Hacker News Reader

mindworkon Ask HN: Which messaging apps do you use?

Telegram - 80% this is my preferred method of communication

iMessage - 10% for friends who refuse to install telegram

Whatsapp - 5% for video calls. Surprisingly Telegram video call quality degraded over last 4-5 months for users in USA. So now I have to use facetime + whatsapp combo

Misc - 5%

Telegram is years ahead of the rest by user experience and features.

mindworkon Ask HN: What's your favorite YouTube video, ever?

I've got a whole playlist of my favorite Chris Turner's freestyle raps. but if I get to pick one it would be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD9uFiiw1mw

mindworkon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

I-130 has not been approved yet. Only 3 months passed since we applied.

mindworkon Ask HN: What Desktop HN client do you use?

Google Chrome is plenty to open up text links

mindworkon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

Hi Peter,

Few months ago I've applied for F2A visa for my spouse from Russia. Official sources state processing times in California at 4 years plus. I am 2 years away from obtaining a citizenship in US by which I then can do K1.

Would you advice to convert F2A to K1 visa in the future? How do I do that? Is there a way to speed up the process at all?

mindworkon Wigle.net: All the networks, found by everyone

Why there is no iOS app?

mindworkon Ask HN: What old video games did you love that haven't left a large footprint?

dungeon keeper 2 - was my first example of the game where you have indirect control of the game, at least that's how I remember it

mindworkon Oura Ring 4

I don't need yet another subscription in my budget

mindworkon Ask HN: What websites that were sold/abandoned/don't work anymore do you miss?

digg and stumbleupon

mindworkon Ask HN: Had enough – a need for a new beginning

> I want to do something in my life that truly benefits humanity.

> Something that helps save our planet.

I would advise you to rethink setting such big goals and start really small. It looks like you're burned out working for an finance oriented industry that does not have such goals in mind, and trying to compensate that with a swing in completely different direction. Jump the whole scale so to say. And that might be an impossible task. As an engineer I would decompose such a big goal in to smaller steps and try to move towards the goal.

If Elon with all his billions barely can make a dent in saving a planet, you should expect less from yourself. Just do your part whichever small it is.

This might be unrelated but I read an article from the founder who found value in the organization called Tugboat Institute. Which promotes sustainable growth of the business. Not sure it's 100% of what you looking for but worth exploring.

mindworkon Ask HN: How can I escape my 3W country as a freelance dev with passive income?

Canada might not be as good of an option. I've spend a month in Canada in September 2024 and spoke with people from Uber drivers to an immigrants. Everybody keeps mentioning that it's close to impossible to find a job for last couple of years and it is getting really expensive day by day.

mindworkon Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

Compared to mint here is a list of things I like about it in no particular order: No ads, I pay for the service and my data is not sold to 3rd party, design, ability to have many different accounts, auto-sync with all my accounts, transaction reviews, cashflow breakdown and sankey diagrams, mobile application + web versions, transaction logging. beginner friendly budgeting interface, tracking recurring transactions.

mindworkon Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

Once Mint.com has closed I started to dig for alternatives and found Monarch Money. Couldn't be happier to pay for the service. New features come out pretty often, and I believe they work on the better support for tracking investments.

mindworkon Tell HN: You can add a 2FA account to multiple authenticator apps

I've got a bug once where 2FA code didn't work after I moved to a different timezone(from PST moved to GMT+1). It was working again after I moved back to my original timezone. Every other code worked perfectly except this one. It was for Intuit account.

Can someone explain how did this happen?

mindworkon Ask HN: How do you sync your Git repos across machines at home?

I agree about too good to be true. I just can't believe it's free for up to 3 users and many machines. But if you look under the hood there is nothing there that you can't build on your own. It's just more hassle to do it. You can install wireguard on every machine that you own and you can manage the keys by yourself, you can add routing tables and internal DNS service. Tailscale just packages that in nice UI with centralized management.

mindworkon Ask HN: What's your secret sauce for maintaining product quality?

