HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

heeton

1,126 karma · joined February 15, 2012

meet.hn/city/gb-Exeter

Socials: - x.com/Ifthenalex

Interests: Art, Books, Climate Tech, Freelancing, Gaming, Hardware, IoT, Legal Tech, Mentorship, Music, Open Source, Robotics, Science, Startups, UI/UX Design

---

Web: https://www.Alex slade.com

submissionscomments
heeton··on I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
> It is a cool design, but 3 years? She definitely worked on other projects in that time.

She's a nice lady, but 9 months to incubate? Her mother definitely did other things in that time.

heeton··on Opal Tadpole – A webcam for laptops
I could never recommend this. I own a C1 and it's completely ruined by terrible software. On MacOS (various versions, on M1 and now M3), it stops randomly, needs regular reconnecting. I'm on an old version of the app because the new version doesn't even work at all (hard freeze after an hour).

Countless examples from forums and elsewhere of the same issues.

Shame, because the hardware is cool.

heeton··on Are compostable coffee cups any better for the environment?
> you’d need to use your tote for at least 5 times a week, ten years or more

You should easily be able to spot this misinformation. A re-useable bag is not 2500x more emissions than a disposable.

heeton··on Workers in Sweden Will Expand Strike Against Tesla
Are these actually sympathy strikes though? It reads as refusal to provide services to a particular company, not the workers fully striking.

Edit: Yes! The terms also used are "sympathy boycotts", which this clearly is.

heeton··on Why You Should Write Your Own Static Site Generator
I mean, really, you should write your own static site generator framework.
heeton··on Ask HN: Anyone Using MacBook Air M2 24GB for Developement?
It’s a very capable machine (I’m still on the M1, powering an ultrawide screen and a variety of intensive apps).

If you care about new models coming out soon, you can check https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

(There’s a chance the M3 is about to be released)

heeton··on Sensor Watch: a board swap for the classic Casio F-91W wristwatch
At the really simple end, I’m using it to prevent my watch from accidentally switching out of 24h mode, and to disable the hourly beep that can be accidentally turned on.
heeton··on What's Hashing? (2022)
If you're an alcoholic brit, hashing can also mean something else.

https://guildfordh3.org.uk/what-is-hashing/

heeton··on Fly.io Postgres cluster down for 3 days, no word from them about it
What’s their reliability been like?

Am I right in thinking the platform got bought a little while ago, and it’s being run by a relatively small outfit?

heeton··on Visual design rules you can safely follow
VVVVVV
heeton··on Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
For almost everything it’s Elixir at the moment.

Phoenix is wonderful for web apps, LiveView makes UIs about 2x easier and faster.

For more interesting electronics MVPs I still use Elixir + Nerves for prototyping.

heeton··on Ask HN: What did you do that helped you reach senior title?
I started to focus less on development.

This was my track, it will be different for others, but: seniority meant understanding user / business problems and then making better decisions about what to build.

I enjoy the quip that “juniors find complicated solutions to simple problems, mids find complex solutions to complex problems and seniors find simple solutions for complex problems”.

Sometimes the best thing you can do as a dev is to re-frame the problem, and I think a certain level of experience or confidence is needed to do that. But you can definitely cultivate the skill and get there sooner.

heeton··on An Elixir/LiveView game written entirely by ChatGPT
Mostly because it was fairly dense and hard to read, and I threw this together earlier today. If I do this again with some more time I'll find a nicer way to capture all the response and show it, I imagine others will do the same.

Or ideally there'll be some nice export process out of the chat itself.

heeton··on An Elixir/LiveView game written entirely by ChatGPT
With this language model around it, I imagine that's a trivial next step. ChatGPT was correctly self-diagnosing problems when I pasted the error codes back in. It justs needs a setup where output is looped back in, and I imagine you could start to say things like:

Give me an environment where the test suite passes for this new repo I've cloned, based on all the environment config inside.

- Finds versions, sets them up

- Installs packages

- Asks about conflicts or problems

- Notes why the tests fail first time (no DB!)

- Creates the DB, runs migrations

- Notes why the tests fail next time (missing env variable)

- Finds a similar env variable in the example file, creates and local env file

- etc etc

That's all possible now if you paste the messages into GPT (with some errors, which repeated attempts can resolve), it needs connecting up into a self-aware environment.

heeton··on An Elixir/LiveView game written entirely by ChatGPT
My bad, that's fixed now.

The repo is also here - https://github.com/alexslade/gpt-game

heeton··on Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?
I have 4 apps running on fly.io for most of this year and can recommend them.

