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tumblen

835 karma · joined January 28, 2010

http://nickyhajal.com

nhajal@gmail.com

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tumblen··on Zeit v1
Anyone else remember when Vercel was called Zeit? Thought this was related somehow.

I loved that branding for them.

tumblen··on Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?
A desktop app that helps you stay focused on your most important tasks every day.

It appears on top of all your other applications to capture and channel your attention into the things you actually care about, before you get distracted.

In the morning, it helps you effectively plan your most important tasks and throughout the day it pulls your focus back to those tasks.

You can check it out here: https://dayglow.app

tumblen··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2024)
Location: Austin, TX / Barcelona, Spain

Remote: Yes (preferred)

Contract work preferred for now (but open-minded to FT)

Willing to relocate: Unlikely but open-minded

Technologies: Full-stack development, Typescript, Javascript, Svelte, React, React Native, Vue, HTML/CSS, MySQL, Postgres, Electron, NodeJS, Ruby, Java, Rubymotion, Android, iOS, PHP, WordPress, Nginx, Redis

I also have a substantial amount of experience doing UI/UX/Design (Figma/Sketch).

Résumé/CV: Email for Resume

Email: nhajal@gmail.com

tumblen··on AOL pretends to be the internet
The very first online game I ever played was an amazing multiplayer space shooter called Silent Death Online on AOL Games. It was incredible and I blew through over $100 a month paying $1.99 hour to rank up my character, upgrade my ship, communicate with and eventually lead my clan.

With 56k modems, it took so long for the "shoot weapon" request to make it to the server that if you wanted to kill someone, you had to shoot well ahead of their actual ship. If you wanted to get good, you had to open up the debug console and use your ping to determine how far ahead to "lag shoot".

Suddenly, certain players began becoming well known for stacking up hundreds of kills in a game and ranking all the way up to Commander (max rank) within a few days. Over time, people began learning the secret: those were the first players to get ISDN and DSL and with their super-fast internet connections, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Those players were my introduction to the world outside of the AOL internet and I became eager to join it.

Around that same time, EA bought Silent Death Online and folded it into their online gaming services. That brought a new era for SDO which came to an end probably not much more than a year or two later when EA for some reason shut it all down (if I recall correctly, people started running credit card scams through the game).

What a time to be on the internet. I am still longing for someone to buy the rights to SDO and relaunch it.

tumblen··on Netflix’s Prices Are Rising Faster Than Cable
The other thing we find with our 3 year old is that he can have his tablet and watch movies or shows on Netflix/VLC, etc. and it's pretty much all positive.

But he always prefers YouTube and when he's using YouTube, he mostly watches 3-5 minutes of something before getting enticed by another thumbnail.

At times when he's had free reign to YT, it really seems to drastically affect his general attention, patience, temperament and even ability to sleep (he wakes up super early asking for his tablet).

Once we cut it off hard, he goes back to normal.

We don't really believe in complete abstinence of those sorts of things (I think it will just make him even more sensitive to those algorithms in the future) but being aware of the effect, reducing YT and prioritizing actual movies/series has made a noticeable difference.

tumblen··on Twitter Home made me miserable
I think most blogging drifted towards affiliate marketing and as a result, Google drastically devalued that content (for that and other reasons).

As a result, I find it so hard to find genuine experiences through web search now. It's all just USAToday, CNN, NYTimes, Webmd, etc. media sites (which are themselves mostly just affiliate marketing/advertising plays, so maybe that wasn't Google's motivation).

I miss the days of searching the web and finding content written by real humans.

The only search I find that satisfies this consistently is Reddit (especially searching google with site:reddit.com)

tumblen··on My Evaluation of SvelteKit for Full-Stack Web App Development
I use Svelte full-time and absolutely love it, but I do have to admit I sometimes wonder what lead to the decision of {#if}{:else}{/if}, {#each}{/each}, etc syntax. Seems like there had to be less verbose, more consistent approach... But, I'm probably not fully-aware of the constraints and missing something.

I sometimes miss the brevity of the React way (which can also be good and bad) for handling conditional code-blocks {visible && <Component>} or {visible ? <Component1 /> : <Component2 />}

tumblen··on Next.js 10
Since you mentioned Svelte, you may want to take a look into Elder.js, if you haven't: https://github.com/Elderjs/elderjs
tumblen··on Show HN: RoughNotation – create and animate hand-drawn annotations on a web page
Love it! Looking forward to using it in future projects!
tumblen··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2020)
Location: Austin, TX

Remote: Yes (preferred), Contract work preferred for now (but open-minded to FT)

Willing to relocate: Unlikely but open-minded

Technologies: Full-stack development, Typescript, Javascript, React, Svelte, HTML/CSS, MySQL, Postgres, NodeJS, Ruby, Java, Electron, Rubymotion, Android, iOS, PHP, WordPress, Nginx, Redis, Design with Figma/Sketch/XD/PS

Résumé/CV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ya0y40ygjwpnxhd/nicky-resume.pdf?d....

