Hacker News Reader

dev_throwon My dad left me $7M and I have no idea what to do with it

Altruistic: building a foundation to pardon medical debt, or tackle some low hanging fruit type problems in your neighborhood.

Pragmatic: Invest most in index funds, and use the proceeds to fund your startup.

Crazy: Alt-coins :D

dev_throwon TetzelCoin, a cryptocurrency designed to be a token for forgiveness

Looks promising. Anonymous confessions on the blockchain, and ICO proceeds used for a great cause (medical debt)!

dev_throwon Fish are eating lots of plastic

Thanks, I was having trouble with italicizing things :)

dev_throwon Fish are eating lots of plastic

Bioaccumulation is a serious thing. I suspect increase of plastic in fish might be related to the reduction in sperm count in men.[0][1]

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-semen-quality...

[1] http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/10/a-story-about-fish-plasti...

dev_throwon North Korea Missile Appears to Have Flown Over Japan, Abe Says

It seems like the Kim regime is backed into a corner where only the capability to launch nuclear weapons will ensure that they aren't wiped off the face of the planet.

dev_throwon I’m Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

Would applying for a green card on a TN Visa be considered a violation of the non dual-intent of the visa and prevent me from renewing/applying for TN Visa at the border?

Context: naturalized Canadian citizen (Indian born) on a TN Visa working in the states.

From what I have read, green card applications are determined by country of birth, and for India are upwards of 3 years. So, I would like to know if an application for a green card would jeopardize future TN Visas at the border.

Thanks a lot for doing this AMA, Peter!

dev_throwon Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

Yeah, I am curious as to what skills are most prized in frontend engineers.

Sidetone: I am semi-actively looking for a Javascript Engineer job (fullStack or frontend with ~2 yr exp). Are y'all hiring?

dev_throwon Show HN: Skov – A visual programming environment

This is wonderful for folks who can understand concepts presented to them visually. If I had access to this as a child, I could have definitely grokked functional programming faster :)

I can only think of one major improvement - add the concept of synchronicity/asynchronousness. Perhaps a visualization to illustrate difference in function completion times or race conditions will help!

dev_throwon Alien life could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics

Our universe might just be an alien's Docker container.

dev_throwon Forget self-driving car anxiety: In the early days human drivers were the fear

Human drivers are still dangerous. Every year, around a million people worldwide are killed due to automobile accidents. [1]

Meanwhile, in the United States alone, there are around 5 million vehicle crashes annually.[2] Although automobile safety has increased, I am curious as to whether our accidents per-capita has stayed the same.

Also, we have to consider the interaction effects between decisions taken by human drivers and self-driving algorithms. I have a feeling that they might be deleterious initially, but should be able to improve after some iteration.

[1] https://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safe...

[2] pdf: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

dev_throwon Stealth Cell Tower Disguised as Printer

Perhaps a temporary fix might be to have a on-board verifiable hash map of cell tower addresses by location. Either that, or a way to block 2G on the device.

dev_throwon IoT Growing Faster Than the Ability to Defend It

I think there is a great use case for open source software running on our IoT devices, where we are cognizant of features, security and implication of updates. I predict this will be more commonplace in the next 5 years.

At present, we are so blissfully unaware of what runs on our devices that it is scary.

dev_throwon Ask HN: Where to Practice Web Application Penetration Testing?

http://overthewire.org/wargames/

is a great resource for learning basic pen-testing.

dev_throwon Family sues Amazon after hoverboard fire destroys $1M house

Interesting news. The result of this verdict may set a precedent to further curtail online sales of electronic goods from questionable manufacturers (read relatively cheap).

The only question is whether this will lead to a more booming underground economy for folks who are more risk friendly.

dev_throwon Ask HN: How to make secure email convenient?

I have witnessed several enterprises move from 100% email to 90% Slack and alternatives while using email primarily for scheduling purposes. I have a feeling corporate email will slowly die off over time.

Perhaps using a community messaging tool with built-in end-to-end Signal encryption will be the way to secure lines of communication in the near future.

dev_throwon Facebook Peering

With the increase in live HD video streaming on Facebook, this is a smart move on Facebook's part. I wonder what the traffic ratios have to be before the peering partners will want to start charging.

dev_throwon Microsoft is doing a better Apple impression than Apple

I for one am bemused to see both Apple and Microsoft's 2016 offerings - one with a non-touch screen but a seemingly ergonomic touch bar, and the other with a beautiful touch screen.

My money is on virtual/augmented reality as being the next frontier for development tools, where we will move away from flat screens into more intuitive three dimensional realms.

dev_throwon DMCA exemption for repairs, modifications, research on your vehicle takes effect

Not really... There will be (already are) tons of devices that we do not own that can affect our safety, health or quality of life. For example: traffic lights controls or ventilation systems. Left insecure, they can/will be dangerous.

dev_throwon How I Became HackerRank 1 in Two Hours

Companies like HackerRank turn software engineering into a commodity (great for code copy paste). The HackerRank contests submitted by companies were quite buggy, verbose (but with confusing English), and like the author, took a lot of fighting with the website to get the code to pass the tests.

This is in no way a measure of success as a software engineer, where a significant amount of time is spent in defining problems and articulating maintainable solutions for deploying features. This means using design patterns, proper documentation, in lieu of regex type expressions that are indecipherable a week later.

dev_throwon DMCA exemption for repairs, modifications, research on your vehicle takes effect

This is great news. It is alarming to realize that a majority of devices built after 2020 will be connected to the internet without the choice for us to vet their security. Securing these devices must be a proactive endeavor.

dev_throwon Ask HN: Career choice: Boutique consultancy or Big 5

To clarify, I am a new grad dev, and while that is well below the average, there are promises by the company about fast and frequent salary increases.