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bttf

197 karma · joined January 17, 2013

Where we're going, we don't need roads.
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bttf··on Show HN: Photoc – Command-line tools for photographers
You mean more like ImageMagick?
bttf··on Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
This led me down a rabbit hole - didn't know Yogi Berra was responsible for so many witticisms.
bttf··on Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer
Incredible article, as a lifelong Hendrix fan, nicely done.
bttf··on Libgodc: Write Go Programs for Sega Dreamcast
Would happily take work chat, video conferencing in network-enabled Shenmue over Teams, Slack any day
bttf··on Ask HN: What's your experience with using graph databases for agentic use-cases?
would you consider needing to do community detection as a reason for using graph over relational?
bttf··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)
The Goodreads of music. I'm a lifelong music nerd and have developed habits for finding and curating good music, both new and old. I'm codifying my habits and heuristics for discovering new music into an AI-powered social platform that can be used by anybody to widen their horizons in terms of music they listen to and to share their taste with others. https://waxnerd.com/adnan
bttf··on Don’t let an LLM make decisions or execute business logic
the way by which things will scale is not only limited to the optimization of low level hardware but also just by brute force investment and construction of massive data centers, which is absolutely happening.
bttf··on Don’t let an LLM make decisions or execute business logic
It sounds like the author of this article in for a ... bitter lesson. [1]

[1] http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

bttf··on The Mythology of Work (2018)
In 2025 and beyond it is my sincere hope that we stop lauding articles that merely present problems without providing any substantive thoughts on how to solve them.
bttf··on Ask HN: What software/tech blogs/magazines should I be reading in 2024?
That sounds awesome. On TIGSource by chance? Care to share any?
bttf··on Ask HN: How do you maintain multiple SDKs?
In our case, we do a lot of client-side computing (for data privacy reasons). We also support hashing, and real-time events. These all have different implementations per language that aren't trivially scaffolded.
bttf··on Sauna use as a lifestyle practice to extend healthspan
You simply have not had a proper sauna before. It can get your body way hotter inside and out than a shower ever could
bttf··on Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories
There is a distinction between Twine games, or choice-based games, and parser games, which are typically called Interactive Fiction games. One provides a pre-set list of choices at branches of narrative, while the other provides a world that the user can explore and manipulate via a palette of text commands.
bttf··on Ask HN: How would you, a solo dev/small team, make a scalable web app in 2022?
Sure; because it is a monolith, it makes things simpler by having just the one backend container to scale. So it's a matter of making more instances of it available (via # of pod replicas in your k8s cluster) for increasing availability.

You can start using k8s right away, and just have 3 replicas running to start. As you scale, just up the number of replicas (and nodes as you need them) as you go.

Your real bottleneck becomes the database at that point (in addition to any blocking 3rd party APIs you may be using), which I would not host in k8s but use a managed service such as AWS RDS. This bottleneck will make itself apparent later on, depending on your application and the scale you reach. But you should definitely have the resources to cross that bridge once you, if ever, reach it, because you should be dealing with a large number of customers at that point.

bttf··on Ask HN: How would you, a solo dev/small team, make a scalable web app in 2022?
I've been working on a project that largely addresses this need. It's a distillation of knowledge gained from building web apps of my own as well as for startups for the past several years. The stack comprises of React (via NextJS), GraphQL, Express, Node.js, and PostgreSQL - all written w/ TypeScript.

The goal was to provide a hardened boilerplate app with no distinct featureset but at a minimum have things like ORM, user authentication, migrations, as well as a frontend web UI set up so that it could be used as a head-start for any web app projects in the future.

It's built for fast developer experience, while decoupled enough (a la containers) so that it can easily be taken into a kubernetes cluster for scale. (Still a monolith though.)

The project is private now, but happy share it on request. Also happy to answer any questions.

bttf··on Memories of the “Sneakers” Shoot (2012)
Great read.

