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nirkalimi

147 karma · joined September 14, 2013

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nirkalimi··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)
Working on https://ireact.to/, basically a centralized link in bio to collect feedback, questions, urls, ideas from your community.

Saturated market riddled with alternatives, but I wasn't really able to find low friction way to collect these things that met all my needs. Most of this stuff gets lost in DMs or comment sections, which just wasnt working for me.

Also figured it would be a neat way to re-think paying for a creators attention. IE, giving the option to tip (and soon subscribe to a VIP inbox of sorts).

nirkalimi··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)
Currently working on https://ireact.to/ - A public inbox for content creators.

Its a super simple way for your community to submit and vote on the content that they'd like you to check out/react to next.

nirkalimi··on Ask HN: I have so many 'bots' signing up to my site. Why?
Any recommendation to stop this? Perhaps only offer social sign on?
nirkalimi··on Ask HN: I have so many 'bots' signing up to my site. Why?
Thanks for the write up, that makes sense.

I would of thought these 'spammers' would of given up because of verification, but it seems to continue despite many of accounts not being verified yet, perhaps they think they can verify later (which makes me think a TTL on verification emails is important) or that was an oversight completely on their end.

nirkalimi··on Ask HN: What are some excellent blogs, news boards, YouTube channels to follow?
https://www.cbx.gg/

Creator Economy news and discussion.

It’s great for content creators or those building audiences.

nirkalimi··on Hire vs. Do Yourself for Indies
Had a conversation about this (podcast) and was looking to get some perspective from other indie creators / founders. The article I linked is just a boiled down TLDR from a 1 hour conversation.

What do HNers think ?

nirkalimi··on Ask HN: Have You Worked for a DAO?
Funny enough, before I posted the question I thought to myself "I wonder how this would be received"?
nirkalimi··on Ask HN: What books are you reading?
Stuff Matters - Mark Miodownik

This is a really casual Material Science book. It's sub-title is "Exploring the marvelous materials that shape our man-made world." I am about a quarter of the way through and am really enjoying it. I really knew nothing about materials, this book served as a fun/interesting introduction to modern materials. The first chapter (my favorite thus far) was about metals. It goes into how different types of alloys are created and into sword making; what makes a good blade vs a brittle blade that will fall apart in combat(hint: it has to do with the amount of carbon in the blade. Too much and it is brittle. You want about 1% in the entire blade.)

nirkalimi··on The Shazam Effect (2014)
I remember posting this awhile ago. Here is the Original Thread if you are looking for more comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634357

Great article regardless. Glad to see more peoples take on it.

nirkalimi··on Show HN: JavaScript Graphing Library Comparison
Interestingly enough, I had a problem with ChartJS that no one seemed to be able to remedy. It was quite bizarre and at first seemed to be a cross browser issue, but after further investigation it seemed to just be some type of strange cross-machine issue. See it here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30063762/side-effects-fro...

Given that, I had to do some hacky stuff upon every refresh. Instead of using destroy() on the canvas, I had to remove the Canvas DOM object itself, building it back up, and inserting it again. Because of this I am a bit skeptical about using ChartJS again, which is unfortunate because I do love their Charts. I feel like maybe SVG might be the better way to go for analytics.

nirkalimi··on Let’s Build a Web Server. Part 1
Author is a great writer. I wish I could read everything by Ruslan Spivak.
nirkalimi··on New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity
Excited about this. I would love for this to be implemented all over the internet.

It is fairly easy to be negative. In fact, the cynical approach is the easiest point of view you can take. I have been working on this myself, and I encourage everyone to try and go the whole day/week/month practicing the opposite.

I think this has to do with how we are taught. Critical thinking somewhere down the line gave justification to being 'gratuitously negative'. I went my whole life thinking that I was being helpful when in reality I was just hurting people.

nirkalimi··on Chrome’s Console API: Greatest Hits
These look incredibly useful. Regardless if they work on IE or not.
nirkalimi··on Ask HN: Where do you store your code notes?
OP here, I just found http://happenapps.com/#quiver BUT it's not available in the US within the app store. I would also prefer something free, but am not opposed to a onetime payment for a very good solution.
nirkalimi··on Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures
I read this book cover to cover.

