microsoft.<p>5. The app is extremely resource heavy and way too over-featured. I build the boilerplate app and Run it and it takes minutes to build (most of the time is downloading dependencies so not such a big deal).<p>6. I open the newly created app in Sublime Text (my editor) and I can't find a way to build the app anymore.<p>7. Because Visual Studio is so bloated, I download Visual Studio Code, which is far more simple but I can still not figure out how to build my app even with the various extensions VS code boasts.<p>8. After hours of googling, I formulate a script that can build the app from the command-line.<p>9. But I stil don't know how to build the app as the .exe file created does not execute.<p>10. I'm very disappointed.<p>The worst of all is that there is not even one good guide on the whole clearnet on how to do develop a Hello World windows app from scratch.
Upvote: | 382 |
Title: I’m a bootstrapped founder of a SaaS product, working with an agency run by an ex-colleague of mine for development. The existing infrastructure is a React/Node/GraphQL FE + BE deployed via an ECS container on AWS.<p>We’re looking to make a pivot into a new product with a new infrastructure, and would like to make use of boilerplate as much as possible to focus on the core of what will be the MVP. That means not building from scratch the following elements:
- Auth
- Payments
- Hosting for FE + BE
- Database<p>We want to continue with our current tech stack on the FE + BE(React/Node). I’ve love to know people’s recommendations and what they’ve found to work in the past.
Upvote: | 57 |
Title: I ask this (as truly an open question, without knowing the answer) because of 2 recent posts on HN that got flagged, one a thought-provoking article by a Yale student titled "Abolish Yale", and the other about the California proposal to use the recently-novel "citizen deputization" legal techniques pioneered by Texas, but this time to restrict assault weapons.<p>The reason I ask this is because there appear to be a growing collection of topics that <i>are</i> interesting and deserving of debate, but because they are hot-button issues they often devolve into flame wars. I've been on the other side of this as well, where I commented that I flagged a DEI-focused article because, while I thought the topic itself was interesting, it seems comment threads on DEI topics <i>always</i> devolve into uninteresting flame wars, and that I rarely learn something new from these threads.<p>I didn't feel that about the 2 topics today that got flagged - indeed, there were a bunch of comments that let me to going down Wikipedia rabbit holes and I learned a ton, and for both of these topics the first I heard about them was on HN.<p>So my question to the HN community is whether you think there is some way (e.g. feature changes, "sub topics", etc.) to host these topics that seem fundamentally relevant to the HN audience, but which are so difficult to have debate about without getting flooded by low quality comments?
Upvote: | 76 |
Title: I've been using Backblaze for a few years for my home computer. You know how everyone keeps telling you, a backup is only a true backup once you've done at least one restore? Now I know why (silly me).<p>I just got a "Safety Freeze" error [1] - essentially some inconsistency with my backup. Backblaze will not tell me the actual cause of this inconsistency. It's possible that some data might be missing - Backblaze doesn't tell me though.<p>The only official solution is to <i>manually check all files</i> (millions in my case). I also can't download a full backup since Backblaze only allows downloads of up to 500GB at once. So my only option is to do a full hard drive restore, costing $189 + customs in Europe, so at the end probably closer to 300€. But even then I won't know if/which of my data was corrupted.<p>What bugs me is that the Backblaze desktop software should be able to resolve this - it should be possible to do a hash of all the files that are in the most recent backup, and cross-check it with the hashes of the files on my machine.<p>Not sure what I should do now.<p>Edit: This is the response from the Backblaze support:<p>> I apologize, but this [=manually checking all files] would in fact be the only sure fire way if you are concerned about any deleted files. There wouldn't be a way to compare hashes the way you describe in this case as that mechanism is simply not implemented into the Backblaze software. The Backblaze software is intended to prevent data loss. It would not be intended to be able to automatically cross reference local and server data against each other to display what is and is not backed up on our servers.<p>They can't be serious with this?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.backblaze.com/safety_frozen.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.backblaze.com/safety_frozen.html</a>
Upvote: | 203 |
Title: TL;DR: I am looking for a platform to distribute my dissertation research data collection Android app to ~50 adult study participants in the US. The most important features are the ability to quickly and reliably deliver app updates over one year, safety, affordability, and good UX (participants are non-technical Android users). I don't want to use Google Play Store.<p>To give you some context, for my dissertation project, I need to collect data using a custom Android research app installed on participants' phones for one year. The app requires a lot of permissions and continuously collects a lot of data. My colleagues discouraged me from using Play Store because Google banned their apps for no good reason and with no recourse, even though their research was approved by research ethics and human subject protections committees (IRB). This jeopardized their federally-funded studies and caused issues with their findings.<p>For this reason, I would like to distribute my app to ~50 adult study participants in the US using a different platform.<p>Four features are especially important to me. First, app updates need to be delivered reliably and relatively quickly over one year. Second, there can be no spyware, excessive tracking, unnecessary notifications, nudges to download other apps, and no annoying ads. Third, affordability is important because I would be paying for the distribution from my personal student savings. Finally, I would prefer a platform with good app update UX for non-technical users, including older adults.<p>So far, I have looked into APK Mirror, but according to their policy [1],<p><pre><code> > If your app is new, doesn't have a proven track record, and not
> unique, it will likely not be approved.
