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_kxbdon Roblox S-1

because most companies do not recognize roblox as a platform, they recognize it as a game. nobody realizes that the development of games on it is on a similar level to web development, it's like explaining social media to congressmen.

it's not them getting special treatment purposefully. it's been on the iOS app store since 2012.

apple's policy here is a bad one. if it were fully remove, true web browser diversity could come to iOS, and roblox could finally do JIT compilation of Lua, among so many other possibilities.

_kxbdon A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

The future of anti-cheat is machine learning specific to the game. CS:GO already does this, where it used the Overwatch community review program to train it, and it can now automatically ban some cheaters.

I don't think it's a viable model because players are willing to do it for free, as CS:GO's Overwatch shows.

_kxbdon Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode

Discord has one of the worst light modes I've ever seen. Until recently, the sidebar taking up 20% of your screen on the left didn't even change colors, it remained in dark mode regardless of if you swapped. Also note that the role colors most servers assign contrast way too poorly with light background (bright yellow on white). And dark mode is the default. Worst example to try to extrapolate from.

_kxbdon A Study of Meditation Under the Influence of Psilocybin

Mindfulness meditation is probably useless [0]. Other forms of meditation are obvious scams [1]. It's possible that there are some particular forms of meditation which are actually scientifically valid, but a huge portion of the field suffers from psuedoscience.

I think it's pretty likely meditation is placebo and conditioning. People like mysticism that comes from the East. Acupuncture is the same deal.

Amusing to note the "Weaknesses in historic meditation and mindfulness research" section on the link you posted.

[0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mindfulness-no... [1] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/transcendental...

_kxbdon Linear Algebra by Jim Hefferon – free textbook

What are your particular critiques about this book? There's nothing inherently inferior about a free resource. What makes LADR superior to this book?

Finding a teacher isn't at all mandatory, you can do math yourself by completing exercises, checking your work, and looking at the solution afterwards. There are plenty of places to ask questions if you get stuck.

_kxbdon How I Wrote a Modern C++ Library in Rust

It seems fairly obvious that if Language A's design prevents a certain class of bugs possible in Language B's design, A is safer than B. If someone isn't satisfied by this, they probably are biased against Language A. I'd tell the hypothetical person to try writing a buffer overflow vulnerability in safe Rust.

That said, I can't find the source right now but I believe the quote is something along the lines a sizable percentage of Firefox's security bugs would be less severe or nonexistent in Rust vs. C++.

_kxbdon Airtable raises $100M at a $1.1B valuation

I use Airtable for my job, mostly as a project management application. This may be an unusual use case, but I find myself limited at many times.

I feel like Airtable is very unresponsive. On the community forums, they seem to communicate rarely, and not implement very simple functionality for long periods of time. Very good features that would be highly beneficial and should take a weekend go months without even a reply.

It's death by a thousand cuts for me. Sorts in Kanban view don't automatically resort when you add cards, so you have to manually resort every time. No rich text formatting on cards. Copying tables doesn't copy the field type. There's so many minor things I'd like changed.

None of the problems by themselves are deal-breakers by themselves, and I will continue to use Airtable (Trello, for instance, does not offer the field customization I love about Airtable). But I can't help but think execution can be so much better.

It's almost like nobody at Airtable pays attention to the design of features. Everything is so limited. Blocks are an incredibly useful idea, but in practice uncustomizable and not something I find helpful.

It's a good product, but not a great product.

I've been considering working on my own product in this line. At least if nobody else uses it, I'll be able to.

_kxbdon Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

I don't find these sorts of articles valuable.

The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying.

If we remove all the filler in this article (more or less the entire article), it amounts to "be okay at multiple things rather than trying to be good at something".

As per usual with incredibly vague life advice from unaccomplished people, this isn't always a good idea to apply. Being excellent at something (or at least very good) has its merits. For example, I don't want someone who can write "Hello, World!" in 30 programming languages. I want someone who understands even just one programming language inside and out, and really puts the effort into improving.

> "Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds Of Success"

No it doesn't.

Bonus points if you have a modal that pops up to sucker you into a free mailing list in hopes of converting you to an over-priced life advice seminar / program / book.

There is no secret bullet to productivity, and paying $197 for this snake oil salesman's course (how long do you want to bet that "sale" has been going on for?) is not going to help you. Eat well. Sleep. Maintain relationships with people you care about. Work hard, pay attention to what you're doing and think critically. That's all there is to it.

> "Read over 500 books"

Someone bragging about the number of books they read is hilarious.

Congratulations on $1.2m in revenue and a business degree, but that doesn't make you worth listening to.

_kxbdon NY Man Arrested for Cutting Wires to Red Light Cameras (2016)

Here's some sources on this I found after a light search:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/man-indicted-for...

https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/09/07/red-light-robin-hood...

Edit: The study linked to in the original article gives me a 404. It's a link to the 2014 annual report's PDF. I couldn't find it elsewhere, but here's a link to 2015's annual report: http://suffolkcountyny.gov/Portals/37/PDF/Red%20Light%20Safe...

_kxbd on How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it works and why it works."
I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great business move, but if they hadn't paid attention to Snapchat, would they have come up with it?
I understand that this article was written about a niche product, but I think it still applies.
On the other hand, I really like the bit about the communication with your customer-base. In game development particular, but also in all sorts of software I use, I see so many developers who don't interact with customers or improve their product based on feedback.
Customer feedback for users that aren't enterprise has to be the ultimate form of support. If I can provide the same service as a competitor to you, but I'll listen to your feedback, respond to it, and potentially act on it, I think I have a big advantage.

_kxbd on It’s better to be born rich than gifted

I'm open to being wrong here, but where can I find a source on this?
I only found this one chart [1], and the mean averages seem to be lower than 130. I have no idea how reliable this is. I can't speak to San Francisco at all, but I can't find the data.
I'd also include "web developer" with software engineer, and everyone with no knowledge of CS theory, just all software developers in my opinion.
[1] http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/Occupations.aspx

_kxbd on Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

You should know who runs a VPN in my opinion if you're going to trust them. Private Internet Access you at least have a name at London Trust Media, but Andy Yen has a public presence.
I don't trust anyone who uses "military grade encryption", period, even though it is just a marketing ploy.
ProtonVPN has their own data center of some sort in Switzerland. All VPNs are leasing the same servers from Leaseweb and friends (even ProtonVPN). They say it's in an underground retired army bunker, which sounds good for physical security assuming that's really the case. You never know for sure, but it's better than the alternatives.
VPN companies are notoriously shady, and I only trust ProtonVPN. I believe their service in _some_ respects is a cut above the rest, and I am willing to deal with multi-day customer service responses, DDoS attacks, and the like because of that.