HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

new_here

1,034 karma · joined August 24, 2018

submissionscomments
new_here··on Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
Agreed, OpenAI and Anthropic want to get as close to the user as possible. Browser is used more often than a specific website or standalone desktop app and much less work than an entire OS. Raycast also seems well positioned but perhaps more niche.

Perhaps Atlassian was sitting on cash and needed to make some bets. If you can build a big enough user base for a browser it can earn handsomely from AdWords type referral fees. Look at what Google pays Apple to be default on Safari and how much referral spend Chrome recouped for Google etc. Maybe Atlassian will try and promote Dia to its customer base and look to launch more AI type commercial product discovery experiences like Perplexity Shopping.

new_here··on The Frustration Loop
A.K.A Hellbanning.

You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28684250

Congrats on the milestone!

new_here··on Death by a Thousand Microservices
Posts laden with cynicism are always popular on HN. Gets boring after a while. Was hoping for a more measured take on a genuine issue like this.
new_here··on Tell HN: Apple Is Still Throttling iPhones
Am not money conscious in that regard. Own a full suite of Apple products and have no issue paying the premium for them.

The issue is with the intentional misleading of people to think their device is slowing down when they just need a battery replacement. At Apple’s scale it’s significant and dishonest towards its customers.

new_here··on Spanish climber emerges after 500 days in cave
Where do I sign up?
new_here··on Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Hacker News
This is great! Congrats and thanks for sharing your work! People have been asking for dark mode for years. This has it and so many other nice UI improvements too. Well done!
new_here··on Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable
Linear.app is awesome. We switched from Jira and our team's participation on issues went through the roof. It's fast, clean, has keyboard shortcuts and replaces agile terminology with simpler, familiar paradigms. We activated Slack, Sentry and GitLab integrations too. It's a beautiful piece of software to use and part of the reason we chose it was to inspire ourselves to try build something of similar quality in our own domain. Seriously, it's that good.

I've also used Redmine a few years ago. It gets the job done but nowhere near as slick and fun to use.

new_here··on EU to mandate public salary information for all job postings [pdf]
I think this is going to be the natural side-effect. I remember seeing Monzo posting salary ranges of £40k - £100k for certain positions. So for the right person they'll make a plan but they can also lure in more candidates and low-ball them when making an offer at the end of the process.
new_here··on Search engines and SEO spam
> Maybe ultimately you open up spam fighting to your users. If you managed this well, you could harness a lot of energy.

Doesn't Google already consider that if a user returns to the results page (or clicks a second link) then the first link visited was not satisfactory. Seems like a pretty elegant solution.

new_here··on Post Mortem: Incorrect Cache Configuration Exposes Personal Information
Yeah, I've just realised they've probably accidentally included a generic URL in the cache rules that they actually didn't intend to cache.

I originally thought they were trying to cache account data responses and so wondered why they wouldn't just use unique query parameters in that case. Definitely risky business though.

Out of interest, it looks like Cloudflare offers some sort of token authentication to authenticate at the edge: https://blog.cloudflare.com/token-authentication-for-cached-...

new_here··on Post Mortem: Incorrect Cache Configuration Exposes Personal Information
I see, so the it's likely that a generic URL pattern (like your example) was accidentally included in their caching rules.

I guess I didn't think of that originally because I thought if you wanted to cache some kind of response data like this, why on earth would you use a generic URL? But perhaps they probably didn't intend to cache this endpoint.

new_here··on Post Mortem: Incorrect Cache Configuration Exposes Personal Information
The blog post doesn't say much more than the headline. I'm curious about the specifics of what could of actually happened here.

In my limited experience working with CDNs wouldn't you just cache the responses of unique URLs and have some sort of cookie check at the edge before serving it.

So my own app would request something like /api/account?id=123 with my own id in there.

How would you end up getting other people's data in your app if your app only calls that unique URL?

new_here··on Ask HN: What is the most bloated website you use
https://linear.app actually looks pretty cool. Real-time sync, keyboard shortcuts, clean UI, dark mode and a quick action CLI thing.
new_here··on Ask HN: What is the most bloated website you use
Totally. A light UI with some tuned edge caching and you will be golden.

There are quite a few competitors popping up, the main issue is that they all seem to be bootstrapped and don't have the funding to make a disruptive marketing splash.

new_here··on Ask HN: What is the most bloated website you use
JIRA is unrivalled in my opinion. Just loaded up a random ticket page with one comment and no attachments.

