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casralad

57 karma · joined May 5, 2021

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casralad··on CNN+ streaming service is shutting down a month after launching
>their primary audience seems to seek comfort in their stories about how they are in the right and how the opposition are the bad guys.

Jesus fucking Christ. What would the opposition have to do for you to believe they are the bad guys? Like a coup or something?

casralad··on Ask HN: How different is it to make an Android app vs. an Apple app?
>cross platform frameworks improved

No serious mobile application is built with a cross platform framework. It's a development strategy that relies on the product being "good enough".

Please prove me wrong. I would love to see counter-examples.

casralad··on The off-screen workers who keep the adult webcam industry running
It's a little like AOL in the 1990s. A great business model, but one that won't outlast reliable internet access from service providers. Businesses like webcam studios bridge the gap until internet access catches up.

There are unsexy, short term business models for entrepreneurs.

casralad··on Ask HN: Are the 2020s the decade of peak homogenisation?
No.

"Netflix / Disney etc seem to have copped onto one idea that works and just release the same tv show / movie over and over again with a slight tweak as it brings the money in without any worries."

This is the golden age of streaming. There's more diversity in show types on Netflix alone than across all platforms (movies, tv, direct to video) in the 90s. Paramount is almost entirely devoted to new Star Trek properties and HBO Max releases a new movie every month. If you aren't seeing innovation in story-telling its because you are a Philistine.

This question has real "kids today" energy.

casralad··on ‘We’re a Cult’: Inside Bitcoin’s Shameless Hypefest
It's not usable as a currency except in the most dire circumstances and no one is working to fix this. Transactional currency has been abandoned as a goal by every major crypto project, and it doesn't make a sensible replacement for currencies in functioning economies. If the only use case is as a currency alternative for people in a failed state, it's not a compelling technology, and it's not even doing that right now.

Dotcom companies were offering services that hundreds of millions of people could use around the world. There was a bubble and many tech valuations were stupid, but people used Webvan to solve a problem. No one is using crypto for anything other than speculation on the price of crypto.

casralad··on ‘We’re a Cult’: Inside Bitcoin’s Shameless Hypefest
Pets.com and WebVan were exemplary of the dotcom bubble. They had insane valuations and a problematic business model, but investors poured money in because of hype. But both those services are legitimate, profitable through other companies today. They were just too early, maybe too hyped.

I got groceries from WebVan in the 90s. I bought books from Amazon in the 90s. I used Yahoo.com to find information in the 90s. These were services with value even if the companies didn't make it.

Crypto has provided no value other than making some people money. It has solved no problem. In more than a decade, crypto has still not found a viable use-case.

casralad··on The state of burnout in tech, 2022 edition [pdf]
I support this. Overtime is free labor and the market should be regulated by the government to prohibit this.

That said, I've been a software engineer for over twenty years and most of those years I've worked under 40 hours a week and rarely worked overtime.

casralad··on Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?
Software Engineering at Google [https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book]
casralad··on What to do if a cop tries to scan your face during a traffic stop
Abolition is the only path forward. You can't reform this.
casralad··on Ask HN: Where do you get your non-tech news from?
Twitter.
casralad··on Is success tied to having rich parents?
Early investors almost always require a friends and family round.
casralad··on Ask HN: Is the state of mail user agents that sad?
I went down a rabbit-hole last year trying out different MUAs and configurations, searching for that perfect setup. I like CLI interfaces and I wanted something where search was not as painful.

It was a nice distraction, then I realized that I only spend a few minutes each week reading email. It's just not a significant part of my workflow, either professionally or personally.

casralad··on Ask HN: Who's getting pulled back into the office?
In my city, Covid infections are still higher than they were at the peak last winter, so there has not been much discussion about returning to the office, though our offices are open and anyone can go in and work there if they choose.

We were told early on that we would get a 30 day warning if we were expected to come back to the office, and management for my team has said they would never require us to come back, that it would always be optional. (Always is a long time. I'm under no illusion that this policy is immutable).

I would be very surprised if myself or any of my peers asked to come back to the office in the next year or so.

casralad··on Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off
Google used to be a pretty respected brand in tech spaces, didn't it?
casralad··on Don't forget Microsoft
I started at $50k, never made more than $200k in a year. My net worth will be a million well before I'm 65.

