I remember some proto-memes about translation of some text between English and Chinese 100 times and the results being hilarious...modern parallel would be to ask a LLM to read the article, and generate the prompt that constructed the article. Then generate an article based on that prompt. Repeat x100.
HN user
aj_g
Austin Gayler https://austingayler.github.io/ https://github.com/austingayler
The answer is in the name. The word 'hacker' used to more refer to someone who is a tinkerer, diy engineer, curious about how systems, components, etc work. Hacker News is still somewhat true to this ethos, what's popular here aligns with this old-school curiosity mindset. Of course the exact interests of the userbase has changed over the years, but if you spend a lot of time on this forum you eventually understand some of the common themes that get the minds of the hackers turning.
Unfortunately due to the enshittification of things people are conditioned to see HN as something to be gamed and leveraged for personal gain now, but in general it's algorithm-less enough, the the mods are strict enough, (thank god) that the type of content here stays pointed towards the original 'hacker' ideals.
For several thousand repos? Ensuring none of the 451 package versions have been installed on any branch in any repo? I don't think it's so simple.
Anyone have a good solution to scan all code in our Github org for uses of the affected packages? Many of the methods we've tried have dead ended. Inability to reliably search branches is quite annoying here.
For real. It makes me feel like I'm coding in C++ again. I have the suspicion that many Next aficionados are using M12 Macs with 512GB RAM and don't know how bad the DX is on anything less than a bleeding edge machine.
I've saved a link to more or less every thought-provoking article I've read since the last 12 years (first in Evernote, and now Obsidian). I have two notes, one "links", the other "article notes", that's just a bare minimum note-taking system for stuff I read on the web. Both notes are huge, and undoubtedly contain many tidbits of advice, perception shifting ideas, or "subjectivity merges" (https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/books-are-subjectivity-me...).
One of my project ideas now that has been building in my mind is, 12 years on, to go back and re-read and re-evaluate many of these links, and do a short write-up on how I've been influence by this article or any explicit choices that I've made in my life that could likely be attributed to it. I think this would be fascinating from a psychological/neurological POV but also a really cool chance to reflect on how I've changed/grown as a person.
Great article, and this resonates a lot with how I've felt lately. I'm trying to include at least one "creative" task each day in my to-dos, because I notice I feel much much better if I have a multidisciplinary day--some programming, some writing, some DIY projects, some new cooking. If I run out of steam for one thing, oftentimes I still have energy to put into other types of tasks, and even feel rejuvenated afterwards. These things can be small (like learning a new skating drill or a small home improvement project), but the act of creating something physical regularly feels really good to me day after day.
They're nice to be able to change up your position during the course of the day, but regardless of what you do, it's bad for your body to be in the same position for several in a row. You can throw some money at the problem, but having discipline to get up and have a quick break every 30 minutes will take you much further than a standing desk will IME.
Really cool angle. I'm curious how Youtube ranks on the amount of human knowledge or described experience compared to the whole (publically available) web. It's got to be pretty substantial.
To add to the list, clamp:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/01/modern-fluid-typogr...
Such a nice property, makes responsiveness much easier to build in
A personal journaling web app that records my voice, sends it to a speech-to-text API, then sends that text to ChatGPT to rewrite it in a style of my choice (bulleted list, casual, professional, etc). Then saves that as a markdown file for viewing in the same web app. Pretty easy to make and I really like journaling with my voice.
I would almost consider this a default package to use in a react application for server-side state. Any mildly complex UI will almost immediately need init/loading/error/data states, and you begin to write a wrapper that trends towards what react-query gives you. It makes it a lot easier to by default, write code that provides much better UX. The improvement there far outweighs the small amount of time it takes to learn the library and overhead it introduces.
For sure an influential engineering codex. Feels almost strange thinking about all the easy abstractions we have now for hosting, like Render or Vercel or that this was written in 2012, when web apps were much much more of a wild west in terms of accepted/shared practices.
Beautiful. Does it ever feel challenging in any way, like you're fighting against a social norm?
Cheers, thanks. Pasted it from elsewhere and it got auto-ellipsis'd...
Great point, I feel often the same. The brain so often goes into a mode of "ah yeah, now is the time to google that one thing I was wondering earlier today", or "I just want to confirm this one small detail about thing X", and then my phone is pointed straight into the eyeballs again.
This is the best advice in the thread. If we don't have our health, what else do we have? Most people seem to agree there will never be a shortage of programming jobs, so I wouldn't worry about "staying ahead of the curve" too much if you have a solid foundation.
No kidding. I think part of the reason is also the huge amount of people flooding into dev roles, so having 2-4 years of experience puts you ahead of 70% (random number) of the other applicants, who all have 1-2 years, and you're relatively 'senior' (compared to other industries, where it would require several times longer, at least). That plus the depressingly reductionist Medium-article-writing culture with people elaborating on how to become ~Senior~ in three simple steps. Context is everything here.
It would be an interesting experiment if commenting on all crypto related articles required you to disclose how many dollars(/euros/whatever) you have invested in crypto.
Related, does anybody have any suggestions for a cheap/large/easy to look at monitor that could be used for a digital picture frame? I was thinking of getting a Raspberry Pi to rotate through my photos in my home, but the hardest part of the project would be choosing a good discrete/mountable display.
Funny that this popped up on HN. I lived in Istanbul for a little bit and was perplexed by the number of cats, but for one reason or another it's not something I ever thought of actually Googling. Thanks for sharing!
Fascinating--do you have any links to further reading/watching about this?
Has anybody here experimented with coffee substitutes (such as https://www.cookinglight.com/good-food-fast/mud-wtr-mushroom... )?
Props to you.
I am incredibly far away from the world of SV/FAANG, so tell me, is FB really becoming a less desirable place to work? It seems to me like it's a pretty small minority of people that would refuse a $1XX,000 paycheck on grounds of being a ethically dubious snowflake in the avalanche that is Facebook.
Super interesting theory. I think the implication here is a little bit unnerving though: if an individual has three "weird" views, and the most effective way to convert another individual is to only expose them to one of those three, then are we doomed as a society to evolve at a slow pace, since humans are just not psychologically prepared to comprehend so many new ideas at the same time?
Agreed--I want to take trains, but when I can fly somewhere and buy 10x the carbon offsets for the difference between the plane/train costs, well...I'm going to fly.
Really cool project. How do you differentiate between things that have been too internalized/are too obvious and things that are worth writing down? i.e. you don't have a section for basic algebra, because I can only assume you know that pretty well.
Agreed. I'm at a stage in my life where my median friend probably is between 'just entering the workforce' and maybe 2 years of experience (from uni). One reoccurring idea in my mind right now is the notion of 'selling out'--what does the transition look like from "I'm happy living frugally like a college student" to prioritizing your career in your waking hours of your life? What does it look like to slowly convince yourself that just getting that next raise will finally make me happy (even though I have to sacrifice other things to do so)?
this is the life I want. do you have a more detailed write-up on your life anywhere?
It's an incredibly weird thing to describe. Especially when externally, you can act exactly the same but your internal perception of things is haywire. I've often gotten AiWS when doing job interviews or other intensive face to face conversations. It's not something you can easily just explain away: "Hey, I'm going into an AiWS phase right now and when we shook hands your hand was literally the only thing I was visually perceiving and I was overwhelmingly aware of every minute detail about it. I could stare at it for the next five minutes and find it fascinating. But just disregard all of that!"