Hacker News Reader

kevinconroyon Ask HN: How do I give back to people helped me when I was young and had nothing?

+100! I view it as "holding the door open behind me for others", much like people held the door for me.

kevinconroyon Exercise before bed is linked with disrupted sleep

“Honey, we’re in the test group for the RTC!”

kevinconroyon Africa CDC to Declare First-Ever Continental Health Emergency as Mpox Surges

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/08/09/nx-s1...

Alarmed by mpox surge, Africa CDC is poised to declare a 'continental emergency'

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has never done anything like this before. The agency is poised to declare a “public health emergency of continental security” as early as next week.

Since the beginning of last year, mpox cases have been surging in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with children making up the majority of the 14,000 reported cases and 511 deaths so far in 2024. Those numbers roughly match the number of cases reported in all of last year in the country.

kevinconroyon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2024)

I highly recommend Enveritas to anyone looking!

kevinconroyon Finding a new software developer job

If you are job searching, it's dangerous to go it alone.

Take this: "An Engineering Leader’s Job Search Algorithm" https://docs.google.com/document/d/19fr_36WOzKlq_zyGP2RdxMEs...

kevinconroyon UPS CEO says drivers will avg $170k in pay and benefits at end of 5-year deal

CEO is trolling working class. It’s total cost of benefits added to TC. So while from an economist POV this is the total cost of one employee, it’s not the TC (total comp) that Tech often uses, largely because it’s hard to know the added costs that the company pays per person

kevinconroyon Effective Immediately: A central hub for people who've been recently laid off (2020)

This may also be helpful: "An Engineering Leader’s Job Search Algorithm"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19fr_36WOzKlq_zyGP2RdxMEs...

kevinconroyon Ask HN: How's the job hunt going? (For those laid off)

If you are job searching and reading the comments on this post, there’s a >90% chance that "An Engineering Leader's Job Search Algorithm" may help you:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19fr_36WOzKlq_zyGP2RdxMEs...

Good luck!

kevinconroyon Adobe now requires you to purchase a subscription to rotate PDF pages

Open up two docs in preview. Let's say Doc A is the one you want to merge into. Open Thumbnail view in each doc. Select pages in Doc B you want to merge over to Doc A (some or all). Drag and drop into thumbnails view in Doc A. Reorder as desired. Profit.

Copy + paste also works.

kevinconroyon Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?

https://www.globalgiving.org

kevinconroyon Ask HN: Do I have to host all data in the EU to comply with GDPR?

IANAL, but you will need to get opt-in permission from EU users to transfer their data outside of the EU unless you can apply standard contractual clauses (SCCs) or get an EU representative.

Source: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-44-gdpr/

Example of an EU rep for hire: https://edpo.com/

kevinconroyon New iPhone SE

As a long time SE v1 user, I’m really happy with my iPhone 13 Mini. Yes slightly bigger, but I love it for all the same reasons I loved my SE

kevinconroyon Gravitational waves should permanently distort space-time

Cue "Three Body Problem" trilogy references

kevinconroyon Ask HN: How to prepare for blackouts/other disruptions caused by climate change?

As with (nearly) all things, there's a robust subreddit and a niche industry focused on "prep" (preparation for disaster situations). Many refer to themselves as "preppers".

https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers

Some are ready for a "HTF" (hit the fan), society-collapse events. Others, like myself, focus on the higher probability but less attention grabbing situations like multi-day power outages, supply chain disruptions, and low-cost-high-ROI investments (like buying two sets of N95 masks for the family in 2018 in the unlikely event of a pandemic).

There's lot of view points within the community as to what is best, but generally the agreement is to determine what your personal level of risk tolerance is, and invest + prep accordingly.

kevinconroyon Adjustable recipe

Like this? https://www.makebetterfood.com/

kevinconroyon Choose Exciting Technology

Agreed. Their example is that selecting Elixir was a great choice for them. Cool. That was using an Innovation Token.

I'm guessing that in addition to Elixir, they also used plenty of boring technology. Like using `cron` or `at` rather than writing your own scheduling subsystem. Or building on top of a standard OSS database rather than rolling their own.

The point isn't to _never_ to use new technology, but rather to use enough boring tech that you still have mental bandwidth to pour into the new tech, innovation, or product that will be your competitive edge.

kevinconroyon Ask HN: How do solo SaaS founders handle monitoring/PagerDuty?

