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mindwork

120 karma · joined March 23, 2012

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mindwork··on Ask HN: How to find non-popular blogs and forums?
There was a post about 2 years ago on HN so that people would post links to their blogs. Somebody saved that post and extracted all the links in to the CSV file with their name and karma, and put it on a website(it's not there now). I've downloaded that CSV file and slowly went through all 1626 blog links over the last 2 years. I finished just about a week ago. It was quite a journey! Some links I would glance at the homepage and immidiately close, and some I stayed for days - reading all interesting articles from the Archive link. It was a blast!
mindwork··on Ask HN: Developer-as-a-Service?
I started to frown upon people calling themselves developers. This is the term I used a long time ago and now I use Software Engineer.
mindwork··on Ask HN: Developer-as-a-Service?
Isn't it called consultant/consultancy?
mindwork··on US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
thats not the point I was answering.

The point is that it's 2 sides of the coin under regulation vs over regulation. And no system is ideal on both sides of Atlantic

mindwork··on Ask HN: People who work different timezones than your company. How sched?
I guess we have different understanding of L24/N24. There is no need for a task to take 1 day, it can span days easily. I had tasks which spanned a week or two just because they were deep technical work. But I was able to explain what I did and what progress did I make to the room of engineers. Nobody has been asking me about deadlines or when would it be done, it's not that type of meeting. But it's a nice check-in point to see if I(or the team) move in the right direction and if I don't report meaningful progress for multiple days maybe I need help or extra eyes on my work. I would post draft PR with the code so other people can evaluate and correct my approach. This saves you from working days in the wrong direction.
mindwork··on US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
At the same time European laws got whole internet littered with "Accept cookies" banners
mindwork··on Ask HN: People who work different timezones than your company. How sched?
For many years I worked for US based company from European timezone. 9-10 hours difference. It's been okay. I started work around 2-3pm and left around 10pm. It was pretty tough because I couldn't sleep for 3-4 hours after my work day ends that meant 1-2am.

On the bright side I could sleep as much as I wanted in the morning and do chores in first half of the day.

What helped me with motivation is Daily Standup with my team where you have to report about your L24 progress and what you're going to be N24. This added enough stress to increase my motivation to do stuff. I couldn't show up with nothing or lie my way out of it. Also US comp was pretty big motivator. Geo arbitrage etc.

mindwork··on I built an app to backup Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives
Would immich work for this? You can run it locally in docker container
mindwork··on Ask HN: How much would you pay to solve the largest problem you face?
Have you tried visiting different countries and try to date there? Depending on the country it can make a huge difference
mindwork··on Ask HN: Is it still a good idea to learn Perl for a young developer?
No, unless you're set your eyes on woking at Booking.com
mindwork··on Ask HN: Anyone else feeling increasingly alienated from the industry?
way to go comparing building web pages and mobile apps that push ADs on people with concentration camp guards. When I compared tech with engineering or even science.
mindwork··on Ask HN: Anyone else feeling increasingly alienated from the industry?
It's just a job.

I'm not sure why one would put the weight of the impact of your work on yourself. You've been trained to do certain job, you've been hired to do the job, and you are doing it. You can have moral quarrels with the company mission(like working for defense), but you can't change the whole industry's direction.

Do people who invented printing press and made all the scribes obsolete need to think about their impact on the world? Does inventors of the car who put all horses out of work need to think about their impact? Does people who invented atomic bomb need to put a weight of the devastation that it brought on their chest? All those things have 2 sides, it improved life in one way and worsened it in others.

Professional deformation - is when you treat everything in life as a puzzle that needs to be solved. And when you switch your focus from engineering to societal problems and try to solve that, unfortunately it's not working like that. Sometimes life is just a chaos and it's not your or anyone else fault.

It's just a job.

mindwork··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)
I've been working more on my homelab.

In short: installed immich(instead of Synology Photos), Beszel, Paperless-ngx(configuration pending), moved a bunch of tools out of my HTPC VM in to separate VM, did a proper backup of my proxmox cluster and set up cloud-init template with new ubuntu.

Due: gitops style deployment and terraformation of infrastructure(provision proxmox VMs via terraform) and auto redeployment of docker containers across 5 machines. Probably would need github runner in my network. Also Authelia is still missing in my lab, I need to get to that soon

mindwork··on Tailscale has raised $160M
Now I'm waiting for all AI billboards in San Francisco to be replaced with Tailscale ads
mindwork··on Tell HN: Google Authenticator lost all of my codes
When your password and the time passcode are stored in the same database thats literally not 2FA (second factor).

Rather use apps like Authy or Ente on your phone(something that you have) that could sync.

mindwork··on Ask HN: What's broken about the software side of car ownership?
When the car malfunctions mechanically it can be a basis for a lawsuit for the manufacturer. There is a practice of recall in the industry. So what would happen when software that you run on the car's computer malfunctions or you accidentally install malware on that computer? Do you blame yourself or manufacturer? What if there was a loss of life because of this malfunction?
mindwork··on Show HN: I converted my notebook into a searchable database of IT keywords
I couldn't find anything that I put there: DRY, RBAC, Duck(-typing), Liskov, b-tree
mindwork··on Archival Storage
I've been considering to get in to the Blu-ray backups for a while. Is there a good guide on how to organize your files in order to split it in to multiple backup disks? And how to catalogue all your physical Discs to keep track of them?

