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Title: Hi HN! I am Maria, solo founder of DataQA (<a href="https://dataqa.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://dataqa.ai/</a>), a tool to search and label documents for various NLP tasks (e.g. entity extraction, entity linking, etc).<p>I have worked as a data scientist and ML engineer for the better part of a decade, and over that time have specialised mainly in applications involving natural language processing (NLP). One of the key questions I have always had at the back of my mind is whether my time was well spent. Whenever I spent more time on feature engineering or trying different models, I always wondered whether I would get better return on investment by simply labelling more data. I have created DataQA to enhance exploration & labelling of documents. It is open-source and ships with the elasticsearch text search engine which I have packaged as a python package (might be topic of a future technical post), as well as a rules-based engine to do pre-labelling of documents using NLP rules. It is very easy to install with a single pip command.<p>One of the key things I wanted to add to DataQA is an integration to Wikipedia. Even though wikipedia is the largest living repository of human knowledge in the world, I still always found it difficult to process it and create structured datasets for my specific applications. Since wiki pages are long-form articles, it is important to divide the text into smaller text chunks. A lot of the interesting data is also sometimes displayed in tables. With DataQA you can now upload a list of wikipedia page urls and the tool will extract the articles, process them and even parse the tables, so you can then label any entities you want. You can find a tutorial here: <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/a-labelling-tool-to-easily-extract-and-label-wikipedia-data-63f58e2e76ae?gi=13e9b7f5080c" rel="nofollow">https://towardsdatascience.com/a-labelling-tool-to-easily-ex...</a>.<p>The open-source version of DataQA currently only supports csv, but I have an enterprise version with premium features such as labelling of pdfs (with understanding of tables). If you're interested in a free trial, please contact me at [email protected] :-).
Upvote: | 116 |
Title: I just wanted to share my short cautionary tale about DO.<p>I am running an application on managed Kubernetes. From a tech perspective, I was quite happy until this happened.<p>I broke my production system by introducing a bug in the k8s infrastructure. So I went over to DO to login and fix it.
It sends a 6 digit code to my email for me to enter in order to login. The only problem is, that the email never arrives in my Gmail inbox.<p>I made double and triple sure it's not in spam, and checked that emails arrive normally in my inbox. But it's just not there. I guess there is a bug on DO's side. This is <i>not</i> their 2FA, but something they do when logging in from new browsers/locations, so no backup codes.<p>So I open a ticket, as this is already quite urgent (production is down). But I get no answer. I waited a few hours and opened another ticket. With no success.
By now it's be 24h, and I cannot get a hold of anybody at DO.<p>I guess I got what I paid for. Digital Ocean is nice for playing around, but for serious projects one should look elsewhere.<p>EDIT:
I found a blog post describing a similar problem.
Looks like sometimes DO is just silently blacklisting emails.
<a href="https://qertoip.medium.com/you-will-randomly-lose-access-to-your-digitalocean-account-2fb7b4d799b5" rel="nofollow">https://qertoip.medium.com/you-will-randomly-lose-access-to-...</a>
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: And other DNS resolvers as well.
Upvote: | 68 |
Title: I work on a small software team that develops code for scientific instruments. Our team runs very efficiently, and the focus on code quality is a big part of our culture.<p>However, lately, I have noticed that I'm unhappy with the intense code review cycles. The features work, have test coverage, and good git history, but we end up with a lot of back and forth until everything is precisely how our architect wants it to be. My perception is that I reached a point where I spend 50% of the time developing a solution (since I have enough architectural and domain knowledge) and the other 50% figuring out what will fly on review and merging back.<p>I do have some conflicting points in mind:
- My skills have evolved a lot in this process, and I take pride in delivering good-quality code. But now that the learning curve is flattening, I feel the weight of not having enough creative freedom to write something up quickly or try different designs.
- I see a lot of value in the shared ownership from the lengthy reviews, and we usually end up with better code/design as the suggestions are technically sound.
- I'm starting to feel like code is implementation detail since our high code standard does not necessarily add more value to users.
- The focus of reviews is not on correctness but stuff like naming, docstrings, and design. Whenever a colleague makes a suggestion that helps the code improve, I'm happy to oblige. But lately, I wish I could slip a docstring that explains what is done instead of the why.
- In essence, we follow open-source library development standards while making a closed source application.
- The nature of our projects requires big additions to the software, so it is very common to have chained PRs.<p>Have you ever found yourself in such a position? What do you think about code review? Can too much of it be wrong?
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: TLDR; account locked out suddenly without any follow-up to my inquiries from customer service over 48+ hours. Sadly, I used to love DO for their balanced pricing, range of services, docs, online written material. I <i>thought</i> they were among the best of the best.<p>Long story short, I've had an account with them for roughly 5+ years as I recall, <i>good</i> credit card on file, monthly bill around $20-50, US address. I use a few droplets to run dokku/docker containers for dev and 1 private Google Outline VPN endpoint, only for me. I only ssh into these from non-root and root should be turned off completely (but I'm only a hacker and not a F/T systems person).<p>Not sure if it matters but I don't do anything nefarious on these droplets-- no webscraping, no botnet creation, no crypto mining. I don't know what else would be considered verboten!?!<p>Try to log in with github, won't work and asks for email login. Try to login from there, and it asks for credit card info for "authorization" although the card is the one on file and being charged for so many years.<p>No recourse, and what a crappy way to treat clients even if they are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. Thankfully I am building a new MVP all on AWS and have my company prod there too running for 5 years. So I don't have to put up with unprofessional dealings and major risks of service interruption.<p>Assume through no fault of your own that you could be shut out of everything. You have been warned.
Upvote: | 120 |
Title: What books have helped you be more effective at work that apply to most “knowledge work” jobs?
Upvote: | 107 |
Title: Due my clumsyness I overwrote my bookmarks which cointained my long reads for the the coming holidays.
Upvote: | 57 |
Title: I've been trying different approaches such as subscribing to newsletters or using RSS readers to follow people I find interesting but not everything they write every time is interesting! Also, if you limit yourself to following people you've been reading before you probably end up not discovering new content.<p>With the technology, amount of data, and algorithms we have currently should be pretty easy to build a tool capable of tracking articles/papers/talks you read/like and suggest things you could be interested in.<p>Does anybody use/know a tool like that? There are many places to get suggestions based on how popular they are across the entire platform but aren't we in the era of the personalization?
Upvote: | 101 |
Title: I'm a data engineer at heart, and I never did or enjoyed front-end work. Having said that I always was happy to code and evolve crawlers and web scrapers. Now I've taken some time off from work and gigs and I'm working on a side-project I've been hacking for some time.<p>Without getting into the details yet: it aims to make web data collection a little bit easier for non-devs. I'll soon have an MVP and will start pitching to investors: aiming for an open-source business model (after a few months of stealth development) and eventually a typical SaaS offering for extra functionality.<p>At this point I'm trying to consolidate and counter the steel-man counter-arguments I should expect from investors. The most obvious one: as one can imagine, the product it's not magic and, after a certain point it does require some manual work from the customer, hence this is an aspect I should prepare for.<p>I have done some preliminary analysis of the space of potential competitors (think import.io, Apify, Zyte/ScarpingHub, etc.) and described opportunities for differentiation. What I'm afraid of is getting sidetracked in a discussion of "um, this is web scraping and it's hard to make a business on top of it".<p>I understand that there's not much context now and one could easily say "well yeah, anything could be possible with a good team, product...", but I'm reaching out to the HN community to gather some considerations, mental models and pointers, I may not think of myself at this point.
Upvote: | 171 |
Title: Hey fellow HN people,
What are some life changing books have you encountered?
You can state the why as well and how it mattered.<p>For e.g. Almanack of Naval Ramakant is a good starting point.<p>Thanks.
