HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

bengrunfeld

176 karma · joined March 18, 2013

Front End Engineer - 4+ years experience

For the past 4+ years, I've been working with HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, jQuery, PHP & Python.

During my first 3 years, I developed over 500+ websites in Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento, performing many fix-jobs and working closely with SEO/SEM planning and implementation. Adobe Creative Suite was used daily.

For the past year and a half, I've been working in startups dealing with DevOps and Cloud related tech, mostly Heroku and GAE. As part of my roles, I developed web apps in Python and PHP, utilizing the Webapp2 framework. Testing was done using Unittest, Mock and Nose.

Other tech skills: Unix/Linux, Apache, SSH, Git/Github, Jasmine, AJAX, C, Foreman, Vim, Vagrant, SQL, NoSQL.

GitHub: github.com/bengrunfeld GitHub2: github.com/bengrunfeld-wf Blog: http://cloudandcode.tumblr.com/ Twitter: @bengrunfeld

submissionscomments
bengrunfeld··on Ask HN: Did you delete your Facebook account in 2018?
YES. I disabled it, and no longer use it. I did not delete it altogether, because all of my contacts are on Facebook Messenger. Honestly, my general happiness rose about 10% after leaving FB. It's trash for the brain, and hurts more than it helps. Get rid of it.
bengrunfeld··on The U.S. Yield Curve Has Inverted
Sorry for the copy pasta, but they say it better than I do.

"Historically, inversions of the yield curve have preceded many of the U.S. recessions. Due to this historical correlation, the yield curve is often seen as an accurate forecast of the turning points of the business cycle. A recent example is when the U.S. Treasury yield curve inverted in 2000 just before the U.S. equity markets collapsed."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/invertedyieldcurve.asp

bengrunfeld··on How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart
You just need to make up for the weirdness by hosting a BBQ every now and again. No one's gonna be made at you if you fill them up with a bit of meat and beer ;)
bengrunfeld··on Some studies show an association between the herpes virus and Alzheimer’s
Things move slowly in medicine, and this is bleeding edge research.
bengrunfeld··on Evergreen: a React UI Framework built by Segment
Here's another framework, that raps around a library, that wraps around another framework, that wraps around another library.... please... stop making me learn new things to keep myself relevant in the vertigo-inducing swirling vortex that is Javascript.
bengrunfeld··on Darpa Literally Reinvented the Wheel for Army Combat Vehicles
As a previous soldier (commander of a hummer unit), there are serious challenges that the terrain offers. Bits of sand and rock get into EVERYTHING when you're driving over them. All those small complex moving parts could easily become a nightmare if they got stuck full of grit. Hopefully their engineering takes this into account.
bengrunfeld··on Palestinian territories to get 3G in mid-2016
Right, only Israel bashing and anti-Semitism are allowed on HN. How politically correct of you.
bengrunfeld··on Analysis of DNA uncovers a rough dating scene after the advent of agriculture
Eunuch's and harems. The rich and powerful males kept all their local women in a harem and forced all the other competing males to become eunuchs. Not fun, but it fits with the Monty Python version of history.... ;)
bengrunfeld··on The Whole Haystack: The N.S.A. claims it needs access to all our phone records
Maybe instead of revoking every global citizen's right to any type of privacy, the government should address the issue behind the terrorism: namely, radical Islam being allowed to proliferate freely and metastasize.
bengrunfeld··on President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
Yeah, and then he goes and signs an order expanding the permissions of the NSA and FBI to bypass constitutional rights and international law in the pursuit of being able to access and store private and confidential user data.
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
Also....

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/02/17/frightening-film-on-...

bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
Do I need to say any more on this, or is it ok if it just goes ahead and speaks for itself?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
You think the current antics of Islamic State are anecdotal? You just need to watch the news for all of 17 seconds to see that this is a very accepted cultural norm.
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
Not to flame or anything, but that really doesn't make any sense.
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
I was involved in the Israeli Security establishment for over 5 years. I never saw any ethnic cleansing, massacres, or any of the other horrid things you talk about. As a combat commander, I had to give 1hr lectures to my soldiers about ethical behavior before EVERY mission. It was crazy, and I thought it was over the top, but even during the intifada, we were held to a crazy moral standard as soldiers.

For example, the rules during my time stated that if an Arab throws a rock at you (big, heavy, can break your skull apart), you are not allowed to shoot. If they have a knife and are charging from a distance, you are still not allowed to shoot. If they have a molatov cocktail, but are at a distance where it can't hurt you, you are not allowed to shoot. If you shoot and kill in these situations, you will be tried before a military court for murder and jailed.

The Israel you talk about is an anti-semitic PR fantasy that holds no resemblance to the reality of what goes on there. Part of my job taking care of terrorists with blood on their hands that we'd arrested was to ensure they got hot bloody food while we took care of them.

Not exactly a world of massacres and ethnic cleansing. Sorry, your rant is just rhetoric.

bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
So you've met one or two American Arab students, studying in nice universities, and that dictates the social norms that spread across the middle east?? Wow man, I want some of what you're smoking.

