HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

mildavw

260 karma · joined April 23, 2009

submissionscomments
mildavw··on Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
Yeah, it bugs me too. What about letting "natural consequences" befall Equifax (or rather its customers)?

I take no action now. Scammer gets a $10k loan from BigBank using my info. I get the bill and report it as fraud. Write a few letters to clear it up (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-re...). BigBank will be out $10k and is now motivated to figure out a better way to make loans.

mildavw··on Net neutrality is in jeopardy again
I don't know if this particular legislation would allow this, but this the path that I fear we're heading down.

The flyer you'll be getting from the company who owns the line coming to your house: https://imgur.com/muJfxMQ

mildavw··on On Funding Hapi.js Core Development
Could a "pro" version work like it did here? https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq
mildavw··on Ask HN: Any advice for switching from self-employment back to employee?
I'm back to self-employment after a 6 1/2 year stint as a regular business-hours on-site employee. Couple of observations:

1) Having a flexible schedule allows one to get a lot more done. My personal/family life and side projects received a lot less time when I became an employee. That 40-60 hr/wk job eats way more hours than you get paid for.

2) The stress around hustling to keep work coming long-term when self-employed goes away in favor of a steady paycheck. It's odd getting paid the same no matter how productive you are. You do acquire other stresses, however. Like having to work with people you don't like or jive with. And having to work on projects that you don't like.

3) The flip side of that stress is the excitement of working on something new where you get to learn new skills. You have a lot more control over what you work on being self-employed. As employee, you do what the company most needs you to do.

4) And the flip side of the steady paycheck no matter what is the ability to generate more income by working more or jumping on a lucrative opportunity right away when you spot one.

Regarding equivalent compensation, it depends on your health insurance situation (do you depend on it? how big is your family? or maybe you are young and healthy and only need coverage for catastrophes?), your tax bracket, how much your family/outside time is worth to you, etc. There are no online calculators for a reason. ;)

mildavw··on Felony – An open-source PGP keychain
I hear ya. And I'm sure most HN readers understand and share your cynicism. But I think naming it something satirical and anti-double-speak ultimately increases your odds of being misunderstood.

The OP is honestly interested in furthering the right to privacy. State it plainly and simply. (It doesn't inoculate the app from being painted as a terrorist abetter, but it's the best you can do.)

mildavw··on Felony – An open-source PGP keychain

  4th Of July
mildavw··on Felony – An open-source PGP keychain
Suggestions and/or concepts you (OP) want to evoke:

  Patriot
  Freedom
  Liberty 
  Good Citizen
  Free Speech
  America
  Fourth Amendment
  Secure In Papers
  Right To Privacy
mildavw··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2015)
http://Renewfinancial.com | Portland, OR | Onsite/Full-time

We combat global warming by working with cities, states, and Wall Street to get homeowners the $20k they need to put up solar panels, insulate their homes, get a more efficient furnace, etc.

We're looking for Sr. Devs, Engineering Managers, Build Engineers, and QA folks.

Our careers page is not quite up-to-date with all of those positions, but here's the Sr Dev slot:

http://jobs.jobvite.com/renewfund/job/oFkF1fwp

We're heavily Ruby and will train new hires whose experience is primarily in another language.

After several years with a headcount in the dozens, we are now in the hockey-stick growth phase quadrupling in size in short order.

Contact: Tom Janci tjanci@renewfinancial.com

mildavw··on Yahoo stopping all new development of YUI
I interact with Wells for some backend services. The only interface they expose is an IE-only java applet. Can't say I'm surprised they are lagging the industry by a decade.
mildavw··on The New Fast Food
This makes me think about food carts. Here in Portland, they are are filling the niche for fine food at discount prices. For weekday lunches I pay $6-9 for what would be $12-20 in a restaurant. Clearly many other customers are doing the same. The local weekly recently reported that there are now 750 carts in town.
mildavw··on Ask HN: Why Will No One Hire Jr. Devs?
Early/mid 20's.
mildavw··on Ask HN: Why Will No One Hire Jr. Devs?
The Portland startup where I work just hired 3 jr. devs. Our goal was 2 seniors and 2 juniors but we didn't get any viable senior candidates. Most candidates were eliminated at the code challenge stage. So that'd be my tip: if you have to complete a code challenge, make sure it's the best code you've ever written. Even if it's a trivial task, things like full test coverage and demonstrating that you know some OOP best practices will give you a better chance at an interview.

The two bootcamp grads we hired had much stronger skills than most of their peers. I had conversations with their instructors and, indeed, they said that these guys were top of the class.