Upvote: | 246 |
Title: Hi everyone. I'm a random guy based in Munich who got accidentally wealthy and thus lost my drive for pretty much everything.<p>After my Bachelor in CS I launched three startup, which all failed. So a year ago I decided to enroll in a Masters program at LMU at the age of 26. Back then I was living quite on the edge and thus was very motivated to ace my studies to get into a FAANG company.<p>Around the same time I also invested all of the ETH I had at the time into an ICO, which turned out quite well for me. In early November I sold everything and after taxes I now own 7.5 million euros. A sum I would have never imagined.<p>I have no idea what to do with the money. And I also have no idea what to do with my life now. I have not talked to anyone about it but I start to feel fatigued, even though I am not doing much. My motivation for my study is gone, I stopped working out, stopped reading books and am basically becoming insanely depressed in the process. The covid situation is not helping much either.<p>I am posting this here because I think there might be founders out there who sold their company and experienced similar issues afterwards. How did you get out of this? What can I do?<p>I am still doing my Master studies and will finish it within the next three semesters but I worry to fall into a void afterwards.
Upvote: | 171 |
Title: We received a few emails from AWS about irregular activity related to Log4shell. I asked a few friends, and they got similar messages as well.<p>AWS provided a list of EC2 instances where they saw DNS queries which are typically used when targeting the log4j vulnerability, but they did not provide further information.<p>Have you received similar notification? What have you done about suspicious instances?<p>The ironic part is that AWS did that on Friday while half of the internet was making memes about the fact that the Log4j vulnerability was disclosed on Friday.
Upvote: | 143 |
Title: A part of me is overloaded with tons of news (which turn out being a noise after all) and «Last hour Ipad deals!!!» garbage in RSS. Another part thinks all the worthy news are showing up on HN within a few hours anyway.<p>The question is, am I missing out on anything if I only visit HN?
Upvote: | 47 |
Title: Between Nov 20 and Dec 14, someone with the IP address 34.66.115.47 has submitted 16 requests to join my email newsletter on my website form with nonsense email accounts like [email protected] and [email protected]. In one instance they used a real email address, so I have their name and know the company they work for (which is in my industry and we actually have mutual colleagues). What could this person possibly be doing with all these weird form submissions? I have a very basic, static website, do no A/B testing, and haven't made any updates to it in months. What do you think?
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: Like most of you I learned to code as a kid with adult resources. But my children are nearly ready to learn to code and I am considering that maybe there could be some better resources available now. However most of the books I've seen that are made for kids are too simple and obfuscate important details. So, are there actually any good kids coding books?
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: I noticed that I'm still clicking away the once proposed dialogue of Whatsapp to give all my data away to Facebook.<p>I have not accepted it and I keep clicking away. And you?
Upvote: | 141 |
Title: From my experience most of the companies scouting for developers are trying to minimize costs and using the “fully remote” positions as a mean.<p>I almost never faced an HR ready to discuss salaries higher, than my current “above average” full-time salary in my region (~120-180k).<p>I wonder what should your CV look like and how should you approach the search for companies that can afford expensive developers no matter the geo.<p>If the goal is not worth the effort in the first place — what alternative scalable ways to increase senior programmer’s income can you recommend?<p>Scalable means more or less reproducible in finite timeframe without high risks like in “starting your own startup”.
Upvote: | 425 |
Title: I'm mid-thirties working in Software/Data Engineering. I've been working at different companies during the last decade, and currently making ~$120k, and hitting no more than 40h/week.<p>I don't consider myself especially intelligent. Neither I'm dumb. I suffer from imposter syndrome from time to time, especially when I start a new job/challenge. I usually acknowledge these situations and manage to drive them without major problems. I have been in places where I was making way more but the job was boring, in startups where I was learning x10 every single day, I cut my salary to join especially talented teams, I stayed at places that required less than 10h/week while being paid for 40h... Sometimes I have been focused on pursuing a bigger salary, a promotion, or becoming a manager. I successfully accomplish most of these challenges. Every single situation had pros and cons, and none of them made me feel completely full-filled.<p>I thought I had a pretty good work-life balance but lately, I've been through health issues and every single doctor/therapist is pointing out to stress and sedentarism. Due to that, I've been reading some articles where researchers explain how people in tech started to care more about happiness and less about salary. I thought I was already doing that but looks like I've been doing something wrong with my professional career, and there is a path more equilibrated and focused on happiness I should follow.<p>Do you do something special?
Upvote: | 423 |
Title: Being a SW Eng I spent hours on a chair. In home-office. COVID lockdowns made this worse. Added extra stress due to bad future outlook and a lack of direction in my career plus dozens of other blockers that navigating gets more difficult as I grow older.<p>Anyway. The point of the matter is that I crack and meltdown quite often. And that makes my problems multiply because I then have to deal with apologies etc.<p>How do you deal with meltdowns? How do you calm yourself down? I'm not talking about being a Buddha (I'm as far away from that as I could be unfortunately). I'm talking about doing the bare minimum so that I don't cause myself and the people around me extra problems.<p>For the most part I have managed to keep this away from my (shitty) job so it has not affected my (dead in the water) career. But it is taking a toll on my family relations and I hate me for that.<p>No phychotherapy please. I won't go near their arrogance.<p>Any practical tips that work on you are highly appreciated.<p>For context I'm 45 yrs old, male, relatively new dad in a backwater EU country.<p>TIA
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: I’m a mom of two young daughters and I have used my Facebook account mostly for work, and to communicate with my family, some of whom are now deceased. I have never pushed or broken Facebook’s rules or uploaded obscene images.<p>On Monday my account was suspended because someone broke into my account and uploaded prohibited images and then also used my associated bank card to make a fraudulent purchase of £200.<p>I had 2FA enabled so I have no idea how someone managed to access my account. I am not a techie.<p>My bank has refunded the £200.<p>Facebook won’t even tell me what I am supposed to have done nor will they unsuspend my account.<p>The most I have got is that 27 of my posts go against the community standards on nudity or sexual activity - which is nonsense because I am just a mom using FB to connect with family and friends. I am not a porn star and I don’t upload such images.<p>I am so upset because I have so many memories on the account with my Grandma and Grandad (both deceased), photos and videos of my two young daughters growing up, as well as many others.<p>I sent my ID to FB and have not heard anything more. I feel scared that I have sent my ID to someone that has somehow hacked my account, used my bank card, and now knows more about me than before.<p>I feel violated because of this and now Facebook won’t even listen to me.<p>I am sure that a human at Facebook would be able to look and see that I didn’t do this. If they checked the IP addresses used if they just used common sense to see what has happened.<p>Please, I am desperate, does anyone have any advice on what I can do next?
Upvote: | 158 |
Title: Back when I was 24, I pretty much hated my 9-5 job because of lack of control over my destiny, the limit of earnings and growth and the idea of going to the office every single day. I realized I could start something of my own.<p>So I started to look for something easy to do work on that would not consume a lot of my time. Blogs were a rage back then and multi-million dollar exits were quite common. I bought a domain and installed WordPress and started blogging after my working hours. I started a technology blog in the hope to replicate the success of Mashable and Techcrunch. I spent about 4 hours every night covering tech news about companies and social media in general.<p>2 years passed and I burned out myself. Traffic to the blog was flat and I was not making any meaningful money. I shut it down.<p>A few months later, I started a website that pulled information from Amazon and displayed dresses in a fancy and intuitive website. I opened a Facebook page, spent a lot of time marketing it and eventually made a grand total of 2 sales in a span of 3 months.<p>I decided to give up.<p>The very next year, I decided to build a note-taking web app that was a mash of Google calendar and a to-do list app. The idea was that people would see today's schedule by default and they would easily add and manage tasks.<p>I hosted it for a few months and lost interest due to a lack of customers.<p>After taking a break for a year or so, I decided to do something ground-breaking. I built my version of Facebook Groups/Slack that would allow people to share something interesting with others. You could create groups and add/remove people from them. The UI was fancy and a few of my friends and family loved it.<p>A few months after running it, I shut it down. I found it hard to justify its existence since everybody else was using Facebook groups and with the rise of mobile apps that allowed seamless sharing, my application made no sense.<p>Sensing an opportunity in media space again, I then started a news aggregator website that aggregated news titles from hundreds of outlets storing thousands of news articles per day. The website was smart enough to cluster the news articles based on topics which, Google news does well. People loved it and it got great reviews, but it was not growing fast enough.<p>And like earlier, I ran out of patience after 6 months and I shut it down.<p>After multiple failures, I decided to take a longer break. I had pretty much given up my entrepreneurship journey knowing there was no way I could build a reasonably successful business.<p>A year passed and I started to feel uneasy with myself and my day job.<p>So, I built a stupid web app that cleaned new articles by stripping them off of ads and showing only the relevant content. I shared it and got no real feedback from others. Nobody cared.<p>That's where it hit me, why not pivot to and a link management platform? I thought it's so easy to build and manage it. I could feel the tingling in my body. I built https://blanq.io/ with the excitement of a toddler.<p>I was so wrong.<p>I spent the next 1 year building the landing page, the entire web app plus some extra features in a hope that it will take off.<p>For the first 18 months, I had no paying customers. I put everything into this. All my previous experiences of failures and learning went into building this platform. "How could I fail?" I thought.<p>I then decided to stick to it and give myself 3 years to decide its fate.<p>On the 19th month, my efforts started to pay off. I landed my first customers then 2nd and then 3rd.... and so on. It's been 8 months since then and I now have 10 paying customers using my platform almost every day and growing every month.<p>My learning:<p>1.Don't quit too soon and don't be too hard on yourself.<p>2.With each failure, you do get better at not failing.<p>3.You improve at everything as time passes - marketing, programming, sales, operations.
