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MattBearman

3,569 karma · joined September 30, 2010

Senior engineer at Krystal.uk, former founder of Saber Feedback

Email: matt@[HN username].com

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MattBearman··on Spending 3 months coding by hand
I had a similar experience recently coding a wordle clone on and for a Psion 3a (an early 90s palmtop pc) the screen only shows a few lines of code, and the built in ide is little more than a text editor. I really enjoyed the process
MattBearman··on YouTube addresses lower view counts which seem to be caused by ad blockers
YouTube premium actually has its own version of sponsorblock called skip ahead, it works really well, so they’re not ideologically opposed to skipping sponsored segments
MattBearman··on Removing yellow stains from fabric with blue light
I wonder if this is related to yellowing plastics? Retr0brighting with peroxide and sunbriting (putting yellowed plastics out in the sun) are already common treatments in the retro community. I’ll have to give it a try on some of my old hardware
MattBearman··on Stop Killing Games
This won’t require companies to keep servers running, just that they have an end of life plan, eg: releasing a version of the server that can be self hosted for multiplayer games
MattBearman··on How to title your blog post or whatever
One of my favourite YouTubers, superfastmatt, uses a similar title pattern. Eg: “Insulate Your Camper Van. Or Just Watch Me Do It. Whatever”
MattBearman··on I bought a container full of Chinese electric excavators. Here's what showed up
Only the mk 5 supra (2020 onwards) has anything to do with BMW. Up until the mk 4 stopped production in 02 there had been 25ish years of purely Toyota Supra/Celica Supra
MattBearman··on Garmin Connect services were down
> The Garmin Connect app seems to be completely useless without the Garmin Connect servers being up. It is not even possible to see local data on the phone.

Not the case, I can see all the local data from my watch in the app and still sync the two, just missing cloud backups and online specific functionality

MattBearman··on A copy of a copy of a copy: FDA medical device clearances
Anyone else read this title and think of Nine Inch Nails?
MattBearman··on Apple reverses course on death of Progressive Web Apps in EU
I’ve written a PWA that I use daily on my iPhone, and it delivers push notifications when I’m not using the app to the lock screen.

Don’t get me wrong, Apple’s PWA implementation is very limited, but you can definitely have background notifications and lock screen notifications.

MattBearman··on Rigged Google restaurant reviews in Vietnam
This is a common tactic in app stores - app asks if you like using the app, and only asks you to review if you respond positively
MattBearman··on Ask HN: Undiscovered electronics/maker YouTube channels
My wife and I have a channel on which we restore/fix/modify cars and motorbikes - https://youtube.com/@EnginesandUnfinishedBusiness
MattBearman··on Ask HN: How many of us have (nearly) abandoned Reddit over the API debacle?
I’ve not casually browsed reddit since apollo shut down, occasionally I’ll end up on a post from a search, or my wife will show me something she’s seen, but that’s it. I was a pretty heavy user before as well.

Before apollo stopped I had set my phone to limit me to half an hour a day, a limit I hit almost every day, and regularly exceeded.

I don’t really miss it though, so it’s probably been a net benefit for me, but I’m still pissed off at how it went down

MattBearman··on Commander Keen's adaptive tile refresh
I’m not 100% on this but I believe the NES has a dedicated graphics chip for sprite manipulation, where as it all had to be done in software on the PC
MattBearman··on Ask HN: What are some Git aliases you setup that save you time?
Unless I’m misunderstanding you can checkout your previous branch with

  git checkout -
(The same way you can use ‘cd -‘ to change to your previous directory)
MattBearman··on Ask HN: Does anyone know the short story called “shit yourself”?
Damn, of all the different searches I tried I never thought to try “tech blog”
MattBearman··on Ask HN: Does anyone know the short story called “shit yourself”?
Amazing, thank you! How did you find it?
MattBearman··on Ask HN: Share Your YouTube Channel
Engines and unfinished business: https://youtube.com/@EnginesandUnfinishedBusiness?feature=sh...

