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ensemblehq

116 karma · joined September 30, 2021

Software/Data/ML Engineer. Fractional CTO, Founder of EnsembleHQ (data platform consulting and managed services)

Reach out @ teren@<HN username>.ca

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ensemblehq··on The coolest use for the Vision Pro
Wow I’m incredibly impressed that you’ve decided to embrace VR technology. When renovating our house, it was incredibly hard (and still is) to visualize how everything. So far we just got lucky but the basement is going to be a challenge as we’re making structural adjustments.

How did you get your team to get onboard with the process? How is the ROI?

ensemblehq··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
While there is increased complexity on top of all the software thats being built today, I reckon the focus on speed (and shipping to prod) over quality has also led to the increasing number of bugs. The mindset shift from shipping quality products (not just software) to shipping something that is good enough has been the mantra of management in recent years. When business schools and tech leaders prioritize the idea that we need to be more agile and every sprint needs to be a production release, these are the results we get.
ensemblehq··on Ask HN: Who build production apps with out seeing code?
You'd probably see a lot more examples from entrepreneurs/business folks who don't have a technical background. I would never put anything materially complicated in production without thoroughly reviewing.
ensemblehq··on Ask HN: Are AWS Certs worth getting for experienced Devs?
AWS Certifications do help to a certain extent to convey your knowledge of the AWS ecosystem to consultancies and their clients. I don't have a certification but almost all of the consultancies I've worked with advocate for it just to give the client more confidence. Mind you these are the larger consultancies with larger clients so they tend to like these certifications as a signal. Have you ever had a chance to work with the various components in the ecosystem already?
ensemblehq··on Malus – Clean Room as a Service
Interested to keep updated on this point. As a consultant, I've worked on transformation of legacy applications so this would help me greatly as well. We've worked on pretty archaic systems where no one knows how the system works even if we have the source code.
ensemblehq··on How to effectively write quality code with AI
I can provide evidence for your claim. The technical debt can easily snowball if the review process is not stringent enough to keep out unnecessary functions.
ensemblehq··on How to effectively write quality code with AI
It’s going to be extremely difficult if PR and code reviews do not prune unnecessary functions. From what I’m experiencing now, there’s a lot of additional code that gets generated.
ensemblehq··on How to effectively write quality code with AI
This is exactly the issue I’m facing especially when working with AI-generated codebases.

Coding is significantly faster but my understanding of the system takes a lot longer because I’m having to merge my mental model with what was produced.

ensemblehq··on Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in
There could be many factors at play here so it’s not clear what the main issue is. However, from experience, US VC funds typically come from other US institutions and so it’s an easier sell when the corporation is US-based. Rules and regulations are more well understood and less complex for funds. The article states the requirement is to flip the structure to have the parent company based in one of the 3 countries mentioned. Presumably, better business/returns/policies
ensemblehq··on America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
What’s missing from the writer’s analysis is also the desire from the population to create such businesses. Having lived in Asia for a bit, most of these small businesses are not wildly profitable and not everyone is willing to put in the hard work and effort to running these affordable restaurants.
ensemblehq··on Ask HN: Is anyone using LLM based document processing in production?
Have you tried using non-LLM based methods? Like starting with something rules-based and working through a layered multi-model setup?

That’s what we’ve been using for document extraction where accuracy needs precision (capital markets documents, medical assessments). We had a go at pure LLM with medical documents but the output was poor and felt like it would take substantial investment to create something more robust.

ensemblehq··on Launch HN: Inconvo (YC S23) – AI agents for customer-facing analytics
Gemini has some support for Google Sheets built-in. It's under Labs now but worth a comparison: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/14218565?hl=en
ensemblehq··on Tell HN: I underestimated how lonely building solo can be
Yes - 100%. That's why I have a Slack where I invite friends and other people hacking away. Planning on setting up more remote social stuff to beat the 'loneliness' factor. Happy to send you an invite if you want. We're friendly.
ensemblehq··on Ask HN: What is the web template everyone uses for startups?
You can probably find a ton of similar themes to purchase on ThemeForest (https://themeforest.net/)
ensemblehq··on Fast
RE: P.P.S... God I love that humour. Actually was very funny.
ensemblehq··on Ask HN: Who is looking for a cofounder in London?
Interesting. During my time there, I found the scene to be decently vibrant. It's definitely not SF but there are quite a few events and get-togethers happening around.
ensemblehq··on Vanishing home field advantage in English football
I was actually going to comment on the same fact about professionalism growing into English football. Back when the Premier League era began compared to now is just a whole different level as what most players have been saying on SkySports. You see players playing in their mid and late 30s.

