bckr

> But websites need to be up 24/7, cron jobs need to run on the weekend and backend servers need to be up to support both

Tech entrepreneurs should give more weight to choosing markets that don’t require this

I’ll have to check that one out

Don’t worry, we can create a priesthood caste with secret knowledge of technology whose purpose is to guide the human race toward a brighter tomorrow!

Maybe someone could write a foundational science fiction novel about this.

For a contemporary example, what is the message of a painting of a watermelon?

It could be merely that watermelons are beautiful. Or it could be that the artist supports the people of Palestine.

For a less extreme example, think about the paintings of Norman Rockwell. Are they just pretty images? Or do they communicate norms?

Think also about what is censored vs what is not censored.

I actually almost fainted laughing when I read this and then some of the coping responses on X. I needed this today. What a good move.

> Let it be art, not propaganda.

My friend I have some news for you.

Edit: almost ended it there but remembered what website I’m on.

I don’t think there’s a material difference between art and propaganda. The art you like is merely the propaganda which you do not question.

> Ganon

I was wondering what an action-adventure villain was doing in the dictionary

> Ganot

Oh, that sounds more like a real person.

I'm not being flippant, actually. I would pay to have a reliable source of information. I'm also overwhelmed at the thought of how to make such a thing work.

Might be time to go back to the encyclopedia business model

Hype cycles ride on real progress that’s first blown out of proportion, then under-appreciated. LLMs are still magic AF. We are just so tired of hearing about them and how they’re going to change everything.

It’s gonna require N more hype cycles (bearing in mind that usefulness is the expected endpoint of the hype cycle)

This was wonderful. Extremely hackery. I did skim the last half, because it’s largely code.

Hmm. Given that Textbooks are all you need, I’m not sure this holds.

Maybe “don’t focus so much on organizing your inputs, instead focus on many quality input reps”?

Drive it in larger and larger closed courses. Expand to neighboring areas with consent of the communities involved. Agree on limited conditions until enough data has been gathered to expand those conditions.

This is different mechanism from the sound laser or SASER. The sound laser works like a laser, with a cavity where particles are bounced back and forth to stimulate a highly coherent beam of waves.

I’m not sure if this new mechanism is definitely better than the existing sound laser?

Right. I considered getting a new game console. Then I decided to just get a controller and see what I could play on my laptop.

DuckStation + $50 Xbox wireless controller + MacBook Air = I’m not buying a PS5 anytime soon

Ah, I should keep watching that. I don’t think I finished the first season yet. Maybe because it’s horrifying and bleak

Thanks! I’ll work from this going forward, maybe check it against Wikipedia as a popularity heuristic.

One thing I realized today is that, if I’m doing an “ideal year of gaming”, there’s a limit to the hours I could spend in such a year, which puts a nice limit on how many games I can include. Maybe 100 games per year, tops. This lets me do a lot faster filtering.

The thing that has stuck with me about monads is that operations which you can chain like

// Python

new_foo = foo.bar().baz()

Work as / can be defined as monads, if you get a Foo out of each of them. This at least gives me something practical to hang the concept on.

I’m doing a deep dive into the video games of the year 2000.

The plan is to make a threejs site where I can display all my favorite games with models of their original packaging and instruction manuals.

An interesting aspect of the research is that almost all published games are bad or mediocre.

Wikipedia knows about ~800 video games published in the year 2000. Of those, only ~300 either piqued my interest based on description or had reviews above ~70% positive.

I eliminated more of those based on personal interest (realistic flying or sports are not very interesting to me). And even more by watching videos of gameplay.

The level of polish and artistry vary enormously.

I’ve got a list of <100 games I’m very interested in, still. Which is a lot! But the breakdown is interesting to me.

Tidy first!

Make the necessary change easy to make

Then make the necessary change

I’m paraphrasing Kent Beck

Would love to hear some perspectives on this.

I worked at a YC company a couple years ago. They did not say they were 7-day-weekers, but the culture encouraged it.

There were 2 planning meetings per week, one on Thursday and one on Monday. So if you set a goal on Thursday… you should have it done by Monday.

A young manager there would work 24/7, stressing the hell out of most people who worked with them.

Of course, things would be broken that required weekend death marches.

The thing with startups is, it’s easy to default to this. After all, to the founders, this is the most important thing ever. It’s their ticket. And they try to make it seem like your ticket as well (it’s not).

But smart people don’t work like this. Smart thoughts don’t come out of exhausted brains. It’s a meat grinder for no reason. It’s sadistic.

This seems like it answers its own question. In Flask or Django you add a route that does some health checks. I don’t understand what this is asking.

Ask HN shouldn’t link out

Yeah not sure if there’s a way to activate chat on mobile either. Some said hey “to me” but all I could do was tap around and hope they could see I was acknowledging them

Another way of looking at it:

Once you get specific enough about the problem you’re facing, the questions and their answers are no longer constrained to a single domain.

Yet another, perhaps closer to what you mean: If you get so focused on improving one thing, you’re going to improve all the things involved, which is always a lot.

If you want to make the best widget that you possibly can, you’ll need to know about widgets, and widget making, and widget usage, and the specific application of widgets at hand, and the people who will be using the widgets, and the roadblocks that your users will face when using widgets, and the strategies for overcoming those and the roadblocks you will face when making widgets. You’ll also want to know about the people in your supervision who make widgets, and how to lead widget making teams, and how to position your team and sell your efforts to the widget company sponsoring your widget project. This requires experience with widget-project-selling design and communication. And being good at design and communication means being a well rounded human being with the capacity to grow and introspect.

And that’s just for widgets!

The above is basically a description of a project I did, but made completely generic.

Stimulate? Or simulate?

My learning path went something like this:

(The dark ages of data processing for personal use)

- Use a text file: Fine, you have to write your own read & write logic, but for small amounts of data this works.

- Use a CSV file: less custom logic than plaintext

- Use a JSON file: really nice to have structured data!

- Use a Python pickle file: the idea is you can “pick up where you left off”, but it’s slow, clunky, and inflexible

(Finally learning to use a database)

- Use Google Sheets: oh, it’s nice to be able to index things without needing to read/write the entire dataset! You can also do searches and stuff, it’s great.

- Django ORM + MongoDB: Oh my god, so horrible. MongoDB was supposed to be simple. This set up was slow and complicated. Migrations were a constant pain. And we didn’t even have any users.

- Postgres: It all makes sense. SQL is great. You can think about and query your data in reasonable ways. And it’s fast.

- DynamoDB: Yeah whatever, as long as you do validation on every read/write you’ll probably be fine.

> Using code from a generative AI without understanding what it does is never a good idea.

Yes.

AI as a faster way to type: Great!

AI as a way to discover capabilities: OK.

Faster way to think and solve problems: Actively harmful.

How about “building is on fire” or “company is dead tomorrow”?

1. You don’t take any notes or make any bullet points?

2. > As I'm writing, I do go back and make changes as they pop into my head

This contradicts the idea that you only write once.

3. You don’t get feedback on your first finished version and make changes?