Car and motorcycle restoration projects - mostly my wife and I restoring a 1993 Toyota MR2

—-

I also have Big Beige Box: https://youtube.com/@bigbeigebox?feature=shares

Retro computer projects, so far fixing up a cheap Pentium II system, but I’ve got older systems planned

MattBearman··on Would senior engineers be interested in working reduced hours or part time?
I started doing exactly this at the start of the year.

I'm now working 25% less than my full-time colleagues over 4 days (ie: I work one less day a week, and a slightly shorter work day). I absolutely love it and would never go back.

Of course it helps that I'm lucky enough to be in an industry where a 25% reduction in salary is still more than enough to be able to pay the mortgage and support my family.

I'm actually hoping to ultimately go down to three days a week, just need to make sure it will still work financially.

MattBearman··on Ask HN: Why do Google/App Store search show ads and the real result together?
My guess is due to "ad blindness" a lot of people skip the ads and go straight to the results, so removing it from the results would be penalising the app's creator.

And removing from the ads would mean the App Store gets less money from the app's creator (assuming it's pay for impressions rather than pay for clicks)

MattBearman··on Ask HN: Buying house – any disruptors I can use?
Is a 1% broker fee normal in the US? We just bought a house in the UK, and paid a flat fee of £300 to the broker (on a £415k house). The broker saved us £3,000 overall, so well worth the cost. The broker gets a much bigger commission from the lender
MattBearman··on Where to find engineers with customer experience?
Look for people that have previously run one-person SaaS companies. Speaking from experience, you have no choice but to get good at working with customers when there's no one else to do it for you.
MattBearman··on Ask HN: What books would you recommend for learning about cars?
What aspect of cars? If it’s working on them I’d recommend a workshop/haynes manual and just getting stuck in. There’s also loads of great stuff on YouTube (but of course that’s not a book)
MattBearman··on Ask HN: Who wants project feedback? (August 2021)
I've recently been working on the documentation tool I wish I had back when I was running my last SaaS tool - something that makes it quick and easy to create docs, as well as helps keep them up to date and improves discoverability.

I've got as far as a very simple proof of concept, the link below is to a quick survey, which includes a demo video of the app working:

https://forms.gle/aNiw1Wp5gejjqGPy9

MattBearman··on Ask HN: Help (in)validate my side project idea
Clickable link - https://forms.gle/aNiw1Wp5gejjqGPy9
MattBearman··on Intuit to share payroll data from 1.4M small businesses with Equifax
If you're based in the UK I'd definitely recommend FreeAgent - https://www.freeagent.com

Disclaimer: I used to work for them as a software engineer, but having used Xero when I was self-employed I can definitely say FreeAgent is better.

MattBearman··on ParkMobile hacked, they claim license plate numbers as “basic user information”

  Encrypted passwords were accessed, but not the encryption keys required to read them. We protect user passwords by encrypting them with advanced hashing and salting technologies
So are the password encrypted or hashed?
MattBearman··on Robinhood is limiting purchases of stocks: AMC, Blackberry, Nokia, and GameStop
It's the same with Trading212 in the UK
MattBearman··on Review broken products instead of new ones
Not the OP, but I’m willing to bet this is just a copy paste of some generic boiler plate t&c with a bad search and replace applied.

I agree it’s not good though, and if that is the case, they should definitely pay to have some created for specifically for their site

MattBearman··on Ask HN: Why are software companies stingy with developer hardware upgrades?
I'd be pretty pissed off if the company I worked for was replacing all the hardware every year, that just seems wasteful.

My personal laptop is 2 years old and I can't imagine needing to replace it in the next 12 months. The one I had before this was 6 years old when I replaced it, and even then I didn't need to. Although that was back in the days when MacBooks were easy to upgrade

MattBearman··on Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack
One theory is it's a tweet scheduling platform, rather than Twitter itself that was hacked.
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