- 105 requests

- 3.9MB transferred

- 13.9MB resources

- 32.57s load time

Here's a nice repo of other examples: https://github.com/dominictarr/your-web-app-is-bloated

new_here··on Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year
Take a moment to comprehend those numbers:

FY18/19 - under $10bn profit

FY19/20 - $314.7bn profit (3/4 of Ireland's GDP) and paid no tax on it.

> The subsidiary, which collects licence fees for use of copyrighted Microsoft software around the world, recorded an annual profit of $314.7bn in the year to the end of June 2020, according to accounts filed at the Irish Companies Registration Office. Its profits jumped from just under $10bn the previous year and compare with Ireland’s 2020 GDP of €357bn ($437bn).

> Tax transparency campaigners described the “tax aggression displayed by Microsoft, and facilitated by Ireland” as “beyond belief”.

new_here··on Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars
Awesome work! I was wanting to build a library like this myself but you've executed it way better! You should try to build and charge for a web API for this to let communities auto-generate avatars for their new users.
new_here··on Moving to London for a Tech Job
Visiting London is a blast, living and working there is a grind. I was deeply unhappy after three years (from 2016) but I really enjoy going back to visit socially. I was earning pretty decently and living in Zone 2 between Holloway Road (Piccadilly) and Highbury & Islington (Overground) stations.

Once the novelty wore off and I'd got into the work day commute all I noticed was how filthy and over-crowded it is, and how nothing works. Too hot, too cold, too much snow or too much rain and trains don't run which causes a massive backlog of people and delays. It takes 40 min to get anywhere and there are frequently obstacles during your journeys (signal failures etc). You live in the same town but never see some of your friends because it is such a saga to get there and back. I worked in Leicester Square and could not get proper mobile signal there most of the time. Moving apartments is super stressful and estate agents gouge you every step of the way. Doing any sort of admin in that town is an absolute nightmare.

The restaurants are some of the best in the world but most of the time you need to book at least two weeks in advance, so there is almost zero chance of spontaneity. While restaurants are a bit pricey it's a 50% chance of being mediocre or the best meal of your life. Not to mention every time you sit down you are reminded that your two hour time limit on the table has started. Any exciting band or festival has tickets that sell out in seconds.

I also felt that interactions with people could often be a fine line between sarcasm and being patronising. A lot of my friends raved about London 10 years ago (and I believe them) but most have now left or are wanting to.

It's a shame though, London seems like it can be a great city but is being crushed under the weight of all the people and honestly the quality of life I experienced there was just not that good. It really feels like too many people have moved there and it's become a bit of a tragedy of commons situation.

Sorry to be a downer but I really feel that London gets a lot of hype and from my experience doesn't seem justified in its current state. So just wanted to share some of my experiences.

new_here··on Irish health service hit by cyber attack
A lot of these articles don't actually mention specifically how the systems were compromised.

Was it a malicious email attachment that propagated through unsecured networks or outdated OS versions? And what data was encrypted? Are we talking regular excel files or actual databases?

It would be interesting to have some more detail or case studies so others could know how to fortify infection points and limit the blast radius of their own systems.

new_here··on The Endless Acid Banger: algorithmic self-composing acid techno music
Some nice stuff on their Bandcamp too: https://music.vitling.xyz/
new_here··on Perfect Motherfucking Website
Lowering the contrast of text helps people with dyslexia (between 7.5% - 17.5% of users) to read the content more easily: https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/r11

High contrast text can appear blurred for them while reading.

new_here··on Fuck Domainparkers
Domain names seem analogous to property. A good .com gives a business the digital prestige comparable to having a store on 5th Avenue, New Bond Street or the Champs-Élysées.

Then there other parts of town (.io, .co, .app and so on) which become gentrified and increase in value as people move into them and start doing fresh things.

I once pondered taking out a business loan to acquire a particular .com domain, thinking of it as a mortgage. The thinking was that once it's been acquired you can run your business from that prime property instantly and pay that asset off each month. Then one day if you ever had to sell it you could probably get the same or more for it, provided you hadn't overpaid initially.

new_here··on Fuck Domainparkers
While searching for a domain the other day I came across the lovechild of domain squatters - venture.com - which allows you to rent a .com domain for a couple of grand a month. I never thought the bar could go lower.
new_here··on “Location-Based Pay” – Who are we to complain?
The remote tech workers and manufacturing labourers compared in the article are both still subject to the same market forces.

