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MikeTVon Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

Would you mind sending me an email (address in profile)? I'd love to pick your brain about some of the trickier ones I'm running into.

MikeTVon Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

Do you happen to have links to any good documentation/articles on this topic? I'm working on what amounts to a dark theme for Win32 controls and largely making it up as I go along, relying on tidbits and off-hand mentions from defunct blogs.

MikeTVon Treating SQL like code

My experience also. This is particularly bad in the SQL Server space, since Microsoft essentially dropped source control integration in SQL Server Management Studio 2016 and later (there's an official workaround[0], but it's not well received).

Most likely they're happy to offload version control to add-ins. There are a few, but most of them are way out of budget for small businesses or small IT departments. Which means version control usually doesn't happen.

This has been such a problem for me with clients that I started a side project[1] to try to help fill the gap. If anything it's shown me that the problem is more widespread than I originally thought.

[0] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2016/11/21/source...

[1] https://www.versionsql.com/

MikeTVon Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

I've been filling a tiny gap in Microsoft tooling with https://www.versionsql.com/

It's something that seemed small and simple to implement, but has filled a not-insignificant portion of nights and weekends for over six years now. Then covid came around and dried up most of my consulting income, so I figured why not really prioritize it and see how far it can go? Still small, but growing nicely now.

Also reluctantly abandoned the flawed "build it and they will come" mentality and started splitting time evenly between development and marketing. This has probably contributed more to the project's recent growth than several thousand hours of dev time. Take heed, o ye ambitious developer-founders! :-) Recommended resources: Product-Led Growth, Developer Marketing Does Not Exist, 80/20 Sales and Marketing, BusinessOfSoftware.org talk videos, Microconf talk videos (on YouTube).

MikeTVon On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

I'm casually experimenting with this too, to improve AQ in my home office. Do you recall the surface area in the 6-inch-deep bioreactor (or total volume)? The only hard numbers I've found are from the Russian BIOS-1,2,3 experiments, which suggest 18L/person of Chlorella will 75-100% compensate for a person's CO2.

I have 18L of Spirulina, which appears to be having some effect, though not anywhere near a complete offset. Though, my setup is quite sub-optimal, and I've seen articles that suggest Chlorella is a couple times more efficient at biofixation than Spirulina. Continuing to tinker :)

MikeTVon Why I’m Worried About Google

I've noticed that with single-question responses such as Amazon's "why are you returning this" drop-down, and it makes total sense there. A consistently random arrangement means that users picking just the top answer will have no more influence on the overall report than random noise. Makes less sense when available answers are the same for each question, such that the user might have mentally cached them to avoid rereading.

However, n=1. The timing might have been coincidental.

MikeTVon Why I’m Worried About Google

Today Google popped up a little survey in the corner of my account page, with questions like "I trust Google to keep my data private", "It's easy to find out what data Google has on me", that sort.

Answers were one-click response buttons: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree (top to bottom, in that order).

The first time I clicked "Strongly Disagree", a few questions in, the next question had the order of the answers reversed so that Strongly Agree was on bottom. Submitted an opposite sentiment before realizing what happened.

Strikes me as manipulative, like the survey really isn't so much for discovering my opinion as it is for collecting favorable ones. I wonder who will get the results, and to what end?

MikeTVon Don’t keep cell phones next to your body, California Health Department warns

This one suggests so: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055...

Released as a partial report last year; a quick search didn't find if it had been completed yet or not.

MikeTVon Ask HN: Do you know any examples of AI-generated fiction?

Check out NaNoGenMo [1], a yearly challenge to write computer-generated novels. Each year gets 100-200 entries (see the GitHub Issues tab) using various techniques. The resource links are treasure troves as well.

Other relevant links I've collected, hoping to do this someday:

- Writing like Engadget [2]

- Story Generator [3]

- MANOWAR Lyrics Generator [4]

- Song lyrics generator [5]

- How Neural Storyteller Works [6]

- A Japanese AI Almost Won a Literary Prize [7]

[1] https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017

[2] https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/neural-network-journalis...

[3] http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=storygen

[4] https://dmatoso.com/manowar-lyrics-generator/

[5] https://www.song-lyrics-generator.org.uk/

[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20170602194354/https://www.somat...

[7] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxnjn/a-japanese...

MikeTVon The Best Monitor for Programming: A Cheap 40" 4K TV

FWIW I have the 6290 (2016 model) and haven't run into any annoying misfeatures. Crisp and smooth at 60Hz, UHD color mode. Was stuck at 30Hz and perceptibly laggy until I forced it to 4:4:4 in the nVidia control panel.

Everything online tells me the display lag is unacceptable, but I haven't noticed it personally even when FPS gaming. Maybe it's the conditioning from gaming on an underpowered PC growing up :)

MikeTVon Tell HN: Yahoo Finance has apparently killed its API

Earlier this year (~May) they shut down their API endpoint that rendered handy little stock chart images with a surprising amount of useful features. Any alternatives out there, other than tying together a charting lib and data API?

