drumdance

I'm 56. Please teach me your ways. I took a break from dev work from 2017 to 2023 and want to get back into it. I learned more recent stuff like React and have built a couple of open source projects and a mobile app using React Native, but I can't even get an interview.

Someone should to invent an AI powered one that is utterly unpredictable and installs in the boot sector. You're browsing Hacker News one day and suddenly your smoke alarms goes off. You do it the next day and your Echo device starts playing death metal at highest volume. You do it the next day and your car alarm goes off.

SNRIs like Wellbutrin do this. They make cigarettes taste gross.

I've always feel like this is a fundamental weakness with these systems. They would do better having a monolithic namespace. Want the handle @jack? Too bad. Maybe it should be like a domain name you pay for but other than that I don't see a way for federated systems to get traction.

If I were Google, I would offer small businesses built-in chatbots for their Maps listings.

For me it started with signing up for Match.com for free in 1995 because I was one of the first 10,000 users.

Seriously, it was probably Usenet that kept me engaged. The web was exciting to browse but the conversation was on Usenet.

Serious question: did Matt get divorced recently, or suffer some other family trauma? He seems very angry.

I applied for these guys a few months ago, wrote a well thought-out cover letter and got a form rejection email in less than 24 hours.

This encapsulates a hunch I've had lately: that you could probably tell a lot about a potential hire if you could read their emails and slack messages.

The best co-workers are good at communicating without being annoying or a jerk, they have a good sense of what the important issues are, and they don't let ego or trivial concerns get in the way of solving problems.

Nicely done. Years ago I had the idea of projecting my Kindle library onto the wall to look like a bookshelf. Stopped at the idea stage.

My dad was an airline pilot. To hear him talk he was surrounded by morons.

That said, at least with airplanes you have to put in the flight hours and they have to be documented. Most commercial pilots start off at very low pay doing puddle jumpers and regional jets. Military experience might give you a leg up because it shows you've spent a lot of hours going through a very regimented program.

My dad was fortunate to get in the industry right before it became an option for the masses rather than luxury and business. It was high paying, glamorous job.

In 1981 my sister was just out of college and worked on the PC as her first job. She said the loss of Estridge was devastating, and IBM changed some of their policies around executives traveling together because of it.

There are 3-4 I regularly use. Google offers it for their business accounts, of which I have a couple.

  Location: USA (northwest Arkansas)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate:Yes to Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Bay Area
  Technologies: PHP, Ruby on Rails, Node, JavaScript, TypeScript, jQuery, React, Next, Remix, MySQL, PostgreSQL, HTML, CSS

Résumé/CV:https://djscruggs.com

Email: me@derekscruggs.com

Over 20 years of experience in web development. Have built multiple B2B products from scratch, serving tens of thousands of users. Co-founder of multiple companies, can do sales and fundraising in addition to development

SEEKING WORK, USA, Remote or Northwest Arkansas

Over 20 years of experience in web development. Have built multiple B2B products from scratch, serving tens of thousands of users

Tech stacks: PHP, Ruby on Rails, Node, React, Next, Remix, jQuery, MySQL, PostgreSQL, AWS, Fly, Vercel

Can serve as a hired gun, interim CTO, product owner

More info: https://djscruggs.com/

I was CTO of an analytics startup in the early days of MongoDB hype. We built on MySQL. One of our competitors was MixPanel.

We were having scaling issues with one particular customer, so I looked into the various solutions. They all looked pretty cool, but I didn't like that the developer communities were small compared to MySQL and PostgreSQL.

So I ended up sticking with MySQL and building a simple sharding mechanism that allowed us to move big customers to their own server if necessary. It worked great.

While I was working on that, MixPanel published a long, highly detailed blog post about why they had moved to MongoDB. That led me to have second thoughts. "If these guys are doing it, maybe we should too?" But I was pretty far down the sharding development path and couldn't justify making such a wholesale change based on one blog post.

Fast forward about nine months, and MixPanel published a new blog post about why they had moved off MongoDB. Vindication!

Ever since then I've had conservative disposition when it comes to deploying new technologies.

I'm job hunting right now and one of my must-not-haves for any employer is that they're sales driven instead of product driven. I'd rather work for university IT department than at Oracle.

Depends on the carbs. Leafy greens and other vegetables are carbs, and for the most part they're compatible with paleo style diets. It's the processed carbs like bread and sugar that should be avoided.

There are already new gambling apps on the block chain. That existing players don't want this is irrelevant. Classic innovator's dilemma.

They don't advertise that because their lawyers told them not to. There are lots of ways to dance around this and imply appreciation without stating it.

> king of print

The Wall Street Journal has had a larger national subscription base for years.

And of course there were many dominant local city papers in the days before digital. I used to read the Chicago Tribune cover to cover every day. Before that I read the Atlanta Journal.

The New York Times covers many things: politics, disasters, science, the arts, education and so on.

Rush Limbaugh exists for one reason only: the promotion of a hyper-partisan view of the world. He gets millions of listeners just for that one single topic.

Does every NYT reader read it for the editorials?

For sponsored podcasts you're right. But much of what I listen to doesn't have advertising, or it's indirect in the form of interviewing guests who promote their products.

For example, one of the podcasts I really like is run by a guy who a) knows a lot about real estate and b) sells a SaaS product for people who want to do what he does. He frequently references show notes, PDFs, webinar signups and the like in his show, and I engage with most of that stuff... if I remember to do it when I get home.

In his case the value per customer is quite high, so he would probably make the investment in rich media. He doesn't have sponsors and so isn't beholden to click through rates.

And I'd wager that's true for the vast majority of podcasts. A handful make money from advertising because they have really large audiences. The rest do it as a hobby or to promote their businesses.

Very cool.

In the last few weeks I've been thinking something similar would be great for podcasts. Not on-screen editing, but tools for displaying information and soliciting feedback.

In my case I've been listening to a lot of podcasts about real estate. Frequently they reference a PDF or web site to sign up for more info. It would be nice if that just showed up onscreen rather than having to open a browser on my phone (especially when I'm in the car).

Dedicated apps can do this, of course, but I an open protocol would have a lot more uptake from semi-technical people who want to create simple online course distributed via podcast.

I'm moving to Colombia for part of the year. Maybe full time in the next couple years.

Well, some argue that poker is a game of skill. Bluffing, looking for tells etc. Everything I've read is that when you get to the championship level, everyone already is good at understanding probabilities. It's psychology that makes the difference.

In fact, just last night I talked to a woman who does really well at poker because she randomly pretends to be a "dumb broad" on some hands.

I'm buying real estate in South America because I think the dollar is overvalued.

The market went up 150% during Obama's two terms, the best eight year performance of all other US presidents except Clinton and Coolidge.

It's because the economy has done so well under Obama that it can withstand Trump's nonsense, at least for the near term.

The difference is scale. These days it's orders of magnitude cheaper to do that, so now we get orders of magnitude more offers.

I get tons of "personal" emails from sales reps trying to set up a short meeting with me to discuss my hiring needs.

You're not going to find anything near as beautiful in the US for a decent cost of living. I would move to Wellington in a heartbeat if I could. Imagine San Francisco without all the traffic and homelessness.