Email: nhajal@gmail.com

tumblen··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired right now?
Location: Austin, TX

Remote: Yes (preferred), Contract work preferred for now (but open-minded to FT)

Willing to relocate: Unlikely but open-minded

Technologies: Full-stack development, Typescript, Javascript, React, Svelte, HTML/CSS, MySQL, Postgres, NodeJS, Ruby, Java, Electron, Rubymotion, Android, iOS, PHP, WordPress, Nginx, Redis, Design with Figma/Sketch/XD/PS

Résumé/CV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ya0y40ygjwpnxhd/nicky-resume.pdf?d....

Email: nhajal@gmail.com

tumblen··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2020)
Location: Austin, TX

Remote: Yes (preferred)

Willing to relocate: Unlikely but open-minded

Technologies: Full-stack development, Typescript, Javascript, React, Svelte, HTML/CSS, MySQL, Postgres, NodeJS, Ruby, Java, Electron, Rubymotion, Android, iOS, PHP, WordPress, Nginx, Redis, Design with Figma/Sketch/XD/PS

Résumé/CV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ya0y40ygjwpnxhd/nicky-resume.pdf?d....

Email: nhajal@gmail.com

tumblen··on Amazon can’t end fake reviews, but its new system might drown them out
Do any of these sites have an extension that can rank individual reviews for trust-worthiness based on the content + other reviews by that user?

It's always a bit of a schlep to have to remember to use another website to check review credibility.

tumblen··on Amazon can’t end fake reviews, but its new system might drown them out
Yep - and a lot of reviews are even people complaining about shipping which really is irrelevant (unless it's a packaging complaint about the product itself).
tumblen··on Amazon can’t end fake reviews, but its new system might drown them out
Amazon has been more expensive lately and most other stores have free-shipping now too. I've definitely found myself being much more open to shopping around and purchasing elsewhere than I was 4-5 years ago.
tumblen··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2019)
Location: Austin, TX

Remote: Yes (preferred)

Willing to relocate: Unlikely but open-minded

Technologies: Full-stack development, Typescript, Javascript, React, Svelte, HTML/CSS, MySQL, Postgres, NodeJS, Ruby, Java, Electron, Rubymotion, Android, iOS, PHP, WordPress, Nginx, Redis, Design with Figma/Sketch/XD/PS

Résumé/CV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ya0y40ygjwpnxhd/nicky-resume.pdf?d....

Email: nhajal@gmail.com

---

Developing & designing web experiences + software since 2005. Enthusiastic and skilled at bringing ideas to life while staying focused on user experience + business objectives.

Comfortable with all aspects of design, development, maintenance and support of web + mobile experiences.

tumblen··on In Its First Funding in 14 Years, 1Password Raises $200M Series A
Great point that I hadn't thought of, but is so true! It communicates ok in text, but verbally not well at all.

Maybe they can rebrand to "123456"

tumblen··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2019)
Location: Austin, TX

Remote: Yes (preferred)

Willing to relocate: Unlikely but open-minded

Technologies: Full-stack development, Typescript, Javascript, React, Svelte, HTML/CSS, MySQL, Postgres, NodeJS, Ruby, Java, Electron, Rubymotion, Android, iOS, PHP, WordPress, Nginx, Redis, Design with Figma/Sketch/XD/PS

Résumé/CV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ya0y40ygjwpnxhd/nicky-resume.pdf?d...

Email: nhajal@gmail.com

---

Developing & designing web experiences + software since 2005. Enthusiastic and skilled at bringing ideas to life while staying focused on user experience + business objectives.

Comfortable with all aspects of design, development, maintenance and support of web + mobile experiences.

tumblen··on Filing Your Taxes Is an Expensive Time Sink. That’s Not an Accident
That makes me wonder if there could be a model of some sort of "People's Lobby" where one could set up a fund that individuals could contribute to in order to lobby for/against something.

Probably more complicated than that and corporations would respond in kind. But it does seem like giving citizens the ability to compete in the lobbying space only makes sense.

tumblen··on List of Emerging Technologies
This is probably my favorite Wikipedia list (List of Common Misconceptions):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

tumblen··on Why I wrote 33 VSCode extensions and how I manage them
So happy to know I'm not the only one playing Airmash who isn't in high school!
tumblen··on Digital Ocean Managed Databases
Thinking about moving from Linode to DO just for this. Makes so much sense.

