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PLejeck

168 karma · joined July 26, 2011

Rubyist, ex-noder, and hardcore polyglot. Stuck in the Central Valley; somebody please save me.
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PLejeck··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2016)
Location: Modesto, CA (way east of SF)

Remote: Temporarily, not long-term

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Ruby/Rails, HTML/CSS/SCSS/etc., ES6, Docker, EmberJS (intermediate), ReactJS (intermediate), Elixir (beginner), Swift (beginner)

Resume: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/nuck

Email: me@plejeck.com

---

I started programming at 7, learning BASIC on my mom's classroom computer. Aside from a brief stint as a designer in college and a few dark years caused by Perl, I've been programming ever since. Also my the way I've picked up ample devops and UX knowledge.

I help maintain a few gems right now (Hooloo https://github.com/NuckChorris/hooloo , doorkeeper-grants_assertion https://github.com/doorkeeper-gem/doorkeeper-grants_assertio... , sidekiq-debounce https://github.com/NuckChorris/sidekiq-debounce), with a few more in the process of being extracted from the existing codebase of hummingbird.me (namely, libraries for interfacing with MyAnimeList and AnimeNewsNetwork, as well as JSONAPI::Resources integrations with Chewy and Pundit).

I've been working with Rails for 3 years, with a focus on applying UX concepts to API design. I'm looking for a startup that can use my skills and help me develop new ones like native app dev or more thorough functional testing.

PLejeck··on Spark is a great Mailbox replacement
I actually regret not switching to Spark sooner, since it has support for more email providers than Mailbox ever had. I do wish it would take some cues from Inbox and add the Action support, though.
PLejeck··on The radical plan to destroy time zones
This involves radically ignoring the human factor in time. Things are still mostly local in daily life, except in the small bubble these men live in.

Next year I'm sure they'll be arguing for decimal time.

PLejeck··on Show HN: We open-sourced our anime discovery application
That would require there to actually be MAL devs. Last I heard, they're down to one guy and he's AWOL.
PLejeck··on Show HN: We open-sourced our anime discovery application
I've not used AniDB much, but I once half-finished an API wrapper for Node.js so I guess I'm about as qualified as we're gonna get.

In my experience, AniDB is effectively unmaintained code. They have developers, the developers just don't know the codebase well and they don't mess with old stuff. I've heard this is because it's a behemoth Perl script, but I don't know for sure.

But to cover your main point of "an API checking file hashes/fingerprints against episodes to add to your list", I just wanna say that this is kind of a silly system: you can easily extract that data from a filename.

For example, the desktop app Taiga has an open-source parser which extracts lots of data effectively (https://github.com/erengy/anitomy) and I myself wrote a simple regex-based one for my own client. Both are capable of extracting at least the episode number, subber, and series title.

So why would Hummingbird want to store hundreds of thousands of MD5 checksums when there's better options?

PLejeck··on Show HN: We open-sourced our anime discovery application
I think the fact that normal TV/Movie sites lack information on Anime led to the schism more than anything. The same things the Anime community has developed could be equally applicable to normal TV, especially in the age of DVRs and streaming: Anime fans were watching things asynchronously long before anyone else
PLejeck··on Show HN: We open-sourced our anime discovery application
Hummingbird already offers an API through Mashape, which is infinitely more thorough than any competitor's.

Additionally, MAL has lots of minor bugs, and how can you trust a site that hasn't been maintained in 5 years to store your password correctly? 2009 was a scary place.

This is pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if MAL is storing passwords as MD5+salt. They do just email it to you in plaintext when you register.

And recovery is a 6 digit pin, which is totally plenty of entropy.

PLejeck··on GitHub Down
I'm making light of the fact that we repeated the same thing that happened in history. When people started getting attacked, they formed larger groups to defend themselves. and now we're doing that on the internet with things like CloudFlare.
PLejeck··on Ask HN: a better couchsurfing platform?
Can't something like Airbnb already fill this role? I don't know much about couchsurfing in all honesty.
PLejeck··on C++ For C Programmers
I'm slightly afraid to learn C++ after being told so many horror stories. But for the low low price of free? Count me in.
PLejeck··on GitHub Down
Everybody is always under attack. The internet is falling to pieces because of botnets, and people forming clans for protection (by which I mean CloudFlare, they're forming CloudFlare)
PLejeck··on Logout is broken by default in Ruby on Rails Web applications
Redis is an ideal data store for this kind of thing, will be doubly so once we have Redis Cluster.

