keraf

It will probably save you time too with layoff emails trained using Google's internal data.

Awesome game! Really addictive :-)

  Perfect landing, incredible, you can’t get better than this

  Score: 101.1 point landing
  Speed: 0.7mph
  Angle: 0.1°
  Time: 26 seconds 
  Flips: 0
  Max speed: 32.4mph
  Max height: 194ft
  Engine used: 53 times
  Boosters used: 30 times

It's quite ironic how much critics are aimed at China being a surveillance state when the EU train is going full steam ahead in that direction... Dark days ahead.

Craft Docs (https://craft.do/) | Engineering (multiple roles) | Full Time | Remote (EU Timezone) or hybrid in Budapest (HU) or Edinburgh (UK)

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We're building an app for crafting beautiful documents and taking notes. Already available for 2 years, won the Mac App of the year 2021 award by Apple, good user base (individuals and business) and community (11k+ on Slack), raised a series B recently, plenty of runway, great engineers. We're growing steadily and have the ambition to deliver the best document writing experience out there.

Stack: NodeJS, TypeScript, React, Swift, AWS, Serverless

More info: https://www.craft.do/careers/

Was in the same boat in the beginning of the year, got +10 years of professional experience at some good companies. Got ghosted or rejected before the intro call a lot, despite matching 100% the job description, sometimes even ticking all extra/bonus points. It was very frustrating, especially since I never received any feedback on why... I guess it's because I hopped from job to job at a 1 year interval in the past years.

I ended up finding a really nice job via my network. Took some time but I'm very happy now. Ping me your LinkedIn or CV, the company I'm at is still hiring. My email is the same as my website in my HN profile, only replace the first dot with an @.

Awesome, will check it out! Thanks for sharing & building this!

The other day, I was looking to embed a tile based world map without detailed zoom levels (up to z11-12) into an offline desktop application. I was surprised by the difficulty to achieve this. The source formats are really heavy (120GB+ for planet) and the tools either too slow and/or overly complex (for example requiring setting up a DB to import the data in). Most tools I found seemed to be for making maps for smaller areas. I ended giving up...

Maybe I've done it wrong. Would love some good pointers on this. Any simple ways to generate vector tiles for a world map up to zoom levels 11 or 12?

Not available to everyone though.

> Only members of the civil aviation community, incorporating airlines, airports, companies, organizations, associations, government agencies and qualified individuals, may register a domain name in .aero.

I'd probably go with NextJS and Pocketbase[0]. I like to start with everything on a single instance/machine, cheaper and less overhead, allows me to focus more on building things rather than ops.

[0] https://pocketbase.io/

Thanks for sharing this, it resonates a lot with me. I've seen too many friends sucked in bad relationships, jobs or places (apartments, cities). Despite having people around telling them about all the red flags, they keep going with it, only to realise later down the road it was bad for them. Change can feel scary but is sometimes necessary.

I've been there as well and I'm thankful to the people who shared, sometimes hard to swallow, truths that helped me see clearer. That being said, the grass is not always greener elsewhere. Consult people around you and listen to their opinions, an outside perspective can give you great insight to your current situation. Sometimes the change needed is within yourself. Also, if you see a firend in that situation, be there for them and be honest, people get stuck in this and it can take them into really dark places.

Glad you got out and found something better OP. Don't resent past experiences, it's a waste of the time you saved. Take it as a learning experience, we all do mistakes.

Some decades ago, my dad's best friend's car got stolen in Geneva. They found it a few days later 50km away in France. The police returned the car to him and said it was used in a jewelry store robbery in Geneva. Not sure how or why, but they returned it to him with its contents it was found with; two Mont Blanc pens (worth 700$ each) and a few high quality tools that were probably used to break into the car. We got a fancy pen in the family since...

On the topic of car theft, my dad used to have a BMW E30 325iX back in the days. The car was very sought after by thieves, so his cousin (who's a mechanic) installed a switch under the seat to cut-off the gas between the tank and the engine. The car was broken into a few times but never disappeared.

It's just missing VALL-E for vocals, and it can go on tour.

I'm a full stack web developer and held 2 positions at game dev studios in the past.

