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ctb9

79 karma · joined March 17, 2009

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ctb9··on Airtable acquires Airplane
Welp, this changes my 2024 outlook.

I've been using Airplane.dev since their first post on HN, and I was repeatedly delighted with the way the product "just worked", I thought they made great choices about code vs. config vs. admin, and their feature development velocity was superb.

I was ready to really jump in and move beyond simple internal tools to build complex, mission critical internal systems in airplane.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I would love to leverage the powerful Airtable UI, but their scripting vs. custom extension offerings have always felt underpowered and needlessly complex, respectively.

ctb9··on Show HN: NPM package which makes your react app visually editable like Figma
This seems like it could be cool, but I would need an actual product screenshot or a demo video on the website to move forward.

And the "Learn more" link inside the Your Design Assistant section doesn't point anywhere.

ctb9··on Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
Agreed, if anything this placebo finding supports your idea that the experience mediates the improvement more than the chemical itself.

I once attended a talk by a neuroscientist at UCSF, Adam Gazzaley, that really helped me see what the future of medicine could look like if we appreciated the power of experience, and more importantly if we could measure and then alter said experience in a realtime closed-loop system. My takeaway was that one day we might think of blasting our synapses with SSRIs or Adderall similarly to civil war era surgeons...the bone saw does prevent gangrene, but in a such an inefficient way.

ctb9··on How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way
assuming i was willing to ever interact with a SOAP api in my life which i sure as hell am not

^^^ this killed me. i'm sure everyone who has ever interacted with a SOAP api feels the same. god bless this tiny kitten/person/hacktivist, the world needs more of this energy.

ctb9··on Git is my buddy: Effective Git as a solo developer
Ten years ago I was told to never use Git submodules.

Five years ago I inherited a project that had four repos sharing a Git submodule.

Now I tell people to never use Git submodules.

ctb9··on Ian Fleming Explains How to Write a Thriller (2018)
That was my first thought too, but I don't see why that would be categorized as a 'harrowing experience.'
ctb9··on Ian Fleming Explains How to Write a Thriller (2018)
I was struck by this sentence: "I have no message for suffering humanity and, though I was bullied at school and lost my virginity like so many of us used to do in the old days, I have never been tempted to foist these and other harrowing personal experiences on the public."

Is Ian Fleming saying that he was sexually abused as a child?

ctb9··on Show HN: TaskFlowy - I created a Workflowy clone that's better for tasks.
I really like this. I keep bouncing between text-based todo lists and more visual/kanban tools, so this feels like the best of both worlds. (If I could stand the airtable/notion database view those tools would be great, but alas.)

One thing that's preventing me from dumping in a bunch of action items is that I can't figure out a way of creating tasks via the keyboard. Is this possible?

ctb9··on Show HN: Hackable No-Code Tool for MVPs
I would need an example project (the final product and template inside the tool) to give this a try.

As it stands you just get dumped into the builder with no guidance whatsoever. I wanted to evaluate the tool, but there's no way I could dedicate that kind of time to something I didn't know existed 5 minutes ago without even knowing what it's capable of building.

Surely you have made something complex and impressive with it, right?

ctb9··on Redwood: An integrated, full-stack, JavaScript web framework for the JAMstack
Could someone explain how this compares to Next.js?
ctb9··on The Universe Is Not a Simulation, but We Can Now Simulate It
How does one come to that figure?
ctb9··on Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that doesn't suck
I do. I met one of the founders about six months ago and got a single serving to try (before they started using the tubes).

A couple weeks ago I compared it head to head against starbucks Via while backpacking.

Sudden Coffee totally blew Starbucks Via away. It's about as much better than Via as Via is compared to the horrible Nestle stuff.

It's not going to replace my daily pourover, but for future camping trips I'll be drinking Sudden. For this use-case, the subscription model is a pain. I'd prefer to just buy two or three cases to have a supply and give some out to my outdoor friends/family.

ctb9··on Show HN: Jackpocket launches iOS app to disrupt the $80B lottery industry
I read this as: "We've built our own APIs by automating the purchase process on the state lottery websites."
ctb9··on Which Is Closer: Local Beer or Local Whiskey?
Buried under the shitty attitude, there is actually a useful comment here.