</code></pre>
I have also tried F-Droid, but at least on my Pixel 2 XL, updates of some apps downloaded from F-Droid often fail to install.<p>Would you have any recommendations on what other platforms I could look into?<p>Thank you.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.apkmirror.com/faq/#What_is_the_purpose_of_APKMirrorcom_What_APKs_are_accepted_I_just_uploaded_an_APK_but_it8217s_not_going_live" rel="nofollow">https://www.apkmirror.com/faq/#What_is_the_purpose_of_APKMir...</a>
Upvote: | 87 |
Title: I have in mind not things that take years to master and that you develop over a lifetime, like programming or playing the piano. But there are some practical skills that can be learned in a couple of hours and refreshed with an hour of practice every month or so, but that have a disproportionate return on investment.<p>Two examples of skills that I regularly find useful are classical lockpicking and knowing how to tie a variety of knots. The first has gotten me and friends out of jams when someone lost a key and got locked out, etc.; and if you don’t know knots you will never be able to tie a load tightly to the roof of your car.<p>What skills do you recommend that I add to my repertoire?
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: I used to browse around Medium when it was free. Now I find myself gravitating towards tech oriented sites like HackerNews. I miss reading broader content, like self improvement, professional development, history, culture, etc. Any suggestions for a place where I can casually read stuff like that?
Upvote: | 128 |
Title: evidences:<p>1. https://s3.laisky.com/uploads/2021/12/proton-1.jpg<p>2. https://s3.laisky.com/uploads/2021/12/proton-2.jpg<p>3. https://s3.laisky.com/uploads/2021/12/proton-3.jpg
Upvote: | 100 |
Title: We're an indie app that's trying to make it easier to make genuine new friends as an adult.<p>One month ago, Meta/FB restricted our app from using their Instagram API.<p>Reason? We failed to properly integrate a feature that we do not use at all! (FB Login)<p>We have appealed 7 times now, but all that happens is the appeal button becomed re-enabled after a few days and there is no response. Nothing. Zilch.<p>Has anyone managed to get through to an actual human? We have tens of thousands of users who are affected.<p>(For those who are curious, the app is https://www.we3app.com/)
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: I submitted Cloudflare's coding challenge over a month ago, and I've heard nothing since (and like, I get that there's a lot of applications, but if someone puts in the multiple hours to complete the coding challenge I feel like at least some feedback is warranted—especially given how involved the Cloudflare one is). Has anyone else experienced this with Cloudflare? Is this normal?
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: I woke up this morning to an email from YouTube stating that my channel is banned for repeated violations. They didn’t specify what I violated but it could be anything from copyright to hate speech.<p>Let me explain the content of all 5 videos on my 11 year + old channel.<p>1) a video of a squirrel that carried half a loaf of French bread along a fence and jumped into a tree. He dropped the bread during the jump but somehow managed to one hand/paw catch the bread and save it.<p>2) a friend of mine who was unable to ride a spring horse on a playground.<p>3)my son reacting to a scene from the movie hot rod(cool beans) this was a private video.<p>4) music video of my own music. No samples or other copyrighted material contained.
5) another music video also with no copyrighted material.<p>I submitted a request to the YouTube forum but I suspect that is a black hole where support requests go to die.<p>I’m not really all that upset and I have all the videos that are on the channel locally but the 1 strike you are banned seems awfully extreme. The fact that I wasn’t told that something was flagged or given any sort of heads up is really what bothers me. How can I get YouTubes attention?
