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laughfactoryon OpenClaw is changing my life

Frankly, it sounds like you have a lot to learn about agentic coding. It’s hard to define exactly what makes some of us so good at using it, and others so poor, but agentic coding has been life changing for myself and the folks I’ve tutored on its use. We’re all using the same tools, but subtle differences can make a big difference.

laughfactoryon Ask HN: Any real OpenClaw (Clawd Bot/Molt Bot) users? What's your experience?

I completely and utterly disagree. Simon is no gifter. Intellectually lazy snobs think that any time someone has genuine delight and excitement about something that they’re “grifting.” Also, for anyone who is trying (regardless of whether they are succeeding) the to make money—that isn’t synonymous with “grifting.” God, some of you need a better relationship with a dictionary.

Plus, it seems some of y’all love to hate the very industry which puts a roof over your head. You’re hoping and praying that it all burns down—yet where will that leave you? How do you feel about becoming a plumber—-until the robots take that job?

laughfactoryon Matlab–Python–Julia Cheatsheet

Agreed. As a data scientist myself, I can't imagine Julia getting much "mindshare" among us with the JIT experience it has. Perhaps we're not the real target audience for Julia? But if that's the case then adoption will likely be slow, and limited to only very niche applications and roles. For Julia to really become the next big thing (and solve the damn two language problem), it needs to be an effective solution for data scientists and machine learning engineers--and right now, it just isn't.

laughfactoryon Matlab–Python–Julia Cheatsheet

Yeah, this has been my experience as well. I really _want_ to like Julia. But so far the JIT experience has been exceptionally miserable--and unfortunately for me, my typical approach to development is quite interactive. I'm on 1.1.1.

laughfactoryon Matlab–Python–Julia Cheatsheet

Julia's compiled code might be super fast, but developing (or, God forbid, doing any sort of analysis) is painful because of how brutally slow the REPL/interactive environment is. Pretty much every little snippet of code you'll want to test as you write Julia feels like it takes _forever_ to run. I don't know if there's a solution for this while retaining the compiled run-time performance. I'm new to Julia (from R and Python), but I find the slowness/sluggishness of REPL to be nearly a deal breaker for me. It feels like the web back in the 1990s when you'd click a button and wait, and then click another button (or link) and wait, etc.

laughfactoryon Dear Client, Here’s Why That Change Took So Long

Ugh. MBAs? No thanks. Usually it's interactions with MBA-holding folks that gives me heartburn. They try to mechanize everything. I agree that an MBA education is probably fairly useful for developers, as long as you can retain your perspective and balance the two worlds--they are very different after all. I'm _very_ business-minded (though I don't have an MBA) and I still run into extensive frustration when I get these kind of queries from the business: why is this taking so long? As this article laid out well, the change or new feature is often conceptually simple but there can be _so_ much required to make conceptually simple things actually happen. Unless you have real development experience before becoming "management", I doubt it's possible for a developer to truly convey that complexity to you. Ultimately it ends up becoming a matter of trust, and frequently competent managers realize over time something along the lines of "well, if every developer I've ever had has taken a long time to deliver conceptually simple things then perhaps that means there's a lot to do to deliver things I think are simple." Sadly, there remain some managers who remain convinced, in the face of all evidence to the contary, that all developers are lazy, slow, and just need to be whipped more and harder.

laughfactoryon Technology Radar – Emerging Tech Trends for May 2018

https://www.pluralsight.com/tech-index

laughfactoryon Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?

Yes, this is why it's critical to adopt an output/outcome mentality. When you can't see if or when we're working the only signal of status is whether shit is getting done. This should be the only thing you care about, and it should be super obvious of you're project managing correctly.

laughfactoryon Mindfulness may have been over-hyped

Agreed. I would summarize modern society the same way. In some ways life is vastly improved over prior generations, but I think that masks an alarming amount of b societal decay.

laughfactoryon Ask HN: “Do's” and “don'ts” for tech recruiters?

Your listed Do's are great, and I'll add the following:

Do: - Read my profile and make it clear in your email or message why you think the position is a good fit (referencing details from my profile)

- Be personable and real with me. The more I feel like a random number to you, the less I'm likely to respond. I'm simply too busy for low-quality inquiries.

Don't: - Require salary verification at any point in the process. These days it's offensive.

- Blast out inquiries to anyone who has a keyword in their profile

- Be uniformed about how and why I might be a tremendous fit.