The first one was very much a traditional full stack experience, developing front end features for the website and web based apps, as well as back end features for the web and games. We worked very closely with the game development team, so day to day I had to go into dev builds to see if my changes worked properly. I loved the job, it was the games I always wanted to work on, colleagues and management were great. But crunch was hard, ended up burning out which took a while to recover. Looking back at it, I would do it all again, I learned so much and I'm proud of what my team and I achieved.

The second job was as a UI developer, using the Gameface middleware, which basically renderers a web frame on top of the game, allowing you to design and write UIs with web tech. I was doing React there. The job was alright but the management was horrendous, a complete shit show at some points. Ended up leaving after a year and never came back to the games industry.

For both jobs, the salary was lower than other web dev jobs. And at times, it can be quite tough with crunch. But on the bright side, you meet great people and learn lots about game development even if you're not directly in the production pipeline of the game itself. I guess if your focus is to work on the game, you can easily transition within the company.

Your tech stack can be relevant depending on where you apply. Experiences wary greatly between studios, sometimes even within the same company. But I noticed a trend where working conditions and salaries are getting better in the industry, so maybe it's a good time to join. Have a look at career pages of game dev studios, you might find something you like.

Or maybe look at the indie route, working on your own game idea during your spare time. I'd highly recommend starting with Godot[0], the concepts of that engine are quite easy to grasp and you can produce really good results with it.

[0] https://godotengine.org/

Yeah that's a good point. In our case, all smart systems can work independently (via their own app or physical controls) or be integrated with other smart home platforms. It's true that if they would ever move out, the HA instance might be gone, making the house loose a bit of its brains when it comes automation. But the base to build on is there, still has value I guess. And the rack with Ethernet in all rooms has some value too.

Edit: The only "problematic" part would be the cameras. Not sure if Unifi cams can work with other platforms than Ubiquiti's. But in any case, the wiring is there (Ethernet) and the cameras can be replaced or a new owner could bring their own Unifi surveillance console (or we could sell it with it).

I only have only few (less than 10) IoT devices using WiFi and they are spread over 2 fairly good access points. The rest are either wired or using ZigBee. My router doesn't have WiFi functionality itself, it's a Unifi Dream Machine SE[0] with the APs and cameras connected in PoE. It's plugged on a UPS, so hopefully the internet should still work if the electricity cuts.

Regarding your issues, I'm not an expert but I would recommend deploying more access points (pick some good ones) on the areas where your IoT devices are. Best advice I have is to wire your access points, I always had bad results when bridging them wirelessly. Although if you are in a remote area with little interference, you could get better results.

[0] https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-unifi-os-cons...

My choice with their new house was pretty simple. They wanted a smart home, and being the tech son I would inevitably have to help them at some point. So either I debug a system that is open and familiar, with remote access and reliable software/hardware. Or I deal with some closed proprietary trash which will end-up with me on the phone with some incompetent cash grab company. As mentioned in my post, the latter would have cost 3 to 4 times the price of all the hardware we bought (see the link) and we would just get some SBC or cheap tower instead.

With the current setup, I can easily connect via VPN to configure network devices. Ubiquiti also makes it very simple to apply network changes or upgrade it remotely (as long as it's from the same brand). I set up extensive monitoring and alerting to proactively resolve issues. I also gave my parents some training and docs on how to plug things to the Ethernet sockets (if they want to setup a new printer for example) or what to do to bypass the router (rewiring) in case the main router fails.

As a side note to helping my parents. They are both 70, not the most tech literate people but they manage to do all basic things without much trouble. I put them both on Ubuntu 8 years ago, never had any issues whatsoever. I get maybe one message or call in 6 months for a question, but it's usually web related. Once in a while when I get home I update the distro, but that's pretty much all the maintenance I do. I have Teamviewer on all their devices, just in case but never really had to use it so far.

Not my home but my parent's (as I'm a "nomad"). They recently built a new house and put me in charge of the tech with a handsome budget, so I built a rack just like it would be my place. Ended up costing 1/4th of what other "smart home" companies quoted. We got way better bang for the buck and software capabilities.

