Hacker News Reader

davewasthereon Johnny Cash Has Been Everywhere (Man) (2012)

Or you could be a rambling man, and actually go everywhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXDtQcuA5Bo (It's not until 3:20 that places start getting listed)

davewasthereon Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?

Yeah, I remember reading something about measuring Michael Phelps' energy input/output and he would have been in a massive surplus, except for the fact he was in cold water so much - and the energy required to keep himself warm made up the balance.

davewasthereon Launch HN: Rownd (YC W22) – Add authentication and accounts to any website

on https://rownd.io/pricing

'Up to 1 website', is an odd way of saying it. You can't really have less, can you? Also in Pro you've spelt 'Unlimited' incorrectly.

Any plans to add social auth, or just magic link going forward?

Watched the video, hopefully you'll experience the network effect going forward. Best of luck with the product.

davewasthereon Launch HN: Rownd (YC W22) – Add authentication and accounts to any website

Firebase, Cognito, Azure B2C?

Yeah, for the same reason I don't want to store credit card details, I don't want to store user credentials.

davewasthereon Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

Australia has that beat.

We're spending around $4m (USD 2.87m) per person to house refugees in Nauru offshore detention. Because reasons.

Persionally, I'd rather let the formally recognised refugees come to Australia and pay them each $100k a year for a savings of 3.9m/year/person. Bargain!

davewasthereon Ask HN: Why is MS Teams so slow, do devs test Teams on less powerful machines?

Yeah, I've found this to be the least broken (and fastest) way of joining a meeting.

No issues with any other meeting platform (Slack, Zoom, Discord etc... all work a treat), but the Teams client, on multiple machines? I've lost track of the number of times it's just not worked for me, or been an absolute dog.

Hope that Microsoft give it some love, because it's definitely got room for improvement.

davewasthereon The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon

https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/UcNarG

For those that hate paywalls...

davewasthereon Ask HN: How do you start contracting?

Permy role -> Consulting role -> Contracting is the way I did it.

Although as a lot of people say, clients come from my network and referrals. So build that up first. Also, I started my own consulting gig in the UK, which is pretty much consulting central (I don't know any other country that normalises contracting to such an extent).

Possibly something like TopTal would work if your network hasn't reached critical mass yet. They'll take the pain out of finding clients. But that's never been an issue for me.

I think starting from scratch now might be a bit trickier. I have a Saas that's in an industry that's sort of dependent on relationships. And those are harder to build in today's virtual world (or at least, I'm finding it so). I don't think I have any great wisdom on what to do differently though. My pipeline is sort of an organic subsconscious thing.

davewasthereon Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?

Yeah, I really like how the characters unveiled - and the overall arc of the story.

Bit of feels near the end.

davewasthereon British F-35B crash possibly caused by 'rain cover' left on during launch

Yeah, I can't see it quite happening the way the Sun intimates. Can't rule out FOD ingestion, but highly impropably could it have been an intake covers left on.

davewasthereon Making the dislike count private across YouTube

What's stupid, is (as long as comments are enabled) all someone needs to say is "I dislike/hate/loathe this video" and everyone who would have previously disliked the video, upvotes that comment (perhaps as well as...).

Although I guess it all counts as engagement, so win-win as far as YT are concerned.

davewasthereon Sri Lankan teenager builds solar-powered tuk-tuk from scraps [video]

A pair of safety goggles (while grinding steel) would be a good investment too.

davewasthereon The Photos app gets worse with every single update

Things like irfanview and imageglass are great alternatives, but I actually find myself using the photos "Edit & Create" option a lot, so I'm not sure I'm really looking for another default image program.

davewasthereon Why geothermal isn't ubiquitous and how it might get that way

I can't find anything to back this up. If anything, Germany are investing more in geothermal. It's expensive to set up, which is the downside, but it's a great baseload source for power/heat that keeps generating nonstop with minimal operating costs/maintenance for 30-40 years. Nothing about exhausting their heat gradient.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-geothermal-sec...

davewasthereon Ask HN: How Long Is Your CI Process?

Most of our builds (.net Core with a react front-ends) take around five minutes from push to having a release ready. Haven't really needed to optimise them at all. Roughly a minute for each of npm build, dotnet build, test and publish.

Deployment takes a little under a minute in total.

