HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

octagonal

383 karma · joined September 29, 2012

submissionscomments
octagonal··on Europe's Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard
It's not easy coming up with a name that sounds at least somewhat OK in >24 languages.
octagonal··on Microsoft Launches Surface Laptop 6 for Business and Surface Pro 10
I'm still waiting on my current, 60 hours of use a week, mid-2019 MacBook Pro to die or have any sort of malfunction so I can justify buying a new one. Its battery life has seen better days but that's basically it.
octagonal··on The Last Linotype Newspaper (2022)
Linotype machines are marvellous and I'd highly recommend seeing them in action should you ever get the chance. They are the perfect intersection between a rube goldberg machine and a mechanical marvel to excite a part of my brain that I can't even properly put into words.
octagonal··on Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
I won't resort to naming and shaming here but if you ever get contacted by a UK agency that 'resources vividly', immediately request a removal of your contact info per GDPR or you will get phoned daily for months on end.
octagonal··on Yahoo Pipes
Node-RED is much more focused on IoT as far as I can tell, although the UIs look comparable.
octagonal··on Yahoo Pipes
You might enjoy https://pypi.org/project/htmlq/
octagonal··on Accidental Google Pixel Lock Screen Bypass
Yes. The first one is more like a user complaint than an actual reproducible bug report.
octagonal··on Accidental Google Pixel Lock Screen Bypass
I don't think many phone OEMs will actually take the effort to muck around in the lock screen mechanisms.
octagonal··on French mayor demands €15,000 fee to climb Mont Blanc
Not true at all. I've done work for insurance companies in the past as well. While it's true most of them will not diverge from their standard contracts, some are very open to clients suggesting 'custom' insurance no matter how obscure the clauses. The only caveat of course being that it will cost you substantial amounts.

> I also work in insurance industry as a software dev - nothing that I have seen would let insure someone who would go under-prepared. One could fill in form that he goes fully prepared but once lied insurance company won't pay anything.

If you break the terms of the contracts you won't get covered of course. Same as with car insurance where you won't get coverage if you were DUI.

octagonal··on From August 1: Cash transactions above NIS 6k illegal
It acts as a "pre-emptive" tax shift. If more people pay taxes there's going to be less pressure on the government to set an ever higher tax rate, because now they receive more money while levying the same amount.
octagonal··on The mites in the skin of our faces
Why do you want to kill them?
octagonal··on Over 13k Vivo phones found to be using same IMEI number (2020)
Many providers in the EU will also gladly block connections based on IMEI if you can prove you're the owner of said IMEI.
octagonal··on Show HN: PNG to PDF Conversion in the Browser
Finder.app and Preview.app are surprisingly decent format conversion tools
octagonal··on A planned EU regulation about website certificates is causing concern
Belgium is very similar in that regard. Our politicians are very talented in turning what should be straightforward processes into complex bureaucratic puzzles that require at the least an advanced degree in accounting to solve. So frustrating as it's holding SMEs back.
octagonal··on Audiblegate
Language can change and words can take up new meanings.
octagonal··on Amazon Pip Horror Story
I was lucky enough to experience a 2 year long project in which everything that went wrong was blamed on the developers. Project managers breathing down your neck, feeling so pressured you barely dare take a bathroom break, the whole shebang.

Quit working for them and now I'm a freelance dev.

They asked me to get back on the project and I said fine, that'll be €700/day. After some grumbling they realized they had no other option so they agreed.

The project is still failing due to bad management but I no longer care. I believe to now feel the same sense of calm around chaos and failure like you do.

A lot of developers have real mental scars from bad projects like this, because they get duped into thinking it's a matter of personal pride to see it trough.

It's not. Your primary concern should always be personal health.

octagonal··on How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?
The only safe way to drive an F1 car is with remote control.
octagonal··on Health Effects of Coffee
Well, there does exist this standard by the Specialty Coffee Association specifically intended as a reference for testing: https://sca.coffee/research/coffee-standards

It suggests that the 'cupping vessel' be "between 7 and 9 fluid ounces (207 ml to 266 ml), with a top diameter of between 3 and 3.5 inches (76 - 89 mm)"

octagonal··on Learning Haskell is no harder than learning any other programming language
Coincidentally: it’s also the only programming language I know of where someone has written a lengthy blog post about how I’m in fact, not too dumb to comprehend it.
octagonal··on The European Union is updating its electronic signature laws
Correct. Which is strange, because both "intern" and "intra" mean as much as "internal". I never understood why "externational" isn't a word.
octagonal··on Show HN: Dead Yet? – Keep an eye on dying startups
This reminds me of an idea I had in mind a while ago.

It would've been similar to this (like some kind of "Startup Graveyard") but slightly more extensive: interviews with the founders and the lessons they learned from it, what "type" of failure they suffered from (misinterpreting the market, lack of skills, etc).

I ultimately gave up on the idea because none of the founders I contacted wanted to truly spill the beans on what went wrong (the best I tended to get was some vague PR mumbling).

octagonal··on A cave in Romania that was sealed for 5.5M years
33 people: 0.00000045810% of the earth's population

100 people: 0.00000134736% of the earth's population

Seems fairly comparable to me.

octagonal··on A Database Model for Simple Board Games
Thank you for that link, super interesting! It made me interested in trying out Clojure and seeing what it's all about.
octagonal··on Show HN: Ship – A fast, native issue tracker for software projects
Linux support would be amazing!

But disregarding my preference, what is your analytics showing in terms of OS usage?

octagonal··on Google Fit: An effortless, comprehensive view of your fitness
You can use it while you're at the gym.
octagonal··on French soldier’s room unchanged 96 years after his death in the first world war
Congratulations, your comment is both unfunny and unfounded in reality.
octagonal··on The Arachnids That Live on Your Face
I really hope this article doesn't make anyone actually try to get rid of these arachnids although I'm sure "hygiene" companies will be all over this in a few years.

> Spiders are living on your FACE! Please buy our stuff.

octagonal··on Better Browsing for Ruby Developers
Are DuckDuckGo instant answers being considered as well?
octagonal··on Watch ATV-5 docking
I'm wondering what kind of transport layer protocols are used to transmit data to and from vessels in space. It's hardly going to be plain TCP, right?
octagonal··on Getting It Done with Haskell
Purescript.
Page 1 of 3Next →