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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

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

submissionscomments
heeton··on Ask HN: New Programming Language?
In my experience, Elixir (I haven't used Erlang much, so can't comment on that too) is the first language that removed async concerns. With the lightweight thread approach and message passing, things can get "embarrassingly parallel" very easily.
heeton··on Paper Grain in Origami
Time to get even more detailed :)

The article describes the opposite of what you did - grain usually aligns perpendicular to machine direction. After a quick search it looks like this is because of the Fourdrinier process commonly used, where a vibrating (side to side perpendicular to machine feed direction) mesh aligns the paper fibres as paper passes over it.

So this would explain the opposite of what you (and I) have observed with toilet paper.

Toilet paper is built on long rolls, then chopped down, so the perforations are also perpendicular to the feed direction of the roll itself. If this explained it, we would see it tearing more easily parallel to perforations.

Without researching more, my first guess is that the feed direction of the eventual roll is not the same as the machine direction for the paper that goes into it. And with multi-ply paper, do they criss-cross? I would presume so, for strength. You wouldn't want a finger break-through.

Now I'm wondering if there have been any rigorous studies into the orientation that people use with their toilet paper when wiping their arse...

heeton··on How we got to LiveView
Personal anecdote: LiveView is absurd. It's the biggest change I've experienced in web development since Rails v1.

I've been able to build rich, interactive, games without a single line of Javascript. It takes complicated server / api / front-end build projects and results in literally 1/10th the amount of code for the same result.

It's one of the few times in our world that the technology isn't just "new and cool" but "fundamentally better".

heeton··on Ask HN: Product teams who value deep work – What is your communication stack?
Thanks. From context I'm guessing that you exist in a wider organisation, and Slack was a pre-made decision that you have adapted to?

(And I like your approaches for doing that)

heeton··on Ask HN: Product teams who value deep work – What is your communication stack?
I appreciate and agree with the core of your argument here, but it's not very useful for me.

I am that leader who is setting the example. We aren't endlessly changing tools, it's a new project. It's not another layer on top of the existing chatroom, nothing exists yet.

If there are product teams who are happy with their stack, I want to hear about it. It implies they have their communication sorted, their people have the right behaviours, and then they found tools which support them.

I can do the first parts of that, but I'm unaware of the current market of the tools that might follow. Or to put it another way: I'm looking for data so I can consider the problem, I'm not looking for an answer to some problem I haven't stated.

heeton··on Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'
Yes. Of course, the business would also receive a tax credit for all the CO2 being sequestered by employees eating food. /s

Also, your 25 tons number is wildly wrong. It's simple to work it out on the back of an envelope:

CO2 is a produced from O2 and sources of carbon in your food. C + O2 = CO2

The molecular mass of the Carbon in CO2 is 12, the total molelcular weight of CO2 is 44. So, 27% of the mass of the CO2 you breath out ultimately comes from your food.

25 tonnes of CO2 being breathed out a year would imply 18.5kg of Carbon being consumed per day.

You must be hitting leg day hard.

heeton··on What do fintech startups use on their back end?
Any major tech stack will work fine. I assume “real time alerts” will need an integration with a 3rd-party notification provider (email, sms, etc) and the bulk of your business logic will be defined with whoever is providing your share price API.

So, tech doesn’t really matter, pick something simple and mainstream so you can get help as needed.

Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, Nodejs, Java, whatever. Postgres for a database.

You likely won’t need any exotic cool tech, novel databases etc.

heeton··on GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1410049195067674625

"""

"but eevee, humans also learn by reading open source code, so isn't that the same thing" - no - humans are capable of abstract understanding and have a breadth of other knowledge to draw from - statistical models do not - you have fallen for marketing

heeton··on Elixir 1.12
Likewise. It’s superb, and I haven’t had an issue getting developers (though half have been Ruby devs who picked it up easily).
heeton··on José Valim Reveals “Project Nx” (Numerical Elixir) [audio]
That’s what it is :)
heeton··on Nitrome to convert its Flash game library to HTML5
Anecdotally: flash games got a LOT of plays because of that play style.

I was a kid at the time, and released a few crappy flash games (“Tilt” where you literally just had to balance a plate on your cursor).

