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FlacoJones

63 karma · joined April 8, 2021

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FlacoJones··on In ‘The Book Against Death,’ Elias Canetti rants against mortality
Asimov said this was his favorite thing he ever wrote, and it addresses this same idea.

The Last Question - Isaac Asimov - Read by Leonard Nimoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XOtx4sa9k4&t=544s&ab_channe...

FlacoJones··on In ‘The Book Against Death,’ Elias Canetti rants against mortality
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov - Read by Leonard Nimoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XOtx4sa9k4&t=544s&ab_channe...

Even if the longevity obsessed manage Earthly immortality, non-existence will forever loom.

Will they be happy with 100 years? 500? 1 million? Non-existence remains a theological not scientific hurdle.

FlacoJones··on The Myth of the Second Chance
agreed. not everything that's true is wise.
FlacoJones··on Seattle ordinance intended to help app delivery workers is 'hurting' them
https://archive.is/Q6pYI
FlacoJones··on The worst programmer I know
Being a 10x engineer can come from either:

- 10x productivity yourself - Adding 2x to five 1x engineers

Non-technical management will never appreciate the engineering multipliers like Tim

FlacoJones··on Hardcore tech-interview style riddles and mathematical puzzles
ChatGPT got the snail one wrong over and over, not parsing that on the 16th day there will be no night for the snail to fall back down 4 meters:

Let's analyze the snail's progress:

During the day, the snail climbs 5 meters upwards. During the night, it slides 4 meters downwards.

So, in a day, the snail effectively moves 5 - 4 = 1 meter upwards.

To calculate the number of days required for the snail to reach the top of the well, we need to determine how many 1-meter increments are necessary to cover the remaining distance of 20 meters.

20 meters / 1 meter = 20 days

Therefore, it will take the snail 20 days to reach the top of the well.

FlacoJones··on What makes developers productive?
Time to Release

https://justkeepclicking.io/whats-your-ttr-equation/

FlacoJones··on How to reduce stress and overcome anxiety as a software developer
imho software engineers are the most susceptible to the hyperactivity that often leads to these types of maladies - which ultimately flips from “working 100 miles an hour” to “only able to work 2 hours a day”, aka burnout

Byungchul Han is what’s been saving me - almost like philosophical therapy. has helped me to realize the societal origins of a lot of the expectations i inflict on myself

hope his frameworks might help others!

https://youtu.be/BX-FK_Rmzjc

FlacoJones··on SBF paid over $40M to bribe Chinese officials
https://archive.is/7nsMF
FlacoJones··on No Lodash
Where is .cloneDeep? That alone is mainly what I use lodash for.

Even though JS is pass by value, if you pass an object, the other nested objects will still be references to its predecessor.

FlacoJones··on Consultancies know less than they claim and cost more than they seem to
https://archive.is/I8RJh
FlacoJones··on Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
thank you for adding "(if you can)" to suggesting they relax...that is real
FlacoJones··on The great crypto crisis is upon us
Centralized exchanges do absolutely. No guarantees on deposits beyond a consumer Terms and Conditions check box.

Decentralized exchanges with proofs of reserves on chain less so, e.g. MakerDAO's over-collateralized stablecoin called DAI: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1316928/dai-reserves-bre...

FlacoJones··on The great crypto crisis is upon us
Closing line with the usual FUD around decentralization as a scary thing - even though it was centralization and privileged actors at the center of that centralization that has caused every major CEX collapse.

If we think an occasional CEX collapse is bad, the financial surveillance and political manipulation that would occur under a CBDC scheme is far more damaging to freedom and financial security in the long run.

Be vigilant of articles that slip in advertisements for CBDC - they are quickly becoming a propaganda weapon.

"A more promising approach is through central bank digital currencies that operate within the broader digital monetary system. This is an approach that builds on the trust embedded in central bank money, and could serve public interest in a future monetary system(opens a new window). The technology benefits flow to real world economic activities rather than just other types of crypto. The economic benefits of decentralisation should also be scrutinised more effectively. We are now seeing what happens when an industry rests simply on an article of faith."

FlacoJones··on Ask HN: Software architects – what’s your typical day look like?
- It's typically a journey up and down the stack in terms of frontend, backend, and DevOps, and a journey in and out of solving inherently complex problems (where the seams of your services are, authentication) and incidentally complex problems (frameworks, machine-specific issues, Docker hell etc.)

- 80% what needs to be done today/what fires need putting out, and 20% planning for the future and seeing how the bleeding edge can legitimately help us (e.g. WASM coming soon...). This is part of the general keeping up with advances in industry

- Mentoring, jumping on pair programming calls to unblock other teammates.

