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veb

2,638 karma · joined December 4, 2010

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veb··on Things every programmer should know
I'm sure if I took the time to read them all, they'd all be very different as everyone has their own opinions on "things every programmer should know".

IMO what every programmer should know is how to do their job :)

veb··on Depression, anxiety rising among U.S. college students
As soon as I learned the discipline for social media, and that's all forms: Facebook, Twitter, IRC, Slack etc and learned how to control myself from visiting every three seconds, I got a lot happier.

There's just nothing better for peoples health than to ignore social media, to ignore technology, to keep their phone far away from them as possible.

While I have other issues, it really wasn't until I cut out all medications, alcohol and then technology from my life. I use social media sparingly these days because I've trained myself to avoid it.

I lost a lot of friends when I went through a segment in my life where I was depressed, moody and so on so forth, but at the end of the day I'm happier now because the experience taught me what I did wrong, and what some of the catalysts were, so there's a silver lining in every 'bad' thing that happens so to speak.

Regarding sleep disturbance, I've just taken to edibles and having zero light in my room with one of those artificial sunlight alarms to wake me up in the morning. Seems to help a lot.

New Zealand also seems to have a crisis with suicide. I'm super lucky that I have a blank cheque from ACC to get any help I need, along with my family. Most people don't have that, unfortunately and I feel extremely bad for them. I wish I could help, but really I feel, what can one person do in this instance than to try and understand what people are going through but that's difficult as hell because most people hide and mask their symptoms through other crap like drugs, alcohol, which all simply lead to temporary psychosis and worsening depression-like symptoms.

At least these days things are better, but I'd like to reconnect with old friends and say sorry for all the damage I caused, but it's hard to know where to even start.

veb··on Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals
In New Zealand we have debit cards, so they act just like a normal credit card, except it needs to have money in the account for the transaction to work. So you tie it to an account that you put money into, instead of say, your every-day spending account which could contain a lot more money.
veb··on Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?
yeah, on second thought, you're right regarding Asia.... to a degree. I worked in Singapore for a while and a lot of people my age didn't live at home, and a few did. Singapore was a bit different though, it's bloody expensive there.

In the Philippines I found that depending where you were from, depended on whether you left home as early as possible for better opportunities.

Never heard of the dorms thing though.

My wife and I will buy a house one day, but it won't be near any of the "big" NZ cities. Too expensive.

I see the logic too, but surely your mental health must suffer!

veb··on Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?
Interesting! I remember when I first went flatting, it was 4 of my mates. So rent+utilities divided by 4 people made it pretty easy. and it's not like NZ is cheap by any means.
veb··on Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?
where on earth is it the norm to be living with your parents until you're in your 30s?

Kiwi here, a lot of us move out and go flatting at the first possible chance we get - which is right after high school/first year of uni.

veb··on 15-Inch MacBook Pro Battery Recall Program
I too, bought mine in early 2015. It says it's not eligible.

> September 2015 and February 2017

Which isn't early 2015 - that's how I saw it.

veb··on Gmail really wants me to say yes
I have a cochlear implant, I'm probably locked into Med-El for life! :-) But as far as I know, they're not yet spying on people via my cyborg ear.
veb··on Show HN: Full Help – Self-hosted help desk and knowledge base software
Sweet! Thank you. :)
veb··on Show HN: Full Help – Self-hosted help desk and knowledge base software
Super super awesome launch! I love your landing page, and have been looking for something exactly like this for a product I am launching soon.

I'll be in touch! Great stuff.

veb··on Show HN: A Color Picker I Made
I use this one! Love it. Does everything I need.
veb··on Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms
Yep, we definitely have to update that page ASAP. Maybe next time it hits HN we'll be ready. If anyone's interested you can see from my Mastodon what I've boosted from PixelFed: https://mastodon.social/@veb
veb··on Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms
I constantly boost my PixelFed posts in Masotdon :) It's such an awesome way of doing it. My latest toots are in fact, from PixelFed: https://mastodon.social/@veb
veb··on How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps
Wonderful article... but incredibly selfish. I'm pretty sure if I'd faked my death and then later on reached out to my wife, she would murder me and nobody would know.
veb··on $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now
I was wondering what on earth all the top commenters were talking about! Thanks.
veb··on Pi-Hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
A friend and I just launched an MVP a couple of weeks ago so people in New Zealand (and kiwis abroad) could have a VPN with PiHole hosted here in NZ: https://expatvpn.co.nz - however from the early users it seems everyone's just been using it for their phone mainly. I'm thinking I might rebrand it to be more for secure mobile browsing or something...
veb··on Today we had someone fake their entire interview via Skype - Story (r/devops)
If you change the URL from `reddit.com` to `ceddit.com`: it'll show you the deleted comments.