Upvote: | 604 |
Title: I've been trying to switch from Chrome to Firefox as my primary browser, however I've noticed that Gmail and YouTube are unbearably slow in Firefox (no customizations). Other sites work perfectly fine.<p>Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any tips to fix?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: In the last 12 months we have seen the SolarWinds hack, the Microsoft Exchange Server data breach, and since Friday, Log4j. I'm reading an article on CNN about the US government's response to Log4j.<p>"Organizations are now in a race against time to figure out if they have computers running the vulnerable software that were exposed to the internet. Cybersecurity executives across government and industry are working around the clock on the issue."<p>""For most of the information technology world, there was no weekend," Rick Holland, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows, told CNN. "It was just another long set of days.""<p>The sysadmin subreddit is also full of professionals talking about the problem.<p>With so many large scale hacks, 0-days, and breaches happening these days, are cybersecurity professionals ok? Have studies about the mental health and anxiety levels of this group of professionals been conducted?
Upvote: | 106 |
Title: HN is full of intelligent respectful discourse, with tons of insight gained by reading the comments.<p>Is there anything similar to HN, that covers finance topics (such as markets, etc)?
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: something went haywire in crypto space
Upvote: | 56 |
Title: 95% of the value we get from Alexa is automatic turning on/off of lights and simple functions like cooking timers.<p>We've had Amazon Alexa for five years, since the gen 1 device, and now find it to be an increasing invasion to the sanctity of the home.<p>We find it particularly annoying that nowadays, when you ask Alexa to do something, several times per week it will suggest some annoying upsell crap you don't care about. It used to suggest things once per quarter tops, that was fine.<p>HN, what private alternatives to Alexa may exist?<p>For example, does anyone make a system that's relatively polished and operates entirely in the home, with no audio sent to the cloud? I'd be happy to run a hub/box for the system.
Upvote: | 224 |
Title: Hi HN! When you have a production system running, every now and then there are requirements to made a DB update because of some bug in the code, or for some use cases which were not thought of earlier. How do you handle such updates?<p>The common way I know is the access is given to a small number of trusted people who make the updates. Are there any other ways or best practices such that the small set of people don't end up becoming bottlenecks, apart from the potential risk of abuse of trust.
Upvote: | 96 |
Title: I stopped using it 5-6 months back as most rooms I find were pretty boring or just people arguing about random stuff.
If you still use it, what are some interesting rooms you follow?
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: Whenever I search for how to use some library or particular feature on Google, first page will be full of SEO optimized websites with mediocre content. I don't name the sites but while they work, the code doesn't inspire confidence, nor is there proper conceptual explaination.<p>Are there high quality tutorial sites for general coding or specific areas (web, app dev etc..)?
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: There are many reasons why people downvote comments/posts in any community - be it HN, Reddit, Facebook, etc. I would be thankful if you could explain your reasoning for downvoting the comments when you choose to do so.<p>For example, I'll sometimes see a massively downvoted comment that's constructive and beautifully written, but it carries an opinion that is not currently popular for whatever reason.<p>I believe that downvoting someone just because you disagree with them is terrible for a discussion network like HN. Moreover, I would say that I learned the most from the comments that I disagreed with - on all levels, politically, technologically, personally.<p>I will downvote a comment if it's not constructive, only written to be provocative, etc. It doesn't matter if I agree with the author's opinion or not. If someone puts in the effort to explain their opinion politely and constructively, my thinking is that it's positive for all the people in the community.<p>So, what kind of a downvoter are you? What are some of your reasons for downvoting a comment?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: Anyone else seeing this?
Upvote: | 879 |
Title: I've been a software developer for about 12 years, the last 8 of which I have been the CTO of a company that is growing like crazy. Recently I have been doubting every move that I make and have lost all faith in myself as a developer. When I look at a new feature I just think that I will make it shitty or get called out on not doing things the "right" way. The thing is, I know I'm a decent developer but I find myself doubting every single decision that I make. Is this burn out? How can I get out of this funk and move on?
Upvote: | 318 |
Title: Is there hope for people looking to break into software engineering if they don't like web development? From the outside at least it looks like all the jobs are full-stack roles. Is it some kind of right of passage? Any advice for someone who genuinely wants to break/transition into this profession but wants to avoid web apps?
