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gregd

2,444 karma · joined November 30, 2010

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gregd··on Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
Does anyone know what the environmental ramifications are of sinking presumably noisy and hot tubes into the ocean? I've been in server rooms and they aren't exactly quiet. The picture of the racks look to me like standard 1U servers.
gregd··on Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage
I'm 53. I have a 25 year IT career and the last 10 of it has been coding and sql server mostly.
gregd··on Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage
I've been coding off and on professionally for over a decade and I STILL feel like an imposter.

I still have to look stuff up constantly.

I still watch how-to code videos everywhere.

Don't know if I'm alone or other people just can't bring themselves to admit that.

gregd··on The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account
My wife owns an email address in Gmail and you wouldn't think it was a very popular email address. Until of course someone's account information at numerous shopping sites began showing up. My wife contacted this person by phone and it turned out to be an elderly woman. The elderly woman was not having it and began arguing with my wife about whose email address it was. The elderly woman ranted on and on about HOW DARE MY WIFE TAKE HER EMAIL ADDRESS!?*@4@~!

She just didn't get it and more and more new accounts began showing up.

When that didn't work, I tracked down one of her relatives on Facebook, who happened to be younger so she got the whole Internet thing, and explained that her elderly grandmother (it turns out) was using an address that didn't belong to her. Her granddaughter told me she would talk to her grandma and tell her how silly she was being and promised to explain how her grandma could keep herself safe while shopping online.

No new accounts in the grandma's name have shown up since...

gregd··on Asana S-1
Dunno. You can look at their pricing tiers for yourself: https://asana.com/pricing. Also, it's not obvious that the Premium tier and above, despite saying it's "per person/per month", it's 5 person minimum. Gah
gregd··on Asana S-1
Except Planner has no timeline or Gantt charts, despite claiming most of last year, that Gantt charts where on their roadmap. I've found Planner to be nothing more than a glorified Kanban board, which is also something Trello does much better even on their Free Tier using your 1 powerup of a Gantt chart.
gregd··on Asana S-1
I'm not sure I'm really buying your statistics. There are ways to go about prioritizing roadmap items that aren't rooted in customer size (think UserVoice). The company can also have a well documented and published roadmap so that I can easily see what's coming down the pipe and whether or not it's going to factor into my buying decision (I get item x which is something I really want - in a couple of months).
gregd··on Asana S-1
Shadow profiles? Huh?

I simply put tasks in Asana and want to view it on a timeline like a Gantt chart. I can't do that unless I pay 5x10.99/month. There is a huge gap between $0 and $70/month.

What revenue are they cannibalizing if I'm not going to go from $0/month to $70/month when I'm only one person? They just lose me as a customer going forward.

gregd··on Asana S-1
The thing that drives me absolutely bonkers with Asana (others do this as well) is that the freelancer has to upgrade their "free" account to roughly $70/month to get functionality like seeing a Timeline (think Gantt). Their pricing isn't clear that to upgrade to Premium (to get Timeline) says it's $10.99/month. It's not until you get to the next screen that it tells you it's 5x10.99/month because there is a five person minimum.

Almost none of these project management tools are built with full functionality for a freelancer who manages projects and people doing the tasks/projects, but doesn't need them to log into the project management tool.

gregd··on Microsoft Analyzed Data on Its Newly Remote Workforce
I think that the increase they're talking about probably came about because people where highly stressed out and worried about Covid-19. A certain degree of comfort comes from reading about shared experiences during this stressful time on a company-wide Yammer feed.
gregd··on Microsoft Analyzed Data on Its Newly Remote Workforce
I used to live and work in Portland, Oregon. My commute in the mornings was, at it's worst, 30 mins to my campus. That same commute back home took 2-3 hours.

