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kaashmonee

314 karma · joined August 2, 2019

www.watchmepivot.com/builder-index/u/kaashmonee
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kaashmonee··on Linux from Scratch
I second this a thousand million times. But with AI, i can't help but admit i find myself indulging in building things backwards, now that i can try a couple different approaches simultaneously for it.
kaashmonee··on Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance
Substantiveness of this article notwithstanding, I do want to point out that the author also runs (or is planning on running) a programming course which to me may be a slight conflict of interest. I think the author may altogether be well-intentioned, but it IS something that I'm going to keep in the back of my mind as I consume this content.
kaashmonee··on Claude Memory
I think GPT-5 has been doing this for a while.
kaashmonee··on Psychedelics are challenging the standard of randomized controlled trials
The title seems a bit misleading. I thought they were talking about LSD or psilocybin. But this is referring to an MDMA-based therapy which I feel is more of a stimulant, or at least is used as one more often than it's used as a psychedelic and it's an amphetamine.
kaashmonee··on Adam Neumann seeks to buy back WeWork after declaring bankruptcy in 2021
It's astonishing. I had a hard time wrapping my head around this...he is quite literally being REWARDED for failure. I knew the world wasn't fair, but wow.
kaashmonee··on Ask HN: If you're running an LLM locally, what are you using?
Ollama is incredible for me! The setup was super easy. I have been playing around with llama2-uncensored.
kaashmonee··on Elon Musk’s Doge barks up SEC’s tree
Interesting, but I'm not a huge fan of this article. The best I was able to surmise was that the SEC may do something in some cases where cryptocurrencies are treated like securities but I wasn't able to garner any information on what the deal with Dogecoin is right now nor what has been done or may be done against Musk in particular in relation to Dogecoin.
kaashmonee··on Ask HN: If you were not laid off, how are your 1:1 meetings going?
I don't have any.
kaashmonee··on Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
This is so based. Now I don't know anything anymore is the author Derek Sivers from California who now lives in New Zealand even real. Is anything on his about page even true? How are we supposed to trust it? Then again, it doesn't matter.
kaashmonee··on Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?
But I think that's what truly makes it "engineering." Programming and solving problems are fun in a vacuum but tech is just a lot more than that. Being able to produce a solution to a problem today doesn't mean that the same solution will work tomorrow. That's why we have to _engineer_ a solution, not just produce one.

I'd argue this is true of any engineering discipline. For example consider this analogy: we build bridges to solve the problem of being unable to cross to the other side. But we could also solve this with, say, a boat, to paddle ourselves across the body of water instead; in fact, that's a much more immediate solution that solves the exact same problem. But is it sustainable? Is it scalable? Can it handle traffic? To address these concerns, we _engineer_ a bridge.

Software that's meant to service a lot of people can't just be written to solve a particular problem today -- it must be _engineered_ so that it's future-proof, which is to say, easy to scale, easy to read, easy to refactor, etc. So often the simplest programming challenges become particularly difficult and often interesting engineering challenges.

Finally, to actually answer your question, it entirely depends on the company, the size of the team, and the commitment to code quality and engineering that that team has. Working at Google on the search team, for example, wouldn't be a great fit for you because every line of code you write has to be engineered! But working at a startup might.

But this comes with tradeoffs. Often times, the solution you write will have to be rewritten if you want your product to succeed. Refactoring and re-architecting things are a necessary evil as technology, hardware, and languages + frameworks change over time. I've worked at places where I've found myself repeatedly having to work on the same things over and over again because of how poorly engineered they are! If you enjoy programming and solving new problems and you want to have a career doing that where presumably you're building some sort of product, you have to engineer at least somewhat reasonable solutions today so that you can work on something new, exciting, and cool tomorrow.

kaashmonee··on Ask HN: How's your relationship with your parent(s)?
I'm from an Asian country and I'm an only child so my relationship with my parents is similar to my relationship with some of my close friends.

Granted my parents have changed over time and their values and beliefs now aren't what they were when we first immigrated to America. I count myself very lucky that they were able to adapt and leave some of their antiquated views behind.