A million isn't what it used to be.

casralad··on Ask HN: How Do You Budget?
>Any details on how that happened?

buy food cook the food you eat generational wealth don't throw out food

casralad··on Ask HN: How to buy a house as a 20 year old in the USA?
>be as creative as you wish

I don't think this is an area where creativity expands the existing options. If you have a stable job you will likely be approved for a mortgage. It might not be enough of a mortgage to afford a home in the city or even state that you want to buy. People who buy houses very young usually have generational wealth, even if it's just a parent who co-signs the loan.

Down payment is useful but not necessary. I've bought several houses (just one at a time) with $0 down payment.

FHA loans exist to help lower income people become home owners.

casralad··on Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
I worked at a very large corporation that had a pay freeze for years. I didn't leave because of money, I just worked less each year. After more than five years of being underpaid, I was working only a few hours a week. Eventually I got laid off, decent severance. I miss all the spare time I had.

I love my current job, but there will come a time when they are no longer willing to increase my pay above inflation (I suspect this year will be a test), and when that happens, I'll leave.

Money is the only reason I'm here. Shockingly, I can keep myself occupied and amused without scrum, a non-technical manager, or Jira tickets.

casralad··on Ask HN: Where Is the COLA?
Yes. I would like to learn more about your union experience.
casralad··on Firefox 96
Similarly-sized software companies are also overpaying their executives at the expense of worker wages, so Mozilla is right on track.
casralad··on Ask HN: Tell about your work from home setup
iOS developer. I work from the spare bedroom in my house.

Kitchen chair, Purple seat pad, 3' x 2' desk from World Market, M1 MacBook Pro, clip on ring light for meetings, Magic Mouse. I use the built-in microphone and webcam on my laptop.

casralad··on Ask HN: How do I deal with not being able to build products
Check out "The Four Tendencies" by Gretchen Rubin. It describes almost this exact scenario and provides tools that may help you overcome it.
casralad··on Ask HN: Are you happy with your current job?
Yes. Fully remote, good separation of work and life, the technical problems are interesting enough (for me), and management is mostly sane. I'm a software developer in the US.
casralad··on Marketing is probably more important than the product itself
Marketing is more important than the product because without good marketing, you'll have no customers.

Logistics and supply chain is more important than marketing because without product to ship, you'll go broke before you can bill your customers.

Server ops is more important than logistics and supply chain because if your servers are always down, no one can buy your product.

It's like saying that the engine of your car is more important than the transmission. You need both.

Apple in the late 90s had the same marketing they always had, and they were dying. Google in the late 90s had no marketing, and a product so good it made all other search engines obsolete overnight.

casralad··on Ask HN: Can you share your experience when you bombed an interview badly?
No one has asked for my college GPA (2.4) since my first job out of school.
casralad··on Ask HN: Can you share your experience when you bombed an interview badly?
Years ago, I was a J2ME developer. There were very few candidates with my skill set and not many jobs either. I don't remember the company I was interviewing for, but they were really excited to find me because I had the experience and skill set they were looking for. And I was excited because my current employer was circling the drain.

I failed the technical screen interview.

They asked me some softball questions about Java and J2ME, thanked me for my time, and then I didn't hear from them for a week when the interviewer's manager called me. He diplomatically explained that I bombed the tech screen, but that he was giving me another chance because it didn't make any sense based on my resume. So I answered some more technical questions, and I could tell by his voice that he was not impressed by my answers. Not quite wrong, just not demonstrating the technical mastery he was expecting.

Anyway, I didn't get the job. They ghosted me after that. I've never been particularly good at the technical side of interviews, but I have always made it through the technical phone screen (if there was one). Extra humiliating to get filtered on the phone screen (twice!) for what was my area of expertise at the time.

casralad··on Building Self-Managed Teams: A Case Study from Riot Games
I've been a software developer for thirty years and every pay increase has been less than 3% unless I switch companies.

It's their rules. I'm just playing the game.

casralad··on Ask HN: I think I hate the software development industry? Am I crazy?
>30 is more commonly a point where people in our society start to get a sense of their actual career path and shift from "consumers" of the current culture to "architects" of the next culture

An insightful and eloquent observation that matches my experience in the workplace. In my thirties, I started to have career opportunities tangential to programming, paths and directions I could have followed into management, marketing, architecture, or hardware. I chose to stay with programming because I liked it, and still like it now that I'm out of my thirties. You are not locked in to anything, no matter what your title or role is today, and you'll learn more from inside than from on the sidelines.