Over 5 years it go something like 100million plays... I never quite believed it.

heeton··on Show HN: Kiba Pro v2 – Commercial Ruby Extensions to Kiba ETL
I used Kiba (but not Pro) to setup ETL pipelines at the Beano, and found it great to work with. Thibault was nothing but helpful at the time, I can imagine this is going to be very useful for folks doing data work in Ruby for whatever reason.
heeton··on How to attract a technical co-founder [video]
Hi - I'm the creator of this.

It's a new format I'm trying out — recorded versions of questions I get asked a lot as a developer in the startup scene.

A big part of it is also finding gaps in my advice/knowledge so I can improve. Feedback welcome.

heeton··on Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
I help founders hire technical staff, or find co-founders.

I’m not a recruiter - I’m a CTO who’s done a lot of hiring myself, and it’s more about how to understand who you need and how to talk to them.

(I’m currently working on some free resources/workshops on the topic to build my pipeline, so if the above sounds useful to you then get in touch - my email is in my profile)

heeton··on Ask HN: What do you look for in a software engineering candidate?
Send me a message (email in profile) and I can do a mock interview with you and give some feedback.

Outside of technical ability I look for people skills, communication, reliability, self sufficiency.

Where are you applying? Aside from iOS what are you technical skills?

heeton··on Ask HN: What course should a CTO do?
I made the transition a few years ago, and wished this article had been written back then - it contains 90% of what I needed to know. Hopefully it will help you too, even though it’s not a formal course.

https://github.com/webflow/leadership/blob/master/tech_lead....

heeton··on Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
I don’t associate hard/soft with difficult like that (I personally find soft skills difficult), but this is a good example of how the terms are ripe for misunderstanding.

I try to use communication or personal or interpersonal skills, etc.

heeton··on Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
I’ve stopped calling these “soft” skills, especially when hiring in the last year.

They’re anything but soft, and no less important to a team.

heeton··on Ask HN: What do you actually use your biohack implants for?
A few people are doing similar things - I wanted a ring or something like that for a while. But now I just use Apple Pay.

http://metro.co.uk/2016/07/14/these-amazing-oyster-card-nail...

http://uk.complex.com/sports/2012/07/pay-for-the-london-metr...

heeton··on Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?
If I can suggest a talk rather than a book, "Hammock Driven Development" by Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure) is one of my favourites.
heeton··on Ask HN: Is there a way to sell my MVP?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product

"is a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development"

If people are willing to pay for something, even before it has any features, that seems like a pretty good MVP to me.

Assuming that people are paying for it that is...

heeton··on GitHub spy on user reading emails (2014)
"I'm paranoid enough to be worried about an email beacon. But instead of protecting myself with a secure client or text-only mode, I'd like to trust that people aren't going to track me."

Right.

heeton··on Where In Our Solar System Are We Most Likely To Find Life?
Earth

Sorry. Couldn't resist :)

heeton··on Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?
There are a couple of banking startups (at least here in the UK) that want to give you API-like access to key stats (transactions, totals) without full access. Very excited for that to pan out.
heeton··on Ask HN: I just got $100k in AWS credits, how should I use it?
No, it's like saying "here's $20, you have to use it all today. Or I'll give you $4, half today, half tomorrow".
heeton··on The Doctor Who Championed Hand-Washing and Briefly Saved Lives
This is all I saw.

http://cl.ly/image/2a0z2Q1T2S2C

http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/10300000/Doctor-Who-T...

heeton··on Get Your Essentials for Free
This seems like Uber's real play. A massive network of drivers that can be used at all times for all manner of things.
heeton··on How to “get out of the building” while working full time?
If you're technically under an inventions assignment agreement, then you're acting in bad faith by doing this in the first place. It's not being caught that results in distrust, it's being untrustworthy.

I'm not saying that the company is right in taking any work you do outside of office hours (I think that's total crap), I'm saying that you've made an agreement and now you're trying to work around it.

In an ideal world, you'd get permission - or work for a company that understands. Of course, the world isn't ideal :)

heeton··on Why They Called It the Manhattan Project (2007)
As an aside, I know someone who runs a cocktail bar called the Manhattans Project - http://manhattansproject.com/

He's also a developer and physics geek, so a lot of the drinks end up with fantastic nuclear program puns.

The FatManhattan etc.

If you're in London, UK, you should definitely join his mailing list and go along to an event (they happen every month or so).

heeton··on Entrepreneur is a silly word, and you sound silly when you call yourself one
To most of the world, and entrepreneur is defined as somebody who finds opportunities to exploit for a profit.
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