Upvote: | 257 |
Title: After unintentionally ending up on several React Native projects, I hunger for the days when I used to enjoy coding. The developer experience of React Native is tedious, frustrating, and unrewarding. But as I ponder a job change, I wonder: What is better in this day and age?<p>I remember when Ruby on Rails hit it big, one of its mantras was that it made coding fun. As Rails has waned in popularity, has any other tech stack taken that crown?<p>What do you all think?<p>EDIT: Obviously this is highly subjective so if you can provide your motivations for why you feel how you do, that would help us all. Thanks!
Upvote: | 100 |
Title: I managed to surf some of the software hype waves, some like "AI" have not really benefitted me in a major way and some, like crypto I deliberately ignore by now.
What do you think is the next big thing in programming or computers/Internet in general?
I'm thinking low-code or no-code tools that are actually composable by programmers perhaps?
How about something in the physical space - are we going to see more types of wearables, for example?
Basically I'm looking for ideas on what to focus my learning on in 2022.
Upvote: | 93 |
Title: In the past I've used Rails, Django, and other web frameworks with angular and some react or jquery for the front end, and either postgres, mysql or sql server for the database.<p>If you were to build a new web app product with a fairly complex database schema and functionality, what tech stack would you use as a starter? Obviously things depend a bit on the use case, but let's assume it's a web application that doesn't need high concurrency.<p>More like building a PoC of a web app start-up that can scale for a few years.
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: If I wanted to keep my skill set sharp. What top 3 tech skills should I learn in 2022 to keep providing the most value in your opinion?
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: I've had people just be not nice to the point of rudeness, people driving while interviewing, people walking on treadmills out of breath, etc.
Upvote: | 54 |
Title: Hey HN! It’s Abel and Alex here to share what we’ve been working on for just over a year: FlutterFlow (<a href="https://flutterflow.io" rel="nofollow">https://flutterflow.io</a>). It’s like WebFlow, but for Flutter.<p>Flutter is an open source framework for building cross platform applications. FlutterFlow combines a UI builder with pre-built templates and Firebase/API integrations, generates clean Flutter code, and allows you to deploy to app stores directly from your browser. This enables extremely fast iteration, from product idea concepts and designs to working Flutter apps. As an example of what’s possible, we built an internal app for playing trivia games by using the jservice.io API and Firebase all in under 2 hours:<p>Time lapse of building the app: <a href="https://youtu.be/Fm4jjpuKM1E" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Fm4jjpuKM1E</a><p>Link to live version of the app: <a href="https://app.flutterflow.io/run/ByqwG33rw80qyN39ooNq" rel="nofollow">https://app.flutterflow.io/run/ByqwG33rw80qyN39ooNq</a><p>Exported source code: <a href="https://github.com/FlutterFlow/ff-trivia/tree/flutterflow" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/FlutterFlow/ff-trivia/tree/flutterflow</a><p>Alex and I, along with a friend of ours from Google, quit our jobs in 2019 to work on a cross-platform mobile app that ultimately failed. It was a learning opportunity, and it also led us to feel the pain of the slow iteration process every time we wanted to roll out a new experience. We were able to experiment with various landing pages within hours, but building new screens and app experiences took weeks or even months. For over a year now, we’ve been tirelessly working on fixing this problem.<p>I first fell in love with coding by pure luck as a kid in Ethiopia. My father, who at the time owned an internet cafe, decided to start taking night classes in CS in the late 90s. Ultimately he didn’t use his degree professionally, but I ended up with learning materials and a compiler, Turbo C++ 3.0. As I grew older, eventually ending up as an engineer at Google, I started to appreciate that as engineers we were often tasked with solving problems even when the solution didn’t necessarily involve writing code. Alex comes from a physics background, doing his undergrad at Stanford, and transitioned to study CS and AI there as well. In 2016 he joined the team I was on, a small ML group within Google Maps. He’ll often admit he had underestimated the amount of skill involved in building beautiful, fast and functional apps. And he certainly didn’t expect to love building with Flutter as much as he does, having been entrenched in ML for most of his career. Yet here we are.<p>There has recently been a healthy amount of skepticism towards no-code tools, mainly due to concerns of extensibility and scalability. This is definitely the case for some apps - a good example is a tool such as FlutterFlow itself. It would be very difficult to build all of FlutterFlow recursively. We do use it internally for many of our pages, but using a visual builder to implement our code generator seems far fetched. This doesn’t imply however that there isn’t a middle ground that enables fast iteration in a visual builder, coupled with the ability to write code that seamlessly integrates with the overall experience. We’re not quite there yet, but we believe this is the right direction.<p>Finally, we believe Flutter is going to be the catalyst that drives this movement. It’s composability, the fact that it’s super cross-platform (Android/iOS/Web/Desktop/Embedded), and the vibrant and passionate community it fosters give it a unique advantage. Whether we do it or someone else, the application builder of the future will be built on Flutter. Huge thanks to our users, the Flutter team and the Flutter community.<p>We’d love for you to give it a try and share your thoughts. What do you think the future of application development is going to be?<p>p.s. we were on HN when we announced our launch back in May: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27238381" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27238381</a>
We’ve made a lot of progress since then, enabling app store deployment, payments, ability to add custom code and much more: <a href="https://community.flutterflow.io/c/whats-new-in-flutterflow" rel="nofollow">https://community.flutterflow.io/c/whats-new-in-flutterflow</a>
Upvote: | 190 |
Title: I'm currently on Hover, which is mostly fine. Except it doesn't support a certain kind of DNS record (can't remember which; ALIAS maybe?) which is necessary to get requests without the www. prefix to resolve correctly to my Heroku apps<p>Google Domains is out because I don't use Google products/have a Google account<p>Security is a high priority because my emails go through one of my custom domains<p>Those are about all of my requirements; it's also just hard to know which registrars are trustworthy<p>Would be very grateful for recommendations
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: Hey folks,<p>We are the team behind Slik.<p>Over the past year, we have been hacking on SlikSafe [1] a Dropbox alternative where all your data is first encrypted on your own device and then stored on decentralized storage.<p>Some features we're most excited about are -<p><pre><code> - multi-device data sync,
- auto-backups via desktop apps,
- search your docs by name or contents with end-to-end encryption,
- easy sharing via email, QR-code or private-link,
- Password-less login using MetaMask/Phantom
</code></pre>
We leverage storage providers IPFS and Storj for global redundancy, reliability, and immutability.<p>You can use our web app [2] and macOS app [3] today. Our desktop app for Windows is currently in beta, and will be launched in early Jan.<p>You can read our WhitePaper [4] for the technical implementation, or see a quick demo [5] of the product.<p>Would love to hear what you think.<p>Arpit, Charvi<p>[1] SlikSafe: <a href="https://www.sliksafe.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.sliksafe.com</a><p>[2] Web app: <a href="https://app.sliksafe.com" rel="nofollow">https://app.sliksafe.com</a><p>[3] macOS app: <a href="https://sliksafe.com/downloads" rel="nofollow">https://sliksafe.com/downloads</a><p>[4] WhitePaper: <a href="https://sliksafe.com/whitepaper.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://sliksafe.com/whitepaper.pdf</a><p>[5] Demo video: <a href="https://www.loom.com/share/abe133c4ce874655a952a30601e99408" rel="nofollow">https://www.loom.com/share/abe133c4ce874655a952a30601e99408</a>
Upvote: | 284 |
Title: Most software companies would have external dependencies like cloud platforms, APMs , Functional/Business integrations. How do you folks monitor these external dependencies errors , latency etc ? RSS feeds etc are there but there are days were AWS is slow to update status page, latency in CDN are not that obvious in the middle of night when you get paged. Makes me wonder what other folks are doing about this ?