But still, if your frontend hosts can't reach your database, you have far bigger problems than your sessions not working.

PLejeck··on Rails' CookieStore isn't broken
I'm suggesting that site operators need to use HTTPS. It doesn't matter if you use Rails, PHP, Node.js, whatever. USE HTTPS. NEVER USE HTTP.

It's as simple as that. Never assume that anything transmitted over HTTP is safe, because that assumption will come back to bite you.

PLejeck··on Rails' CookieStore isn't broken
I hope that this will at least light a fire under the asses of Rails devs everywhere, and get them to adopt HTTPS. Nothing is safe against Firesheep without HTTPS. All of these issues would be solved with HTTPS.

Also, doesn't cryptographically signing (or fully encrypting, in Rails 4) the cookie just add more time to processing than using a database? I always assumed cryptography is slower than IO

PLejeck··on Is 'Web 2.0' Another Bubble? 2006
In fragmentation, there is not always a winner. Sometimes they just all survive.
PLejeck··on Is 'Web 2.0' Another Bubble? 2006
In Web 2.0 the turnover rate wasn't too high and most "services" were toys made in the spare time as a mashup of other services. To think it was a bubble, even at the time, is nonsense.

Today I see a different case: shady accounting practices, lots of companies going from zero to public with little market validation, high customer acquisition costs, and high employee turnover rates (at some companies).

Today I think we're in a bubble, but nobody can say for sure until we see it pop. But if you're smart, it doesn't really matter whether we're in a bubble or not.

Just don't be an idiot and get solid funding now so you have money to float above the failures.

PLejeck··on Ask HN: a better couchsurfing platform?
To be fair, the tech stack can break a service (though it can't make it) - whether by slowing down iteration or crashing constantly. Putting out fires is not a positive thing.
PLejeck··on GitHub Down
It's rather sad that DDoS attacks seem to just be the norm at this point.
PLejeck··on Logout is broken by default in Ruby on Rails Web applications
They do, and they are signed, but they still have issues like this which are so easily mitigated by just using a goddamn server.
PLejeck··on Elaine Wherry: Why I Now Believe the Glass Ceiling Is Real
Logical skips can do a lot.
PLejeck··on Logout is broken by default in Ruby on Rails Web applications
Sure, it's the default, but don't people realize never to trust clientside data? I don't know if CookieStore is signed or not, but I generally assume even if I sign the data it's not safe.

It's not that hard to just set up a Redis or whatever store to handle stuff like this, I never understood why people whouldn't bother.

PLejeck··on Logout is broken by default in Ruby on Rails Web applications
I sincerely hope that nobody was using the CookieStore in deployment. I think everybody should know by now that cookies are not safe or secure storage for data.
PLejeck··on Ask HN: How did you learn to properly build tests?
I never thought I'd hear "don't write any tests", since that seems to be a horrible sin to most people
PLejeck··on Ask HN: How did you learn to properly build tests?
I know there's not a right way, but I still can't even figure out the most basic of tests. The guys in #rails tell me to stub this, mock that, but then they never explain the terms or how to even stub Rails features. I get what I need to do, but I'm not sure how to do it.
PLejeck··on Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
But it's not even clone, it's just awkward.
PLejeck··on Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
I wonder if it'd be possible to provide a virtual display to a small ARM board and embed it into a window, so that you'd have the virtualization effects (two OSes on one machine) without the speed loss
PLejeck··on LG G Flex curved smartphone revealed
Does it annoy anyone else that it won't sit flat on a table? I'd find myself slamming it down to try and flatten it.
PLejeck··on Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
As a fellow OSX -> Arch person, I feel your pain. The experience of making Broadcom function is enough to drive a man insane.
PLejeck··on Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
Please never use OS X clones.

But you're right that Linux stopped being ugly. Even in Tiling WMs, we're pretty beautiful now. My windows now have the same gaussian blur and shadow abilities as on Mac OS X, thanks to Compton. My status bar has beautiful text set by Pango and rendered by Cairo. My text rendering is as good (or better than, against transparency) in OSX, thanks to the Infinality patchsets.

Really, it's only ugly if you do it wrong. One way of getting it wrong is to try and imitate OS X.

PLejeck··on Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
The lack of good email clients on Linux is a real shame. I'd love to have something like Sparrow or Mailbox. 1password is also a sad thing to be missing.

As for the others, we have locate(1) for searching and rdiff-backup instead of Time Machine.

As for having desktops like that, if you mean monitors, then there's a great solution: Synergy. Hook up monitors to both computers and use Synergy to connect them.

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