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jrowley

1,727 karma · joined October 9, 2013

I'm a software engineer that is fascinated by healthcare. Outside of healthcare, software and hardware, I am interested in running, politics, and music.

Currently I'm a software engineer at Pomelo Care. Before that, I was the Head of Engineering at clinical trial company called Curebase.

Berkeley, CA

https://funk.dog

linkedin.com/in/joerowley

twitter.com/joer14

hn - at - funk. dog

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/joer; my proof: https://keybase.io/joer/sigs/FMZni_OvviV5SYFJulnHOXZQffzDreLQ4vzo5Y7QEl0 ]

submissionscomments
jrowley··on Apple HomePod 2nd Generation
He even live streams fixing them.

Here is a video, more on his channel

https://youtu.be/FfGiuh_QH3M

And I think it works out to about $80 once you include shipping. Ive got a dead one right now - trying to decide if I want to source air gun to fix it myself or just send it to him. Less than $100 to have it fixed is kind of a steal.

jrowley··on Apple HomePod 2nd Generation
If you really want to you can connect additional HomePods to stereo paired HomePods via airplay, buts they aren’t permanently paired.
jrowley··on Ask HN: How do you install not the latest iOS version?
If you really wanted to you could probably use a small drill bit and drill the screw out and then only use a single screw to secure the screen to the body.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2023)
Pomelo Care | Remote (must be USA) | Software Engineer

Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. As an early member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come.

On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a caring mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB,

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is the best so I recommend applying if you're interested!

Learn more here: https://grnh.se/40ce4ff94us or feel free to email me (email in profile - no external recruiters please!)

jrowley··on Ask HN: Laid off employees, did the company ask you to return equipment?
What is a SAW machine?
jrowley··on Ask HN: Anyone try semaglutide / Wegovy for weight loss?
Also interesting to note obesity and inactive lifestyle are the leading causes of type 2 diabetes, so overweight individuals not becoming diabetic may reduce overall strain on diabetes medication supply.
jrowley··on An interactive guide to Flexbox
CSS is grid is newer than Flexbox and has lower browser support, caniuse says 99.74% vs 96.95%. Overtime I imagine we'll see more utilization though

• Grid usage: https://caniuse.com/?search=css%20grid

• Flexbox usage: https://caniuse.com/?search=flexbox

jrowley··on What questions should I ask a prospective engineering manager in an interview?
It sounds like you’re interested in having a technical manager? I’d ask them questions about the stack used at the company/team, why it’s the way it is, who made those decisions, what parts are working out great, what parts need improvement… then maybe about actual software delivery, eg how does something go from idea to implementation - what are the testing standards in place and why? How does a developer know when it is safe to release something?

If the manager can talk thoughtfully about these things at a technical level, or at least acknowledge when they have gaps they may be a good manager for you. Granted there are a lot of other qualifications for being a competent manager in my opinion. Good luck!

jrowley··on Tell HN: Google won't let us get control of our own domain on Google
I’d start with offering the ex employee $1000 to resolve the issue before getting a lawyer involved. Not sure what legal standing you’d have.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Anyone successfully setup a Back end For Front end team at Big Tech?
I have no FAANG experience but I’ll comment if that’s alright.

A few potential talking points:

BFF pattern allows you to separate concerns, have different team topologies and development methodologies, and technical standards and values for different parts of the system. Leadership may appreciate your arguments if you can put them context of enabling teams to advance independently and have different priorities which could otherwise be in conflict. An example could be efficiency gains from fronted / client oriented teams not having to switch language to work on BFF if using node. Another could be testing standards / code coverage for platform APIs may be higher than necessary for more experimental client related work.

jrowley··on Ask HN: How do you organize a platform team?
I think scrum is great when you have following properties: - clear goals - not a lot of interruptions - tasks / projects are particularly timeline sensitive. - you want to measure output and plan initiatives far into the future

Scrum can also have a fair amount of overhead, all of the rituals, eg pointing tickets, refining the backlog.

Also daily standup / status updates for 12 people can be a lot of time.

When you have support queue, operational responsibilities and regular dev work all going on in the same time, you might find you're spending a lot of time trying to ensure some amount of work gets done in a sprint, while support burden / operations supersedes estimates, which then pushes work to next sprint. So the sprint effectively becomes meaningless, because there is always lots of carry over.