I remember about 20 years ago my friend had a huge catalogue of 100s of disks with media(anime) and he used some kind of application to keep track of where each file is located across 100s of discs in his collection. I assume that software must have improved for that sort of a thing?

mindwork··on Show HN: I kept forgetting the little things, so I made an app to help (free)
Great-looking app you’ve got there!

I also tend to forget things, but I took a different approach. Instead of relying on my phone to remember for me, I trained the device nature gave me—my brain! Let's face it, we’re already bombarded with notifications, stuck in a cycle of constant interruptions, making it hard to focus. Push reminders only add to the noise. My wife’s phone, for example, keeps reminding her to "Drink water," yet she always ignores it.

So, I chose a different path—training my memory. I started using an app called "When did I...?". It works similarly: you create a list of things you want to track and tap them when you complete them. If you forget, you can log past events. This process forces me to recall when I last did something, reinforcing my memory while also allowing me to add small notes for reference.

Over time, I found that reminders now pop up in my head naturally, and I can always check the app for confirmation. Plus, it integrates with Siri Shortcuts. For instance, when I finish a swimming workout, my watch automatically logs "Swimming" in the app. I don’t have to remember to track it manually, yet I can always see when I last swam and know when it’s time to go again.

Hope this helps on your journey!

mindwork··on Ask HN: How to backup iCloud images to second cloud provider
I have Synology server at home. Once in a month when I put my phone on the charger I open up Synology Photos app on my phone to backup all the media to that. I intentionally don't allow it run in the background because I don't want to drain the battery. This way I have full control and possession of my media. As a second(third) wave of defense I also have my Synology data automatically backup to Backblaze B2 cloud which is quite cheap.
mindwork··on Ask HN: Where are developers hanging out?
I've had some success going to https://lu.ma/ events. Meetup.com is dead but we've got a new kid on the block. At least for SF it's working great
mindwork··on Ask HN: Who are your favorite photography and generative coding artists?
Does demoscene counts as generative coding? Farbrausch was my favorite for a while https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=322
mindwork··on Ask HN: Tired of startups – want a normal job. Help
> I feel like a freaking loser given my age and my relative career stagnation / my inability to actually turn my mildly above average skills into any real money

I would concentrate on this. Why are you feeling this way? Is it possibly because you compare yourself to others? Or you compare yourself to the "ideal world" that lives in your head based on the things that you read on the internet and experience of others?

I'm sure you have lots of positives in your life right now. Are you starving? Do you have roof over your head? Do you struggle from any health problems or mental diseases? Are you addicted to anything? Do you have friends? Do you spend enough time with them? Can you exercise? Can you pay your bills? Do you have savings to whether turbulent times?

I bet if you switch focus to something that you already have and where you already at it will help you. Switching mindset where you think not from backtracking from Ideal situation back to your life, but to switch that to start thinking from where are you now, and what are the next smallest step that you can take?

mindwork··on Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
symlinks or hardlinks might help with that, depending on your needs. With hardlinks you will see the same file in both locations, and if you change or remove the file it will be removed in the other directory as well
mindwork··on Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco
Could it be not desirable because of single-family homes, but rather because all lucrative and high paying jobs are located here? And it's proximity to the Valley? Also there is much more events and gatherings happen than in the Valley.
mindwork··on What should I expect from moving tech jobs from USA to Europe?
I'm interested in a contact. Not looking right now, but moving to Netherlands might be my goal next year
mindwork··on Ask HN: What inspires you about computing?
I totally agree that a true professional approach is view it as a job rather than an creative or inspirational outlet in your life. And I follow this approach. I see it as a marathon rather than a sprint.

That said, posts like this are common on HN. People burning out and get disillusioned with their jobs. Or loose meaning in tech.

Could this be because 15-20 years ago in order to get in to the industry you had to have a certain passion and curiosity in order to get through the forest of very technical tools and programming languages in order to run anything. Industry was not mature and there was a lot of hype around it's wins, it was literally changing the world. Software was eating the world quickly. Books like "Passionate programmer" and "Secrets of the Rock Star Programmers" were promising us the land of endless rewards if we pour our whole selves in to the job and forget about anything else.

But nowadays, 20 years of growth, billions of LOC and millions of people came in to the industry. Now we've got the understanding that it was just a job after all. And instead of pouring your self in to it, the sustainable way is to treat it like a job and also have a life outside of it. Hedge your bets if you will, because life is more than tech

mindwork··on ElevenReader
Downloaded the app and inserted 3 publicly visible URLs. Only last one was to be downloaded and listened. Not sure whether it's their UserAgent string or what
mindwork··on Ask HN: What software do you dream about, but do not have time to code yourself?
I want to combine a big database of data points about myself. Something similar to https://howisfelix.today/ but self-hosted, dockerized, easy to integrate and use. Plus import of the data from iPhone via Apple Health. Right now I can export it as a file but I don't have any means of parsing that file and importing it in to my own database.

edit: not sure why the data on that website has been blurred, but it's still available in HTML

mindwork··on Ask HN: Favorite blog in 2024?
In 2024 I've discovered a blog that was a fountain of new thoughts and ideas for me: https://eriktorenberg.substack.com
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