HN user
How I think about this:
If you're using an agent in a shell environment with unfettered internet access and code execution: CLI + Skills.
If you're using a hosted agent on a website or in an app without code execution and limited/no internet access: MCP.
We want both patterns. Folks who are agro about MCP do ~all of their work in the former, so it seems pointless. Most people interact with agents in the later.
In my experience one of the best ways to "get ahead" is to give direct 1:1 feedback to someone higher up in your management chain for something that you are obviously right about it (some wiggle room here, but be sure to be atleast mostly right on a non-trivial topic). It demonstrates to them that you have good judgement and have backbone. They will trust you more and start to think of you as more of a peer than merely someone in their span of control (obviously you need to do this tactfully / not be a dick about it but also be firm). This has been a huge unlock for my career. ymmv.
My eyesight deteriorated significantly during 2020-2022 to the point where I could no longer legally drive without glasses (I had been 20/20 or better my entire life). I bit the bullet in 2023 and had LASIK, which brought me back to the baseline I'd been used to for 35+ years. Age definitely played a part, but the speed of decline was really wild to experience and I attribute at least some of that to my lifestyle and work changes during covid (working 12+ hours per day from a small bedroom in San Francisco). LASIK is amazing, for anyone who is considering it.
Used to periodically get a c&d email from FB lawyers for some harmless software I published. Always completely ignored it, not even responding to acknowledge receipt. It eventually stopped. I figure they gave up and focused their efforts on targets who showed they would be responsive to threats. It was 100% bullying.
Grew up in a small town in Connecticut and roamed around all the time as a ~9 year old. Used to go fishing with my friends at the various rivers and streams around town. No cell phones, be home before dark. Doors were never locked. It was a great way to grow up.
A few years ago I got multiple cease and desist emails from a FAANG for a Chrome extension they didn't like. I ignored them and they eventually went away. Sending scary sounding emails to indie devs is extremely low cost.
*apizza
It took literally _5 years_ for me to get through the waitlist. I signed up in 2016 and got an automated email “from” the founder in May 2021 excitedly inviting me to fill out a questionnaire in order to gain access… Asking me to do work after waiting 5 years seemed crazy so I ignored it and got another automated email “from” the founder nudging me to take the questionnaire a few weeks later. Strangest set of interactions I’ve ever had with a product. I have no idea whether their product is good or bad and I stopped caring many years ago.
Prices will go up because the value of the dollar goes up
sorry to nitpick but inflation is the value of the dollar going _down_. if the value of a dollar were to increase, the price of a thing denominated in dollars (i.e. stocks) would decrease (you can buy more with fewer now-more-valuable dollars), ceteris paribus.
I’m the EM on the Docs Product team at Stripe. We own the infra and user experience for Stripe Docs. If any MDN or dev tools folks are reading and interested in Stripe, please reach out: ianm@stripe.com
You don’t _have_ to pay estimated taxes. If you choose not to you just pay a penalty at tax time (essentially interest on what you didn’t pay throughout the year). It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it. I freelanced for a few years and just paid the penalty because I didn’t want to spend time thinking about taxes more than once a year. For how much I was making at the time I was fine with this trade off.
If you cmd+f twice in a row that should bypass you to your browser’s native search. There’s also a toggle in the search UI so that you can opt out of the modal entirely and go straight to browser search every time. It’s in the bottom right corner of the search modal iirc (writing this comment from mobile).
Disclosure: I work at Stripe. Will pass this feedback along :)
Versions of this have happened to me multiple times over the years. They never budge. The developer always gets screwed. I will never build on the App Store again.
did you just "actually" Barack Obama on how change happens in a democracy?
That volume is simply not coming back.
I keep hearing versions of this. Such dire finality. Do you actually believe that in 1 or 2 years time bars in Times Square won't be as busy as ever? If yes I think you are radically underestimating New Yorkers.
We use quite a bit of markdown at Stripe :)
The opportunity cost is not just the lost wages, it needs to also factor in the _years_ of having less-known or no-name/failed startups on your resume. This absolutely will impact your career opportunities. Having 3 early-career years at Google on your resume has a compounding effect for the rest of your life (sorry, but it’s true). That opportunity cost is way, way higher than the n 5-digit dollar value this article rather blithely assumes.
I was very surprised to see my surname on the front page of hacker news today. No relation, afaik.
They could fix the problem immediately by just banning RVs, private portas, and dismantling burner air (allowing special exceptions that must be approved by borg). This would keep many of the Instagram tourists out. If they were for real they would just do that. Also if they introduced snakes to deep playa.
Pro-tip: Nils Frahm’s 2018 album All Melody pairs extremely well with book 3. This combination was a highlight of 2018 for me.
Cool! I made one awhile back called Todobook, it replaces the FB Newsfeed (and various other sites' feeds/lists, like HN) with a todo app that unlocks the feed when you finish your task(s) (either all or one, via config). Fun project :)
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/todobook/ihbejplhk...
lol @ startups with no engineers yet paying “market rate”... they will maybe pay market rate within their stage band i.e. compared to other SV seed-stage startups, but this will still be way below the liquid total comp at a post IPO tech company. At this point in the tech cycle the math is so out of whack in favor of big co that I can’t with a straight face recommend to anyone that they join a seed startup as an early employee engineer unless they’re already well off financially (5-7 years ago I felt like I could). There are exceptions, of course.
It was a great comment, thanks for sharing.
Read about this one on Wired awhile back. Nice to see it making progress. Would love to see a succinct description of how this compares to / is better than the slew of other privacy coins...? Also, is there a first real use case in mind that doesn't involve a big established messaging app adopting it for payments? (that seems hard/complicated/requires a different skillset than building the software). In any event, congrats to the team. Smells like one of the better projects out there!
My comment wasn't suggesting that blockchain is "useless" (that obviously isn't true), just that the "trustless" argument doesn't hold up for me, and that is a primary argument for why blockchain is awesome at pretty much every event/talk I go to on the topic.
"Instead of relying on trust or regulation, in the blockchain world, individuals are on-purpose responsible for their own security precautions. And if the software they use is malicious or buggy, they should have read the software more carefully."
This is also one of the aspects of "the blockchain" that I struggle with. I don't think normal people want this or should be expected to do this effectively. And once you outsource the security (which most everyone will because it's the rational choice, e.g. Coinbase is better at protecting your crypto than you are, John Q Public.) you're no longer in a "trustless" state. The "trustless" pipe-dream (in the consumer use case) all sort of unravels from there for me.
“So-called nazis”, huh?
Neat! I built one a few weeks ago called @SatoshiBot that, when asked for "wisdom", will respond with a random passage from the original bitcoin white paper.
It was fun to set up and in doing so I learned how well written the original paper is. Simple. Concise. Makes for great one-liners like: "The only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to be aware of all transactions."
TBH though with Toshi still on testnet it feels like a pre-release beta. Fun to test on but kind of pointless since it's trading in Monopoly money. Why would anyone ever adopt this? Or, more importantly, why would anyone ever switch from WhatsApp or WeChat (which seems to be the vision if you read their blog posts)?
Btw the developer documentation is excellent! In case anyone over there reads this, well done!
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Ha! this is great.
I made a similar one that replaces newsfeed with a todo app that unlocks when you complete your work: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/todobook/ihbejplhk...
It will also optionally replace Hacker News, Product Hunt, Reddit, Twitter, and Youtube homepages/feed with the same todo app. Basically all the sites that stop me from doing my work (HN is one of the worst for me)