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ruffrey

1,519 karma · joined April 23, 2015

Integrating LLMs into insurance software at Applied Systems Inc.

Wrote code and deployed software infrastructure to support sustainable materials science at Genomatica.

Worked a contract building crypto analytics tools at DeFi Pulse.

Developed golang ETL systems at Walt Disney Studios.

Worked on end-to-end encrypted DevOps tooling (secret storage) as employee #1 at EnvKey (YC 2018).

Founding CTO/coder for 2 years at AQUAOSO (techstars 2019), building a water resilient future, open source GIS/Mapping.

Mostly golang, javascript/typescript, and python. Open source contributor where possible.

Mailsac.com founder.

Formerly: Genomatica R&D, DeFi Pulse, Disney/Marvel, envkey (YC), AQUAOSO, (techstars), Digium R&D, Clevertech, VSP Vision, freelance.

GH: ruffrey Tw: ruffrey Em:

jeff at ruffrey

dot com

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ruffrey··on Ask HN: Staying fit whilst working from home?
P90X is what finally got me into shape in 2011, after a long period of health avoidance. Something about it seemed to help. At the time I didn’t have a ton of money and it was cheaper than a trainer.
ruffrey··on How the gut differentiates artificial sweeteners from sugars in mice
Since 4 months old, our son bounced off the walls when given sugary fruits like banana and orange. With a mood crash an hour or two later.
ruffrey··on Starting with microservices
I’ve done monoliths and microservices. Having a monolithic codebase with many entry points is my preferred.
ruffrey··on Show HN: Justyourip.com
Just You Rip
ruffrey··on Dont Explain Yourself
It really is awful advice for relationships.

The advice has strategic advantage in limited situations.

Hiding your decision making from others robs you of the opportunity to learn from others. If your decision is on such weak footing it can’t hold up the the scrutiny of friends and family then perhaps it should be questioned.

If the person doing the questioning is not tending toward appreciative understanding, then avoiding discussion makes sense.

ruffrey··on Music industry is suing youtube-dl hosters
Can the maintainers host it on IPFS?
ruffrey··on Ask HN: Why are we accepting ageism in tech as something immutable?
At all the startups I’ve worked at over 10 years, this just hasn’t been the case. I’m in the minority apparently. We’ve explicitly looked for a mix of experience to fill missing roles on the team. Frequently the newer devs have direct experience with a hot new framework and are clearly very hungry. This is great for hiring. However any company of marginal success will find itself at a strong disadvantage scaling the systems or team size without experienced engineers. You can only punt on this so long before the weight of bad architecture, testing and code quality from inexperienced devs results in stagnation and liability.
ruffrey··on DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion
The comparison to banks as shock absorbers is pretty rich. It has been only 12 years since banks caused global recession due to secrecy and greed. At least the decentralized options are more open, despite any flaws, which would be shared by centralized finance anyways.

A mix of centralized and decentralized seems the safest.

ruffrey··on Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
I’ve found limited success and failure. Here is what I’ve learned.

Business is hard and important. Marketing, sales and strategy are necessary, there’s no “build it and they will come.”

Working at small early successful startup has been huge for learning.

Learning from local startups and building relationships with other entrepreneurs is huge.

Startup accelerators and hackathons help tech people learn business savvy and connect with non-tech cofounders.

For the vast majority, software dev is an arcane art and dev chops can be highly appreciated by a businessey entrepreneur.

ruffrey··on Tell HN: AWS warns us about irregular activity related to Log4shell
We received this. We have no Java.

The notification from AWS referenced an instance we don’t have.

Some clarification from AWS would be nice. It made me wonder if it was related to an ELB or something.

ruffrey··on Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?
There is interesting advice in this thread.

Work for the sake of survival is what most people are consumed with.

Now you’re free.

What meaning will you give to your life? How will you share your special, unique talents? Who will you help?

ruffrey··on This website has 81% battery power remaining
Apple is designing much of the silicon. Measuring power usage is a core competency.
ruffrey··on The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme
Note that Celsius, the company in question, is not listed by DeFi Pulse.
ruffrey··on Leaving MySQL
Postgres now has UNLOGGED tables which are pretty similar to memory tables.
ruffrey··on Ikea Vindriktning Air Quality Sensor Review and Accuracy
I’ve used this one [1] then ordered similar ones from Ali express after getting the Adafruit one working.

