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GFischer

4,852 karma · joined December 30, 2009

Programmer / IT from Montevideo, Uruguay (South America), currently working for the travel industry after 15 years at the insurance & financial sector.

You can contact me at xargef on Gmail (x..@gmail.com)

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GFischer··on What I Learned Co-Founding Dribbble
Set up a very short timeframe and goal - let´s say, I´m going to make a prototype (or code feature X) this weekend.

Then show it here :) .

The risk of it "getting stolen" exists, of course.. but if you don´t do it it´s exactly the same. If you aren´t convinced, you think someone else will have the time and commitment to do it? Unless they were already planning on it.

My recommendation: go ahead and do it. Maybe you need some structured help, join a hackathon?

GFischer··on What's Salesforce?
The main thing with Salesforce, or SAP, or other software of the sort, is the ecosystem and knowledge that´s tied up with it.

You can do most things you can do on Salesforce with generic software, but the know-how is explicit on Salesforce (think Open Source vs Microsoft). There´s also the backing, support, etc., and them being the original SAAS which I guess is the BIG part (that must have been some pretty huge savings back then).

There´s a team of Salesforce devs working next to where I do, and it does look very much like any other database frontend software, but with the sales vertical. Instead of choosing Java or .NET or whatever, they go Salesforce.

GFischer··on Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?
That´s very interesting to hear. Thank you.
GFischer··on Ask HN: Best free compute and other resources for startups?
I think you have to be introduced into the program by an accelerator now.

I´ll miss it, it was a pretty awesome program.

GFischer··on Ask HN: Server-side web apps – is the database still a bottleneck?
I went the opposite way, from an employer with an insane dedicated server to using cloud services, and I was appalled at how weak the cloud SQL servers are.

Of course, they don´t need hardware expenses, licensing is factored in, administration is orders of magnitude easier and cheaper, so the tradeoff is usually worth it.

GFischer··on Why aren’t more companies remote-first?
I think that conferences, etc, build up on the human element and are important, but not for the reasons you mention.

My current belief is that a 95% remote team works, you do need in-person opportunities, the more the better, but at least once in a project can be enough.

GFischer··on Why aren’t more companies remote-first?
I work on a remote office, and while I definitely agree that the rapid prototyping stage works better in-person, current tools help a lot - we have a pretty large app that was built 100% remotely (I did ask for in-person meetings but there was no budget).

Honestly, you can collaborate and do almost everything remotely. What does lose a bit is team building, you have to go a bit out of your way to build rapport (but it´s also doable).

GFischer··on Should Failing Phish Tests Be a Fireable Offense?
At a financial institution I worked for, they had a separate entrance with separate badges and alarms for the really sensitive stuff.

I only entered that area once, as I was a low-level programmer.

It was also the only company where I never ever made a query on the production server :) (I worked for another financial institution on a more senior role and I did have scary access to the production DB).

GFischer··on Should Failing Phish Tests Be a Fireable Offense?
Reminds me of Roger Federer being denied entry:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/tennis/not-so-fast-roger-fe...

Rules are rules in Australia, even if you are a 20-times Grand Slam champion and one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

Roger Federer found that out this week when he was blocked access to a locker room at the Australian Open by a security guard who took his job very seriously.

A video circulating Twitter on Saturday showed the Swiss double defending champion stalled at the entrance for lacking his tournament accreditation.

GFischer··on Should Failing Phish Tests Be a Fireable Offense?
That´s exactly what I have at work, and it does deter tailgating.

Some people do ask for the owner of a badge to do a second pass but security always appears at that point.

GFischer··on How not to get a $30k bill from Firebase
And they have it for almost all other plans, so the technology is there.

It sounds like an intentional product decision and not a technical obstacle.

GFischer··on How not to get a $30k bill from Firebase
Microsoft Azure has such a feature (although not for Enterprise users, which is evil), I´m surprised that AWS doesn´t.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/offer-detail...

GFischer··on To ORM or Not to ORM
At least for MS SQL, code is fully source controllable, I have it on Git and we have all automated deploys and niceties.

Views can be a problem from a performance side, Oracle has materialized views but MS SQL lags behind (I think Postgre has them too).

GFischer··on Major Azure Outage
In my case, we actually chose it, as we´re a Microsoft shop. Hasn´t been that bad, but we did experience 2 major outages in 1 year.

Not sure how many outages are there on AWS.

GFischer··on Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
Cows have it pretty good (especially in my country Uruguay) - I absolutely understand it when you´re speaking about chicken and fish though.

The one ugly part for cattle is the slaughter, you need to have tough skin to work at a slaughterhouse.

GFischer··on Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006
I´m really sorry, this is what copyright should be for, but I´m sure it´s whack-a-mole and a load of money :(

FWIW I love your content.

GFischer··on Google Is Eating Our Mail
I´ve unfortunately searched for some customer-friendly e-mail provider and people want Google.

I had set up some commercial accounts on Zoho (my own e-mail is on Zoho) but they asked me to migrate to Google, even though it was more expensive.

