Hacker News Reader

cakeson Google Shutting Down Wallet Card

This really is too bad, was convenient at some points for me. Any good suggestions that are of the similar load-and-use-as-needed variety?

cakeson Ask HN: Password Gorilla last commit 3 years – give up on open source pwd mgr?

I used password gorilla for years until 2015, when I switched to keepassx.

I had similar concerns about how it felt that password gorilla remained unchanged for periods of time, regardless of whether I would know if there was a vulnerability or not. It was more...it felt stable (which was fine) but not "this will be here forever!" to me. I recognize I could've forked it (or something similar) but I don't (yet) know tcl/tk and don't feel comfortable "owning" my own password manager for security-related stuff.

I can recommend keepassx/family (I had, long ago, chosen password gorilla for Windows & Linux support) but, at this point if you are moving, find something you are comfortable with (that's updated!).

cakeson Ask HN: Developers – would you ever consider becoming an SDET?

I could probably have been convinced at points but it's a hard bargain since SDET career path almost feels like it requires SDET -> SDE. It helps that I've done SDET in an environment where I was given the right mentoring/inputs that I have a fondness for it. Otherwise, again, for career choices it seems like SDET wouldn't last long.

Aside from career overall and given that I do enjoy automating things, playing against bounds of things, etc. but, again from my personal experience and as indicated, those skills are often in something that doesn't transfer (e.g. proprietary languages) and/or is very product-centric.

cakeson Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

I was thinking about this and I guess _maybe_ if you didn't customize anything during boot/init it would work from your distro's install...very golden path thinking there...

cakeson Docker Compose Wrapper

I smiled to myself for a moment and that was immediately followed by that question.

cakeson Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

Of the same opinion, there is sort-of the architecture "mess" where it is complicated and you may just have to spend some time learning and/or see some hiccups because large projects are complicated and then there is the 15 year old code base where _everything_ feels hacked/tacked on.

cakeson Ask HN: What was your longest time you've spent debugging a single bug?

2 - 3 months where I was primarily "focused" on the issue which was ongoing for the place I worked at the time (ongoing being years and multiple people).

It was an embedded system problem and I didn't fix it and I don't know if it ever did get fixed - sometimes I wonder if it ever was figured out.

cakeson Saying 'no' to keep crap out of products

The difference when developing some interfaces like that can be whether you "consume" them yourself or not. Building something without a known user base/use case (where the idea was just 'that sounds cool') and supporting it forever can lead to _different_ design decisions compared to those where you go "Hhmmm...well if we build it this way it is really good/bad and we can use it easier."

Whatever you end up with, though, is definitely a "support forever" situation.

cakeson Ask HN: My friend and I cannot agree on our server side stack for our startup

I would also like to know at what scale as I've used MSSQL for several years and only badly designed queries/tables caused locking issues.

The real _problem_ (which BizSpark can resolve short-term) seems like it would be licensing.

cakeson T-Shirts Unravelled

This is really interesting/useful for the next time I'm looking to make t-shirt purchases.

cakeson Atom text editor 1.4 released

That's good to know, next time I'm evaluating whether to switch text editors (which happens plenty) - I'll have to keep that in mind (or more importantly try and not discount Atom immediately because 'Oh yeah, doesn't it have a problem with $HOME/.git?')

cakeson Atom text editor 1.4 released

That's surprising and sort of disappointing to me. I _just_ (within the last week or 2) was setting up my $HOME to be .git controlled...and was thinking "Maybe I should give Atom another shot"

cakeson Ask HN: How do you identify a “dead-end” job during an interview?

The day-to-day questions (like you suggest about needing a software product) or really some of the better indicators I've gotten because it will tell you a lot AND the interviewer is generally not at all prepared for that.

cakeson Ask HN: How do engineers make time for job interviews/phone screens/preparation?

PTO or sick days most likely if you have to do it during a normal work day. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you may find a company willing to work around your schedule (e.g. maybe a late-day interview) - it wouldn't hurt to ask.

cakeson Ford says it conducted successful tests of driverless cars in snowy conditions

How did the car alert you that you were on your own (I don't own a Mercedes)? I'm curious as to how it indicates to you a rather important message about your immediate driving situation.

cakeson Security Notification and Linode Manager Password Reset

Agreed - especially having read this earlier (not being able to fix it at the time), still not getting the email (like 6 hours have gone by) and I'm resetting because I should and still no communication from Linode.

Concerning since I had to reset my password and regen my 2fa using only my old password...

cakeson Ask HN: What hypervisor are you using?

The difference between Hyper-V tooling on a domain vs off a domain is really shocking. The tool sets you get on a domain can be useful...off a domain...I'll pass entirely.

cakeson Ask HN: How many of you use Windows for web development?

Whenever I have a general "I don't like it" sentiment I usually will give something a go until I have some concrete reasons for why "I don't like it". It's a pretty solid filtering mechanism for me and helps me explore new things and at the same time confirm or reject my initial reaction(s).

cakeson Ask HN: What new tech are you looking forward to in 2016?

Wider availability of USB Type-C on devices!

cakeson In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

> but the overall incident with the police etc, is a public issue.

I'm not trying to specifically argue about this point of information but we don't even know the whole of that story or if it is even related to this at this time. I'm not saying it is or is not or anything like that. Just that we really don't know anything about what happened (yet and again, if ever).

cakeson In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

Agreed - as much as anyone may want to know the exact reason(s) and or the "true" story...we may never know and while some form of closure is preferred we should avoid trying to figure out ourselves

cakeson Running Windows under FreeBSD's bhyve

Even though it looks like (and probably is, I can't easily try this right now) a lot of work, it's cool to see this running on bhyve

cakeson DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year

I ended up giving DDG a chance as well this year and I had a similar experience. I recognize that part of it is probably how I'm conditioned but it's really frustrating to feel like I'm fighting the thing that's supposed to be helping me (which is how I felt).

Hopefully it does improve over time, I do value my privacy, but I still ended up back with Google because it became too much of a hindrance.

cakeson Ask HN: What non-computer activities do you do?

Same - though in some of the earlier stages and/or during experimentation I would say "And at the end, you can try and eat it."

cakeson Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared

This story has been building up and up for a while now, Michigan Radio has several stories/reports/etc.

http://michiganradio.org/term/flint-water#stream/0

cakeson Ask HN: What platform do you use for current events and news?

A combination of NPR, local TV news, national TV news, RSS feeds (tech, NPR, general news, etc.), and general "browsing" of sites like reddit/hackernews/etc.

cakeson Owner of Peet's to buy Keurig for almost $14B

That seems to be some reviewers thoughts as well - save the trouble and buy a mini-fridge

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/07/keurig-kold-irl/

cakeson Ask HN: How to be a great Junior Engineer?

Agreed and, additionally, don't escalate something you perceive to be "wrong" up the chain of command without at least checking some history and/or asking around.

cakeson Linux Performance Analysis

There is - software like Splunk, SysTrack, etc. get towards that in various ways.

cakeson Does SAP – or Oracle – have product/market fit?

There will also, often, be multiple integrated components of the suite so you have buy-in across multiple points (finance, inventory, sales, etc.) of the enterprise and the software becomes somewhat entrenched.