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: Posting here in case someone else is going through the same thing and could benefit from reading the comments.<p>I get passionate about a new language, framework, idea, project, or hobby for 1/2/3 months, then quit. Like clockwork.<p>For some concrete examples, I'm talking about things like: journaling, Arduino, web development, game dev, photography, writing fiction, tweeting, posting videos to YouTube, knowledge management, 'note-taking,' and more.<p>I used to think it was a question of burning out, so after a time I started limiting myself to 'x' hours a day. That did extend things slightly, but it wasn't a game changer.<p>I always seem to find an excuse as to why it's not worth continuing, right before actually accomplishing anything with the tool/skill in question. This applies to things both big, like getting into a whole new hobby, and small like trying some framework out.<p>As such, I spend many days feeling like the donkey in front of the stack of hay and the pail of water. I know that if I only stuck to one thing I would be much better off, but somehow, I don't.<p>This translates to my work as well, (at a startup) where my title is, quite literally, "generalist." I do stuff ranging from the software side all the way to marketing, sales, and everything in between. It's working for now but I get the feeling it's not viable for the long run.<p>I was wondering what the HN crowd thought about this, and if there is someone who managed to escape this trap. Thank you.
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: I work at a startup with ~50 employees (and have always worked at startups). Love the work and the people. Recently we were acquired by $LARGE_CORPORATION and the experience has been a living hell for all of us. Things that should take a few days take a few weeks. Things that should take a few weeks take a few quarters. It's slowly driving me insane.<p>The experience is best shared as a story.<p>I'm working on migrating our apps to the parent company's VM launching and deploy platform. Should be fairly straightforward, I think. Unfortunately, the deploy tooling isn't entirely compatible with our app so I ask the team if they can implement $X feature to support our app.<p>The first engineer I talk to doesn't even attempt to answer my question but redirects me to their manager. Ok, that's odd, I think, but whatever.<p>Manager says sure, just fill out this feature request doc. It's a Google Docs template with 4 (!) pages of required documentation to just explain why I want this feature implemented. It asks for my team name, the motivation, why I can't solve the problem some other way, yada yada...ok, I guess it's good to document your work, so sure. I fill it out and submit it.<p>No response after two days. Then I get an automated email that their <i>skip</i> level manager has approved the work. Huh? This is followed by an email that the team's eng manager approved the work. Why do two layers of management need to approve work on something they have no knowledge about?<p>Finally, after many rounds of arguing about why this needs to be done in the first place (ahem: you told us to migrate to your platform, and it literally does not work for our app), they quote us a delivery timeline of <i>end of Q1 in 2022</i>.<p>At this point I am in absolute shock. This should take no more than a few days to implement.<p>So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said. Why does it take an entire quarter for your team to deliver? He doesn't have an answer.<p>I tell him I'm happy to fix the issue myself, if they link me to the relevant codebase. "It shouldn't be too hard to dig in and submit a patch," I think to myself. He says he cannot give me access to the codebase for compliance reasons, and that only members of his team have R/W on that repo. What???<p>This is insane. And this entire time I was only alllowed to interact with managers and have not spoken to a single engineer about the actual technical details. It is impossible to get anything <i>done</i> here now.<p>Is this how it's like at all large companies? What should I do?
Upvote: | 454 |
Title: Google deleted my developer account, just because my game has 'new' in the game title. I think it's an atrocity.
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: For at least the past 7 years, without fail, as soon as I start my vacation (whether it's staying at home, or going abroad) I get sick. Cold/flu-like symptoms. Time of year makes no difference.<p>I end up spending ~1 week recovering, before feeling normal again but by that time I'm starting work again. I tend to have to make sure I book at least two weeks, otherwise I don't get a break.
If it's relevant: I work full time, software engineer, mostly remote.<p>Anyone else have this issue or know of it happening? Or am I just overthinking an unlucky run of coincidentally-timed colds.
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: It is a "feature" added to "improve experiences across Microsoft products". With one of the recent updates it gets enabled for all Edge user profiles, and you get a flyout notification, that navigates you to the setting where you can disable it.<p>https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/learn-more-about-search-and-service-improvements-in-microsoft-edge-5b95a197-6311-4976-ad33-4aad57a9ce65
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: I am working on on a very large codebase for the first time,mainly on the front end code.
Needs some tips on how to trace down the code base effectively?
Upvote: | 99 |
Title: Console is flickering between "website is unavailable" and being up for my team. This is happening very frequently just now, reliability seems to have taken a hit.
Upvote: | 863 |
Title: It might come down to taste, but I feel like a lot of the "features" Twitch has been adding have cluttered the interface while offering little of value for someone like me who just watches streams occasionally and isn't closely involved in community events.<p>But most importantly, I'm bothered by the non-dismissable popups that now appear over the video feed. They seem to be for extensions, but what features they provide evades me.<p>These two uBlock Origin rules (which you can add in the My Filters tab) will remove the main two modals that can pop up over the video:<p><pre><code> www.twitch.tv##.extensions-dock-card
ext-twitch.tv##.prime-extension-root
</code></pre>
Additionally, you may want to get back a chat frame without a leaderboard header:<p><pre><code> www.twitch.tv##.channel-leaderboard
</code></pre>
Twitch generates random class names, possibly to prevent your blocking some elements, so I tried to find the topmost classes. I hope that's useful to some.
Upvote: | 99 |
Title: Hi HN,<p>8 months ago, I posted “Ask HN: I built it nobody came, what now?” and got a ton of (not very optimistic) feedback [1].<p>I took away 3 things:<p>1. The message wasn’t properly targeted<p>2. The onboarding experience was terrible.<p>3. Someone posted some advice to find leads which actually worked, yeah!<p>So here we are. 8 months later. I unfortunately didn’t have a lot of time to put in the tool itself. But I improved the website, improved the onboarding, and got a paying customer who seems to really like the software.<p>So here it is in its current
form. Let me know what you think would make the tool/website better!<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26734079" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26734079</a>
Upvote: | 74 |
Title: Could you please share how you went about developing it? How much time, effort it took, why did you prefer that hobby over some other?
Thanks.
Upvote: | 47 |
Title: I don't like the new GA interface. It's hard to do simple things like display full-urls when you serve multiple subdomains.<p>What alternatives do you like and why?
Upvote: | 192 |
Title: Something like Andreas Kling working on Serenity OS<p>There are many summary channels but I haven’t found any who show how their hacking process
Upvote: | 70 |
Title: It seems this question hasn't been asked for some time, so I'd be interested hear what new (and old) ideas have come up.
Upvote: | 782 |
Title: Yearly thread. It can be books published on 2021 or in previous years (but that you read this year.)
Upvote: | 515 |
Title: I live in a part of the world where we haven’t had much Covid. At this point though Omicron seems to be evading vaccines and spreading rapidly.<p>I’m struggling to decide whether to treat it as something mild that I’m definitely going to get, or something really bad that I should be taking strong precautions against. Reading news isn’t overly helpful as it only shows extreme cases/views.<p>Have you had Covid, and what was your experience like? Do you have any lingering symptoms?
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: I guess no body is doing this, everyone talks about making money.
So, let's use this post to share our failed projects and the learnings with other founders.
Upvote: | 352 |
Title: I’ve been listening to all of Darknet Diaries this year and it’s been amazing. Hoping 2022 will be filled with similar gripping brain food. Happy new year.
Upvote: | 91 |
Title: There are very few services / products where I feel my money is being well spent; like ultra-cheap VPS' for personal projects.<p>What do you enjoy paying for?
Upvote: | 91 |
Title: What technology do you use today that is far from mainstream? Think Tony Stark technology.
Examples are mobile phones / internet in the 80s, metal 3D printers, quantum ML, night vision device, large language models (GPT-3) for personal communication, CRISPR, manned drones.
