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drsim

753 karma · joined March 14, 2012

https://www.danielrsim.com
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drsim··on Targeted Bets: An alternative approach to the job hunt
Don't spam. Don't be an asshole. And do everything you can to get that thing you want vs. spraying and praying for some cubicle job.

Exceptional folks rarely limit themselves to pushing submit to upload their CV. That proper channel is a lottery, and they know it. It's a broken system that requires hustle to increase the odds.

drsim··on Denmark's struggle to break up with Silicon Valley
Here in Denmark I hold no animosity toward Americans and none of my circle do. The current US administration on the other hand…
drsim··on Personal thoughts/notes from working on Zootopia 2
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of my most memorable animations due to the wild physics-defying reality it creates.
drsim··on Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT
Distribution has always been monetized. What margin did a retailer take for putting your boxed software on the shelf? How about that magazine ad? Google search? And so on. Get over the idea that a platform should give you their distribution for free.

The problem comes when there is no way for you to own the distribution, pay nothing to the platform, and still be able to build on top of it. That’s the closed portion we should rally (legislate?) against.

There is an argument, similar to mine on distribution, that there is no inherent right that a platform should be open. That the extra utility that comes from being open should make the platform more competitive in the market vs. closed platforms.

The challenge is that with dominant platforms they are monopolistic. There is no chance for competitive forces to reward openness.

These two parts of the debate are often conflated, which hides what is truly troubling: dominant platforms controlling both distribution and access.

drsim··on Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?
I love HN. And the Show HN graveyard is huge! Many a time I’ve searched, found a post I thought sounded cool, and it’s dead… sometimes in just a couple of months.
drsim··on Getting into public speaking
I love public speaking, think I'm above average at it, and am aiming to do more of it. Has anyone here tried Toastmasters?

Went to my local group last week and was pleasantly surprised with the quality of speaking.

drsim··on The cryptography behind electronic passports
It is a shame you are being downvoted, as it is an admirable ideology: why should someone be (dis)advantaged by the accident of where they were born.

In reality though, 8 billion people hold a wide spectrum of beliefs. I would not want to live in a society with low taxation and low welfare for example. How can I live side-by-side with those that do? Of course, we all have limited choice to move if our society does not match our beliefs.

drsim··on The last European train that travels by sea
They’re no more.
drsim··on Trig Spiders from Mars
Physical triangulation stations (trig points) for surveying and mapping.
drsim··on AbsenceBench: Language models can't tell what's missing
Right. I’ve had a lot of success using structured output to force LLMs to make Boolean choices, like can they reply or not.
drsim··on Why Claude's Comment Paper Is a Poor Rebuttal
I think the pull will be hard to resist even for competent people.

Like the obesity crisis driven by sugar highs, the overall population will be affected, and overall quality will suffer, at least for a while.

drsim··on The journalists training AI models for Meta and OpenAI
It is RLHF if I understand correctly.
drsim··on Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare
We have the Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables from 1884. Doesn't appear to have been needed until now so is relatively untested.
drsim··on Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
> Obesity may be slightly aggravated by car dependence, but it is still historically high and a major problem in the walking/public transport countries of Europe.

I’d like to learn more about this. That hasn’t been my personal experience at all. Looking at the national level is challenging, as urban and suburban and income levels must be a strong factor.

drsim··on Internet Archive: Security breach alert
Many providers support plus addresses like bob+servicename@example.com. Servicename can be anything and doesn’t require any setup.
drsim··on Timeshare owner? The Mexican drug cartels want you
I doubt it. You have the loan interest, annual service fees, and fact that you don’t have a sellable asset, at least for anything like what you paid for it. An empty vacation home is still an appreciating asset. Not a good investment in my circumstances but still better than a timeshare.
drsim··on Stocks trampled as Nikkei crashes 13%
It’s scary headlines like this: ‘trampled’, ‘crashes’, that put off less informed, risk averse individuals on lower incomes/ net worth, from investing in stocks.

It’s a shame, as ETFs, and hell, index funds if you must, outperform savings on a 3 year or even less horizon.