> Years later I ran into Phil at the symphony. I asked him I how he was able to come up with such a great script. He blushed and said he had worked on it for nine years. I know spending a long time writing something doesn’t guarantee success. But not giving up on a good idea almost always does.

bttf··on The Great Bifurcation
I experienced a similar transition, albeit this was over 10 years ago. I've come to realize that a balance between both meatspace and hyperspace ends up being most satisfying. For me, the former was very valuable in introducing new experiences (learning and playing music, construction projects, hobbies like hiking and surfing), but the lack of cognitive and 'online' stimulation will make itself apparent over time.
bttf··on Ask HN: How Do You Learn?
For me it's been mostly a holistic approach:

Making time for deep focus

Prioritizing important work (whether its learning or executing on tasks) for the morning right after waking up

Healthy sleeping and eating habits

There are a plethora of tools out there to optimize your workflow, but I think that is more a matter of preference.

Videos can be hit or miss. The right videos can jam pack a ton of information and get you learning complex topics very quickly. Books and articles have their place too, though I tend to read later in the day into the evening when I'm more keen to winding down.

One common thing I tend to do: I may end my day working on something that leads me to a new pillar of information or complicated topic that I need to grok. In those situations, I stop the day there, and plan to wake up the next morning to research the topic (over coffee), and absorb any videos, articles, material I can get my hands on. Your brain can do amazing things with a little bit of caffeine and deep focus after a good night's sleep.

bttf··on How I remember what I learn
Realizing that one forgets the majority of what they learn day-to-day is a harrowing realization. It was for me, at least.

I built this simple web app to help me keep track of what I learn, and later opened it up to the general public. I've gotten good feedback so far - interested to hear more: https://wyl.today

bttf··on Show HN: WYL Today? A note-taking utility for tracking what you've learned
I used React, GraphQL, and Node.js

The idea is one day folks could publicly share their learnings, and that one could participate in 'follower' paradigm similar to that of Twitter

bttf··on Show HN: WYL Today? A note-taking utility for tracking what you've learned
that's fair. I am submitting this app quite early

I've thrown in a screenshot on the landing page to help better inform what the user is getting into. that's all I can do for now given my time constraints. later, I'd like to flesh out a decent landing page.

bttf··on Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation
An old-fashioned term for this is: selling out.
bttf··on How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS
This is an interesting perspective on running a SaaS and pricing it for slower paced growth. On the Inkdrop pricing page, it reads:

>We would like to provide good, quick and warm user support. If we got a lot of users, we won't be able to support them all.

Frankly admitting that they want to pace user growth for better quality service is both brutally honest, and enticing.

I hope more bootstrapped SaaS companies achieve this equilibrium where pricing is premium, growth is paced, and quality is high.

bttf··on Emulators Written in JavaScript
Intresting that SNES is missing from the nintendo list. There's a good bit of literature on the underlying implementation for SNES roms: https://github.com/bttf/snes_dev

(Full disclosure: I spent a little time accumulating aforementioned literature)

bttf··on Pinboard Acquires Delicious
I can relate to a lot of your sentiments.

I'd like to share a project I've been working on, https://slushi.es

bttf··on Ask HN: How do you unwind at the end of a day?
Being able to commute by train really helps me. Having a routine of a 20 to 40 min train ride home creates a buffer between work and home and puts some mental 'distance' between my evening and the work day.
bttf··on The Shamanic View of Mental Illness (2010)
What were some resources that put you on the path to recovery?
bttf··on Mozilla Acquires Pocket
sorry alphapapa, it may not be obvious on the site as it is currently, but you are able to save 1 link to multiple lists
bttf··on Mozilla Acquires Pocket
interesting point. tags have been a feature we have not added yet partly because they seem slightly superfluous. the user is able to search across titles, descriptions, URLs, and can curate links with lists. not sure if tags can provide any extra value
bttf··on Mozilla Acquires Pocket
thanks for the tip. diigo is definitely a competitor (was noticed by our analysis a long time ago but attention to it has fell by the wayside). pocket seems like the biggest whale, so naturally have pinned it as one of our competitors. i think any save-for-later app that introduces discoverability is a competitor
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