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renierbotha

23 karma · joined May 27, 2017

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renierbotha··on Show HN: OwnTime – a chess clock for your day's priorities
This is great and NOT another pomodoro and I gladly paid £2 for this piece of software which I COULD throw at Fable and probably get something similar but honestly can't be arsed and just want the app.
renierbotha··on Starbase, LA
All I saw was nipples
renierbotha··on Show HN: Open-source Stripe Connect alternative
How do you handle refunds & chargebacks? And do you have a maximum amount that can be charged?

For context - I'm building a marketplace for artists and struggling to find a global payouts rail. The ones that exist have really high turnover requirements or reject new marketplaces that deal with higher value physical items due to chargeback risk.

renierbotha··on Show HN: Open-source Stripe Connect alternative
Out of interest, how is it going with PromptBase? Love the idea, does it have legs -- ie are you making money?
renierbotha··on Show HN: An open database of 1,355 global problems with a zero-auth API
Small point but most of the entries Ive seen has been logged on the 23rd of July 2026. Today is the 20th of July 2026.
renierbotha··on The local LLM ecosystem doesn’t need Ollama
Thank you, I needed to read this.
renierbotha··on Show HN: Rebrain.gg – Doom learn, don't doom scroll
I clicked on that link, saw clashing colours and a general lack of UX design principles and immediately closed it.
renierbotha··on Show HN: Eyesite - experimental website combining computer vision and web design
This is very cool!! Have you considered making a WebGL game that uses eye tracking for things like aiming? Could be very cool and one of the very few accessible games
renierbotha··on Ask HN: What are you working on (September 2024)?
Dude this is SICK! Well done, it must have taken a lot of determination to get here.
renierbotha··on I recreated Shazam’s algorithm with Go
Haven't crawled through the repo (yet) but quick question - where does the data that is being searched over come from? Are you loading a library or searching some large library acquired from somewhere else?
renierbotha··on Ask HN: With recent layoffs, how would you advise new grads entering the market?
In my experience, teams getting laid off are generally (not always) experimental, high risk / high reward, horizon 2 type bets. Ie not the main function of the company or one of the major bets the company needs to succeed for their current strategy.

So one way to avoid being hired into a team like this is to ask a many questions centered around the impact of the team.

For example, - “what are some of the main accomplishments this team has had in the past?” - “what is the mission & vision of the team, and how is it aligned to the business operational plan?” - “what will happen to the company if this team fails on its biggest bets?”

This is naturally aimed towards bigger companies.

renierbotha··on Ask HN: Recommended reading for IC transitioning to Manager track
Thanks, will put that one on the list :D
renierbotha··on Ask HN: Recommended reading for IC transitioning to Manager track
Thanks, putting The Culture Map on the list ^_^
renierbotha··on Ask HN: Recommended reading for IC transitioning to Manager track
Thanks for the input!!
renierbotha··on Ask HN: Recommended reading for IC transitioning to Manager track
Thanks, really appreciate this input! Finding a mentor is easier said than done but agree that it's an important step.
renierbotha··on Ask HN: Which jobs will survive and which will disappear in 50 years?
Well, the _entire stock image industry_ has surely been disrupted. If you relied on stock imagery last year as your primary source of income, you may be out of work come next year.

https://www.shutterstock.com/press/20435

renierbotha··on Show HN: Recycle your old Spotify playlists into new ones
Good job! I've had a number of spotify API side projects that never got this far. +1 for access to source ^_^
renierbotha··on Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?
A data dictionary of 200+ business metrics used in a large water utility company, listing clear explanations, pseudo SQL and source data lineage.

Before this there were 5 different ways to calculate specific things like “minimum night flow”.

Plus we then built the data product which calculates all that stuff and serves it to the business in a self-serve query interface.

But by far the most impactful was bringing together different teams to align on how actually to calculate core business terms.

renierbotha··on [dead]
I'm having loads of issues with Notion this morning bu downdetector and the official Notion status page says there are no issues.

Even the Notion website fails to load some times...

renierbotha··on Real Time Speech Recognition with Gradio
Yeah not really working as expected.

Was interested in this as I'm looking to build a "swearing detector" to help me swear less in video calls but this could not pick up one sentence properly out of a couple and then it started throwing errors.

Think it needs some time back in the lab tbh.

renierbotha··on Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?
So many cans of worms
renierbotha··on Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
I have a similar situation - although my gap is much smaller (~4 months) it still is big enough to raise questions. But it hasn't. In the last 3-4 months I've interviewed with over 10 companies (multiple stages) and not one hiring manager was interested in the gap.

However, that doesn't mean the recruiters who rejected my CV didn't care about it. And that's why, to avoid any confusion about the gap I added an item on my resume which indicates what I was up to. In my case, I travelled to India to do my yoga teachers training course. So I added the course certificate with the date clearly on my CV.

So to summarize: the best thing to do IMO is to remove the possibility of confusion by adding any descriptive piece of information on your resume.

renierbotha··on Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
PS - If anyone feels like notion is a vibe and want to try it out, I wouldn't be against you signing up using this link:

https://www.notion.so/?r=f5b9c5492da44f55bedb473d92a0bfb1

The free tier is pretty extensive, and I'm most def gonna upgrade soon, but every bit helps :)

renierbotha··on Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
I've recently discovered Notion (www.notion.so) and it's changed A LOT for me.

The main selling point is that it's all the other tools - Trello, Kanban, Asana, Google Sheets (to an extent) in one place, with a planned release of an API.

I've been loving it so much that I've started helping my brother organize some of his company's projects using Notion to showcase the value of having your content organized in one place with the tools that make you feel like your living in 2019.

renierbotha··on Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online
Here's a simple scraper to download the entire collection:

https://github.com/Rendiere/vanScrape

renierbotha··on Ask HN: How do you plan your travel?
Rome 2 rio - https://www.rome2rio.com/ is a great tool to see what the different transportation options are. Say, for example, you want to travel from Lisbon to Berlin, rome2rio will show you what your options are (fly, train, bus, etc) and what the respective costs are.

Especially useful if you are traveling to countries where public transport isn't a given.

renierbotha··on Ask HN: How to stop overthinking everything in my life?
Hey dude, I'm in pretty much the same position: mid twenties, white male, working tech industry etc but with a twist - I live in South Africa where inequality is a dinner table topic.

So, how do I deal with shit? Mostly I don't, to be honest. But whats been keeping me sane is this:

1 )Work towards a goal that you know will enable you to give back. If it's donating to charity or volunteering work, its this crazy thing that happens when you start really thinking of giving back to people with less with no expectation of getting anything in return.

And:

2) Meditation. Being able to view your thoughts as thoughts and nothing more. Learning to become mindful of whats currently around you and how to appreciate it, especially yourself.

Hope this helps. More than keen to chat about it if you want.