FlacoJones··on AWS and Blockchain
most of the problems blockchain attempts to solve are public coordination problems in adversarial environments rather than corporate problems the CTOs/CIOs are likely to have.
FlacoJones··on The future of cryptocurrency is at stake in Ethereum’s switch
https://archive.ph/PiYYA
FlacoJones··on I visited a friend who is watching Breaking Bad. Now clips appear on my YouTube?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
FlacoJones··on Why are we calling it crypto? Just call them private coins
People in crypto invent new words rather than building new things all too often. I think it's a carryover practice that emerged from the whitepaper era of 2017-2018, when you had to have a massive pseudo-intellectual theoretical framework supporting your dApp to support a token raise.

Build cool things and don't hide behind jargon.

FlacoJones··on How to take credit for someone else's work on GitHub
One thing to note: I believe this only works if the email is not already associated with a GH account.
FlacoJones··on Record lifetime for a bubble
I clicked this thinking it was referring to crypto
FlacoJones··on Crypto.com accounts had unauthorized withdrawals
If they had access to the private keys they wouldn't have to go through the crypto.com platform at all.

They'd just pop it in any wallet and sign withdrawal transactions.

There's no 2FA or whitelisted withdrawal addresses (for most tokens) or emails on-chain.

FlacoJones··on Coronavirus research deemed too dangerous by DARPA, approved by Fauci
You're right - I'm using "Fauci" as a synecdoche for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NAID). Dr. Fauci was the director of NAID at the time of the approved 3.7M funding for EcoHealth Alliance's "UNDERSTANDING THE RISK OF BAT CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCE" project.

The fact that this project was funded by the NAID is public knowledge. Here's the source: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_R01AI110964_7529

Now, whether or not this project was previously rejected by the DoD over GoF concerns...well that's what the attached article explores.

FlacoJones··on Bitcoin mining is being banned in countries across the globe
TL;DR Maybe regulation of massive mining cartels can have positive externalities by making distributed mining pools more profitable
FlacoJones··on Bitcoin mining is being banned in countries across the globe
That's exactly it - hashpower consolidation does result from economies of scale.

At least looking at ASIC-resistant mining algos... it would be a hopeful future if we could get protocol-level compute and storage sharing to distributed mining pools, like https://www.nicehash.com/

Until contributing your unused compute and storage is as easy as clicking a toggle, the economies of scale will prevail.

I think crypto + ASIC resistance + seamless edge computing = the original dream of the Internet

FlacoJones··on Bitcoin mining is being banned in countries across the globe
Perhaps I'm missing something but even as a crypto-hopeful this doesn't disturb me too much. Bitcoin et al. is better off without mining becoming consolidated into giant conglomerates.

The vision is for mining to be distributed amongst many small to mid-sized, non-colluding teams, the sum of whose hashpower is still greater than that which could be mustered by, say, a government or bank.

I hope that one day the UX and hardware for mining and joining mining pools becomes so simple and cheap it just makes sense for many semi-technical people to run a node in their home or contribute their compute/storage to distributed protocols. Even have this built into the operating system, with a simple toggle for turning it on and off.

Truly distributed mining is largely a UX problem. I hope that these bans may spur spur development on dead simple mining pools for all.

FlacoJones··on Ask HN: How do I deal with not being able to build products
It's perhaps anathema to say "Get business involved to keep you on track!" on an engineering news aggregator/forum, but it works for some people! I've actually found the demo deadlines to be an amazing "razor" to knock myself out of analysis paralysis while I'm coding and refactoring.
FlacoJones··on Ask HN: How do I deal with not being able to build products
Build a product that you yourself want to use.

Then, find a semi-technical "business accountability person" (could be a CEO) that has a vested interest in keeping you on track.

Sure it's a balance of "keeping it loosey goosey and fun" and "wow this just feels like another JIRA tracked corporate project" when you get non-technical people involved, but that balance can be half the fun.

Also, you don't have to come up with the idea yourself necessarily. There are hundreds of non-technical founders vying for technical cofounders with 10 years of experience.

My one actionable piece of advice: do more hackathons (especially Web3 ones)

I'm just now about to launch my first self-made production project after four years, and it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had a kind of accountability partner.

I met my business partner in a Chainlink Hackathon last year. We were working on the same thing, I liked his team, so we fused. He's kept me on track ever since as we enter seed financing, and I like to think I've perhaps kept the technicals on track as CTO.

FlacoJones··on Udemy S-1 IPO
Like deep diving TLS: https://www.udemy.com/course/ssl-tls-intro/
FlacoJones··on Udemy S-1 IPO
I just create a new account with a new email and you'll see the "flash sales" again.

Just use a temp email: https://temp-mail.org/en/

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