Kanban does require a mature, self motivated team too though, since deadlines aren't as clear necessarily.

jrowley··on Ask HN: How do you organize a platform team?
This sounds challenging! First I’d recommend kanban as opposed to scrum for the team, as the team is so large it is probably hard for them to be really working on a single scrum board effectively.

2nd I’d make sure the team had space to do their operational duties, possibly on a rotation so that other members can focus more on platform development. It can be tempting to try to minimize the operational work, especially when coming from more of a product oriented team. But it is important to develop good process to support the recurring operational labor.

Finally within that team of 12 I’d identify the most senior devs and tech leads and work with them closely on these process changes. Try to understand their problems and ensure they understand the goals coming down from the VPs etc.

Sorry if this is basic / already in play. Good luck!

jrowley··on Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPhone 14 Pro for 2 years
Or it will be part of “Apple one” or whatever
jrowley··on Ask HN: Dealing with the Guilt of Giving Notice?
Everyone will come and go from a company eventually, unless they die or the company shuts down. Although you work closely with these people, ultimately this is a transaction between yourself and the business and if you really have a good relationship with your colleagues, and they are good people, and they will understand and support you in your transition. But these feelings are normal!
jrowley··on Ask HN: Have you or know someone who has been cured of acrophobia (50 yrs)?
You might want to see if you can get a prescription for Propranolol and have some guided exposure therapy while on it. People have used it to successfully cure arachnophobia and other phobias.

It works surprisingly well and helps you essentially erase those old memories / fear and reconsolidate new ones.

You need to follow the protocol carefully. It is roughly:

1. expose yourself to the fear

2. take propranolol

3. rest for 90 minutes (light reading, sleep)

4. wait a few days and get good sleep

5. re test

I wish you best of luck!!!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25980916/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-020-0857-z

jrowley··on Why BART uses a nonstandard broad gauge
The new trains aren’t as loud due to their conical wheels.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Is your company giving you a holiday for Juneteenth?
I’m at Curebase. US employees have the Monday off.
jrowley··on AirPlay and Touch Bar = Network Disaster
I wasn't familiar with MoCA. Seems like a lot of the advantages of power line networking, but higher throughput / reliability I imagine. Thanks for the tip!
jrowley··on Ask HN: Pros and Cons of Switching from Linux to M1 MacBook in 2022
Re your side point, In the past I have had that same issue especially when external monitors / accessories are attached. Not that I think detaching monitors before sleep is a reasonable work around. But I was able to isolate it to that.

My work around was disabling sleep at the time. :/

jrowley··on The SSO Wall of Shame
Well browsers essentially started phasing out support for non SSL pages with password fields, which forced sites to get SSL and drive down the cost. Not sure if there is similar united front for SSO.
jrowley··on Infinite Mac
Oh wow, I remember this for sure. What a throw back. What was it called?
jrowley··on Ask HN: What stops a random USB device from rooting Windows?
I built something like this using teensy board. It’s pretty simple. Mine had a button to activate it, and was not nefarious but could have been. Hope this helps!

https://github.com/joer14/hackers-doorbell

jrowley··on Ask HN: How do you keep track of software requirements and test them?
At my work we’ve needed a QMS and requirements traceability. We first implemented it in google docs via AODocs. Now we’ve moved to Jira + Zephyr for test management + Enzyme. I can’t say I recommend it.
jrowley··on A man bought a cruise ship on Craigslist
Man buys boat and then can’t afford is a tale as old as time. But he took it to the next level.

Very impressive work and vision though!

jrowley··on Study suggests mechanism through which psychedelics may alleviate depression
No, in the informed consent document they should describe you will be given an active placebo or the investigational drug. The IRB would approve the specific drug / dose that is administered, as outlined in the trial protocol.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Anyone use GitHub Issues at their company?
That’s interesting about the permissions. Should be mitigated to some extent by branch protection rules?
jrowley··on Incident with GitHub Actions
Using your own runners GitHub doesn’t completely solve the problem, because GitHub won’t queue them to start the job during these outages.
jrowley··on My own phone number is now spam texting me
Physicians want to be accessible only via specific channels, to protect their time and to ensure there is consistent process across patients. Most of the time as a patient you can’t call them directly, unless you work through the page operator or you plan ahead with them on predefined phone number and time.
jrowley··on GitHub incident 2022-03-23
Does GitHub enterprise result in dedicated instance or any better availability?
jrowley··on Clockwork raises $21M to keep server clocks in sync
Exactly! what would Leslie lamport say? ;)

https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/time-clocks.pdf

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