2 are elixir apps that have been created on fly, 1 was an elixir app I had running on heroku, and 1 was rails app on heroku I recently migrated. I used their heroku migrator and it worked pretty much automatically. I had a few steps to follow to move the DB, but their docs covered it - https://fly.io/docs/rails/getting-started/migrate-from-herok...

I didn't want a self-hosted flavor of Heroku, and I value an opinionated and active community around the platform. I'll mirror another comment here:

> Everyone wants to be the new Heroku, but that should be table stakes. Fly is innovative in the same way Heroku was when it launched.

heeton··on Neutralisation of cockroaches with laser automated by machine vision
I have one on my desk as part of a laser cutter that cost less than $200 in total.
heeton··on OptiFi Program Incident Report
If MM were million-million, that would mean OP destroyed $50-100 trillion dollars. About the GDP of the entire world. So it probably doesn't mean million-million ;)
heeton··on Tell HN: I have received SPAM on my HN email
To add to this FYI: "SPAM" is the stylised trademark of a cooked pork brand. Spam is the name for unwanted nuisance email.

https://it.cornell.edu/gsuite-gsuite-student-facstaff-email/...

heeton··on Dusting “Attack” via Tornado Cash to Public Wallets
Do you have a source for this?

Last I checked, the ledger on Bitcoin and Ethereum are functionally identical. A value against a wallet address. There are no "accounts" on either.

heeton··on Tell HN: You can’t hire diverse candidates because you don’t post salary ranges
“The goal of a salary negotiation”

You’ve failed at the first hurdle then. This is to remove all negotiation and give candidates some advance assurance of their remuneration.

heeton··on I've been abusing HTTP Status Codes in my APIs for years
Reading the spec, that's definitely not what 204 is meant for.

https://httpwg.org/specs/rfc7231.html#rfc.section.6.3.5

> The 204 (No Content) status code indicates that the server has successfully fulfilled the request and that there is no additional content to send in the response payload body.

I don't see how that could be intepreted to mean "You have requested a resource which does not exist". It's intended for use cases like "Your request to save the file has been received, no further content will be sent".

Or am I misreading the spec?

heeton··on Ask HN: What's is your go to toolset for simple front end development?
Seconding this. I've been using LiveView in production for ~18 months now, on a couple of projects.

Hugely simplifies the overall stack. Combine with TailwindCSS, TailwindUI.com, and you have some very powerful tooling at a low development cost.

heeton··on Show HN: Crocodile - Better code review for GitHub
I like the site + product idea, but the demo fails to show me anything interesting except a floating comment. So I can't yet see the value of the tool.

The files you've chosen to use don't appear to show any difference between iteration 1 and 2, so one of your major features doesn't do anything. Is that a bug, or accidental? (I'm using Firefox 101 on MacOS 11.4).

My personal dumb suggestion: give a few demos, showing off the very worst points of code review hell, and how crocodile fixes each one. Make it a game. E.g.

"You're halfway through a large code review, and Sally has just added 2 new commits, ugh. Challenge: find the button to see the new additions, then decide if you want to include them in your current review, or review this iteration first and the new additions separately."

"Simon has just added a merge commit that fucks everything up, all the files look weird. Challenge: there's a way you can trivially see that the PR before this extra commit was looking great."

"You can spot a new method that was introduced, and you'd like to see the places where it's being called, but that's a lot of scrolling back and forth. Challenge: find how to show code hints on a selected piece of text"

heeton··on Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions
And, which recruiter?
heeton··on Ask HN: Share your personal site
https://www.alexslade.com

Nothing special, just some information for folks who might look me up. (I'm CTO of a gaming startup, so whilst I'm always interested in advisory roles and part-time consulting, I'm not actively looking for work).

heeton··on Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
You've misunderstood kickstarter. It definitely doesn't have to be projects "that wouldn't get support from traditional funding channels".

And they can be quite strict about only allowing projects that are nearly complete. It's extremely common for a boardgame, or other project to be "complete" but need a tonne of investment for production, shipping, etc.

Seems like the perfect model for a book launch. And the fans get what they want too with all the bonuses.

heeton··on [dead]
They're washing their hands. They do this at the communal row of sinks common in most public bathrooms (in the US and UK at least).
heeton··on Ask HN: What is your preferred “full-stack in a box” solution and why?
Elixir + Liveview + Postgres
heeton··on Becoming a Synth Dynamo
Seconding this - the push was amazing for me without a big music background, as chord exploration became shape based, instead of needing piano knowledge.
← PreviousPage 5 of 9Next →