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: The proxies like Squid can do HTTPS intercepting so I was wondering what's the point of TLS anyway? What if a nation state is determined to intercept all traffic of its internet users or even a major ISP - can't they get a trusted CA colluding with them in such a way that they can generate certificates on the fly and hence replacing the SSL certificate of every website that's get visited, decrypt and encrypt back?<p>Cryptographically speaking, that's possible? Wouldn't it be possible for certain states hostile to their citizens to pay off some trusted CA to get a wide open arrangement of that sorts? Now someone thinking they're talking to gmail could be first talking to a data collection island in the middle?<p>Similarly, other vectors of attack are the IP routing and DNS. I do not understand the Noise protocol but couldn't an ISP or a government pretend to be man in the middle, between let us say a Signal user and its servers?<p>EDIT: Added IP and DNS aspects plus typos
Upvote: | 73 |
Title: Hi, my Christmas is solitary this year, no family or friends. I'm not even having a Christmas dinner. I'm not sad about this, though. It's just the way it is. What I wanted to say is, if you are in the same situation, you are not alone. So have a virtual hug from me.
Upvote: | 1193 |
Title: I made a similar post last year at this time and, again, I am in my office on Christmas morning.<p>There are a few days every year that really show which jobs are vital and which can be left aside for a day. I started my car this morning (-32, -40 with wind chill). On my way to work I drove past a hospital and a care home, both were manned. The dairy farm had its lights on. A cop with his flashers drove past me on the way to some emergency. The macdonalds drive-through was open too. I had to be at work by 0600, but I was relieving someone who had been sitting in another office since 1800. On my computer were the same dozen emails I get every morning, each from someone else who drew the short straw.<p>There aren't many of us on HN that work weekends let alone Christmas morning, but If you too are sitting in a dark office remember that all across the world are millions of other people working the truly important jobs.
Upvote: | 872 |
Title: I have worked in many different fields(web dev, analytics, product management) but can't seem to stick to one. Is it about the field or something about myself that I need to change? How do I go about solving this??
Upvote: | 229 |
Title: I want to help my elderly parents with their computer, but as I live far away, this needs to be done remotely (general stuff, paying bills, etc..)<p>I've seen some solutions, such as Team viewer. However I'm bit concerned about the security side.<p>If you have same situation, what is your solution?
Upvote: | 64 |
Title: Does anyone want to work with me and engineer or market a $5,000 tiny home — the blueprints will be open source, but also manufacture at scale if there is demand. This home would have a solar roof, small battery, water tank, will arrive in a IKEA-like box worldwide. It should allow a 6.5 ft person sleep comfortably and should be movable with a forklift. Think a next generation home for the homeless. Should withstand regular weather for 20 years. DM me. I could invest some $50k to start this venture if we can form a team. Email me at [email protected] or text me +1 323-240-1241
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: If you are alone in a big city, what would be your online/offline to kill some time during Christmas/New year vacation?
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: I think foreign keys could be valuable to improve how we write SQL joins,
in the special but common case when joining on columns that exactly match a foreign key.<p>The idea is to add a new ternary operator, which would be allowed only in the FROM clause.<p>It would take three operands:<p>1) referencing_table_alias
2) foreign_key_constraint_name
3) referenced_table_alias<p>POSSIBLE BENEFITS<p>* Eliminate risk of joining on the wrong columns
Although probably an uncommon class of bugs, a join can be made on the wrong columns, which could go undetected if the desired row is included by coincidence, such as if the test environment might only contain a single row in some table, and the join condition happened to be always true.<p>* Conciser syntax
In a traditional join, you have to explicitly state all columns for the referencing and referenced table.
This is somewhat addressed by the USING join form, but USING has other drawbacks, why I tend to avoid it except for one-off queries.
When having to use fully-qualified table aliases, that adds even further to the verboseness.<p>* Makes abnormal joins stand out
If joining on something else than foreign key columns, or some inequality expression, such joins will continue to be written in the traditional way, and will therefore stand out and be more visible, if all other foreign key-based joins are written using the new syntax.
When reading SQL queries, I think this would be a great improvement, since the boring normal joins on foreign keys could be given less attention, and focus could instead be made on making sure you understand the more complex joins.<p>SYNTAX<p>Syntax is hard, but here is a proposal to start the discussion:<p><pre><code> from_item join_type from_item WITH [referencing_table_alias]->[foreign_key_constraint_name] = [referenced_table_alias] [ AS join_using_alias ]
</code></pre>
EXAMPLE<p>To experiment with the idea, I wanted to find some real-world queries written by others,
to see how such SQL queries would look like, using traditional joins vs foreign key joins.<p>I came up with the idea of searching Github for "LEFT JOIN", since just searching for "JOIN" would match a lot of non-SQL code as well.
Here is one of the first examples I found, a query below from the Grafana project [1]
[1] https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/main/pkg/services/accesscontrol/database/resource_permissions.go<p><pre><code> SELECT
p.*,
? AS resource_id,
ur.user_id AS user_id,
u.login AS user_login,
u.email AS user_email,
tr.team_id AS team_id,
t.name AS team,
t.email AS team_email,
r.name as role_name
FROM permission p
LEFT JOIN role r ON p.role_id = r.id
LEFT JOIN team_role tr ON r.id = tr.role_id
LEFT JOIN team t ON tr.team_id = t.id
LEFT JOIN user_role ur ON r.id = ur.role_id
LEFT JOIN user u ON ur.user_id = u.id
WHERE p.id = ?
</code></pre>
Here is how the FROM clause could be rewritten:<p><pre><code> FROM permission p
LEFT JOIN role r WITH p->permission_role_id_fkey = r
LEFT JOIN team_role tr WITH tr->team_role_role_id_fkey = r
LEFT JOIN team t WITH tr->team_role_team_id_fkey = t
LEFT JOIN user_role ur WITH ur->user_role_role_id_fkey = r
LEFT JOIN "user" u WITH ur->user_role_user_id_fkey = u
WHERE p.id = 1;
</code></pre>
In PostgreSQL, the foreign keys could also be given shorter names, since they only need to be unique per table and not per namespace. I think a nice convention is to give the foreign keys the same name as the referenced table, except if the same table is referenced multiple times or is self-referenced.<p>Rewriting our example, using such naming convention for the foreign keys:<p><pre><code> FROM permission p
LEFT JOIN role r WITH p->role = r
LEFT JOIN team_role tr WITH tr->role = r
LEFT JOIN team t WITH tr->team = t
LEFT JOIN user_role ur WITH ur->role = r
LEFT JOIN "user" u WITH ur->user = u
WHERE p.id = 1;</code></pre>
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: Mine are Statistical Inference in Computer Age, and Transactional Information Systems. Curious what other books teach us powerful concepts and tools that carry us a long way
Upvote: | 95 |
Title: I am currently job hunting to begin a second career as a software developer (I currently work in the care industry but studied computer science at university years ago and have coded on the side since). I am confident in my technical ability but not at all with my ability to deal directly with clients, and some of the jobs I am applying for involve this.<p>What resources are out there to improve my knowledge of working with clients well and effectively? Books, podcasts, videos, anything would be great!
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: There is an awesome thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29673707<p>But reading between the lines it's obvious that the major problem in most cases was lack of demand or inability to market the product.<p>So I'd be interested hear what and how you do early demand validation for your side project or idea, if any?<p>Share your story.
Upvote: | 147 |
Title: I’m a self-taught web coder and have made some small CRUD systems for very targeted tiny clients during my professional life. I have also made a few hobby sites for fun just for myself.<p>I’d like to expand my skill set but I have trouble visualizing all the moving parts of a “big” web app and all the tools that go into it—when people talk about containers, or testing, or deploying such-and-such, I don’t have a clue. With HTML/CSS/JS, I can spin up a little demo to play around and learn on another personal/toy project, but how do I, as a solo person, learn about larger-scale technologies?<p>I’m a visual artist and print-based technician so front-end would probably be the place to focus. Is there a recommended path for going from hobby projects & small sites to larger-scale best practices in React/another important platform?