- Bullshit me

laughfactoryon The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul

Oh I think it'll help you successfully quit smoking, but man, quitting vaping is another animal in itself. The problem being that vaping is cheap (especially DIY), and it doesn't smell. So there's less incentive to quit, and if you do try holy hell the irritability is horrible for 2-4 days (nicotine withdrawal).

laughfactoryon Java is too old, What should you learn in 2018?

https://www.pluralsight.com/tech-index

Java might be old, but it's still a long way from dead. And actually it could be argued that it's done a fantastic job keeping up with the demands of modern development. Kotlin and Scala are great, but there's still tons of need for and value in Java itself.

laughfactoryon Why data scientists should start learning Swift

Swift? Um, okay... Good language, yes, but it's still very iOS-centric. I generally agree with the assessment of Python, but I'll stick with R for everything it can do. I use Python for everything else. If Swift breaks out of the iOS box then maybe I'll think about learning it.

laughfactoryon Blloc – minimalist smartphone

I'm unclear from the website what exactly the pitch is. I really like the idea of a grayscale medium intelligence phone which helps counter the addictive nature of smartphones and is focused around the essentials: maps, camera, calendar, email, slack...

For some time my wife and I have both been wanting a dumber minimal smartphone, to help break our addiction to our phones without depriving us of their usefulness. This might be a good fit, but it's hard to tell from the website.

laughfactoryon Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

$0 demand? Are you kidding? If there was no demand then Bitcoin's price would be $0. It's not zero therefore demand is also not zero. This is basic economics. Come on, man.

No intrinsic value? How about how it is truly stored energy? It has a lot in common with gold. Just because it's digital doesn't make it's worthless. Lots of very valuable things are entirely digital these days.

laughfactoryon Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

Excel is remarkable, yes, but I'd argue that given its nature pretty much every reasonably complex workbook can be expected to have at least one bug. Having worked with them a lot in many different contexts, I've seen just how easily errors are introduced and I think they should never be used for research or finance where the cost of errors is high. At it's core the issue is that it's really hard to create variations and tests which can tell you if something is wrong... Much harder than it is to do this in a normal programming paradigm. Yes, the barrier to entry is lower, but the trade-off is much increased error rate and ongoing brittleness. Even if it's "right" at one point there's no guarantee it will be right in the future. What if someone copies/pastes data into a crucial worksheet and misses a column? It's so incredibly easy to screw up!

laughfactoryon A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

The TLDR; is that roughly 2,000 more people in the 25-34 age group started farming, which is a roughly 2% increase. Doesn't really sound like news to me, not yet at least. I'd like to interpret it as the younger generation getting back to their roots and more connected with real stuff (where food actually comes from, getting hands dirty, that sort of thing), but 2,000 people doesn't make a wave. I hope this number continues to rise and that as a society we become more _real_ in coming years rather than less. I.e., I think our society has lost something important the further we've gotten from our roots.

laughfactoryon Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

What intrigued me most about the article was that it played the whole "adjunct professors get paid like shit because university funding has fallen dramatically." The truth is that this is nothing new: adjuncts have always been paid peanuts and treated poorly. What is new is that universities have realized that they can hire a fleet of adjuncts for cheap, and have them do most of the teaching. It's a cost minimization strategy which leaves them more money for sports programs and hiring more bureaucracy (and more expensive star researchers). Modern universities survive under the auspices of existing to teach and nurture young minds, but they're as much of a big business as any.

Sadly, most of my great professors in college were either adjuncts or associates. I.e., poorly paid.

laughfactoryon Ask HN: What do people use to prevent crawlers?

Great idea. I'll keep this in my back pocket for future use.

The wiley and expensive way is to alter your page

laughfactoryon Ask HN: What do people use to prevent crawlers?

This is very true. My scraping efforts have become vastly more sophisticated after running into explicit attempts to block me. Now I've got all kinds of bells and whistles, and validate the data returned.

laughfactoryon Ask HN: What do people use to prevent crawlers?

As someone who who does a fair amount of scraping for my job, it's always vastly preferred to simply pay for the data. It's generally more efficient and cost effective then scraping. Scraping is always the last resort: we need the data, it's not available for sale, and it's publicly accessible.

laughfactoryon Ask HN: What do people use to prevent crawlers?