Worst one was probably a big Sharepoint application at one client's site. But that still only took about 12 minutes in total.

davewasthereon Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM

Worth checking your dishwasher though. Ditto, that's all I knew in UK (although I mostly hand-washed).

But even here in Aus now, there's a little compartment for pre-wash/rinse detergent... but nobody is aware of it that I've come across. That youtube video was revelationary!

davewasthereon Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM

Some UK flats are tiny and can't fit a full-size dishwasher.

And as a singleton, you don't often make enough dishes to justify a full load either. (although a twin drawer dishwasher would work a treat there)

davewasthereon Ask HN: How did you transition from FTE to self-employed/sole proprietor?

In 2008, I just quit - leaving my job at a small consultancy, which I really enjoyed. Initially, I was going to move country/head away travelling. But then it actually made sense to hang about for a bit for visa/residency reasons, so I found myself needing some work. Somehow, I ended up with 3 simultaneous contacts, all for essentially foundation clients. Picked up a fourth a few years later.

First few months were nuts, working insane hours, but very quickly found a balance. After that, I managed to travel and be a sort of hybrid digital nomad, with a base in one country that I often returned to. I'd spend about six months in the Northern Hemisphere during late Spring and Summer, around four months in Southern Hemisphere for the their late spring/summer - and the other couple bouncing around the tropics.

Probably had a 12-24 month runway of cash if needed, but never actually touched any of it. No idea how to hustle for new work. But it kept coming in anyway. Stopped bouncing between hemispheres around 8 years later having settled in Australia.

Have now started a company with a co-founder and transitioning more to selling Saas products rather than contracting purely exchanging hours for cash. (I've never been able to get paid purely on value-based pricing)

davewasthereon My Current HTML Boilerplate

Well, it's perfect readable in lynx & IE6.

I think for the most part, it's a pretty reasonable selection of tags. And there's almost no excuse to keep crazy old stuff around these days.

davewasthereon My Current HTML Boilerplate

It's missing an obnoxious cookie dialog, mailing list modal window and multiple ads.

davewasthereon List of Helicopter Prison Escapes

I don't think it'll take long for the first Drone Prison Escape.

davewasthereon SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

So much better than the best wired connection I can currently get here in Aus...

Awesome!

davewasthereon Ask HN: What Alternative to StackOverflow?

This was probably _the_ QA site for development/IT questions prior to SO. It used to be completely open and I really enjoyed helping out answering questions on the site. It felt like a focussed newsgroup that was super accessible.

But then they got scammy with hiding answers to users (but allowing googlebot to index) and paywalling... and that's why when Joel announced he was working on SO, I was super keen. Was one of the first few hundred users and it was exactly the anti-EE stance that appealed.

Fuck ExpertSexChange and the horse they rode in on.

EDIT: Jeff, rather... I followed both Joel and Jeff at the time, but think it was Jeff's posts that hooked me. https://blog.codinghorror.com/introducing-stackoverflow-com/

davewasthereon Weighing a Car with Tire Pressures

Or just use one bathroom scale, and a lever to adjust weight of a single wheel to within the scales limit, then measure each wheel individually and add the results.

davewasthereon Realtime Starlink Satellite Map

It'd be super not efficient...

Also, nobody wants a figure-8 demolition derby in space...

davewasthereon Ask HN: If you could work remote where would you live?

And, in practice, the latency will actually be better than fibre. So instead of a 240msec ping to the US from NZ, it'd be closer to the theoretical minimum of 25msec, but by how much, who knows? I could see a realistic 50-80msec perhaps.

Which is still pretty mind-blowing.

davewasthereon Show HN: Endpoints.dev – Pastebin for HTTP Requests

Same thing and worked a treat, with live updating... interesting.

davewasthereon Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

So looks like my randomised sleep times, working until bed, too warm a room, light seeping through, and glass of scotch in the evening 'routine' is not the most ideal.

Definitely need to take that advice on board!

davewasthereon A Novel Mechanical Ventilator Designed for Mass Scale Production

Yeah, Resmed here in Australia are doubling/tripling manufacturing capacity. https://www.businessnewsaus.com.au/articles/resmed-ramps-up-...

davewasthereon Google ditches its free WiFi service in South Africa, three months after launch

Do you mean Google Data Studio, or something else?