Upvote: | 121 |
Title: Merry Christmas to all!<p>I would like to ask the advice of those who have possibly been in my situation:<p>I am over 50, and have been developing software since the late 70’s. Over the years I switched from being a full timer at Hughes Aircraft in LA to a part time consultant in Hawaii. Things went pretty well for decades, but after a family loss I lost interest in work for several years.<p>Since then, and after my skills no doubt became somewhat outdated, it is absolutely impossible to find work. The continuous news articles about the “great quit” where many folks are leaving work, as well as the claims that hirers are having great difficulty finding employees seem to be fictional from my POV.<p>Over the past few years I have been only interviewed once or twice a year by anyone who seemed interested, most notably Google and Facebook, but neither decided I was a worthy hire. At this point it seems impossible to get even a junior developer job! The only interest I ever see is from recruiters overseas, who seem to be matching my resume up with job listings by keyword only.<p>Does anyone have any advice for a developer who has been writing (and delivering) code for over four decades on how to find a job? How do I make someone believe they are hiring a developer who can deliver? I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s the situation I am in!
Upvote: | 110 |
Title: Django 4.0 projects would also be appreciated, or simply high quality Django projects.
Upvote: | 239 |
Title: Your day-to-day one?
Upvote: | 390 |
Title: Hi friends,<p>I'm shopping a router and from what I read in the reviews, ALL mid-end family routers (those between $40 and $100) that I see need a cloud account to access the management page. I'm wondering if there is anything that does not need a cloud account? Thanks~~
Upvote: | 137 |
Title: Mine was Fall of Civilizations Episode 12, about the Inca empire:<p>https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2021/01/12/episode-12-is-now-live/
Upvote: | 220 |
Title: Hi,<p>I've just had a bizarre thing happen and wanted to see if the HN community could come up with some theories as to what happened.<p>LastPass blocked a login attempt from Brazil (it wasn't me). According to an email I received from LastPass, this login was using the LastPass account's master password. The email doesn't look like it's a phishing attempt.<p>What troubles me is that the master password was stored in a local encrypted KeePassX file.<p>I can imagine that someone has my KeePassX file and the (completely different) password to this file. If that's the case, I'm in a world of hurt.<p>But are there any other possibilities? Is the email from LastPass accurate i.e. was the login attempt actually using my master password? Is there some LastPass extension installed on some computer still having a valid auth token allowing them to login as me to LastPass..?<p>I'm really confused, and scared.<p>Thanks for your help.<p>P.S. The LastPass account had 2FA set up, but I was able to simply remove it (since I didn't have access to the token anymore). That's scary too -- what's the point of a 2FA you can remove...??<p>---<p>Update:<p>- the email was truly not phishing -- the same information regarding the login attempt appears in my LastPass dashboard. I also talked to LastPass support over the phone, and they confirmed seeing the same information.<p>- There are 2 separate users in the thread below confirming that the same exact same thing happened to them, from the exact same IP range as me.<p>Either the 3 of us had the same malware/Chrome extension or somehow had our master passwords compromised...? Or...? Is this a LastPass issue?
Upvote: | 877 |
Title: I’m not an idealist considering becoming a volunteer or take a significant pay cut to work on a specific cause, but I don’t want my OKRs to be tied to things that actively makes the world what I consider a worse place. I don’t want my salary to increase the more “whales” we catch, whether that’s an online casino, an addictive mobile game or a crypto currency.<p>I’m concerned about the environment but I don’t consider myself to have very radical political views in general. These are areas I’d want to avoid. What’s left? What areas could I pursue that are also potentially doing interesting things online?<p>- AdTech. Most obviously the known harm some social media can cause to democracy by fueling rage, but also systematic economic problems related to e-commerce below.
- Most e-commerce. Trying to get people to buy material things they don’t need. Bad for the environment.
- Crypto. Companies fall into one of 3 categories: terrible for the environment, a Ponzi scheme, or neutral but legitimizing or encouraging projects in the previous two categories.
- FinTech/e-commerce platforms. Trying to get people to buy stuff they can’t afford, on credit, and don’t need. Bad for the environment and society.
- Gambling. Duh.
- Gaming with in-app-purchasing. Exploiting people prone to addiction or with low impulse control. Immoral and bad for society.
- Fossil-heavy industries. Air travel, booking and similar. We need to fly occasionally, but I now celebrate when flying is reduced. I don’t want a bonus to change that.<p>I’m not judging anyone, I’ve worked with several of the above myself. I just want to do things differently after 15 years.<p>This is not a discussion thread about my claims above, I respect if you consider them ridiculous, but we’re not very likely to have a fruitful discussion on this particular topic.
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: I am a long time HN reader and trust this community. I would love opinions of HN in general.<p>I might be going through midlife crisis. I am feeling a bit lost and a bit failure. I have a soul-sucking but decent job at one of major tech companies. But I never cared for my day job, as I had been focused on my side projects.<p>Now I have a wife and 2 kids. We need a bigger house, but we cannot afford it. We could have bought our dream home in 2020 but prices have skyrocketed in my area. This made me start paying attention to my career. I see my friends who focused on their day jobs are now much higher on corporate ladder.<p>I am at the point where I cannot really work on any side project because of kids. I rather spend my free time with them. A few options I am considering:<p>A. Keep the day job, and aggressively move into management. Safe and I know internal politics. The cons might be too much politics. People skills don't expire though.<p>B. Keep the day job, stay an individual contributor. Sharpen my technical skills and become an internal or external thought leader. Again safe. But may not have enough time to really be a thought leader. Harder to be a great IC and make the same amount of money as mediocre leadership.<p>C. Get a new job at FAANG as IC. I could easily make 2x - 3x my salary there. But I am not great at LeetCode. And I don't want to take time away from my kids to do LeetCode.<p>D. Get a new job anywhere as an IC. I could probably get 1.2x to 1.6x of my current salary. May not be enough to buy a bigger home. But work-life balance should be better than FAANG and there is no need to waste time on LeetCode.<p>E. Start part-time freelancing and quit my day job. I have a few past clients that should be able to provide enough work. I can pay bills and use extra free time to work on my side-projects. Riskier but might be good to take a break from my day job. Eventually freelancing could turn into a consulting business.<p>I am leaning towards option A or option E. What do you think?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: As my partner and I raise our nearly 1 year old child we are constantly looking for her to reach milestones. The prescribed advice from our doctor as well as reasonable online resources has us tracking development in stints that seem to go about a month each. And it is stressful, not unlike pressure of software development. My partner, who is not a software engineer, finds the process almost overwhelming. As we are getting near the release of version 1.0 (her first birthday) I have to wonder: is this right? Frankly it is not what I was expecting nor would wish for. I do not want to raise a daughter like a scrum project. It seems that child development ought to be paced more naturally.
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: I am pretty extroverted and derive a lot of meaning and enjoyment from working with people IRL, not just across a Slack connection. My previous job went from tolerable to intolerable as a result of the pandemic caused 100% WFH. These days it's hard to find an in office job, and even when you do, it feels like that would be s red flag anyway, since WFH is seen as a perk by most, or realistically I worry I'm going to go in to the office and be the only one there.<p>I just like being able to grab lunch with coworkers and shoot the shit. I find i care more about my work when I feel more connected to the other people who are affected by it.<p>(BTW I don't mind partial WFH, thats just obviously beneficial for everyone.)<p>Are those days just over? Am I doing / thinking about this wrong in some way? Is it not as bad as I think? Are there places out there for weirdos like me?
Upvote: | 266 |
Title: This question was asked 3 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367243) by mdoliwa, and I'm curious what it looks nowadays.
> How many people on hacker news are running successful online businesses on their own? What is your business and how did you get started?<p>> Defining successful as a profitable business which provides the majority of the owners income.
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: Looking for someone who can escalate a query through Stripe (I know a lof of of Stripe are reading here including pc).<p>We process about 5-10M a month through Stripe since 2018 without issues. On the 27th of December they have given us 48 hours notice, whilst the entire company is being ran on a skeleton support crew to completely get off stripe and switch to another processor.<p>We've been in touch with them recently and this was never brought up. We've already started the process to switch do an actual acquiring bank rather than a PSP like Stripe but there's no way this can be completed now in 48 hours, IN BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NY.<p>This seems to be in line with the race to the bottom support from Stripe but pulling something like this is a new low.<p>So hoping that someone here can escalate.
