HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Nelkins

1,617 karma · joined May 26, 2012

Running Nelknet, a software dev agency. I have hired folks from HN and will continue to do so. If you're a solid engineer with great communication skills looking for contracting work, please reach out.

https://nelknet.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielelkins on LinkedIn

@NathanielElkins on Twitter

Email is nat at my company name .com (nelknet).

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/nelkins; my proof: https://keybase.io/nelkins/sigs/AkYw9epjI-shbD3BaRTndtT0IqQ_E7cpplrpn-KEq6M ]

submissionscomments
Nelkins··on All 253 Patterns from Christopher Alexander's a Pattern Language Summarized
Nice, thanks for putting this together.

I do find it a bit funny that the main image is of a building with fake shutters, which is somewhat against the ethos of A Pattern Language.

Nelkins··on Ask HN: How to be SOC2 Type 2 compliant as a solo-entreprenuer?
> Get even a single NO and you're done.

Why do you think that's true? SOC2 isn't pass/fail, you receive a report on your business. You can have gaping security holes and be SOC2 "certified." It's just that your SOC2 audit will reflect that.

Nelkins··on Ask HN: How to be SOC2 Type 2 compliant as a solo-entreprenuer?
Even though I agree SOC2 in practice is of dubious security value, I do think you can lose out on sales if you don't have it. I recently had to choose among a bevy of headless CRM options for a client, and they were adamant that whatever platform we used _had_ to be SOC2 compliant. This narrowed the field significantly and ultimately we went with Strapi solely because of this requirement. I see this come up all the time.

Tools like Vanta (and I'm sure others, Drata maybe, I haven't used them) make SOC2 compliance pretty "easy" in the sense that it's often a mechanical process that doesn't require too much thought. At least for me, it usually involves being in a Slack channel with an auditor, and they're advising you on all the things to do (they want you to "win"/pass, although there is no real pass fail), and then you just need to check the boxes in Vanta.

Nelkins··on Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained
Wow, this is pretty surprising, I was under the impression that this is the leading PG backup/recovery tool.

Anybody know how WAL-G and Barman compare?

https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g

https://github.com/EnterpriseDB/barman

Nelkins··on Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?
Got it, thank you!
Nelkins··on Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?
When you say "power router," what product are you referencing specifically? I'm trying to search online to find a similar product but I don't think I'm finding the right thing.
Nelkins··on RE#: how we built the fastest regex engine in F#
Various investigations have found it to be one of the most token efficient statically typed programming languages

https://martinalderson.com/posts/which-programming-languages...

Nelkins··on Oat – Ultra-lightweight, zero dependency, semantic HTML, CSS, JS UI library
Don't know about anyone else, but the first thing I do with these types of libraries to check out the Accordion component and see if it slides out with a nice animation. This has become my litmus test for how well designed a component library is.
Nelkins··on I got hacked: My Hetzner server started mining Monero
There's a real dearth of blog posts explaining how to use quadlets for the local dev experience, and actually most guides I've seen seem to recommend using podman/Docker compose. Do you use quadlets for local dev and testing?
Nelkins··on Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s
Does this do any level of server hardening for you when you point it at a server?
Nelkins··on .NET 10
There's an open source one by Samsung that is excellent, never had any issues with it: https://github.com/Samsung/netcoredbg
Nelkins··on Why I love OCaml (2023)
There are libraries that simulate a lot of these things (e.g. https://github.com/G-Research/TypeEquality for GADTs). You're absolutely right that it's not as first class as in OCaml, but the tools are there if you want them.
Nelkins··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)
Nelknet (https://nelknet.com/) | Senior contractors, frontend and backend | Remote (US & international, but some overlap with clients needed) We're a small, experienced team building software solutions for US-based clients. Recent projects include: - Building ChatGPT-style interfaces for intelligence report analysis

- Developing generative AI features for professional networking platforms

- Platform engineering for logistics/trucking management systems

- Architecture design for real estate search engines

- Implementing RAG pipelines for edtech products

We're expanding our network of senior contractors (both frontend and backend). This is a 1099 contracting relationship - you'll have the flexibility to manage your own schedule and potentially work with other clients while maintaining a professional commitment to our projects.

Requirements: - Strong English communication skills - Senior-level development expertise - Experience with modern tech stacks - Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively - Some level of US business hours availability

If you're interested, please fill out our intake form: https://baserow.io/form/mXa6NqUOKw9CcDPAU37oPh1uOPFHHESph6k0...

If we have a project that is well-suited to your skillset, I will definitely be reaching out!

Looking forward to connecting!

Nelkins··on Litestream v0.5.0
I'm curious about the same, but also am wondering if there can be an automatic election of a new primary through the use of conditional writes (or as Fly.io say, CASAAS: Compare-and-Swap as a Service).
Nelkins··on I Built an Event-Sourcing Database Engine: Meet Genesis DB
There's also https://github.com/message-db/message-db

Admittedly, these options seem to not be quite as user friendly as OP's solution.