Would be great to have something similar for Redis.

tumblen··on Why You Should Build a Hackintosh
TonyMacX86 is the best single source as dljsjr mentioned but the subreddit is also a very valuable resource in my experience: http://reddit.com/r/hackintosh

I built a hackintosh 2 years ago. It's been fantastic and required very little time to keep updated and running smoothly.

tumblen··on Ask HN: Has Google search becomes particularly poor in past few months?
Something I have felt for a couple years (that I continually feel more strongly) is that over time all the independent content, high-quality bloggers and forum discussions have gotten pushed out of the top results.

They're replaced with nothing but top, recognizable brands like yelp, pinterest, thewirecutter, forbes, usatoday, etc.

I miss when I'd google something and find a bunch of actual, normal human beings' experiences.

I think that they probably got bumped out as they triggered some blog-spam filters, but the alternative of just having results full of brand after brand isn't really any better.

tumblen··on Show HN: Write every day, measure your progress, achieve your writing goals
Hey -

First of all, I really appreciate this! I love the timed sessions that makes you keep writing.

A few things:

1. It lost a bunch of my writing. I was writing in zen-mode and went back to normal mode. I did this a few times. I do not believe I refreshed, but everything I had just written in zen-mode was lost (what I had from earlier in normal-mode was still there).

2. I wish zen-mode didn't automatically go into full-screen mode

3. I wish I could just have a normal-interface mode with a large writing area and no instructions below

4. Am I missing something or is there only 1 writing "document" per day? It seems like I should be able to save what I've written and start a new piece. Otherwise it's hard to actually develop any real content there.

Thanks again, this is really cool!

tumblen··on If Fortnite Were a Website, It Would Rival Reddit and Amazon
Were they larger their first year or two on the scene?
tumblen··on New DHS policy on demands for passwords to travelers’ electronic devices
I went through this process in 2015-2016 after my fiancee was turned away while we were entering the US in PHL (they said she had already spent too much time with me there). We went back to Spain where she's from and started the 4+ month long process of getting her a K-1 fiancee visa.

It is a lot of reading, a lot of forms, and nerve-wracking interviews so I understand where you're coming from. But now she has a green card and it's a huge weight off our chests, great to be able to live a normal life. No one is coming for legal permanent residents, especially by marriage.

Almost everyone we interacted with along the way (except for the border control at PHL) was pretty friendly and just doing their job. No one seemed to have an axe to grind against immigrants.

The best resource I found was VisaJourney which has guides, timelines, useful forums, crowd-sourced processing times, etc.

I'm sure you'll find other users there from your partner's country so you can get a feel for what the process is like from a relevant perspective.

Here is the process/timeline for a fiancee visa: http://www.visajourney.com/content/k1flow

Happy to help if you have any questions

tumblen··on Google is shutting down the QPX Express API for airfare data
What is Fareportal's pricing? I can't find it.
tumblen··on How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
What do you mean by discouraged?

I'm from the US and my wife is from Barcelona. Her family all speaks Catalan between each other but they are perfectly happy speaking Spanish with me (as are all of their family's friends and associates).

Between my wife and her friends, they speak probably a 50/50 mix of Catalan/Spanish.

I have never heard or seen anyone in all of Catalunya be discouraging or negative in relation to speaking Spanish.

When I was first in Spain, the calls for independence were few and far between compared to now, but the situation hasn't improved so they continue to grow.

But the basis of those calls, from what I've seen, is primarily rooted in real, economic/political issues. They aren't calling for independence because they have a different language, but because Spain is not providing them with the fair share of resources they need to succeed and grow as a region.

tumblen··on Google removes Catalan referendum app from Google Play after court order
You don't even know what you're talking about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_conflict

"The Basque conflict, also known as the Spain–ETA conflict, was an armed and political conflict from 1959 to 2011 between Spain and the Basque National Liberation Movement, a group of social and political Basque organizations which sought independence from Spain and France. The movement was built around the separatist organization ETA[4][5] which had launched a campaign of attacks against Spanish administrations since 1959. ETA has been proscribed as a terrorist organization by the Spanish, British,[6] French[7] and American[8] authorities at different moments. The conflict took place mostly on Spanish soil, although to a smaller degree it was also present in France, which was primarily used as a safe haven by ETA members. It was the longest running violent conflict in modern Western Europe.[9] It has been sometimes referred to as "Europe's longest war".[10]"

Catalunya is trying to find a peaceful, democratic path to resolving the issues in their region.

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