Upvote: | 382 |
Title: I was an early Instagram user and got my nickname as my handle and I keep getting either locked out of my account or compromised altogether.<p>Over the years, hackers have tried a number of things to steal my handle and I can usually tell how they get in. These days, I have no idea. I've been SIM swapped a handful of times. One time a hacker faxed a fake ID to Godaddy to try and swap out my domain to gain control of my email (they were successful).<p>Now, I will try to log in to my account and will just be locked out. The email I created specifically for Instagram is not recognized, and there is no way to reset my password.<p>I have two-factor auth on, I don't use the same password anywhere else, I change it regularly, etc.<p>My current theory is there is some employee at Meta that's ultimately stealing the account. Does anybody have any idea how they're hacking me?<p>PS: the worst part about all this is in order to get the handle back, I have to pull strings with folks I know at Meta, for a normal user, they would have absolutely no way of regaining access...<p>[Update] Just got the account back and still have no idea how my email was removed from the account...<p>[Update 2] Reviewing the security section I see a password reset email was sent to [username]@instagramz.com. No clue how or who changed the account email to that though.
Upvote: | 188 |
Title: I have some software that I (my tiny company) has been selling for 15+ years. I just discovered yesterday that someone has been granted a patent on configuring my software to do essentially what it was designed to do. The patent is complete with screenshots of the software, and though they tried to hide the title-bar to obscure it, they missed a few details that makes it obvious what product is in the screenshots.<p>The person/company with the patent hasn't contacted me. A few years ago they said they wanted to build a business around my solution, which I thought was cool. But they certainly didn't claim a patent.<p>Do I need to do anything as long as they don't come after me?
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: HN, being a rather progressive forum, tends to trend in support of including compensation details for job posts, open positions, recruiter reach-outs, etc. This position [1] was just posted today and has been on the front page all day. Does anyone have any insider information or generally good theory as to why YC's own job posts include none of that information?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/y-combinator/jobs/1x2BVnj-product-engineer-admissions" rel="nofollow">https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/y-combinator/jobs/1x2B...</a>
Upvote: | 331 |
Title: Inspired by the python thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29698198" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29698198</a><p>What are some good code to read/channels to watch on twitch to learn basic to advanced rust?
Upvote: | 78 |
Title: I live in a city and used to have a daily commute to the office. The pandemic changed all that. The switch to remote work made me contemplate a move to a quieter location, closer to the countryside. I haven't moved though because my parents live nearby and are quite frail. It's more important to me that I remain living close to them.<p>Who has made a move to a new location due to remote working? Who has considered it?
Upvote: | 97 |
Title: I've been struggling with writing documentation for a piece of software that I've been working on during the past months.<p>The task is so boring that I just can't put any effort into it. I've never wrote any documentation before, and always struggled with writing descriptive content. The last time I did it was for my internship report and it was so daunting.<p>Any tips? Thanks.
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: Daniel Kahneman’s assertion that we’re not great intuitive statisticians got me thinking how poorly I understood stat despite intro classes in college.<p>What is your favorite book that transformed the way you interpret and produce statistics?
Upvote: | 56 |
Title: Looking for other sites like HN where articles and other interesting bits of information are shared. Hope this is ok to post! Thanks!
Upvote: | 47 |
Title: I just got a letter from my electricity company. They are bankrupt and I am now exposed to 80 cents / kwh as they immediately stop supplying electricity.<p>Here is a brief summary of the electricity crisis in Germany:<p>Consumer electricity prices in Germany climb to a record high despite a warm winter. Not only mine, but several other electricity providers have gone bankrupt in the past few days. The price available to consumers is now 45-80 cents / kwh. Many providers no longer accept new customers because they have to recalculate their offers, so that consumers are exposed to the "basic supply", which in many regions has reached 80 cents per kWh. My plan now is to get a contract that I can cancel on a monthly basis and I hope the situation improves. If you accept my application, I will have to pay 65 cents per kWh from now on.<p>The bad news is: From January 1st, prices will continue to rise due to an increased CO2 tax and the Greens have announced that they will continue to increase this tax. However, I hope that the underlying effect will improve and lead to an overall price reduction.<p>At the same time, 3 out of 6 nuclear power plants will be shut down on December 31, 2021 - in 2 days. Since the Greens want to accelerate the switch to electromobility, forecasts indicate that we have a need for several new natural gas power plants in Germany. Unfortunately, due to political tensions with Russia, Germany is working closely with the United States to import LNG. Not only is it more expensive, it is also dirty, because fracked gas has a similar carbon footprint to coal and has a devastating environmental impact.<p>The solution is to buy electricity from neighbors who are expanding their nuclear power plant capacity.<p>I am shocked and not prepared. Fortunately, I can pay for that, but I can imagine that this will cause the prices of everyday goods to rise - and lead to an erosion of our industrial competitiveness.
Upvote: | 84 |
Title: I was thinking through my 2022 predictions and one came to mind that I thought, “hmm… I’d better keep that one to myself.” Its further out than 2022, and hopefully it’s a never. But I am confident it’s coming, and I sure it’s a bad outcome for humanity: we become more and more influenced by learning systems that are goaled to drive behaviors that are not in our best interest, and, eventually lead to a virtual enslavement that leaves us with no free will.<p>I shudder at the thought.<p>What outrageous belief are you confident is true?
Upvote: | 71 |
Title: I spent many years working on the JVM, working with Java and then later working with Clojure. I am used to that world and its culture. It is a world full of books and essays with interesting debates about key issues of software architecture. I'm now switching over to the world of NodeJS, but I can't find the books or essays written to the same depth of detail. I'd like some pointers.<p>Just to take one issue. How should exceptions be managed? There was a long debate, in the world of the JVM, about whether exceptions should be handled as locally as possible to the point of the error, or whether it was simpler and cleaner, from the point of view of architecture, to let most exceptions bubble up to the top and handle all of them in one place. I personally favored handling errors locally, but I learned a lot by reading both sides of the debate.<p>I'm having trouble finding conversations like that, regarding NodeJS. Has there been a debate about best practice? Where can I find it?<p>Also, performance tuning. I have the impression that NodeJS is a bit more magical than the JVM, therefore discussions of performance tuning are considered besides the point in the world of NodeJS. Whereas the JVM offers a thousand configuration options, NodeJS seems to offer fewer. Is that correct? Where are good resources on this subject?
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: Hi All. I can start:<p>1. I lost my uncles and grandma :(<p>2. I got a promotion at work<p>3. I did workouts regularly, started running<p>4. I rewrote and updated my personal project<p>5. I started to learn Go and Rust
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: I am on T-mobile in the US if that helps.
Upvote: | 56 |
Title: This is a discussion I hope can lead to some answers among the developer community about what's going on these days.<p>I previously wrote about how various shopping sites are being very hostile to their customer base [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29384866]. Why does a 32kb text article need 10MB of battery draining heavy javascript to just work? But this is more then just shopping sites as so many websites, browsers, programs, and even OS's are making decisions that are hostile to their users. And it's coming from everywhere. What used to be controversial (e.g. dark patterns), is now normal. And if the user complains - the answers from the developers is "we're sorry, just live with it?"<p>I could write an essay on this but I'll focus on a company which publicly represent this hostility - Blizzard. Blizzard is an entertainment company in an industry which has a tremendous amount of competition. And many Blizzard games are paid for directly from the user's pockets so the customers are paying. But yet, even with this, the contempt the developers have towards their users is immense. While I'm not a Blizzard fan but listening to people who are - they are not happy. Yet at the same time, even with this angry customer base, the developers kept saying they "knew best" demanding the customers do things their until the ceiling broke and the mass exodus we know today happened. There's no apology, no sympathy - nothing - just complete hostility against their users.<p>But of course, this is not just a story about Blizzard. It's Apple, Google, Firefox, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, etc. Just look at Microsoft and their heavy use of dark patterns to force Windows 10/11 options (another essay unto itself). And so many companies gleefully advertising "it's your choice" where "your choice" is slowly "depreciated" until "your choice" is no longer in the deeply hidden options menu.<p>What is it about this field that attracts people that are so adamant, so demanding that their users, their customers do it "their way or the highway"? People who seemly absolutely refuse to even acknowledge the burdens they force upon their users even when their users are saying, very loudly, "I don't want this."<p>In the past, I used software because I wanted to use it. These days, I use software, not because I want to, but because I have to.<p>(To be fair, it might not be the individual developers who is hostile but something in the decision making process is causing entire company to be hostile to their users.)
