Hacker News Reader

vanelsason Static site comments using babashka and Google Sheets

I preferred a solution that is free and doesn't require a server or a database implementation. This was a good challenge and turns out to work quite nicely I thought.

vanelsason The 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement is no longer viable

The propaganda spilled since the 1970s by large cooperations and politicians had two effects. People understand the problem is huge, and worse, they feel they cannot do anything about this issue themselves.

What we tend to forget is that large changes in society tend to start with us. Try eating less meat, eat healthy food, reduce car and plane usage when possible, buy less stuff (especially online), these are things anyone can do (rich or poor). When you start, family members and friends might follow.

From there, more people will try to change their consumption, and when enough people do that, politicians that are willing to tackle these issues will be elected. And when politicians are elected at some point your government will take the right step. From there we go to countries and eventually a large part of the world will do what must be done to survive.

You want a better world? Start by improving your own life and health.

vanelsason What shall I teach my son?

Perhaps the most important thing, let them read.

Anything, books, magazines, as long as it is on paper. Reading will help them to understand, to think, to use the brain without the need of electronic devices.

vanelsason Pledge signed by President Trump and top AI leaders misspells the United States

I guess it makes sense, since both Trump and these business leaders think they rule the world and can do whatever they want. Renaming a country seems a minor thing in the grand scheme of things.

Of course, now they also need to rename Lake Amorica, Gulf of Amorica, The Fédération Internationale de Trump Association (FITA) and so on.

vanelsason Google Maps Renames Lake Ontario to Lake America

Why not call it Lake Trump, hang a tarp blocking our view to it, and be done with it.

The American dream reduced to an idiocracy.

vanelsason Show HN: Bareforge – A UI builder exporting stateful JavaScript/CLJS projects

Dev here. I built Bareforge to address a gap from design to code.

I previously built a library of 90+ web components (BareDOM), and I wanted a way to make those components immediately useful. I often find myself translating designs into working SPAs, so I thought I would build a visual builder that supports the manual coding phase.

What makes it interesting imo: Bareforge (v0.1.1) is a drag-and-drop designer, built in CLJS, where you can design a page and declare reactive state (fields, computed fields, records) directly on the canvas. You can wire DOM events to actions that mutate data live.

It exports a fully functional, interactive project in either vanilla JS or ClojureScript. It’s designed for small bundle sizes and human-readable code.

The export system is pluggable. It currently defaults to JS or CLJS, but can be extended by adding targets for React, Svelte, or other frameworks. I used Claude Code during development.

Demo & Code: https://github.com/avanelsas/bareforge

I'd love feedback on the drag and drop UX, quality of the exported code (would you commit it to a repo?) or what exports you would like to see.

vanelsason Greece’s Proposals to End the Crisis

When people discuss Greece they act as if every Greek person is the same. It is easy to use stereotypes. Greeks are lazy, they retire early, the pensions are "insanely high compared to even the Greek economy before the collapse". The European Union frames this conflict like this the whole time. Sure there are people that screwed up, that took advantage of the situation. There is corruption and extremely poor government for many years. But when you look past that, to the normal Greek person, trying to to the best and make a living then things aren't so simple anymore. DO you really belive that an entire country is evil and corrupt? My 2 uncles have both worked 6 days a week from 10:00AM until 22:00 PM, and 14 days a year vacation. They started working when they were 14 years old, worked until they were 78 and 79 (While we fight the 67 yr retirement rule in the rest of Europe). When they retired, they had to wait 2 years before their pension would start being paid out (normal practice). Only to find out that it was cut in half when it finally arrived. One of them died, the other one (84) now lives on a pension of less than 650 Euro per month. 300 goes to the rent. That leaves him 300 Euro to buy food, pay the bills, get healthcare, support his children (3), of which 2 have been fired and cannot get a job anywhere. And their grandchildren don't have jobs either (which is far more concerning imo). He has a heart condition, yet cannot pay for any medicines. His son has cancer, there is no money for medicines. So when you say that people aren't starving on the streets, then you may want to think about this situation and let it sink in. There is huge poverty in Greece, you may not se it, but it is there. My uncle isn't in a unique situation, this has happened to many, many Greeks.

vanelsason Ask HN: Who's using Clojure in production?