Yeah, but if you can use ML to pick out the differences between real users and bots then you can also use ML to mimic real user behavior. Both sides spend a lot of time and money trying to overcome each other, and end state is the same it was at the beginning: near total access to the data, at least for those sophisticated enough.

laughfactoryon Ask HN: What do people use to prevent crawlers?

And this is why it's an excellent idea to always scrape behind proxies. Never scrape from your own IP, or one easily traced to you.

laughfactoryon Ask HN: What do people use to prevent crawlers?

I would not make the assumption. I've been working for corporate America long enough to know that there's an astonishing level of incompetence many places. I'm sure Twitter is no exception. I'm sure _someone_ at Twitter has considered this, but perhaps they work for someone who doesn't "get it." Among many other possibilities.

laughfactoryon Ask HN: What do people use to prevent crawlers?

I do it using rotating proxies, stripping cookies between requests, randomly varying the delay between requests, randomly selecting a valid user-agent string, etc. It's a pain in the butt. And to scrape more than I do, faster than I do, would be pretty freaking expensive in terms of time and money.

Note that Google is pretty aggressive about captcha-ing "suspicious" activity and/or throttling responses to suspicious requests. You can easily trigger a captcha with your own manual searching. Just search for something, go to page 10, and repeat maybe 5-20 times and you'll see a captcha challenge.

If Google gets more serious about blocking me then I'll use ML to overcoming their ML (which should be doable because they're always worried about keeping Search consumer-friendly).

laughfactoryon Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

I would never tell my employer that I had another offer and was going to accept unless they met my demands. I'd keep it in my back pocket and then if they didn't respond to my treating them like an adult then I'd just inform them I was quitting and then I would. People who operate that way aren't worth working for!

laughfactoryon Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

Yeah yeah, I'm familiar with the study, but it doesn't account for how we employees are generally quite aware of the value of our skill set. Sure, it may take us a bit to recognize the increase, but typically no more than a few months. And then the sense that we're compensated below our value will eat at us, even in the presence of all those things. It's not about the dollar amount, it's about the disparity between market value and compensation rate. The greater that dissonance the greater the motivation to leave. It doesn't feel like respect when an employer pays you below what you feel you're worth.

laughfactoryon Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

I've never seen a loyal company. I'm not even sure what that would look like.

laughfactoryon Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

Yep. Since I graduated from college 6 years ago, my compensation has increased 165% (starting from mid-five figures). How? By switching jobs every couple of years, and always increasing by a minimum of 10%. And honestly, I'm just getting started. Though my hope is that my current employer makes it worth my while to stay for a longer duration. I'm getting tired of switching every couple years, as is my family.

laughfactoryon Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

Bad idea, in my opinion. This comes across as manipulative and underhanded. My personal policy is that if the companies I work for are not able to compensate me commensurate with my value then I 1) have a conversation with the appropriate people about my dissatisfaction with my pay and the value I provide, and 2) begin looking for another job.

If they value me, and respond to my forthrightness then we'll figure out something workable for us both. If not, I find another job and leave.

Alternatively, you can talk to your boss ahead of time (say 6-12 months) and specify what you want and ask what it would take to achieve the goal (promotion, raise, etc.). Then you execute your agreed upon plan. If, at the end of that period, they fail to uphold the agreement then look for another job and leave.

Your recommended approach is akin to being in an unsatisfying relationship, and, instead of talking to your spouse/partner/etc. you go find someone else then go back to your spouse/partner/etc. and say, well, I'm going to leave you unless you do X, Y, Z. Hah! For most of us that approach would not work out very well, and for good reason. It's not the way reasonable, mature, people of integrity behave.

Plus, I don't want to work for anyone who doesn't actively recognize and reward my value, and who requires (yes, there are places like this) you to go through the whole job hunting process and bring them an offer letter to give you a raise. F that. Ideally, the employer recognizes the value I provide and proactively rewards that value. Second best is employers who will give real raises (10%+) when an employee points out how much value they provide. Third best is real, 10%+, raises annually.

The current status quo of 2-5% increases amounts to little more than COL, and is utterly offensive. That's not a performance based increase, that's simply a retainer.

As an employee I'm acutely aware, as year #2 comes to a close, that if I don't get out there and find something better (better title, better pay, better benefits) then, in terms of opportunity cost, I'm losing money. Though my current position my prove to be the exception to that rule. We shall see.

And yes, I run all the numbers on the total value of my compensation package and any improvements/increases which have transpired over the previous years.

But getting other offers and then using them to force your employers hand is just childish, in my opinion.