Nelkins··on E-paper display reaches the realm of LCD screens
I would love to have an eInk tablet that I can watch videos on (color not required). I frequently watch educational YouTube videos before bed, but I’d prefer to have something that isn’t beaming light into my eyes. Does something like this exist on the market today, or do I need to wait until this product gets released?
Nelkins··on Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City
I can’t wait until this is available in more rural areas of NY. I would love to be able to take this thing to/from a bar where there’s no public transport and very low density of Uber/Lyft.
Nelkins··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2025)
Whoops, that probably means that you've already submitted your information. There's only one unique constraint on the email field.
Nelkins··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2025)
Nelknet (https://nelknet.com/) | Senior contractors, frontend and backend | Remote (US & international, but some overlap with clients needed) We're a small, experienced team building software solutions for US-based clients. Recent projects include:

- Building ChatGPT-style interfaces for intelligence report analysis

- Developing generative AI features for professional networking platforms

- Platform engineering for logistics/trucking management systems

- Architecture design for real estate search engines

- Implementing RAG pipelines for edtech products

We're expanding our network of senior contractors (both frontend and backend). This is a 1099 contracting relationship - you'll have the flexibility to manage your own schedule and potentially work with other clients while maintaining a professional commitment to our projects.

Requirements: - Strong English communication skills - Senior-level development expertise - Experience with modern tech stacks - Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively - Some level of US business hours availability

If you're interested, please fill out our intake form: https://baserow.io/form/mXa6NqUOKw9CcDPAU37oPh1uOPFHHESph6k0...

If we have a project that is well-suited to your skillset, I will definitely be reaching out!

Looking forward to connecting!

Nelkins··on .NET 10 Preview 6 brings JIT improvements, one-shot tool execution
Akka.NET and AvaloniaUI are two big ones.
Nelkins··on Embedding user-defined indexes in Apache Parquet
Cool, but this is very specific to DataFusion, no? Is there any chance this would be standardized so other Parquet readers could leverage the same technique?
Nelkins··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2025)
Nelknet (https://nelknet.com/) | Senior contractors, frontend and backend | Remote (US & international, but some overlap with clients needed) We're a small, experienced team building software solutions for US-based clients. Recent projects include:

- Building ChatGPT-style interfaces for intelligence report analysis

- Developing generative AI features for professional networking platforms

- Platform engineering for logistics/trucking management systems

- Architecture design for real estate search engines

- Implementing RAG pipelines for edtech products

We're expanding our network of senior contractors (both frontend and backend). This is a 1099 contracting relationship - you'll have the flexibility to manage your own schedule and potentially work with other clients while maintaining a professional commitment to our projects.

Requirements: - Strong English communication skills - Senior-level development expertise - Experience with modern tech stacks - Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively - Some level of US business hours availability

If you're interested, please fill out our intake form: https://baserow.io/form/mXa6NqUOKw9CcDPAU37oPh1uOPFHHESph6k0...

If we have a project that is well-suited to your skillset, I will definitely be reaching out!

Looking forward to connecting!

Nelkins··on Show HN: W++ – A Python-style scripting language for .NET with NuGet support
There's the original/current implementation: https://github.com/clojure/clojure-clr

And the newer reimplementation: https://github.com/dmiller/clojure-clr-next

Nelkins··on Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?
I donate to the Ionide project which is a suite of dev tools for F#. Been using them consistently for years. They've only continued to improve over the years!

https://opencollective.com/ionide

Nelkins··on Litestream: Revamped
Does anybody have a list of which S3-compatible object storage providers support Compare-And-Swap?
Nelkins··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2025)
Nelknet (https://nelknet.com/) | Senior contractors, frontend and backend | Remote (US & international, but some overlap with clients needed)

We're a small, experienced team building software solutions for US-based clients. Recent projects include:

- Building ChatGPT-style interfaces for intelligence report analysis

- Developing generative AI features for professional networking platforms

- Platform engineering for logistics/trucking management systems

- Architecture design for real estate search engines

- Implementing RAG pipelines for edtech products

We're expanding our network of senior contractors (both frontend and backend). This is a 1099 contracting relationship - you'll have the flexibility to manage your own schedule and potentially work with other clients while maintaining a professional commitment to our projects.

Requirements: - Strong English communication skills - Senior-level development expertise - Experience with modern tech stacks - Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively - Some level of US business hours availability

If you're interested, please fill out our intake form: https://baserow.io/form/mXa6NqUOKw9CcDPAU37oPh1uOPFHHESph6k0...

If we have a project that is well-suited to your skillset, I will definitely be reaching out!

Looking forward to connecting!

Nelkins··on The $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
Seems a bit like a spiritual successor to the Jeep Cherokee XJ, which also has a very strong DIY community around it.
Nelkins··on Tell HN: Pocket (acquired by Moz) only works with FF now
While we're talking about Firefox, does anybody feel like it's gotten dog-slow recently compared to Chrome? Testing with the following gist it takes FF 2.7 seconds on my machine for the page to fully load, and only ~400 ms in Chrome.

https://gist.github.com/NatElkins/6f2538e58778fdf2868419d824...

Nelkins··on Why F#?
It's statically typed and inferred.

With regards to your example, the print/printfn (equivalent of Write/WriteLine) functions are a bit funny in F#. They don't actually take bound string values directly. You need to specify the type (which could be a string, a number, obj, etc)

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-ref...

Nelkins··on I tried making artificial sunlight at home
Would you ever consider making a product that emits some level of IR? Or even a very small amount of UV? Would be amazing for the winter months, even if it was just a very small amount.
Page 1 of 15Next →