We have build a proprietary RTB bidder written in Clojure and powered by custom machine learning algorithms. We use it for mobile customer acquistition and retargeting services - http://www.adgoji.com

vanelsason Trouble at the Koolaid Point

Wow, this is even worse than I ever imagined. It is unbelievable how far trolling can go and what the costs are in life for the victim. I don't know you personally Kathy but I really feel sorry for you. You deserve respect for having the courage writing up these thoughts despite of everything that has happened to you and your family in the past 10 years. What's even worse how easy it has become for us to judge from the sideline with smug remarks on Twitter. Sad, really sad.

vanelsason Show HN: Handcrafted standing desks from reclaimed materials

We've been using sit/stand desks at our office since the start now. At first I was the only one using them, but now every developer seems to be using it more and more. To me, the most important feature is to be able to alter the height of the desk as I want to sit or stand during the day. I find myself switching positions 2-3 times a day. Couldn't work without it anymore. Awesome product!

vanelsason Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (October 2012)

Amsterdam, The Netherlands. MillMobile is about to launch a unique mobile audience targeting platform and is seeking developers to help us scale up. We have international customers and an international ambition. Want to be part of a fast growing startup, with a hands on mentality and working with innovative technology? Mail us at info@millmobile.com

We are looking for (fulltime) front end developers, iOS, and Android developers and two :

Software engineer - systems Responsibilities: Build and maintain high-performance, scalable systems Improve the reliability and efficiency of our core systems Support our internal APIs and user-facing products Develop elegant solutions to complex problems Code using Clojure, Ruby

Requirements: Extensive experience with web infrastructure, distributed systems, performance analysis, search infrastructure and/or large-scale data processing Experience with software engineering best practices (e.g. unit testing, code reviews, design documentation) Strong algorithms and data structures background BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or equivalent work experience

Desired: Development on the JVM, including asynchronous I/O, concurrency, and the Java memory model Experience designing fault-tolerant distributed systems Experience with Hadoop or other MapReduce-based architectures Hands-on experience in Linux Kernel development, configuration, and performance tuning Experience with databases like Cassandra, Redis, Memcached, Postgres, or Ruby on Rails Contributions to the open-source community

vanelsason Dear HN: I Don't care about your f*cking opinion

I can fully agree to that. I am not suggesting censorship or refraining from criticisms. I just like to see people doing that respectfully and in a way that actually adds something to the discussion

vanelsason Dear HN: I Don't care about your f*cking opinion

Good point, and I might have done a better job at it.

vanelsason Dear HN: I Don't care about your f*cking opinion

I guess my writing skills are not so good. I think opinions matter, I just feel we can do a little less with f*cking opinions.

vanelsason The iOS App Store: Needles in Haystacks

Zwapp is one of those app discovery apps. And it is a platform for developers wanting to promote their apps to passionate app users. See : http://itunes.apple.com/app/id426360184?mt=8&ls=1

vanelsason The iOS App Store: Needles in Haystacks

There is Zwapp, the community, and there is Zwapp Connect, our service that helps developers reach the users that are actually interested in their app. We use our recommendation engine to match between user needs and app to drive downloads. We've tried several app download services and found the quality of the downloads very poor. By using a lot of social/app and meta data that we have build up we can target much better and help devs to drive downloads to people that are more likely to use your app. (sorry about the pitch). It is actually a tough problem to crack that involves reach, matching tons of data, providing the right call to actions and then measure the success and improve the process again.