For someone self taught, who has a beginner understanding of Python (control structures, data types, classes, functions, loops, etc) this is undoubtedly the easiest way to introduce them to Algorithms and Abstract Data structures. This really takes a beginner to an intermediate level in small easily digestible chunks.

My question to you now, HN: are there any books on the market that can guide a beginner/itermediate (who knows Python and perhaps a framework like Django) to better understand the ins and outs of programming for the web? I am not talking about getting an app up and running, I am talking about understanding the flow of data, maybe things like WSGI, security, APIs, etc. Something that can really take an intermediate to an "Expert" level.

Any Suggestions?

nirkalimi··on Show HN: Watch People Code
I like this idea. It isn't the most common thing to shadow someone while they code, you can learn a lot from how people "flow".

The site can be a lot better. I think it has potential if curated properly. I'd watch.

+1

nirkalimi··on Sorting in Python
Thanks for this! I spent a good amount of time learning from this just now. This is especially helpful to those self taught hackers who haven't really thought about/formally been introduced to these sorting techniques. I especially like all the interactive learning material. I hope for more!
nirkalimi··on Why You Shouldn't Say It's Easy When Teaching
I think context matters here. Let's take two different use cases as examples:

Case A: The student has a genuine interest in the material. The student wants to be successful, and has worked tirelessly to configure and/or understand a given problem or task. The last thing the student in Case A needs to hear is "It's easy". Obviously the problem, to said student, is not easy. This can hurt overall student moral.

Case B: The student has not a complete devotee to the material. The student is "trying it out". The student thinks the material could be achieved without professional education or training. The student in Case B may need a bit of convincing. Telling that student that something like this is "easy" could be beneficial in this case. The student will believe that understanding of the material is at least achievable.

nirkalimi··on Obama to hit Y Combinator headquarters in Mountain View on May 8
Make sure to not schedule any meetings in mountain view on that day.
nirkalimi··on Ask HN: How do you feel about pirated software?
I understand making something free so as to make it a legacy platform, but do you really think that Adobe isn't already the industry standard?

I am also curious why you think adobe wants you to pirate their software? They seems to be the leader in the market in terms of design software and such. You pirating their software gives them one less sale - bottom line. They are a company who needs to make a profit at the end of the day.

nirkalimi··on Ask HN: Our college is teaching us outdated technology
My main dilemma in school: I loved the humanities, but I also wanted something a little more practical. For this very reason I majored in Cognitive Science at UCLA (with a focus on AI). I was required to take the CS courses and I also was given a chance to take courses under the realm of bio, philosophy, psychology, etc. I think education should require a balance. A well rounded individual doesn't necessarily make the best programmer, but does make the best member of society.
nirkalimi··on Facebook as a disease
"Between 2015 and 2017 it will lose 80%". It seems like everyone is basically saying the same thing about Facebook: Eventually facebook won't' be as popular, similar to all social networking sites before it.

I think Facebook, if anyone, knows best how to defer these types of scares. They have some of to brightest minds constantly worrying about these problems. Remember when Google+ came out and people thought Facebook was doomed? Well they survived - and that was a Google effort mind you. At the end of the day Facebook delivers a good product, not to mention established themselves as a legacy platform. I think Zuckerberg stated once that he wanted to be the "dial tone" of the internet. I think they have accomplished this. And as technology continues to develop, Facebook will try its best to stay up to date.

nirkalimi··on The right way to ask users for iOS permissions
Very intuitive. People just need a context for permissions to make sense. I feel like this is similar to anything online. Don't ask for something right away until someone understands what the benefit of doing so entails. These rules hold true in sales, pitching, etc.
nirkalimi··on Yelp Reviews Brew Fight Over Free Speech, Fairness
I don't really see the purpose of Yelp if reviews can not be 'raw' and 'uncensored'. The reason we all use yelp is because we won't get some boilerplate testimonial- rather we will get the gritty details whether good or bad.

I can see the effects its having on some businesses. My suggestion to those businesses: focus on good customer service

nirkalimi··on What's The Value of a Free Lunch?
I agree that taking breaks more often is needed -- Although I would also say that going to get your own lunch is extra required "work".

The idea here is the average worker doesn't have to worry about it. The less they worry about or "work" on things outside of work, the more they can exert energy at work.