I was also going to hypothesize that players are significantly mentally equipped to cope with away pressures and their tactical shape stays more consistent regardless of being home or away.

ensemblehq··on Ask HN: How much would you pay to solve the largest problem you face?
Are they strictly focused on revenue and growth metrics? There might be a lot of relationship building needed beyond just the necessary ROI arguments.
ensemblehq··on Show HN: VSCan - Detect Malicious VSCode Extensions
This is really cool and I can see a ton of opportunities to leverage this in the enterprise. Using the scanner, does it scan what's on the marketplace as opposed to what's already installed?

I think someone had already mentioned that it would be useful to have this as an extension to scan existing installed extensions but would there be a way to scan just prior to extension installation?

ensemblehq··on Ask HN: Parental Controls You Use?
Thanks. So true. At least not the cell phones that we have today. My first was a Nokia 8310 and I already felt like a baller playing Snake.
ensemblehq··on Ask HN: Are there dev conferences focusing on "soft skills"?
I was actually thinking of setting up some coaching sessions / workshops. If you're interested, I'd love to connect with you just to get a understanding of folks would be looking for and put together a program of some sort. In exchange, I'd be happy to share my experiences and exchange ideas on improving soft skills.

I've worked as a software engineer and as a consultant and went from engineering to business back to engineering again.

ensemblehq··on Ask HN: Parental Controls You Use?
Thanks. It’s great insight. Yeah trying to balance for sure but wanted to see how extensive folks get to. The parental controls that individual apps/sites seem terribly weak. And yes, kids are incredibly smart at figuring stuff out but it sounds like the DNS layer might be the simplest. I wonder if I have to lock things down like how InfoSec teams do.

Will check out an MDM. Is that like Kandji that gets deployed on corporate devices?

ensemblehq··on Show HN: Kan.bn – An open-source alterative to Trello
Wholeheartedly agree. On-prem is still a major market to play in and have worked on many consulting engagements architecting software that plays nicely. Just curious - how do you guys deploy Flagsmith on-prem? I'm still trying to find a nice deployment pattern that aligns well with both client and vendor.
ensemblehq··on What's been your biggest technical bottleneck as a small startup lately?
I'd recommend learning about marketing basics and speaking to your target audience /ICP. From the website, it's not entirely clear what I would utilize the threatfeed to help protect my network and what are the benefits of using your threatfeed vs others.
ensemblehq··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)
An S3/Blob Storage bucket monitoring system that checks for files when you expect them to be there. This allows you to check when files are available for processing and if they are not, you’ll receive a notification via email or Slack.
ensemblehq··on Ask HN: How are you cleaning and transforming data before imports/uploads?
Through many different companies, we’ve primarily handled this with validation/transformation scripts across a variety of tools. What’s useful is attaching observability/logging and having each transformation step do one thing only (borrowing from the Unix philosophy). Having a good understanding of the schema designs for each system is key - at some organizations, we’ve codified the schemas. Pydantic models (and similar) have been very useful as well.
ensemblehq··on Why Cloudflare Is the Perfect Infrastructure for Building AI Applications
They will need to find their niche for sure. As a consultant with larger organizations, CloudFlare has never been mentioned nor recommended given most are already on one of the big cloud providers and those cloud providers already have Dev/AI offerings that are somewhat integrated. More crucially, these providers also offer support and sometimes investment to push deals through.
ensemblehq··on Arsenal FC AI Research Engineer job posting
Hey Chris. This is such an incredible opportunity and great to hear folks like you are spearheading the charge. I’ve a friend who’s leading AI at Real Madrid and it’s fascinating to hear what they’re trying to do (without him revealing the secret sauce to me!)

Does your team and department taking of analytics primarily on the footballing side? Like player performance? How does your teams work typically get incorporated and what does the day to day look like? Do you manage your own tech stack as well?

ensemblehq··on Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?
That's an awesome story. How did your brother find the opportunity to acquire the aging app?
ensemblehq··on Bench accounting services shutting down
Hey, if you're interested, happy to introduce you to my accountant. He handles our books that includes multiple currencies including GBP on wise.com.
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