vanelsason The iOS App Store: Needles in Haystacks

At Zwapp (I am the founder) we've actually attempted to address this issue, and yes, we use users and their social networks to see if we can make more apps discoverable than just the top popular lists. So far it seems to work out really well, people are interested in sharing their apps and providing each other recommendations. You see this in real life all the time. We meet up, put our phones on the table, and often the conversation is lead to "what apps do you use". We try to stimulate and support these types of conversations. There are more reasons why this approach is valid. Gaming reviews is less important because you wil trust a review of a person you know. It may be more interesting to see the most popular apps of your friends instead of the most popular in the app store. And finally, we have spend a lot of effort trying to provide excellent app detection. The reason for this is two-fold. it helps you get started quickly as a user, but more importantly it helps us to understand what apps people have and use, allowing us to provide qualitative recommendations. It is better to get a few users to download your app and then really use it, then get a whole lot of users downloading it and running it once because of a mismatch.

vanelsason "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

I think the author did a great job and took quite some time to share his knowledge with us. Pity the average response on HN tends to be a compliment followed by a but.... I guess we feel we are always smarter than the next guy, he just happens to put in the effort :-)

Well done, loved it all the way!

vanelsason Ask HN: good, quick algorithms course to prepare for big tech interviews?

I have just started reading the bible of algorithms:

http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena/...

Not a quick win but a comprehensive, in-depth algorithm book :-)

vanelsason Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam

Check the site http://appsterdam.rs It is going to be much more than an information hub, the aim is to turn it into a movement. Given the enthusiasm of the crowd there yesterday I'm pretty sure it will turn into something big.

vanelsason Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam

http://appsterdam.rs Give it a bit of time, its warming up and will become a relevant movement :-)

vanelsason 10,795 iOS apps submitted, 3,123 schemes, 98 contributors, * and other odd CURLs

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5103260/how-ios-handle-ur...

Although in all fairness I have to mention that this hasn't happened to me personally, so I can't verify that it works exactly like that

vanelsason Zwapp’s app makes iPhone app discovery more social

haha!

We still hope that creating little app stores with your friends helps to solve the fundamental issue that the App Store is simply becoming too big to find useful apps fast

vanelsason Zwapp’s app makes iPhone app discovery more social

We do wish Apple would provide better ways too, but using the processes isn't going to get you to a 100% anyways. We are (luckily) not dependent entirely on system processes and will (in a few days) see if we can ramp up our app detection with help from the community!

vanelsason Rate my startup: Zwapp, a unique social view of the App Store

because not every user wants that, and tbh we're a bit unhappy with the reliability of both FB and Twitter.

vanelsason Rate my startup: Zwapp, a unique social view of the App Store

We have thought about things like that but to be honest, we want to keep the experience focussed on your friends. There are already enough top app lists around. What makes Zwapp different imo is that it gives you direct access to the apps and reviews of your friends instead of strangers.

vanelsason Rate my startup: Zwapp, a unique social view of the App Store

There is only one point in the app where we ask (politely) if you are willing to tweet about Zwapp.

That is in the autoshare section of Settings. You remain in control at all times about posts. You can turn sharing to social networks on/off but everything defaults to off.

vanelsason Rate my startup: Zwapp, a unique social view of the App Store

We really want to do an Android version, it is a great platform too. We are working on Android already.

We want to strengthen our Android team so if you know any good Android devs they can contact us for a job!

vanelsason Rate my startup: Zwapp, a unique social view of the App Store

We have affiliate links set up which will provide some revenue.

The site is still very clean, almost Instagr.am -ish, but we are also working on a web view where you can see and share each others app profiles (see http://www.zwapp.com/users/237 for a work in progress example).

vanelsason Rate my startup: Zwapp, a unique social view of the App Store

we do two things: 1) We check on custom schemes (btw: watch that space as we will open source our work on that shortly!) 2) We check processes on iOS4 devices and match those as well.

The algorithm learns and will detect better and more with increased usage.