1. https://www.adafruit.com/product/3686?gclid=CjwKCAiAhreNBhAY...

ruffrey··on Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
I suspect they were always there, but google and ddg are getting gamed more now. The quality of results has dropped quite a bit in the past 4 or 5 years in this regard.
ruffrey··on Djinn Split Keyboard
You can use two apple Bluetooth keyboards on one device.

https://symboliclogic.io/years-of-pain-solved-by-really-obvi...

It requires an tray app called Karabiner Elements to link the function keys across keyboards.

ruffrey··on Djinn Split Keyboard
I had this problem. Bought some small rubber bump things for home row keys. Quite easy now.
ruffrey··on Ask HN: Who's not sucky to work for?
Consider working for yourself under a corporation. Quick to be hired, fired, and fire your customers. You may be the best boss you've ever had.
ruffrey··on The metaverse is bullshit
> John Carmack called metaverse development as it exists today "a honeypot trap for architecture astronauts," aka "programmers or designers who want to only look at things from the very highest levels."
ruffrey··on Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place
Fun fact, pidgin was developed by Mark Spencer, who also wrote Asterisk PBX and currently builds open source flight avionics.
ruffrey··on Peter Thiel: Bitcoin at $60k a sure sign political system is about to implode
It does seem inevitable that Tether implodes. Whoever is holding those coins at the time will lose once crypto players decide to stop playing with tethers. Whether they lose all or partially is unclear. The loss may the total value locked or recently purchased in tether. Perhaps it is the same as the market cap due to the fast turnover in the coin.

My conjecture is that Tether's collapse will result in temporary losses to crypto values overall. It will likely lead to regulation. But with regulation the legitimacy of DeFi in particular will be more solidified and raise the markets. This is my guess for the next 5 years or so.

ruffrey··on Ask HN: Why is Node.js hated so much?
Node is hated because programmers are highly opinionated (not in a negative way). Everything with huge usage gets hate, because everything has flaws and trade offs. People get forced to use it at work, sometimes to solve the wrong kinds of problems for it's strengths, which amplifies the dislike. It's the nature of the beast.
ruffrey··on Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel
I've been looking for a way to make a dent in climate change, while also eking out a living.
ruffrey··on Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel
Thank you so much for sharing this! Exactly what I've been looking for.
ruffrey··on Using two keyboards at once for pain relief
Op here, thanks for that! I sometimes type on the MacBook keyboard and it helps to have an identical layout and feel. Just seeing all the stories here about ergonomic hacks is awesome!
ruffrey··on Using two keyboards at once for pain relief
If you're on mac, Karabiner will link the function and hot key combos http://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org to
ruffrey··on Using two keyboards at once for pain relief
Op here, I totally agree we need to re-think keyboard ergonomics! Millions of people have pain from the design of these things. I am so happy the article sparked a little conversation.
ruffrey··on A different kind of keyboard
Thanks, yep, tried a few but am too addicted to the chiclet style.
ruffrey··on A different kind of keyboard
I applaud any effort to rethink keyboards from first principles.

After years of shoulder, neck and back pain I discovered that the root cause was the standard keyboard design. It causes rounded shoulders. Perhaps my shoulders are just too wide. This pinched all sorts of muscles, tendons and nerves. Doctors and physical therapists just failed to identify the issue. Weight lifting didn't help all that much, even with a strong back I had to scrunch and round the shoulders to type.

I finally picked up a second keyboard, and used one for each hand. It was surprisingly easy to convert to. Just added some larger rubber nub things on home row.

It's been life changing. Years of pain was gone in days. No special design necessary.

Each keyboard is arranged at an outward angle, distanced so my shoulders are in a natural position.

I can't recommend this enough.

On Mac it required a system preference tweak (Karibiner app) so each keyboard can share shortcut keys.

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