HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

dalfonso

493 karma · joined October 10, 2014

submissionscomments
dalfonso··on Career Guidance
I'm in LA and looking for potential co-founders for side projects. I have some vague ideas but nothing I'm set on. Leave your contact info.
dalfonso··on Ask HN: Do You Use a Debugger?
Yes. I use PyCharm specifically for its debugger.
dalfonso··on Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft
Microsoft already bought NPM so there's precedent.
dalfonso··on Uber and Lyft competitors ready if service is suspended in California
The cities need to step up and set up their own ride sharing services e.g. https://www.metrolacampaigns.net/ in LA
dalfonso··on Where people are moving during Covid
What's the difference between "moving" and "leaving"?
dalfonso··on HMD Global, maker of Nokia smartphones, gets investment from Google,Qualcomm
I've always thought that if HMD was successful enough, eventually Nokia would just buy them and get their brand back.
dalfonso··on TikTok and Twitter are starting to talk about a possible combination
Vine 2.0?
dalfonso··on Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder
I cannot echo this enough. If you're eventually trying to be the CEO: sell, sell, sell, and then sell some more. If you've got customers waiting, you have so much more of an advantage when it comes to finding a technical co-founder. "I've got this great idea." pales in comparison to "I've got this great idea and 10 letters of intent/1000 people on a waiting list/$X,000 in revenue using gmail and a spreadsheet." (not all of those but the more the better), you'll easily be able to find someone.

If you're eventually trying to become the CTO with someone else doing the selling, then learn to code it up yourself.

dalfonso··on Interview with a Pornhub web developer (2019)
Just curious, is there a different reason to use “sic” besides spelling errors?
dalfonso··on How Did Vim Become So Popular?
I haven't found a way to test/debug in Vim that's as good as PyCharm. With PyCharm, after I write a test I hit ctrl+shift+r and it runs. I've been meaning to try pudb, seems like it's the most similar in terms of a visual debugger.
dalfonso··on Amazon.com was down
Same here. Smile Always for Chrome.
dalfonso··on Show HN: VS Code extension that fades out the colors until you take a break
I don't use VS Code, but I like that there's experimentation in this space -- every X minutes, do something to the UI to remind you to take a break.

I currently use Time Out on Mac and every X minutes it slowly greys out the entire screen. The hardest scenario is if I'm in "the zone" and super focused on fixing a bug, etc. and the notification pops up. I end up feeling antagonistic towards the break reminder.

This looks like it's a good balance.

dalfonso··on Amazon Confirms Plans for Store Under New Grocery Brand
Kudos to you. I just looked it up and the Walmart Neighborhood Market closest to me is ~30K sq. ft. while the CVS closest to me is 17.5K.
dalfonso··on Amazon Confirms Plans for Store Under New Grocery Brand
My bet is this will be very similar to Walmart Neighborhood Market. About the size of a drug store, will stock grocery essentials, and will have lower prices than traditional grocery stores (Safeway/VONS, Ralphs, Albertsons, QFC, etc.)

A store like this might allow them to more cost effectively fulfill small items (deodorant, a pack of pens, batteries, aspirin, candy bars, etc.) by shipping from the store to your home.

dalfonso··on Edge Chromium Release on January 2020
I have to commend Microsoft on the new Edge logo. It's different enough from the IE and old Edge logo that savvy users will notice the change, but similar enough that the users who "just click on the blue e to go to the internet" probably won't notice the change.
dalfonso··on Amazon offered ‘Amazon’s Choice’ to vendors who bought ads and lowered prices
I agree. Take everything with a grain of salt. In addition, I use Fakespot. It gives products a letter grade based on how "fake" their reviews are. Not perfect, but another data point.
dalfonso··on The Best Financial Advice I Ever Got
Mine would be, "Don't be pennywise and pound foolish".

Sometimes it's worth it to spend the extra money. The example that's burned into my brain is hiring movers.

dalfonso··on [dead]
You should add "Show HN:" to the title.
dalfonso··on How I Side Project
One thing that I'm trying to internalize is when you're building a side project/rapid prototype, you need to be lenient on adhering to best practices. Here's a good video from Startup School that shows technical cofounders answering the best practices vs. speed question: https://youtu.be/tSW-GePDwn4?t=1365

They talk about not having unit tests, or CI/CD, etc.

dalfonso··on One-quarter of Uber's business happens in just five cities
Not OP, but that’s the order presented in the article.
dalfonso··on Amazon’s Project Zero will let brands remove fake product listings
>Additionally, Amazon is offering an optional product serialization service for companies that would have them put a unique, Amazon serial code on their products during manufacturing that will then allow Amazon to scan and confirm that a given products is authentic before it ever leaves a warehouse.