On the server/NAS, a QNAP TS-464eU (4x 4TB HDD RAID 5 + 2x 1TO SSD RAID 1), I'm running Container Station with 4 docker containers:

  - Home Assistant => For all the home automation, displayed in the kitchen on a tablet.
  - Adguard => To remove internet trash and protect my parents when browsing the web.
  - NextCloud => For contact, calendar and file sharing in the family as well as backups.
  - Caddy => Reverse proxy to make NextCloud available from the outside.

Computers (including mine) are backed up daily via NextCloud. The NAS is also backed up off-site with a cloud provider.

I did a more comprehensive list of the setup[0] if you are interested.

[0] https://www.craft.do/s/W8r9KufHct0zG7

The great British firewall, starts here, ends where?

As I understand, the lists are maintained per carrier but implemented based on UK regulation. I still find it baffling that despite giving extensive personal information (ID/Passport, bill as proof of address, credit score) to get a mobile contract for an adult, this is opt-out with no questions asked (for example "do you wish to enable/disable this feature?" when the contract is signed). This leaves a lot of room for abuse, as it's demonstrated here.

Personal anecdote, I had to phone Three to disable the filter a few years back when I wanted to browse 9GAG on my commute to work...

I moved to ProtonMail (from G-Suite) and I'm pretty happy overall. Their Unlimited offering is interesting as it includes VPN, storage and calendar.

The few things I dislike about ProtonMail is the search and the fact they don't have the email client app on F-Droid. If you decide to move to Proton, I would advise against importing all your emails (maybe just the last X months). Keep a local backup of all your emails to search them, that worked the best for me and avoided cluttering my new email box.

I added my Lego Rollercoaster on Home Assistant[0] a little while back. Nothing fancy, just cut a Power Functions extension wire to put a relay in-between and an ESP board to control it. On one side I had the power pack and the other the motor. Would have loved to switch out the power pack for a constant power source but never got to it.

If you're looking to do some Power Functions (PF) hackery, there are some interesting articles that cover the wiring and working of PF gadgets more in detail[1][2].

[0] https://twitter.com/iamkeraf/status/1274433444446113792 [1] https://www.hackster.io/Notthemarsian/take-control-over-lego... [2] https://www.philohome.com/pf/pf.htm

Having community hosted servers with their own moderation was just so much better. Sure, the moderation level would vary from server to server, sometimes with immature admins giving out bans for no reasons, but you would ultimately find your way to servers that match you the best. And often, people would become regulars, finding the same players on the same servers, that was the best aspect of online gaming, finding a community.

Games stopping to provide self-hosted servers is also what made LAN parties increasingly difficult. Having to rent game servers, provide decent bandwidth and not being able to run third party tools (for recording scores or set modifiers) made it impossible to use modern games in a 50 people LAN party with a low budget.

Thanks for sharing! Would be nice to see it stream the response back with SSE just like the OpenAI API does when the "stream: true" parameter is passed[0].

Shameless plug: We've just updated to davinci-003 for the AI Assistant (MacOS/iOS/iPadOS only) in Craft[1]. Free accounts have a handful of requests included if you wish to try out the new model on there as well.

[0] https://beta.openai.com/docs/api-reference/completions/creat... [1] https://craft.do/

My most impactful project was definitely NoCoin [0], the first web miner blocker. Back when Monero miners started appearing and sneakily mining on pages, like The Pirate Bay for example, I decided to throw together a browser extension that would simply block requests to the resources that hosted these mining scripts. The project was in no way a technical achievement, it was simply intercepting requests and blocking them based on a list. I could have very well added the resources to some other project like uBlock origin. But it got traction, ended up in the press (WIRED, Motherboard, Gizmodo) and ultimately started being integrated within browsers (Opera was first) and most of the popular ad blockers. The project lost its relevance as everyone else was doing it better and maintaining the list of blocked resources was too time consuming for me. Nevertheless, the goal was achieved, which was to "get rid" of crypto mining on the web. The mission got carried by bigger actors, which brings me more satisfaction than the popularity of the project.