Remuneration is the equilibrium of what a company is willing to buy at and what the worker is willing to sell at. A worker will want a higher price and a company will want a lower price. If they agree at an equilibrium then an employment contract is signed.

Manufacturers have leverage to lowball the salaries of workers because if a worker declines to sell their labour at a low price, then the company can likely find other sellers because there is a large supply of unskilled labour.

But if the supply of a specialised labourer is limited and the company really needs it, then the company has to consider more carefully if they want to pass on the deal or if they want to buy the labour at a higher price.

If Facebook now chooses to pay lower salaries based on the cost of living of a worker's location, then that is their risk to take as they'll open themselves up to more competition. It's up to the remote worker to decide if they want to sell their labour to Facebook at that price or if they're comfortable to decline and look at their other options, which depends on the demand for remote workers of their particular skill set.

new_here··on My product is my garden
There are various communities around the web that all have their own personalities. HN, /r/programming and Twitter are the biggest and most active but also most cynical. Lobste.rs (https://lobste.rs/) is almost purely tech focussed. Dev.to is very (overly?) friendly but it's hard to find substance among the noise. Indie Hackers which you've alluded to, does what it says on the tin but also attracts those hustler types.

The great thing about the internet is that if you think it's missing something, you can build it! I've been working on my own tech community called Able (https://able.bio) in my spare time for about 3 years now. I'd like it to be an intersection of software, hardware and business but with less cynicism and self-hype of other places. Just a place to appreciate the merits of human ingenuity. You're welcome to come hang out there if you like.

But yeah, if anyone knows of any other communities I'd also be interested to check them out. I feel like a bit of variety would be nice at the moment.

new_here··on Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?
From the first article:

> they grow almost 70 kilograms (154 pounds) of tomatoes per square meter. That's at least 10 times the average yield from an open field in Spain or Morocco, but with eight times less water and practically no chemical pesticides.

A promising method with a yield like this shouldn't be abandoned just because the taste isn't as good. This is just something the market will force them to improve, if customers don't continue to buy them. Personally, I've never tasted a tomato that I would label as atrocious so I'm now intrigued to try them :)

new_here··on Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?
The Dutch are apparently the second largest vegetable exporter in the world (!) using these kinds of techniques. Lots of interesting research happening at Wageningen University and Research. A greenhouse that keeps getting mentioned is Duijvestijn Tomatoes.

Further reading here if you're interested:

1. https://www.dw.com/en/could-high-tech-netherlands-style-farm...

2. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...

I agree though, there's not enough info out there about an integrated approach. Perhaps it's proprietary.

new_here··on French news sites prevail in negotiations with Google over "neighboring rights”
If users feel they get the best results from Google then they continue to use Google which drives search and ad impressions. Ads are also clearly labelled so users can decide if they want to ignore sponsored results. I typically click the first result below ads or use an adblocker but that's just me. So this seems like a clear distinction between paid and organic results.

I completely agree on the second point. Google's 'Featured Snippets' are a clear overreach where Google uses people's content at no cost and gives nothing in return. This needs to be regulated because nobody is going to opt-out. For example, I've had some featured snippets and they bring a lot of traffic. Much less than a normal first place listing but more than a second place listing. If I opt-out of Featured Snippets in protest then someone else will just happily take that spot.

Perhaps the balance lies in just indexing headlines of sites. Then publishers could decide if they want to give up that information in their headlines. It's a tough to know where to draw the line but that seems like it's been the fairest balance so far.

new_here··on French news sites prevail in negotiations with Google over "neighboring rights”
Exactly, with the current system Google is incentivised to prioritise the best content for users. If they now negotiate individual licensing agreements with each publisher this adds another factor (cost) to the ranking incentive.

Also, where do you draw the line on what content Google should have to pay to index? What about independent bloggers for example? This policy could potentially open a whole new can of worms.

new_here··on How far does sound travel in the ocean?
There's a great episode from the Cosmos series where Carl Sagan talks about how the range of whale communication was inhibited by the development of steam engine ships: https://youtu.be/UwzukFBWxu4?t=765
Page 1 of 6Next →