> 5 minutes of downtime during business hours would generate 100s of support tickets

Perhaps part of the answer is that if you're a solo founder who is staying solo, try not to create a business where you have these kinds of dynamics.

OR, if you are creating one that does, scale up past being solo ASAP.

kevinconroyon Apple (Pro) Mouse (2014)

The article omitted one of the best "easter eggs" I've seen on a mouse ever: the Apple Mouse's red laser formed the pattern of a cute mouse head when held at about a 45 degree angle about 10 inches from the desk surface. And it wasn't a "oh, I kind of see it" sort of thing - it was clearly designed to have a cartoon look and was incredible attention to detail for anyone who found it.

kevinconroyon Turn recipe websites into plain text

Agreed! It’s a pet peeve of mine too. Here’s some history on why it’s that way and on a better UX:

https://www.makebetterfood.com/about/

kevinconroyon A small DIY air purifier

Yes! We have two box fans with HEPA filters in our bedroom to combat the cat fur/dander. It's made a world of difference. You can see it working as the filter captures everything. Have to change them monthly... but so worth it. #YMMV #YouCatsMayVary

kevinconroyon China Grew Two Cotton Leaves on the Moon

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6599445/That...

Recent article with actual photo (not just the CGI rendering)

kevinconroyon Student rating app penalizes fifth-graders who need bathroom breaks

As a parent who has two kids who have ClassDojo, I can say that ClassDojo supports points for any teacher defined criteria. I this case I believe it was a teacher-defined point system, not the default app settings.

So while it’s all good to discuss gamification and the dark side of these things, it’s not the apps designer that decided to negatively reinforce bathroom breaks, but their app did allow the teacher to set that up.

What other user defined settings and unintended dark patterns are out there?

kevinconroyon Advice to my younger self: become allergic to the churn

Another name we often use is "Business-As-Usual" (BAU) or "Technical Debt". Although some business-as-usual and tech is a necessary evil and in some cases, a good thing, I have also wasted many hours to tasks that create little to no value.

Another way to spot "The Churn": When you're done, what new value did your effort create or unlock? Are users better off? Is the system more resilient and reliable? Or did you just get it back to the way it was working before everything went sideways?

Find more ways to create and unlock value and you'll find you move forward much faster.

kevinconroyon Sergey Brin’s Resume (1996)

Clicking around, the last class he taught was with another student... Larry Page.

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/349/

kevinconroyon A personal story about 10× development

Who says you have to be the one to do it? What conferences exist? What books? Online courses? You don't have to be the professor, but you do need to be their advisor and point them in the right direction to learn, grow, and thrive.

kevinconroyon A personal story about 10× development

Yep. And if you're a 10x developer who becomes a manager or team lead, your best bet to maintaining your 10x effect (or increasing it to 100x) is to grow and support your team. You might not say that they are each and all 10x, but if you can grow them from 0.01x-2x range up to the 1x-10x range, then multiple by n team members and you get the net effect of a 100x-1000x dev.

kevinconroyon A personal story about 10× development

Infinity X developer? If true, I'd say that team has a professional development and growth mindset problem, one symptom of which is a productivity problem.

kevinconroyon Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

Even if it's a rant, it doesn't mean it's wrong.

At CES a decade ago, I got to play with a touchscreen prototype that offered tactile feedback. Press a button and the screen would push back and/or buzz (it's been a while, hard to remember). What I do know is that it _felt_ like I was pushing on something, not just glass.

At the time, it required a big area around it. Think ATM sized. For an ATM, it'd be awesome. I'd hope Moore's law would get the tech down to phone size by now, but here we are with more apps and no tactile feedback.

kevinconroyon Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

Kudos! Glad to see this swing back to tactile controls.

At the CHI conference about a decade ago I spoke with some of the lead HCI researchers at Mitsubishi (which has long contributed to human factors research). During Q/A they said the single best thing you could do to improve safety was to NOT buy a car with a touchscreen interface. Lack of tactile feedback is a major problem. We all were quick to point out that they were selling cars with touchscreens. The HCI researchers said yes the company did, but their point still stood.

You want to be able to do things like adjust heat and defrost without looking (just with hands).

kevinconroyon 82% of vehicles sold this year came with a touch screen

I'd be interested to see human factors research to see if it helps. Still, if you've got kids in the back seat who are asleep and there's background road noise from a highway, you don't want to yell "Carbot, turn down the A/C". Turning a knob isn't that hard.