This isn't always true of Asian families; I have a friend in the same boat as me but I also have one who has an extremely strained relationship with her parents due to their conservative and unchanging views on things.

kaashmonee··on Ask HN: Beating depression with or without anti-depressants?
Hello so the first thing you want to do is see a mental health professional and/or therapy. The second thing is, SSRIs tend to be pretty benign. I'm on Lexapro and the side effects are pretty tolerable and the benefits far outweigh the side effects. I wish you luck on this journey.
kaashmonee··on Google Docs New Feature: Pageless
when the teacher says 6 pages double spaced
kaashmonee··on Ideas that have been beaten to death
I did expect more than 1 idea though in a post titled "Ideas that have been beaten to death"
kaashmonee··on Knapsack algorithm in PostgreSQL source code
Why is this notable? In that same directory, there are lots of other data structures built in too (Bloom filters, binary heaps, etc.)
kaashmonee··on Ask HN: What's the best way to stay up-to-date on computer science research?
Thank you!
kaashmonee··on Ask HN: What's the best way to stay up-to-date on computer science research?
These resources are awesome! Thank you!
kaashmonee··on Security Issues with LastPass on Android
Please let us know when/where you do! This is really cool :D
kaashmonee··on Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)
I feel like this might be a better and more feasible solution. Is there a reason that JS can collect as much data as it does about our hardware? I feel like I always hear the mantra, "The browser is a sandbox," but reading articles like this make me really unconfident that that is true. I don't really have too much of an idea of how WebGL works, but I wonder if there's a way to create some sort of additional abstraction layer between a website and the hardware? So JS just has access to "hardware interfaces" like a CPU and a GPU but can only interact with via this interface. That way, even if a site wanted to, the best it could do is determine that your computer has a GPU or a CPU but not how many cores or what type of GPU?

This would however have the downside of incurring an additional latency with an additional abstraction, but if there was a way you turn this off with trusted websites and only leave it on when you're using a site you don't trust it could be more usable? It just seems better than disabling JS entirely since a lot of websites just completely break without JS.

It just seems like with the amount of information that JS can collect, even if you're using TOR or a VPN, if you crunch all the information about a particular user, like the kind of OS they're running, the version of the browser, the screen ratio, mouse click movements, time of access, number of CPU cores, type of GPU, whether or not it's a VM, etc., it just feels like you might be able to devise a pretty reasonable heuristic for where this person is and the kind of computer they're using. I can't really say I know the extent of browser and JS capabilities, but these things already seem alarming enough where I wouldn't really feel super confident that I can't be tracked even with TOR or a VPN.

Edit: Just discovered something similar to this is being worked on already! https://gpuweb.github.io/gpuweb/#malicious-use

kaashmonee··on Microsoft Acquires Smash.gg
Huh, this is pretty interesting. I'm not really familiar with Smash.gg, but if what people in this thread are saying is true, that it's a fairly straightforward platform that could be easily reproduced by Microsoft, then it seems like this acquisition was almost altruistically motivated. It feels like it's easy for a lot of big companies to make better competing products and drive the little guy into extinction, but this acqusition move feels like the company encourages startups and isn't entirely motivated by greed. But I may be biased; I already do like Microsoft, Nadella, and what the company does and how far it has come since the Ballmer days.
kaashmonee··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2020)
Location: Chicago, IL, United States

Remote: Both

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, C, JavaScript, Go, SML, Django, Angular, Ionic, Flask

Resume/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ROrmSsi0B_g5qGO6pySWgfleUmG...

Email: skandakk@gmail.com

kaashmonee··on Admitting That Functional Programming Can Be Awkward (2007)
I'm not sure I'm understanding the point of this article. Every language and language paradigm is awkward if it's used for purposes it's not meant for. Writing a game is something that is really heavily dependent on mainting some sort of state and functional programming in principle is supposed to be stateless. So, unsurprisingly, it's awkward to use FP for game development.
kaashmonee··on Love After Life: Richard Feynman’s Letter to His Departed Wife (2017)
What a heartwrenching letter. I thought it was a great read. There's something so profound about being human, it confounds all reason.
kaashmonee··on Mozilla made $436M from search deals in 2018
This might sound like a lot, but it sounds like peanuts to what Safari made in the same sort of deal: https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en....
kaashmonee··on Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?
It was actually inspired from HN. I found a site here called helpwithcovid.com and I've been working on a volunteer project with it. It's with a few people from around the world, so it's a nice opportunity to work on something but also with other people so it brings a fun social aspect into things. If anyone's interested, it's called CoCo and it can be found here: https://helpwithcovid.com/projects/719-coco-corona-control-c...
kaashmonee··on Mathematical challenges take undergrad in a new direction
I don't mean to be sour here, but why is an undegrad switching majors news?