Please, go and visit Yemen, visit Afghanistan, even visit Jordan for heaven's sake, and you'll find that the reality of the Middle East can't be understood from within a college cafe in upstate California.

There are powerful cultural rules at play in Arab society that the west has no conception of, and I think that if you get a good look at them up close, it will completely change your perspective.

bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
I can understand your outrage at such a comment - it is a very western response.

But have you lived in an Arab country, specifically a Muslim one? Or even an Arab neighborhood? Have you been a part of an Arab community for a prolonged period? I have.

These ideals of pluralism and equality work wonderfully in novellas about utopian human co-existance, but they simply aren't reality. The Arabs think differently to American liberal arts students - they have a different ethical code.

That is one of the main reasons that the US was completely unsuccessful in their political endeavors in the Middle East, and which everything from Lebanon to Iran looks like a well-cooked pot of shit-stew right now.

If westerners better understood the Arab mindset, as it applies in countries in the middle east, we would live in a more peaceful world.

bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
The terrorism that Israel deals with predates significant US involvement in the Middle East. Bedouin attackers, not to mention marauding arabs from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt have been attacking Jews since before the 1920's.

You can blame what you want on western influence, but the truth is - and you'll know this if you've lived with Arabs - that they don't subscribe to western ideals of pacifism and anti-violence. It's not what they believe in.

For example, I witnessed an honor killing in 2002. It was done in the middle of the village with all the inhabitants cheering. Not sure you'd get the same reaction if you did that in Times Square.

Will happily read the wikipedia article.

bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
The violence isn't a symptom of their treatment. IS, Al-Qaeda, and Hizballah aren't "sequestered into ghettos" and they happily indulge in the same violence as Hamas. Maybe you should visit Israel and have a Falafel?
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
Errr... well, if you insist.
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
So on a hike once with my unit, a bedouin who was irrigating his field with a tractor simply turned it on us and tried to run us down. He failed, miserably I might add, but it proves the point that Arabs will often attack Jews with no advance warning. There are many more example of this.
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
They fundraise from America, have schools and training centers in America, collaborate on PR projects, planning, etc... I could really go on and on here....
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
I've went through 9 terrorist attacks in Israel before I joined the military - I lived in downtown Jerusalem during the Second Intifada. In the other countries, you're right - there is no excuse for getting rid of personal rights and freedoms, but in Israel the sheer number of terrorist attacks cause the reality to be different. If we didn't have the intel, we could never stop the terrorists, and that is simply unacceptable.
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
Unfortunately, yes. I'm a commander in the Israeli Defense Forces, and I've made 10's of arrests of terrorists. Most of them were attempting to hit populated centers with no military connection. If we didn't have the intel on them, we never would have been able to stop them. There is a big difference between that type of domestic surveillance and what the NSA carries out on the citizens of its own country - namely that things aren't blowing up in the USA every single day.
bengrunfeld··on Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal
Israel's Arab civilian's regularly attempt to blow themselves up in public places (believe me, I've stopped a few on them myself). Meanwhile the Palestinians gleefully lob rockets at populated cities in Israel. Of course Israel would want to monitor them as much as possible, and corroborate with the NSA to get as much data as possible. If that monitoring saved YOUR child from getting blown up on a bus, wouldn't you support it, or would you prefer your kid gets blown to smithereens so that social justice can be upheld? There's a big difference between America's domestic surveillance program and Israel's. Last time I checked, the central USA hadn't just recently been shelled.
bengrunfeld··on Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM
Since I am bald and respect my own hairlessness, I prefer the term "bull-faced lie", since I have much less respect for bulls. ;)
bengrunfeld··on Apple’s dangerous game
Apple's architecture decision proves a quiet point - that Apple feels it has been illegally pressured by the government (notably the NSA) to crack too many cell-phones, and that their own business and the rights of their users are at risk from an overly aggressive government. I interpret Apple's move as a self-defense mechanism to attempt to stop the immoral actions of a government over-stepping it's bounds, and to protect the people that Apple cares about most - their users.
bengrunfeld··on Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM
Anyone who believes that America champions freedom of speech and expression only has to go as far as the closest newspaper to discover that it's a bull-faced lie.
bengrunfeld··on How the world came to hate Silicon Valley
Australians despise the U.S. and The Age is simply airing the rank and fetid feelings of the people that read their newspaper.

Trust me, I know - I was born and raised in Australia, and because of the country's heavy Socialist/British background and identity, we were taught to hate everything about America. My wife and I lived in Melbourne from 2009-2012, and she suffered horrible discrimination for being from the US.

Silicon Valley is one of the great monuments to American individualism and entrepreneurial spirit, and it sickens most Aussies to see the success and fortune that has come of it.

The Age is ensuring that the anti-American sentiment is kept at a poisonous and noxious level.

bengrunfeld··on Essentials of PEP 8
I feel that if you don't know enough re styling code to write it properly in the first place, then an automated styling program is an easy way out, and not professional at all.
Page 1 of 4Next →