If the manufacturer opts in to this serialization, as a customer, co-mingling wouldn't be an issue. If a co-mingled counterfeit item gets picked, it wouldn't leave the warehouse. The Amazon worker would then put the counterfeit item to the side and find a genuine one.

For the manufacturer/Amazon, it would still be difficult to find who shipped the fake item.

dalfonso··on WeWork Is Raising Funds at $35B Valuation
I had a dedicated desk at a WeWork for about a year. Before that, I had a desk at Regus location for about a year.

- While local coworking spaces could match the decor, vibe, etc. your local coworking space didn't have locations in other cities. I got 5? credits that I could use to work out of other WeWork locations.

- WeWork definitely had a tech-first attitude. If you wanted to reserve meeting rooms, register a guest, sign-up for events, etc, they wanted you to do that through their mobile app or website. Regus may have had a site, but they didn't push you towards it.

- WeWork had a "marketplace" where you could get discounts on various tech/non-tech things like accounting software, business cards, services, etc. Probably another good revenue stream. They could be pitching it as the "App Store" for startups.

- In my location, in the LA area, tech wasn't the majority. I would say 75% of the people I met were in some sort of service (real estate agents, lawyers, consultants, recruiters, etc,).

I don't think they're worth $35B (Delta Airlines' market cap is $38B, Atlassian market cap is $15B for some benchmarks), but they definitely do have some positives.

dalfonso··on Ask HN: What are your favorite tech sites besides HN?
https://www.techmeme.com/
dalfonso··on Ask HN: What does your ideal home office look like?
If you're setting up a desk, I would highly recommend something with adjustable height. It doesn't necessarily have to be sit/stand, but that's probably ideal. The standard desk height of 29ish inches is too high for 95% of the population [0]. Your shoulders should be relaxed and keyboard a few inches above your lap. You could mitigate this with a keyboard tray too, but I'm not a fan.

0: https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/5-adjustments-you-need...

dalfonso··on Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM
Outside of some of the mentioned reasons (20-somethings are cheaper, ageism, etc.), I think there's a lot of emphasis on staying up-to-date. In order to be "desirable" you need to consistently be learning about new technologies, languages, frameworks, etc. ON YOUR OWN TIME. As you get into age 30+, many people are married, have kids, have enough money to travel, etc. thus you probably aren't going to be as interested in reading programming blogs and watching tutorials.
dalfonso··on Cryptocurrencies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
It was cool to see him use a few concepts that I've used when trying to explain cryptocurrencies to friends: Chuck E Cheese tokens and Beanie Babies. (The other is Easter Egg hunts). Overall, I'm glad that John Oliver's done a piece on this because he's previously been successful at bringing once niche topics to popular culture (net neutrality and sport stadium financing).

I think blockchain (and to a lesser extent ICOs) does have long-term utility. However, the current lack of oversight combined with hype/FOMO for cryptocurrencies and ICOs is the perfect recipe for those "in the know" to rip off the less knowledgeable.

dalfonso··on Ask HN: What's the Hacker News for different industries?
Sports logos and uniforms: http://boards.sportslogos.net/forum/1-sports-logos/
dalfonso··on The Boring Company will prioritize pedestrians and cyclists
Boring Co urban loop system would have 1000’s of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination & blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway -https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/972243992153739265?s=20

Video of concept: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/972245615735222273?s=20

dalfonso··on A small town that kept Walmart out now faces Amazon
4. Price match. This can be a double-edged sword and it may be unsustainable but if I'm the shop owner I'd lose a bit of margin rather than the entire sale. As a customer, who wouldn't want the item now vs. waiting 1-5 days for it.
dalfonso··on Nokia sold 4.4M smartphones in Q4 2017
If HMDGlobal continues to progress (in sales, tech, etc.) I wouldn't be surprised to see Nokia just purchase them. Or in an AT&T/SBC/Cingular scenario, see HMDGlobal purchase Nokia and become "the new Nokia".
Page 1 of 3Next →