Another impactful project of mine was also a browser extension. Internal tool that started as a lunch time project to make my team's life easier. Can't go in detail on that one, but basically they liked it and start suggesting improvements. So did a department that was working with us. And bit by bit, it became a really useful tool that became standard in these departments. Last I heard, the tool is now deployed company-wide. Crazy to think it started just from some lunch time hacking :-)

[0] https://github.com/keraf/NoCoin

I hate to break it to you, but PUBG throws you in with bots for 10 sessions until you can play on live servers. You can get out of this earlier by completing the 4 challenges listed [0]. Once you play on live servers, it gets really difficult. I tried for a while, got pretty decent, dropped the game for a few months, tried again when I got back and it felt like starting from bottom again. It's a fairly fun game with friends, especially if they are regular players and you get carried around by them, you just listen and do what they tell you, try to aim straight, and it works out.

[0] https://steamcommunity.com/app/578080/discussions/1/31801111...

I enjoy more slower paced FPS' these days that don't require to maintain skill. Fini the Call of Duty and Battlefield days, these licenses have been milked long enough anyways. Even the newer licenses like PUBG or Overwatch require a regular time commitment to be any good at it (which make them enjoyable).

I find myself having a great time on Rising Storm 2: Vietnam[0], Insurgency: Sandstorm[1] or Hell Let Loose[2]. They tend to have more mature audiences and less skill grind, easier to just jump in a casual game once in a while without getting obliterated for a consecutive hour.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/418460/Rising_Storm_2_Vie... [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/581320/Insurgency_Sandsto... [2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/

The "closest" I found that filled the void Pebble left are these hybrid watches like the ScanWatch I mentioned. All fully digital ones just go overboard with features, I find them too gimmicky and they come with an awful battery life. I don't want another smartphone on my wrist that I need to charge every night...

I miss the simplicity, yet the huge amount possibilities (via their store and SDK) and watch faces the Pebble had. They still managed to keep the device distraction free along with a good battery life. I'm all ears for any good Pebble-like smartwatch if anyone knows one.

As a big Pebble fan, I was really sad to see the company go without any similar alternatives in the market (at the time). My watches ended up having various hardware issues over the years, so I switched to something else. The efforts Rebble has put in to keep these devices alive is amazing. If they grow bigger, I'd love to see them do hardware.

In the meantime, I'm wearing a Withings ScanWatch [0]. Not as extendable as a Pebble, but it has some features I care about and doesn't distract me.

[0] https://www.withings.com/ch/en/scanwatch

While I'm always excited to see Electron alternatives, they all try to address the same issues and fall short on the exact same areas.

Yes, Electron eats a lot of resources and generates big distributables. I would love to give my users snappier and lighter desktop applications while still being able to build them with front-end web tech. On the other hand, what keeps attracting me to Electron is how feature complete and well documented it is. I tried many alternatives but there is always a point where I can't do something because the API is missing.

I wish all Electron alternatives would join their efforts to make one good framework that can compete, not only in terms of performance, but features too.

So far, I've been working with Tauri[0] for a small project and found it to be working really well despite missing a few features that I needed (and that Electron has). I have high hopes that Tauri will become the best Electron alternative out there and to use it for all my future desktop projects.

[0] https://tauri.app/

The industry is changing towards more automated testing, I heard of a lot of AAA studios implementing/creating testing frameworks. It was very uncommon back in the days, they just threw a bunch of badly paid and overworked QAs at new builds. Games are very complex, covering a wide range of behaviours in environments with a lot of randomness is difficult. With automation, the predictable behaviours (for example, testing that climbing a ladder works) can be offloaded from QA and they can focus on finding more random issues with playthroughs. I guess there was also a push from engineers without a gaming background (and being more used to TDD) that have been recruited in the industry throughout the years.

It depends on what your needs are. If you need simple auth for a single application, most languages have libraries/frameworks that cover most of your needs and are relatively trivial to implement. In .NET land you have Identity[0] for example. You just need to look up what is the most popular option for the tech you're using and if it ticks all your boxes.

If you're looking for a full fledged service that offers SSO and that you can self host (or cloud) with SDKs for most of the popular languages out there, then I'd recommend to look at Ory[1].

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/authen... [1] https://www.ory.sh/