HN user

lpsz

1,371 karma

Lurking.

Posts10
Comments121
View on HN

Sometimes, it's better without these features. E.g. on Mac, dragging left in the browser is a gesture for going back to the previous page, and I can't count how many times I've accidentally triggered that while filling out a web form or interacting with a page. Isn't the back button and the keyboard shortcut enough?

Am I the only one unhappy with the trend of moving toward web-wrapper applications? As a developer, I also love the idea of cross-platform, and of more elegant frameworks, but it pains me to run things that are slower or hog the battery.

* JavaScript-heavy Spotify now vs. Spotify a few years ago

* Atom vs. something like Sublime Text

* Or, Slack that takes the cake especially if you log in to multiple Slacks.

It's cool for developers. It's not cool for the users.

It's remarkable that in the US the much more dangerous general anesthesia is used for routine things like wisdom teeth when anesthetic shots (lidocaine) are significantly safer and simpler. This leads to additional complications due to anesthesia itself, or worse. [1] [2]

If your dentist proposes things like this, please, switch to someone else.

(For those unfamiliar, after the shots you feel not much other than some tugging. And you can get up and walk immediately after.)

[1] http://www.medicaldaily.com/baby-girl-cavity-filling-dental-...

[2] http://wgntv.com/2016/02/23/dentists-license-suspended-after...

I may be misreading. With only a year of instruction and no coding background previously, he was able to get a position at Google? Is this the norm?

As a hiring manager, I would be concerned that a candidate with such short exposure to the field and no real projects under their belt would just be too green to carry their weight.

I tried VS Code the other day after the big announcement but "Electron Helper" or something was routinely taking up 2-3% CPU, eating the battery. Why is there even a separate helper process? Will try again in a few months, I guess.

As much as I liked the idea of Atom, giving it a genuine try for about six months, I ended up going back to trusty Sublime Text. Why? As a developer, I think it's silly to make my computer do more work than necessary, to take up more CPU and battery than needed. And, the subtle non-native sluggishness always seemed to reduce the usability, ever so slightly, not also counting the occasional "the editor has frozen" prompts.

Admittedly, Atom's background color is hands-down more eye pleasing with its slightly blue tint. Fortunately Sublime is skinnable.

Uber has been a lifesaver, but main gripe with UberX as of recently is that they don't seem to screen cars very well, at least in the Bay Area. Dirty seats, older cars, noxious air fresheners, etc. all seem to be the norm. Yes, I do try to leave feedback but wishing the baseline was a notch higher.

Curious what specifically.

For me the underlying graphics changes and other tweaks in El Cap made my 5 year old MacBook Air snappy again, I use Xcode the entire day and things seem better than before.

There is some initial flux around new release time (broken Homebrew or something else for a week) but they tend to settle down quickly.

Not to mention an incredibly heavy web-wrapper Mac app, a memory hog especially if you join multiple Slacks. I actually like using Slack, but this kills it for me. Wishing that a company whose core product is a chat client invested into building a great chat client.

Yes, code reuse, can iterate faster, saves engineering time, etc., but does this all matter if the user experience is sacrificed?

(Spotify, I'm also looking at you.)

Stark contrast with New York Times pieces about struggling liberal arts majors with $120K in debt and no hope.

Given what I feel like is a growing class war in modern America, I wish more could embrace stories like this, and not the culture of putting down others' hard work in the name of "equalization." Some accomplished people (such as Asian immigrants or refugees, in this case) have worked really really hard to get where they are.

Especially for home automation, I still find it so much easier to press a button inside an app than speak words. Just like pressing 1, 2, 3 within an automated 1-800 prompt is heaps easier than trying to enunciate out phrases like "customer support." And so I could never warm up to Siri, Echo, etc. They take way too much effort, even if voice recognition was perfect.

Am I alone?

Stripe Atlas 10 years ago

Off topic, but as a long term Earth Class Mail customer, so glad to see it mentioned and potentially getting more attention. It has been a lifesaver while living abroad.

I expect the salesperson to be able to understand my situation, what I'm looking for, and tell me all my available options, and the benefits/drawbacks of each.

If so, it sounds like insurance salespeople are similar to tax or financial advisors, and regulation forces them to read through and familiarize themselves with all of the options. Fair enough. Just wish the system itself was revamped, pricing schemes simplified, and information made more accessible, to make even this unnecessary.

Only because of incredibly confusing pricing schemes with copays, deductibles, lifetime limits, out-of-pocket limits, in-network limits, and so on and so forth. This should be addressed by making information transparent to all buyers, not through middlemen.

A bad hairdresser can slice off my ear and a bad cook can poison me.

I'm still not catching why selling insurance requires licensing. This is not practicing medicine, this is not giving people haircuts, it's not even preparing food, all of which make sense to be regulated. It's just selecting from a list of plans.

In an ideal world, people/employers should just be able to do it themselves and cut out the middleman.

Have been using Swift since late 2014 (having used ObjC for many years prior to that).

Even with the occasional churn (eg move to 2.0 or 2.1), the sheer gain in productivity due to brevity, type checking, cleaner closures, and various other language features, easily outweighs any costs. I find myself being able to do more with less code, and cleaner code. It's cognitively way easier to build bigger abstractions.

We do have a few legacy bits that makes no business reason to port at this point, but Swift-to-legacy interop works well, too.

I would say the biggest step that made things usable was introduction of incremental builds in 1.2.

Enjoyed the article, thanks. For those who like trivia: bit of history at the current shopping center construction site around San Antonio Rd.

"Demolition has already begun on a row of buildings along San Antonio Road, including the International Halal Market and the Barron Park Plumbing Supply sites. The unassuming-looking market was the former site of Shockley Semiconductor a seminal, albeit unsuccessful, business credited with kicking off the silicon chip industry in the South Bay and considered by many to be the true birthplace of Silicon Valley. As of now, the only mark left of the former building is a signpost mounted years ago summarizing the history of the Shockley site.

As part of their plans, Geiser said the finished development would include a variety of silicon-transistor-themed artwork as well as a plaque and photos to commemorate the Shockley building. (http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/06/01/big-changes-af...)

Bonus: progression of the building over the years:

1. https://videogamehistorian.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/12sho...

2. http://telco.lk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Silicon-Valley-Ro...

3. http://i0.wp.com/siliconvalley.town/wp-content/uploads/2015/...

I do wish the more mainstream companies stopped the JS-based-app trend. Spotify was snappy a few years ago and is now a resource hog. And don't even mention the Slack Mac app...

Ah, just Amazon (which uses Gandi under the hood.)

Many pluses: predictable, can be administered using the AWS CLI, consolidated billing with other AWS services. Heck, can even register domains from the CLI.

Only downside as others have pointed out is that Gandi doesn't make it at all easy to hide your name or company contact information.

A happy NameCheap user for years, I have started switching away. Their horrid "modern" 40px padding everywhere bubbly redesign makes GoDaddy look good in comparison. A major pain to manage more than a couple of domains, and numerous user feedback seems to fall on deaf ears, e.g. [1][2][3][4]

Example weird feature: all domains are shown, even ones that you've let expire/sold years ago, and there is no way to hide them.

[1] https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=...

[2] https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=...

[3] https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=...

[4] https://community.namecheap.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=...