Also note that while senior devs are hard to find, competition is fierce at the junior level. We relocated one from Boston and the other had done his bootcamp in Chicago.

mildavw··on Hello, Stranger
I frequently strike up conversations with strangers, cashiers, clerks, etc. I offer to take group photos so the cameraperson can be in the shot, like, several times a month. Why? I've never really thought about it, but it's probably for the very reason revealed in the study. It's just a habit that makes me a happier person.
mildavw··on Ask HN: Traits and habits of A players
I'd add "found programming so interesting they did not finish high school/college." The maximum level of education achieved by my team ranges from middle school diploma to PhD.
mildavw··on Mark Cuban Thinks the 'greedy' NFL is 10 Years Away from Implosion
If this is interesting to you, you might enjoy this long form book excerpt from a former NFL player:

http://deadspin.com/my-injury-file-how-i-shot-smoked-and-scr...

This reminded me of the dangerous, unhealthy culture I knew well as a high school player but had forgotten as the NFL's marketing efforts replaced that perspective with their own narrative over the years.

mildavw··on Take Buffett's Billion
Or the players for $1M. That's a much bigger bump for them.
mildavw··on Obama’s Path From Critic to Overseer of Spying
The mere hand-wringing that current leaders are doing over this is so disturbing to me because of where I see it taking the country. It's not hard to imagine, say, Carl Rove or his ilk giving someone at the NSA a wink and a nod that they'll be taken care of if their candidate wins office. The NSA leaks or hands off information that tilts the election their way. Given that collection of all of this data is A-OK, no step in this process is blatantly illegal anymore. If I were Ron Wyden, this is what I'd be saying. "Do you want your representatives picked by the NSA? Because that's the logical path we're going down."

The ability read/listen to all electronic communication without warrants gives the NSA too much power for this not to happen.

mildavw··on Ask HN: Anyone deployed NodeJS web site for 10+Million users?
You might try to make contact with these guys:

https://github.com/walmartlabs

mildavw··on Monty Hall problem explained visually
Oops. That's completely wrong. It's the case where every honest answer is yes!

I think this is indeterminate. You have to know the ratio of total yesses to total participants.

The real world use-case I was recalling is simpler: flip a coin and answer honestly if it's heads and "yes" if it's tails. Any individual response is non-incriminating, but if N is large enough where you can assume N/2 got heads, you can know the number of "honest cheaters."

mildavw··on Monty Hall problem explained visually
Did I read somewhere that this technique is actually used to gather survey data where the subject may have reason to lie? They can answer yes but it remains plausible that it was because of two coin flips coming up heads so they are not individually implicated. When you aggregate the data over many subjects, however, you have a better idea of how many actual cheaters there were than if you asked directly.

Anyway, here is the code below: http://jsfiddle.net/nQ3Gu/

  var runs = 1000,
    honest_admissions = 0,
    automatic_admissions = 0;

  function flip() {
    return Math.random() < 0.5 ? 'h' : 't';
  }

  for (var i = 0; i < runs; i++) {
    if (flip() == 't') {
        honest_admissions++;
    } else if (flip() == 'h') {
        automatic_admissions++;
    }
  }
  document.write('The "yes" is honest ' + honest_admissions / (honest_admissions + automatic_admissions) + ' of the time.')
2/3 of yeses are honest and 1/3 didn't have to answer the question!
mildavw··on Ask HN: Do you think the NSA has compromised voting Machines?
I would guess that, no, the president can't just use them any way he wants. There would be/is lots of politics involved.
mildavw··on Ask HN: What IOS apps do you love / did you make?
Made this one for my wife who is a wedding planner:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bar-stocker/id433201093

mildavw··on Ask HN: Do you think the NSA has compromised voting Machines?
I don't think it's a stupid question at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6218004

mildavw··on Show HN: Life – A timeline of important events in (your) life
1. I don't see a problem with it. Go to the right for the details and back to the left for the front page. Makes sense.

2. ??? Comments threads are collapsible and indented properly.

Are you perhaps not looking at it on a phone? Try it on an iPhone, it's great.

mildavw··on Show HN: Life – A timeline of important events in (your) life
I've been using his http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ to read HN on my phone for a while (is it years yet?) now. I try others as they appear and so far continually go back to his.
mildavw··on Ask HN: What kind of side projects are you working on?
I found http://printaura.com via Google when we first decided to wire the generator up to a t-shirt print service, then I saw a http://shirts.io post on HN and wired them up too!

When each order is placed, we go with the printer that gives us the largest margin. There is no bidding going on or anything, they just have different prices for different products and calculate shipping fees differently.

edit: linkify printers

mildavw··on Ask HN: What kind of side projects are you working on?
https://findalakethatlookslikeadog.com

Started as a joke among my dev team and we've now sold a few shirts and plan on developing the idea.

mildavw··on Go, or Ruby or ExpressJS for an API?
If you're interested in other Node options, the good folks at WalMart Labs have built this "Express for APIs" framework:

http://spumko.github.io/

mildavw··on Please share your JavaScript webapp.
What does the site do? Once my order is stored, then what?
mildavw··on Please share your JavaScript webapp.
https://findalakethatlookslikeadog.com

Started as a joke among my dev team and we've now sold a few shirts and plan on developing the idea.

Javascript: Just jQuery.

← PreviousPage 2 of 5Next →