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: tldr:
I launched Truple 4.5 years ago (see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14113636" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14113636</a>). 2.5 years ago Apple froze my developer account. Since that time competitors released similar functionality for Apple products. Apple still has my Developer account on lockdown. What can I do?<p>long version:<p>4.5 years ago I launched Truple (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14113636" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14113636</a>), a bootstrapped parental control / accountability app. Truple is used by parents to gain insight into how their children use the internet, but also by adults who struggle with online habits they'd like to change (porn being chief among them). The screenshot based approach Truple offers proves to work much better than other solutions. It's the only solution that allows you to use social media, but still have accountability for what you're viewing through social media. For example, if you have access to Twitter, you have access to porn. You can't use twitter without having that access. Truple allows you to use twitter while still being held accountable for what you view on twitter. No other solution offers this, because they don't report what you're viewing within an app. Twitter is just an example, the same goes for all "innocent" apps (social media, streaming sites, etc) that contain concerning content.<p>2.5 years ago, I submitted an early version of a MacOS app for notarization. A couple of days later my Apple Developer account was "frozen" without any message or indication why. The signing certificates were just revoked. After a year or so, Apple said they found "potentially unwanted software" in my app and were investigating. I indicated that was unexpected (that's the only question they asked me). As background, to run the app you have to download and install it, login to your truple account, select what you want the monitoring settings to be, grant permissions, etc. It's a whole process. I point this out because the app didn't do anything malicious or against the device owners' will.<p>After nearly two years of waiting on Apple (I emailed regularly, they kept saying it was under review) Apple decided they wouldn't finish the investigation but that I needed to create a new developer account. I've since done so. I submitted a redesigned version of the app for notarization, and now, while my account isn't "frozen", notarization is rejected with the message: "Team is not yet configured for notarization." I submitted a "hello world" app using boilerplate code for notarization, and I get the same rejection. I now have another case open with Apple, and it's going nowhere it seems. I'm assuming Apple has flagged my second account due to the previous issue. I fear I'm stuck in a continual loop.<p>Truple was the first to offer screenshot based monitoring as a parental control / accountability app, but during the past 2.5 years, multimillion dollar competitors have been allowed by Apple to launch apps with similar functionality for Apple products. I have read and reread the Apple developer agreement. My app is in alignment with it... I've made sure since day one that a "reasonably suspicious" notification is present when the app is monitoring. Once enabled, the data captured is end-to-end encrypted and only made accessible to the account owner and their chosen recipients. I've expressed a willingness to make changes if need be, but Apple hasn't indicated I need to make any. They've just been silent.<p>What should I do? I've been <i>extremely</i> patient with Apple. But it's now been 2.5 years and it's gotten me nowhere. Apple seems unwilling to do anything for me but take my annual developer fee. I'm not famous and I have no significant following to rely on to garner attention to this unfair treatment. I ask for your help.
Upvote: | 213 |
Title: So many companies, so much venture capital, and still so few actually try to disrupt the real problems that real people have:<p>1. Housing. It's a global problem, there has got to be a solution...<p>2. Health. There are first world health issues, and third world health issues. None of them is currently addressed in an effective way<p>3. Inequality. The gaps in income and opportunity are just unacceptable.<p>4. Unkindness. There is just too much crime, lying, and being assholes to each others.<p>5. Bullshit jobs. We spend way too much time doing nothing of real value.
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: I made a website for drawing ascii art with other people https://ascii-collab.app/<p>It's been online for a little over a year so there's a fair bit of stuff to browse if you want to look around (so much that I even made a poster https://ascii-collab.app/poster.png)<p>There are other websites like yourworldoftext that do this but ascii-collab has some extra features like per-user undo/redo, box selection, a color highlight mode to see who made particular changes, and there's admin tools so I can remove spam.<p>The code is open sourced here https://github.com/MartinSStewart/ascii-collab if anyone is interested.<p>Enjoy!
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: One hour into it, no status page update. Looks like Active Directory is down.<p>I guess they felt left out with all the AWS issues lately?
