Hacker News Reader

jdauriemmaon More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

> a catastrophic failure

Using what criteria? We have no way of knowing what infection rates would be like today had Biden not been elected.

jdauriemmaon Will Machines Replace Us? Machine-Authored Texts and the Future of Scholarship

In fact, humans can adapt more quickly to new situations than computers can, which is one of the reasons we're still around today.

Anyone else find that slightly chilling?

jdauriemmaon Bugs are evolving to eat plastic

I wonder what waste products the enzyme produces? Apologies if this is a nonsensical question, I don't know much about biology.

jdauriemmaon Why Wolfram tech isn’t open source (2019)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t there open source licenses that don’t permit unauthorized distribution? If so, couldn’t they safely release the source code without worrying about competition from forks?

jdauriemmaon The web is fucked

"Web 1.0" being billed as "glorious" is a stretch, to say the least. There was a lot to dislike about the early web but the glow of nostalgia covers up those blemishes. "Web 1.0" was great for some people and not-so-great for others. There are good reasons why "Web 2.0" happened, and to truly understand it we need to separate the corporatization of the internet from the actual human needs that were and are being addressed by social media, et al.

jdauriemmaon Code to flood Kellogg with bogus job applications after strikers sacked

This isn't the case, though, the intent is to disrupt their ability to hire non-union workers by submitting bad data, not by taking down their ability to ingest data in general.

jdauriemmaon Some experts suggest Omicron variant may have evolved in an animal host

Issues like this highlight the importance of the emerging One Health (https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/index.html) approach to tackling human, animal, and environmental health. Transdisciplinary collaboration across multiple health modalities is the only complete way to tackle large-scale health issues.

jdauriemmaon I test in prod

Full-stack smugness

jdauriemmaon I test in prod

I think your reply to my smug comment is also smug! It’s smugness all the way down!

jdauriemmaon I test in prod

And what in the article do you disagree with?

jdauriemmaon I test in prod

This is a common misconception about testing in prod. It’s not about the logic. To quote the article: “Once you deploy, you aren’t testing code anymore, you’re testing systems.”

jdauriemmaon I test in prod

You absolutely can and should test in prod in these cases.

jdauriemmaon I test in prod

The one I replied to, plus others. Hence, "some."

jdauriemmaon I test in prod

After reading a few smug comments, I've concluded that some of the folks in this thread have never worked on an application where the production scale is many, many orders of magnitude greater than preproduction environments. There's no substitution for "testing in prod." If you're not "testing in prod" with your really-big application, you're not testing enough.

jdauriemmaon I test in prod

Nowhere in the article did the author say they were "proud." Did you read the full text? It's entirely reasonable.

jdauriemmaon Show HN: Pimp My Readme

Thank you for sharing! For those using this service, please keep in mind that screen readers are not able to access text in images. Since the markdown output does not contain `alt` text, use care when copypasting this into your `README.md`; someone who is visually impaired will not be able to perceive it.

Further reading: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H37.html

jdauriemmaon Show HN: Facemodel, create 3D models of your head from a selfie

Thanks for that explanation!

jdauriemmaon Show HN: Facemodel, create 3D models of your head from a selfie

Why do I need an account to use this?

jdauriemmaon ‘Exhausted and underpaid’: teachers across the US are leaving their jobs

Your comment is misleading and I'm hoping it's not intentional.

As with anything in the bizarre municipal-county-state-federal labyrinth that constitutes the US public school system, things vary dramatically from place to place. One issue with many districts' pay tables is that they have too few steps, which is not good for "older members." As someone who was a public school teacher for six years, I also think many teachers would challenge your opinion that "teacher pay overall is just fine."

I'd like to see data on places where, as you imply, unions decide who gets the "worst classrooms" - when I was teaching in Chicago Public Schools, I heard that was once the case in a bygone era. Is this actually happening in 2021?

jdauriemmaon It takes a PhD to develop that

This is well-said and resonates with me quite a bit. How do we build expertise in an engineering organization where the best engineers are incentivized not to engineer?

jdauriemmaon How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum

It seems to me that the industry's original sin with Agile was treating it as anything other than a model for managing a team of software consultants. There are certain types of internal product teams that can meaningfully emulate this paradigm, particularly in a B2B context where a tight feedback loop can be cultivated with customers. Chances are, though, that product teams, particularly in DTC businesses, don't have close enough relationships with their end users to be able to practice Agile as written.

jdauriemmaon Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

Add Starbucks to that list

jdauriemmaon Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

Autoplay warning

jdauriemmaon RIP Jekyll (The Genesis of the Jamstack)

I love Jekyll. I haven't upgraded it in years because I simply haven't had to. It does the job and that's the highest praise I can give a piece of software.

jdauriemmaon RIP Jekyll (The Genesis of the Jamstack)

Jekyll's commit history suggests the "RIP" title is, shall we say, exaggerated.

https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll/commits/master

jdauriemmaon Ask HN: How Do You Learn?

If we're talking about skill acquisition, I like to learn through making up random projects to do. Usually I'll read until I get the gist, start going as far as I can go before hitting a wall, then read some more. I don't have the patience to sit through videos; in-depth technical writing with realistic examples works best for me.

jdauriemmaon Semver doesn't mean major.minor.patch, it means fails.features.bugs

Almost an IP address

jdauriemmaon Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake (2020)

The most effective manager-engineer relationships I've seen are built upon a problem-solving culture, rather than feature-shipping. If your goal is to solve problem X in Q3, your managers and engineers have far more flexibility to collaborate and compromise. If your goal is to ship X features in Q3, your managers have less flexibility and your engineers have an incentive to cut corners.

jdauriemmaon We Still Don’t Get Things Done

Yes! I used to be obsessive about TODOs but never found a solution that worked for more than a year. After the novelty wore off, my lists would grow longer and the satisfaction of clearing them would wane. Then I just stopped.

And my productivity grew anyway! If I value the task, it gets done because it stays on my mind. Reminders help because there’s no giant list to maintain or to make me feel guilty or defeated. Without the TODOs, I have been more spontaneous and naturally more selective about where I focus my attention.

jdauriemmaon Do nothing (2020)

"What have you tried so far?" is a phrase I say a lot when colleagues request assistance. Those six words can be remarkably effective at focusing the requester's efforts without giving them the cold shoulder.