MikeTVon Google is nerfing all Home Minis because mine spied on everything I said

The only killer use case I've encountered so far is being able to yell "hey Cortana! Next track!" across the room while playing with a toddler, since either walking over to push a button or pulling my smartphone out to advance it remotely would totally disrupt the current interaction with my child.

Or I could just curate my playlists more carefully.

Everything else is either too low information density (this is why I get the weather from an app, not The Weather Channel) or more efficiently handled manually (music control, search queries) in most situations

MikeTVon Ask HN: Do you use database version control?

I've been dogfooding my own SQL Server Management Studio add-in, VersionSQL [0]

Priorities in its design and why I prefer to use it: It lives where I work, in SSMS. It's as close to zero-friction as possible, so I'm not getting slowed down or sitting around waiting on it when I could be working. It commits SQL code to a subfolder right alongside the application code in Git/SVN.

Cons: Skips some of the more complex features of other apps in the space, like building migration scripts for deployment or rollback of changes. Also, the add-in is maybe a bit too zero-friction -- it's nice that it doesn't get in my way, but that makes it easy to neglect committing code altogether. Have a couple rough ideas about how to solve that one (suggestions welcome!)

[0] https://www.versionsql.com/

MikeTVon Ask HN: How do send a reply to a comment on Facebook without Enter?

Use AutoHotKey to remap CapsLock to function as an Enter key.

Or dig into the JS and figure out how to execute the send manually?

MikeTVon Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

Several mirrorless and pro compacts at least have focus peaking built in. Not perfect, but something that can be worked with.

MikeTVon Git git git git git

I just ran across Language Tool[0] recently. Free, open-source proofreading lib, can be run totally locally. Uses Google Ngrams to check for often confused words. Didn't correct "doe snot" in my synthetic test just now, but that seems like a plausibly minor extension of existing functionality.

[0] https://www.languagetool.org/

MikeTVon Hackers send silent commands to speech recognition systems with ultrasound

Cortana has that as an option in Settings, but it's not on by default.

MikeTVon Ask HN: What are the 5 websites you visit almost daily?

Mine are in a bookmark folder. Middle-clicking the folder opens all of its contents in new tabs.

MikeTVon Passwords Evolved: Authentication Guidance for the Modern Era

"Value must be 10 characters or less"

MikeTVon Ask HN: What music do you listen to while you work?

Primarily video game soundtracks. They're made to play in the background while you perform tasks and come in all sorts of moods / intensity levels.

Favorites:

- FTL

- Crypt of the Necrodancer

- Shatter

- Skyrim

- Deus Ex (all)

- Frozen Synapse

- Mirror's Edge

- Anno (all)

- Civilization (esp. Beyond Earth)

- Transistor and Bastion (skipping vocal tracks)

- Ori, Journey, Flower

Also House, Dubstep, etc., though it's hard to find mixes without vocal tracks.

MikeTVon The Calibre Content Server

AFAIK they only run the DMCA checksum when the file/folder is shared. Keeping it inside your own account is OK.

MikeTVon Let them paste passwords

Unless you do it the other way around: Generate a list of all passwords similar to the one the user just entered and see if that matches any previous hashes. This is how Facebook's password check works [0]

[0] https://security.stackexchange.com/a/53483

MikeTVon Ask HN: How many are 30+ years and still active programmers?

Tendon stretches a couple times a day [0] Whenever I start feeling pain in my hands/wrists, it's because I've been slacking on doing these stretches.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD8BGa3p1Ms

MikeTVon Ask HN: Small programming projects / challenges for C beginners

You might be interested in "Code Katas" - small, targeted programming exercises. Check out codewars.com, codekata.com, codekatas.org, etc.

Also check out ACM Competitive Programming problems [0]. They're small projects, usually centered around logic, mathematical calculations, and data processing. If you want a challenge, take one year's problems and try to complete all eight in under five hours without an internet connection (physical reference material allowed).

[0] https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/problems

MikeTVon Ask HN: Podcasts – Have/Want?

Two that I listen to every week are Giant Robots and Startups for the Rest of Us - they have a lot of broadly-applicable startup info, but are also primarily focused on SaaS. I wish there were podcasts on building/growing/running downloadable software product-based startups.

MikeTVon Ask HN: What password manager do you use, and why?

KeePass with the KeeFox and chromeIPass browser extensions. Synced in dropbox, using password+keyfiles that aren't in the cloud anywhere. A bit slow on mobile, but can adjust down the rounds of encryption if it gets too annoying.

MikeTVon Ask HN: Alternatives to Skype/Lync

Jabber here too. Works decently well, except they run URLDecode four times on all messages. Makes chatting about URL encoding errors very difficult.

MikeTVon Ask HN: What is your side project?

https://www.versionsql.com

Version control add-in for SQL Server Management Studio.

MikeTVon DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

> DeepStack becomes the first computer program to beat professional poker players in heads-up no-limit Texas hold'em

Whether any others have been made before now is anyone's guess. Botting is a known problem in online poker. If there's a golden goose out there, I'm sure it's being kept under wraps.