Yes, my portfolio dropped 7% this month. I’m still up 6% YTD and 13% in the last 12 months.

My horizon is well over 5 years. It would be an easy way to slow or even reduce my net worth if I were to put it all in a savings account.

Yet this is what a lot of folks do, frightened by scary bombastic headlines without a balanced long sighted story.

Current stock performance is very notable and newsworthy, yet lacks any narrative outside of short term performance.

drsim··on I Received an AI Email
I love this direction. It could be that the writer’s AI agent knows that he’s looking around for a new CMS so asks for more info, compiling this for review. Or it says ‘not interested’ and the conversation is muted.

All without the writer needing to be involved in reading the cold outreach.

drsim··on Over 100k Infected Repos Found on GitHub
It’s a valid question to posit.
drsim··on Submarine cables linking Africa-Asia-Europe severed
There is rarely an incentive to claim responsibility. And in the case of finding a smoking gun held by some national, the geopolitical consequences of pointing a finger are consequential. Nations must decide if those consequences are in their favor. For Nord Stream, pointing their finger either at Russia or Ukraine would result in consequences that are not in Nato's favor.
drsim··on Backlog size is inversely proportional to how often we talk to customers
Yes. And be sure to follow up with a robust customer interview to discover the why.

Executing a customer interview discovers the why behind feature requests.

If you leave it at the Sales and CS level you can end up with requests like I want to export to Excel. Sure, build that feature, but you risk missing the bigger picture.

Why does the customer want to do that? What’s their pain/problem/opportunity/JTBD?

You may uncover it is to integrate with another system, to give their boss a report, or to do some data analysis.

As a PM your job is to not build what customers are asking for, it is to solve the underlying need in line with your product vision and company strategy.

drsim··on HTML Spirograph (2021)
Agreed. Bizarre felt tips are included in the set.
drsim··on HTML Spirograph (2021)
We got our girls, 5 and 2, a Spirograph for Christmas.

With the provided felt tip pen inserted and the outer circle tacked down, I still really struggle to complete circuits without the circles jumping over each other and messing up the drawing.

I don’t remember it being like this as a kid. It felt much more relaxed and natural.

drsim··on Stoßlüften: Shock Ventilation
I have Tado TRVs and do have a HA instance. I’m stuck though, as I like the functionality from Tado like home/away, and VELUX like the automations. I’m not sure I could get as good a result by coding that all up in HA.
drsim··on Stoßlüften: Shock Ventilation
My Velux roof windows do this automatically for me every day. Works great as they won't open if it is raining or too cold. Sucks that the radiators don't turn off at the same time, so some wasted energy there.
drsim··on Lotus 1-2-3 For Linux
I begged for a BBC Micro and got a ZX Spectrum. Turned out to be much better at getting me interested in programming, even if the Spectrum was on the way out.
drsim··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2023)
Rewind, Inc. | Remote/Onsite | Canada | Full-time | Director, Security

Back up the cloud, recover it in seconds. Businesses don't realize that they are responsible for protecting their data at the account level, stored in their cloud SaaS. Rewind protects the entire cloud with backup and restore on 10 platforms and counting.

We are looking for a Director, Security who will be responsible for implementing and running Rewind’s security program. From the start, we have highly valued security, even when we were just 3 folks building in evenings and weekends.

Now with some of the world's largest organizations relying on Rewind, our strong security posture is a key advantage. Join us to continue to be a security leader.

When applying please specify that you came from HN.

Details and application here: https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/RewindSoftware/743999934503...

drsim··on I built a plane spotter for my son in minutes
Google demonstrated codebase aware LLMs at Next last week. I believe it was with their Codey model.

It knew the data model and methods that existed in code, and used these.

drsim··on How Tycho Brahe really died (2001)
I agree, very beautiful and otherworldly when compared to the average Danish landscape. Sailed there three years ago.
drsim··on Pg_later: Asynchronous Queries for Postgres
I'm not aware of a way to prioritize one process over another.

The way I've done it is, as you allude to, by managing locks. You set the transaction isolation level as appropriate.

You can also batch statements by using a cursor, rather than having a single large blocking transaction.

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