Remember HN is the sum of it's parts. Be a postitive part.

ctb9··on Show HN: Computer vision to track and notify website changes
Good idea and nice design.

1. I'd prefer to see monthly pricing.

2. I found the scroll behavior to be quite jarring.

Good luck.

ctb9··on Ask HN: How to motivate QA to have more initiative?
It sounds like your QA team believes their purpose is to test that basic functionality is working as intended. This puts the focus on "checking the boxes" and not exploring edge cases or applying their deep knowledge of your product to try to find shortcomings.

I strongly believe that automating the repetitive and mindless aspects of the QA process is the crucial step to shifting their attitude. Automated UI tests can give everyone confidence within minutes that core functionality has not regressed. This allows the QA team to dive into a product or feature in a creative way and do their best to find the rough edges and help make the product better.

I have a consulting practice exclusively dedicated to helping startups with this very process: http://structurehq.com

ctb9··on Ask HN: “Coinbase just sent you 0.002329 BTC”
Allowing their applicant list to be used for unsolicited marketing seems out of character for YC.

Has either party confirmed this? I'm skeptical.

ctb9··on With IPO Hopes Fading, Square and Box Face Reality Of Commodity Products
I think you mean undercutting, or predatory pricing.

Price gouging is when you use a monopolisitic position to charge an unreasonably high amount.

ctb9··on Ask HN: Idea Sunday
There is a strong assumption here that you could encourage hundreds of people to express their opinion on this someone's shirts.

The value for the poster is clear; what is the value for the voter?

ctb9··on Show HN: A sequence of online courses to learn web development from scratch
I think those are different Dan Grossmans. (Dans Grossman?)
ctb9··on Show HN: Pingsure, test your webapp every hour.
Are the integration tests driven by selenium, phantomjs/casper, or something else?
ctb9··on Goldbely (YC W13) Raises $3M Led By Intel Capital
This article seems to indicate that YC participated in the series A. Is this correct, and has YC done this before?
ctb9··on Ask HN: Content management using wikipedia style editing?
Please comment or downvote if I shouldn't even feed the trolls or the inept international HN hucksters.

The term you are looking for is a "CMS". Good luck.

ctb9··on What I Learned Building Twitter Bootstrap
Same here.

Is there an app with traction that helps people like us find fellow hackers to collaborate with. If not, sounds like an idea right there. Want to help build it?

ctb9··on Google's new "batshit crazy" UX
This also drove my crazy.

My Temporary Fix: revert to the old school GMail, and select the theme "Preview (dense)".

ctb9··on Ask HN: Why is our eCommerce store converting poorly?
Where are you losing people? If no one is clicking get started, address the homepage first. If people look at products but still don't buy, start with your products page.

1. Are you performing split testing on major components of your landing page?

"Increase your brownie points!" strikes me as awkward and mathematical (makes me think $browniePoints++). Ask a few friends in your target market to help you brainstorm.

2. I almost missed the arrows to see more products per category. Make them more prominent and switch the circles in the top right for page numbers.

ctb9··on Ask HN: Evaluate my side project please?
1. looks great. I would suggest fixing the next button vertically so that it doesn't get pushed down by apps with long descriptions.
ctb9··on Ask HN: How do you handle more than one free account per person?
I second this. I'm currently guilty of doing exactly what the OP is describing. The free tier was slightly too small for my needs, so I'm using two accounts for development. When I'm ready to use the service in production, I will gladly signup for a paid account.
ctb9··on Ask HN: Summer Internships in the Bay Area?
Thanks for the heads up. I just checked out upout, really cool idea and great UI.

To try to return the favor: on your about page, you link to /karma.html, instead of /karma.

ctb9··on Ask HN: Summer Internships in the Bay Area?
We're hiring engineering and (possibly) marketing interns.

Company Name: equipster

Company Size: 2 (soon to be 5-6)

Company URL: http://www.equipster.com

Position: (A) engineering intern (frontend and/or backend). (B) marketing intern.

Contact Email: chris@equipster.com

Skills Needed: (A) js/php/python. bonus: experience with large, gnarly datasets. (B) Online marketing, good writing ability, interest in the outdoors

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