Secret sauce is not a technical one, but rather organizational. Pushing back against product/marketing/management to timely address the tech debt is vital for a product quality. As opposed to always sprinting to implement new features.

mindworkon Ask HN: How do you sync your Git repos across machines at home?

I use tailscale to access my machines around the world. It's secure and private. Nobody on the internet knows about this machines, even though they are servers. Easy to configure

mindworkon Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

It's vise versa. Citizen app listens to the police radio and puts the gps coordinates on the map with the descriptions taken from the police report. They have social network on top of that where people can submit videos and live videos

mindworkon What are great international locations to work at?

Germany had a Blue Card visa, supposedly it's easy to obtain. As for Amsterdam, my only piece of knowledge is that booking.com is a big supporter of visas in there

mindworkon What are great international locations to work at?

Amsterdam or Berlin in Europe

mindworkon Ask HN: Coworking Spaces in SF?

Library is quieter and better in terms of electric plugs and internet connection. Only downside is that it's closes pretty early. Only few days a week you can work till 7pm or 8pm. So it's perfect for a weekend. Main SF Library on Larkin is pretty good, has lots of light and open space. It has a restroom too. If you willing to tolerate commuting there, honestly outside looks sketch and always have something going on in there.

Coffee shops are better for a weekday. There might be troubles with wifi reliability or power outlets(there might not be), noise levels, people walking all the time. I found out that I prefer to go to cafe Reveille. It's nice and clean and they have pretty decent wifi, though they don't have any electric outlets. Another option is a Starbucks on Fillmore street. Main benefit being that it works until 9pm almost every day, and you can crank up few solid hours there after work

mindworkon Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)

There is an app called Citizen that notifies you about crime happening near you in real time

mindworkon Ask HN: How do you manage files and backups as an individual?

You've got everything that you need in Synology.

* Use Time Machine to automatically backup your computer to Synology NAS

* Use SMB Share to manually manage big files or archives when you need it(use rsync if you lazy)

* Use CloudSync(synology app) to automatically back up your Google Drive to your Synology

* Use Synology Photos to (semi)automatically backup your photo library form your phone to your NAS

* Use Hyper Backup to backup your NAS to the cloud using S3/Backblaze B2/rsync.

One thing that might be missing is auto transcoding. 223J might not have enough power to transcode videos, but if you get somehting similar to DS920+, it can do transcoding for you. I've got mine setup with Jellyfin container, and it plays very well because CPU can transcode that.

mindworkon Ask HN: Which browser add-on for Hacker News do you use?

PiHole resolves it to 127.0.0.1

I spend way too much time on this website

mindworkon Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

https://sive.rs/slow

Made me realize that it's ok to be a slow thinker, and there is nothing wrong with me. It has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Whatever genetic lottery gave me I have to play with it

mindworkon Ask HN: Who are your favorite tech youtubers

Recently discovered ThePrimeagen videos on youtube https://www.youtube.com/@ThePrimeTimeagen

From my existing subscriptions:

- Just Another CTO https://www.youtube.com/@justanothercto

- Techno Tim https://www.youtube.com/@TechnoTim

- Wolfgang's Channel https://www.youtube.com/@WolfgangsChannel

- TechWorld with Nana https://www.youtube.com/@TechWorldwithNana

mindworkon Kagi Small Web

This is amazing! Over the last 2 months I've been on a personal journey to browse through small web links. It all started from the "Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?" post on HN, and then I found out that somebody put a website with the links from this post organized(https://dm.hn/). I exported all 1651 blog link in to XLS and now every now and then I open up 5-7 just to read random articles and mark it as "viewed". So far I've been through 250 out of 1651!

I wish kagi has something similar, one place where I can see all the links to the personal websites collected via all it's sources

mindworkon Ask HN: Do you successfully manage the browser tabs? If so, how?

Every day I use 4-10 tabs at max. For things that I'm working on or reading currently. I lever leave tab "for later". Instead I use bookmarks extensively. Most recent export showed that I have 672 bookmarks at this moment. I use it for everything from personal sites, to programming resource link storage, homelab ideas, shopping and especially "To read later". I often go to this bookmark folder and pick something from there, and delete if after reading or working through article. Works like a charm.