Upvote: | 187 |
Title: I have been working as a software developer for almost two decades. I have received multiple promotions. I make decent money, 3x - 4x my area's median salary, so I live a comfortable life. I have never been fired or unemployed for more than a few months total over my entire career. Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week. I'm not even discounting job related but non-coding time as not work. There are literally days in which the only time I spend on my job is the few minutes it takes to attend the morning stand-up. Then I successfully bullshit my way through our next stand-up to hide my lack of production.<p>No one has ever called me out on this and my performance reviews range from mediocre to great. I'm generally a smart person. I went to a top 30 university, but it's not like I'm a genius or I'm coasting off connections made while getting a Harvard education. I wouldn't consider myself an abnormally talented developer. I often don't understand the technical details other engineers discuss in meetings. I have probably bombed more tech interviews than I have passed. All my jobs have been between 2-5 years so I'm neither finding a place to stagnate or leaving before anyone could judge my production. It feels like I am in the middle of the bell curve in terms of career success. So what gives?<p>Are most of us secretly lying about how much we are working? Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Have I just been incredibly lucky and every boss I have had is too incompetent to notice? Do I have imposter syndrome and I am actually a 10x developer whose laziness makes them a 1x developer?<p>These questions have kept popping up in my mind over the last year. Remote work during the pandemic has allowed me to finally be honest with myself and stop pretending I am working when I am not. I want to know if I was the only one pretending.
Upvote: | 1665 |
Title: I played around with GPT-3 to build this demo. Select a public BigQuery dataset and describe your query in natural English, then edit the generated SQL as needed and execute it.<p>https://app.tabbydata.com/sql-assistant-demo
Upvote: | 66 |
Title: I just got this text:<p>> VZ Msg: Introducing Verizon Custom Experience. VZ content & offers are more relevant using web browsing & app usage info. For info or to opt-out: m.vzw.com/CE<p>And all I can say is: fuck that.
Upvote: | 272 |
Title: Inflation over the past 12 months ended October was 6.2%. I got a 1.5% raise. I will be compensated 4.7% less next year than I was this year. Even better is that based on the typical raises they give, it will take years for me to recover (or a 7% promotion).<p>Anyone else sharing my pain?
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: I am constantly worried that (1) I'm missing out on things, (2) something bad is going to happen and (3) can't see the point of it all since one day all will come to an end. I want to start enjoying and living a happy life. What are some steps I could take to achieve that?
Upvote: | 66 |
Title: I work from home in the EU as a freelancer for a US startup.<p>A few days ago, an email came out of the blue, demanding that I install an "agent" from a company named "Drata"* on my laptop. The motivation is that my client badly want a SOC 2 certification.<p>I have worked as a developer for more than 30 years. Tiny shops. Startups. Major league. I have never even heard about someone putting agents on developers laptops.<p>I'm pretty pissed off. So are the teams I work with.<p>Is this the new normal now?<p>Just for the record: I don't have credentials to production systems, and I don't work with production data. I just figure out how to transform dreams into code, I write parts of that code, and then I fix it as needed.<p>* Drata (https://drata.com/about) is on a "Mission to Help Build Trust Across the Internet". Their business model (in my case) seems to be to take money from companies to spy on their employees/contractors, and then they sell the employees/contractors private information to "targeted advertising". When I confronted them about this, they replied: "Feel free to reach out to your Drata administrator internally with concerns. Do note, that when your company contracted with Drata, any edits or redlines they provided will prevail for all employees of your company." - basically to just bend over and smile.
Upvote: | 408 |
Title: I've been reading a lot as of late. All sorts of things, but mostly technical posts and papers by a wide variety of programmers and researchers. Especially about the Rust Programming Language.<p>The more content I discover, the tinier and irrelevant I feel. I go down a rabbit hole of brilliant relevations of one person after the other, and I come out tired and discouraged. People are writing crazy compilers, optimizers, devising mathematical mathematical theorems etc. and finding concerete applications of their work everywhere. For instance, I just discovered the blog of Aleksey Kladov today and the depth and breadth of his work made my jaw drop.<p>Now, I realize this is rather superficial to talk about. I myself work on low-level systems, writing non-trivial code and trying to solve all sorts of interesting problems. Senior engineers and professors have told me that I'm brilliant. But when I'm alone with myself, I feel like I know that I'm a nobody. I try not to compare myself; but I'm also unable to shrug these feeling off, however indirect.<p>P.S. Not intended as a humblebrag. I truly need external input at this point. Sorry if this is offensive to some.
Upvote: | 64 |
Title: Since it's hard to find such a person, who understands CS/Math/can program machines but never used "normal" programming languages<p>I do wonder how it'd be designed, maybe current approach sucks?<p>OOP is beautiful itself, it *enables normal people* to model complex systems that'll be running on computers, but can we get even better?
Upvote: | 55 |
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