Upvote: | 93 |
Title: As a senior CS student, I am interested in looking for ways to improve my professional skills and develop habits that will ultimately pay off long-term in my career.<p>From browsing internet forums and listening to friends it seems that a popular approach to bettering oneself as a software engineer is to "learn the latest technologies". However, with so many new technologies to choose from, how will I know which ones will benefit me long term? This reminds me of the Red Queen hypothesis [0], learning new stuff just to keep up.<p>I suppose the stereotypical example is the web development space with its many frameworks (Reactjs, Nextjs, Svelte, Remix). I notice this as well with programming languages such as Go, Rust, Julia, Dart, and Kotlin.<p>On the flip side, I wonder if mastering the fundamentals and the things that will not change in the next 50 years is a wiser approach. This is inspired by the ideas of Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett [1, 2]. If this is true in technology, then I wonder what are those things that will not change in the next 50 years?<p>I also wonder how the Lindy Effect [3] applies to technology. Would it be more worthwhile to strive for a high level of proficiency in decades-old languages such as Java and C++, or focus instead on promising languages such as Go and Rust? Reading Dan McKinley's article on Choose Boring Technology [4] nudges me in the direction of focusing on more mature technologies.<p>[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis<p>[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/966699-i-very-frequently-get-the-question-what-s-going-to-change<p>[2] https://fs.blog/staying-the-same/<p>[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect<p>[4] https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
Upvote: | 57 |
Title: Hi everybody! Due to Covid 19 pandemic I was forced in my home, so I revamped my book<p><a href="https://8bit.gioorgi.com" rel="nofollow">https://8bit.gioorgi.com</a><p>It is a huge collection of information about the 8bit comnputer era (1980-1985) up to the NES console.
I collected information from various source including “The 8bit Guy” videos and specific site (like C64 wiki, nesdev etc).<p>I am using docusaurus to give a pleasnt look to the whole site.<p>Please give me you feedback (and happy new year btw)!
Upvote: | 83 |
Title: - Use lists instead of long paragraphs.<p>- One prediction per list item.<p>Historical:<p>2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068<p>2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596<p>2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859<p>2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988<p>2017: none?<p>2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767<p>2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723<p>2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370<p>2013: none?<p>2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201<p>2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023<p>2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681
Upvote: | 134 |
Title: Happy New Year HN<p>First: Thanks for all great submissions and for all high quality and interesting comments from all you users here on HN.<p>Second: Do you have any plans for the new year, new skills to learn, excited over any new project, looking forward to something, should you do anything different this year, etc?<p>Personally I never had any "new year promises", neither this year, but I have at least a "goal/plan" this year, to do something different;
Consume less, create/learn more.
It is so easy just surf the web consuming stuff because you are bored, that in the end gives you nothing/little in the end. This year I will try to use more of my time to try to learn stuff that interest me or can be useful. I probably will fail miserably, but at least its a plan :) And now I have said it, on the internet, so best I stick to it :)<p>Once again
Happy New Year
Upvote: | 225 |
Title: I recently put an end to a drawn-out and stressful chapter of my life. It lasted many years and I'd like to get a sense of closure. Yet I can't seem to fully rekindle the same energy of my younger self. I've bought a couple of books to celebrate, but I haven't opened them yet because I don't want to <i>taint</i> them with past memories, if it makes sense.<p>How did you close the previous chapters of your life? It may sound strange but I almost feel I have to <i>ask for permission</i> to move on. Like it's not real unless I share it with someone else.
Upvote: | 230 |
Title: As Paul Graham wrote in his essay "Why nerds are unpopular", it is hard for us tech oriented people to build a great social life. Because our minds constantly revolve around tech and science.<p>Has anyone here ever made good progress in connecting with other people?<p>If so, which approaches or resources were helpful to you?
Upvote: | 96 |
Title: Given the removal of the need to move to a High-COL area to work for a FAANG-type or FAANG-aspiring company with the rise in intermediate-to-senior level remote work opportunities for some of them, I feel that it might be possible to FIRE for more of us.<p>I've always been fortunate enough to avoid grinding LeetCode, telling myself I don't want to jump through those hoops (rotating a red-black tree on a whiteboard) and that I was happy enough at non-FAANG companies. I know that at almost all of these companies they will ask you LC medium (or even LC hard) questions. However, the death of a close friend has made me reevaluate whether I want to work until 65. Maybe retiring early or at least having the option to not work full time makes sense. I do know that you can still live a good life before you are retired, and I am guilty of "Groundhog Day" living like some of us are.<p>If you were not hired into FAANG out of college and were rusty on algorithms and data structures, what advice would you like to share on getting hired into FAANG? What did you have to do to prepare successfully for the interviews? How many "practice" interviews did you do? How much time did you spend every week? How did you maintain discipline during the grind Did you have a coach or some coach-type program? What books or courses would you recommend? Thanks for any input. Happy new year!
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: I know. You may be probably be in a time zone that already made the change to the new year. Or may be you don't care about this made up construct that we call the new year. May be you are right; this is just a social construct that has no bearing on our actual lives. But I don't care. May the next revolution around our nearest star bring you the happiness you always wanted in your life.<p>And, by the way, thank you for making my life a place full of curiosity earning to learning new stuff. You literally made my life better, HN. Thank you!<p>And happy 2022. I mean, happy 12022, fellow homo sapiens!
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: How do you take care of yourself mentally and physically? How do you avoid burnout and what do you do when you have burnt out? What are your top few points of advice for these aspects of self-care or anything else that may be relevant?<p>For context:<p>I am finishing my bachelors in CS this year, but I really enjoy my major and classes and I look forward to landing a job in industry. I find side projects to be fun, but motivation to continue working on them dies off within a week or two. As a result, I don't have as many things built and to a level that I would like because I feel like I should be putting my time on something else and then end up making no progress on anything (leetcode, projects, self-learning, hobbies). So I feel like I always need to be doing something and then when I do something I feel like I should be doing something else that is "better", which leads to constant (but sometimes low) feelings of burnout, laziness, or overwhelmingness (hope that's a word). I would also consider myself a perfectionist, so that makes me feel like everything I am doing has to be perfect (even when I don't know how to execute whatever I'm doing properly). I like to take well thought out steps in anything I do (picking next quarter's classes and professors, projects, programming, friendships, etc), but sometimes I feel like that holds me back from actually doing the thing I am thinking about and lead to no progress again.<p>I apologize for the rant, but I'd like some advice, thoughts, and reflections from the community.
Upvote: | 265 |
Title: I'm building up a list of technology to learn in 2022 and I'm wondering if going deep dive into K8s is worth the time.<p>Background: I'm a ML Engineer building up skillsets in MLOPs. I have experience with AWS and have a couple of AWS certs under my belt. For now, I'm reviewing how deep I should go with K8s, e.g. getting CKA certified etc.<p>Thoughts, please?
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: Git is amazing and essential for my work. However, a vast majority of developers just use the clone-commit-push workflow and can get by. I've also taught CS to younger kids and seen students struggle to internalize the mental model of Git. The learning curve is steep for early devs. Is there merit in having a VCS that has a less steep learning curve or are the benefits of knowing a universal VCS too great (even if you end up using a small subset of the features)
Upvote: | 75 |
Title: I feel like there is more and more posts about existential crisis and anxiety. I don't know if I'm noticing it more because it's resonating with me or are these issues becoming more prominent. I feel like the general sentiment here is atheism and maybe nihilism from people in tech who have more money than they need and now they don't know what to do next. It could be it's just me projecting as well. What I'm asking myself is is it becoming unhealthy for me to come here every day and read about these topics because they could be amplifying my own issues and there isn't really an answer to these questions.
Upvote: | 85 |
Title: Looking for examples of high-quality engineering blog posts, and particularly interested in posts from tech company blogs.<p>I'm looking to see quality writing in this genre- brief explanations of technical concepts, good structure and flow, and tying things back to business context.
Upvote: | 198 |
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