GFischer··on Downsized dwellings: Inside Tokyo's tiny living spaces
Just to give you my perspective as an Uruguayan (South American) software developer, whenever I visit the U.S. I think houses are ridiculously huge - most are bigger than mansions here in Uruguay.

I don´t have the same experience in Europe.

GFischer··on Downsized dwellings: Inside Tokyo's tiny living spaces
A twin bed isn´t a requirement for a single person. I lived in a 14 square meter apartment for 8 years, it´s not that harsh.
GFischer··on Downsized dwellings: Inside Tokyo's tiny living spaces
As someone who lived in such an apartment in the past, computers are the main thing. I wished I had air conditioning back then.

I agree, It is pretty incredible how many things have been miniaturized - thanks to smartphones I no longer travel with a laptop for leisure for example, I´m travelling halfway around the globe next month with only a carry-on luggage.

E-book readers such as the Kindle are another amazing advancement.

GFischer··on Downsized dwellings: Inside Tokyo's tiny living spaces
I used to live in a 14 square meter (150 square foot) apartment in Uruguay while I was working and studying, for almost 8 years (definitely at age 25 like Sotaro Ito).

Honestly, it wasn´t bad - I was outside all day, and the miracle of the Internet meant that when I was inside I wasn´t missing much. I did my studying and meetings on university buildings, so it was basically a dorm room.

Several poor families (single mother and children, some immigrants) did live in the same 14 square meters and that was sad.

GFischer··on Ask HN: Part-Time Work for Founders?
The best kind would be using your first customer as a funding source.

The other, typical option is to consult for a not very demanding customer.

GFischer··on Dow Jones’ watchlist of 2.4M high-risk clients has leaked
From what I understand (as mentioned, IANAL) having the database itself is lawful, as they're compiling it to comply with a legal requirement, but under GDPR, that still wouldn't stop from having to comply with GDPR and the rights (including knowing if a subject is in the database):

http://lexindicium.com/2018/03/19/data-mining-and-gdpr-compl...

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...

Right to:

information about the processing of your personal data;

obtain access to the personal data held about you;

ask for incorrect, inaccurate or incomplete personal data to be corrected;

request that personal data be erased when it’s no longer needed or if processing it is unlawful;

object to the processing of your personal data for marketing purposes or on grounds relating to your particular situation;

request the restriction of the processing of your personal data in specific cases;

receive your personal data in a machine-readable format and send it to another controller (‘data portability’);

request that decisions based on automated processing concerning you or significantly affecting you and based on your personal data are made by natural persons, not only by computers. You also have the right in this case to express your point of view and to contest the decision.

In particular, the clauses about access to personal data and to have decisions being made by a natural person seem relevant here.

GFischer··on Dow Jones’ watchlist of 2.4M high-risk clients has leaked
Yet another sensitive database with probably no way to know if you're in it - GDPR sounds like a pain but I'm coming around to believing it's a necessary evil to stop this nonsense.

OTOH I guess this is relevant information and so they should be allowed to have it under GDPR rules? I'm obviously not a lawyer although my work, like most programmers' is affected by GDPR, PCI and whatnot.

GFischer··on A Humility Training Exercise for Technical Interviewers
The technical part is, at several companies (including the one I work for).

A lot of companies now rely on tools such as Codility / Leetcode / HackerRank for technical screening, or their own in-house tests.

GFischer··on What it’s like to pursue a dream for 30 years and fail
The best thing the US military could do for soldiers in those circumstances over the next ~20 years, is reduce the enormous carrying weight they deal with now.

I thought that was the point of the "dog" robot from Boston Dynamics. Are those too expensive for deployment?

GFischer··on When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
The "find a reason to say no" can be very damaging as well if taken to the extreme.

I've seen people that were entirely qualified for the position be rejected at the company I work for because they made some totally understandable mistake - I'm talking about people that took the time off to take a 5-hour on-site coding assignment, and made a mistake but would have had a passing (and possibly good) grade on an academic evaluation.

And now we have 5 open positions and nobody hired for them.

GFischer··on The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins
Doctors in the US make almost twice of what doctors in other developed countries make.

If you're saying it's because they have to pay for med school... then maybe it's med school that's taking the bacon :P

https://journal.practicelink.com/vital-stats/physician-compe...

And, as rsj_hn, all the bizarre administrative overhead eats a lot of profits which are basically dissipated, it's economic wealth destruction.

GFischer··on The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins
Weeks is not bad... Months is. And as you said, it's for non-critical stuff.

A mixed system - government-managed for important things, with extra healthcare you can pay on top, like the one we have here in Uruguay, seems to work best.

As far as I can tell, we have the best healthcare for anything but special/rare cases which would be best served by a top specialist from the US or Germany. For the remaining 99% of cases it beats any system I know of.

GFischer··on Mickey Mouse and Batman will soon be public domain
It´s copyrighted for the author´s lifetime, so the primary author will have no problem, and what you say was the original intent.

It´s how many years after death that is the problem.

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