I've been working remotely off and on for the past 10-15 years and I cannot even tell you how much my quality of life has improved to not have to commute anymore.

gregd··on Ask HN: Something like Khan Academy but full curriculum for grade schoolers?
All of the kids in our Academy have reported nothing but positive experiences with Outschool and really enjoy the courses. It's the first place we all look when augmenting their schooling outside of our Academy. If any of the various teachers had been bad, we would have heard about it. I can't speak to the selection criteria, only the perspective of students.
gregd··on Ask HN: Something like Khan Academy but full curriculum for grade schoolers?
We homeschool our children and we also help run a homeschool academy. A lot of the kids love Outschool.
gregd··on Tell HN: Google drops blogspot.in, breaking hundreds of thousands of permalinks
Information silos are an issue with every org at every level, not just with technical people. There are technological tools to help facilitate knowledge sharing (think enterprise wikis, password sharing, generic email inboxes, etc.) coupled with policies requiring things to be done a certain way (think register domains with this generic email acct., etc.). I find it interesting that companies don't put further effort into this...for exactly the reason in the original link.
gregd··on Show HN: One stop platform to grow your career
"not a job portal" and yet, "Apply directly through our app to different career options."

This is ask HN wherein you show off your website with the expectation that HN users will offer feedback. Some would call this judgment. So what did you think ask HN was?

gregd··on 'Into The Wild' bus removed from Alaska wilderness
Nobody has an issue with you walking into the woods with little to no prep...and RETURNING.

As someone who used to be a firefighter, the issue is that walking into the woods with little to no prep, means that there is an extremely high likelihood that you'll need to be rescued. This of course puts a lot of other lives in danger (during the rescue or recovery operation) because you decided to not be prepared.

gregd··on Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
I've worked remotely now for just shy of 10 years in a row and more like 15 years total out of a 25 year IT career.

I have found the biggest hurdles to remote work usually boil down to one thing, your clients or employer and fellow employees, who still "go into" an office, need to buy into the remote worker situation. This usually entails wrapping their heads around fewer meetings (even adhoc ones) and utilizing online tools exclusively...namely Slack, Teams, Skype, etc.

What has helped tremendously is that since most companies adopted a sudden and an across the board "work from home" policy, it's forced collaboration via different avenues. Those of us who already worked from home, now are included in meetings and discussions that we would normally be left out of because our face wasn't physically in an office.

I'm hopeful that we'll see a broader adoption rate even for those that still like the physical office, will be able to work from home on an as wanted basis..sick kid....sick spouse...deliveries expected...plumbing needs fixed..etc.

gregd··on Excerpt from Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez (2016)
I couldn't even make it through the Wired article because the writing was too atrocious. It reminded me how much I loathe bro culture.
gregd··on Facebook’s New Remote Salary Policy Is “Barbaric”
It's not a stretch to imagine other companies looking at what Facebook gets away with, to also model their behavior. This isn't endemic to Facebook, so disregarding this as "only applying to Facebook" is absurd.
gregd··on Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
I updated it and apologized for the error.
gregd··on Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
Sorry. When I cut/paste the subtitle of the article on submission, I thought I grabbed the entire subtext. Not sure how that happened, but I've edited the title.
gregd··on Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?
HN Special Chrome Extension
gregd··on Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%
I'm shocked that people continue to be shocked that this happens under Capitalism.
gregd··on Rebuilding James Bond's Apple IIc – A Software Forgery [video]
I love stories like this..ones that hit you as a child that completely change the direction of your life.
gregd··on Rebuilding James Bond's Apple IIc – A Software Forgery [video]
Speaking of floppy's I remember the brand to get for the Apple machines at that time was Elephant. Because "an elephant never forgets".
gregd··on Rebuilding James Bond's Apple IIc – A Software Forgery [video]
Slightly jealous of your //c.
gregd··on Rebuilding James Bond's Apple IIc – A Software Forgery [video]
Me too! They single-handedly got me interested in "making a computer do stuff" with those charts of peeks and pokes! Here I am ~35 years later and I'm still making computers do stuff.

Well I started on a TRS-80 but quickly became obsessed when I got my hands on a II plus and then an IIe. I never got to use a //c but remember a friend got one. It was as close to portable as you could get then and I remember wanting one really badly.

gregd··on Rebuilding James Bond's Apple IIc – A Software Forgery [video]
I'm fairly certain it's //c to ][c
gregd··on Rebuilding James Bond's Apple IIc – A Software Forgery [video]
As someone who coveted the Apple //c in high school, I absolutely loved this.

Does anyone remember Beagle Bros software?

gregd··on Ask HN: Why do most job sites hide salary?
Having to reach out to find the salary range, is already wasting time.
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