Which gets redirected to: https://snew.notabug.io/r/devops/comments/askyfu/today_we_ha...

veb··on Federal HTTPS domains that'll expire soon because of US government shutdown
He has a tag 'diesel mechanic' on Momento: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momento-for-hacker... - it's actually pretty handy! :)
veb··on What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
I've sadly been to hospital via ambulance quite a lot for seizure activity and that kinda carrying on. The biggest bill was when I received my $54 bill for the ambulance! Oh no. (St John is a volunteer ambulance service). So, I went and paid it and then paid them $80 for an annual househould membership - meaning if anyone in my house ever needs an ambulance, it's free!

I'm aware however, with the rescue helicopters there can sometimes be complications because at the end of the day, someone needs to pay - but as an accident, everything's covered under ACC anyways. (and: http://www.police.govt.nz/faq/if-i-get-lost-and-need-search-...)

veb··on Asana raises $50M at a $1.5B valuation
Ha! Totally agreed. Super annoying when you click somewhere randomly and an empty task is created.

Aside from really petty annoyances, I find Asana does what I want it to. I don't feel very strongly about it either way. If another product showed up that was better, I'd move in a heartbeat.

It just doesn't inspire.

veb··on Launch HN: Sterblue (YC S18) – Software for drones to inspect power lines
No. Those are auto-generated. Quite terrible. It really makes a world of difference when someone adds proper subtitles for the deaf/people without audio.

As a deaf person, the way the auto-generated captions are shown is so much harder to read than just your normal sync'd captions.

veb··on Launch HN: Sterblue (YC S18) – Software for drones to inspect power lines
This is pretty cool. Maybe you guys can add English captions to the video, as it's French right now :)
veb··on Thousands Say Kratom Cured Their Addiction, Government Says It’s Another Opioid
Just thought I'd chime in for this. After my cochlear implant surgery I had all these symptoms.

I was put on the same medications. After a while I started having seizures. Over time, I managed to stop the tramadol, and the others only leaving the gabapentin. Seizures still happened. (the electric shock thing I used to encounter, was probably related).

One day I come across side effects for it and one of the big ones was "causes seizures". So, trying to stop that gabapentin was one of the hardest things I've ever done, such extreme withdrawals, far worse than any tramadol, oxycontin etc.

As soon as I had stopped the gabapentin, all my symptoms disappeared, and I've not had another seizure since.

What we think happened was I had an infection, that had caused the aforementioned pain and shocks, so we went with the medications which obviously masked a lot of the symptoms. However it wasn't until I was free of the meds, that things were actually better, and it was very easy to pinpoint what was causing havoc with me.

When reading about Gabapentin/Pregabalin all over the internet, some people have had such bad experiences with it - and on top of that, doctors give it out like candy in New Zealand as a fix-all, because it's marketed as a very safe drug.

I hope your wife is feeling better these days mate! :)

veb··on Tesla meets self-imposed deadline for Model 3, rolls out 5000 cars in a week
I see them quite often in New Zealand, but saw my first Lamborghini in the flesh the other day!
veb··on Pixelfed: Open Source ActivityPub-Based Photo Sharing App
If anyone wants to have a look at some (basic) photos, here's my profile: https://pixelfed.social/mike
veb··on Pixelfed: Open Source ActivityPub-Based Photo Sharing App
It just came online for the beta yesterday so there's a lot to do! Check out https://github.com/dansup/pixelfed/issues
veb··on Is Sleeping with Your Baby as Dangerous as Doctors Say?
Same here. My son was born perfectly healthy etc. We tried the whole crib next to the bed. Didn't work very well, so we co-slept. They both got a full 8 hours sleep a night together. It was great.

I've never ever slept so still in my life. (tho, he was on his mums side.)

When we transitioned him from sleeping with Mum to his own crib, it went perfectly. We just moved him one night and that was it.

Our doctor was very supportive. Told us never to use drugs/alcohol and co-sleep. To be very careful and so on (basically echoing the article) - and it worked out for us. I guess if he was born premature or something, they'd probably say "don't do it".

veb··on “Lifefaker.com makes faking perfection easy”
That article on rental friends makes me so mad. I'd rather know that my dad wasn't around than be completely lied to like that. Jeez.
veb··on Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry
I really wish they'd bring back some trams though. A lot of our roads are incredibly wide, they could still have trams going up High Street, thru Caversham etc. I wish Dunedin would spend more effort on public transport - I loved how many people used the buses recently when they had a free day!
veb··on Submit a movie script to Amazon studios
that might make an interesting movie script ;)
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