HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

marktucker

147 karma · joined August 8, 2010

https://amazingmarvin.com
submissionscomments
marktucker··on Why time seems to pass faster as we age
I could recommend taiko (Japanese) drums as an adult hobby. You very quickly get off the ground in terms of making wonderful music together with a group.
marktucker··on Xonsh: Python-powered, cross-platform, Unix-gazing shell
It’s a cool shell. I used it for a half a year. And then it started crashing on me every ten minutes or so. That’s when I came to appreciate how important the stability of such a tool is.
marktucker··on I got robbed of my first kernel contribution
Maybe you’re not a native English speaker? “Getting robbed” can also mean not getting something you are justly deserved.
marktucker··on Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock
What amount of money do you think you'd have to pay them in order for them to say "Yeah, that's enough. I'm not going to use my position to my advantage."?
marktucker··on TODO apps are meant for robots
Point #2 was the reason we made our todo app. It was amazing how many apps had due dates but not do dates. Today you should see the tasks that you WANT to do, and not ALL your tasks, and definitely not just the tasks that MUST be done by today.

The rest of the points are solid as well. Dealing with the downward spiral is the most challenging and interesting. I personally always solved this by putting my head in my wife's lap and talking through it. This is not scalable, so our solution is a "procrastination wizard" that walks you through getting started when you're in a downward spiral. We've gotten good feedback that it's helped people recover from spiraling, so there's definitely hope for solving this with a tool, and I think an LLM could be a good solution here!

marktucker··on Lab Leak 2.0?
This may be the standard approach, but the question is how else it could have happened other than some GoF procedure. Any idea what the odds are of this ratio happening by chance?
marktucker··on When WikiLeaks bumped into the CIA: Operation Kudo exposed [video]
Posted last week here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29723433

TL;DW Guy thinks information should be free. Thinks an informed society is important. Thinks journalistic freedom is necessary for that. Thinks Julian Assange should be free.

Video is about the circumstances around the foiling of the plot to get Julian Assange out of the country by means of becoming an Ecuador diplomat. There was a meeting between JA and an Ecuadorian diplomat during the final stages of the plan (end of 2017 I think). This was high priority for US intelligence. One company inspected the fire extinguishers just before the meeting. The fire extinguisher was later found to be bugged. Each day around the time of the meeting there was a Ford Focus or a police car parked in front of the building allegedly collecting signals from the bugs and being ready to rock if necessary (often there were multiple dudes in the car, once 8 cups of coffee were brought to a police car). High quality surveillance of one such car reveals a dude holding case notes mentioning what to do in case the video surveillance goes out and JA tries to leave the building, including shooting out tires. Mentions operation kudo (meaning has something to do with “friend”), which the presenter suspects to be a joint operation between the CIA and the London metropolitan police since it used MS7 (something like that) and MET acronyms. This would all be very much a breach of inviolability of diplomatic missions from Vienna convention. Lawsuits are underway apparently. In the end Ecuador gave up on this plan due to diplomatic pressure from US.

Presenter was himself surveilled on behalf of the CIA but things have calmed down since a yahoo news article last year described some of the circumstances above, though he said it was also filled with some misinformation.

Might not be 100% accurate. I was distracted.

marktucker··on When Wikileaks bumped into the CIA: Operation Kudo exposed [video]
Guy thinks information should be free. Thinks an informed society is important. Thinks journalistic freedom is necessary for that. Thinks Julian Assange should be free.

Video is about the circumstances around the foiling of the plot to get Julian Assange out of the country by means of becoming an Ecuador diplomat. There was a meeting between JA and an Ecuadorian diplomat during the final stages of the plan (end of 2017 I think). This was high priority for US intelligence. One company inspected the fire extinguishers just before the meeting. The fire extinguisher was later found to be bugged. Each day around the time of the meeting there was a Ford Focus or a police car parked in front of the building allegedly collecting signals from the bugs and being ready to rock if necessary (often there were multiple dudes in the car, once 8 cups of coffee were brought to a police car). High quality surveillance of one such car reveals a dude holding case notes mentioning what to do in case the video surveillance goes out and JA tries to leave the building, including shooting out tires. Mentions operation kudo (meaning has something to do with “friend”), which the presenter suspects to be a joint operation between the CIA and the London metropolitan police since it used MS7 (something like that) and MET acronyms. This would all be very much a breach of inviolability of diplomatic missions from Vienna convention. Lawsuits are underway apparently. In the end Ecuador gave up on this plan due to diplomatic pressure from US.

Presenter was himself surveilled on behalf of the CIA but things have calmed down since a yahoo news article last year described some of the circumstances above, though he said it was also filled with some misinformation.

Might not be 100% accurate. I was distracted.

marktucker··on New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit
I've heard people say good things about dominos in Switzerland in France but I have zero interest in trying it to compare with my experience in the USA.
marktucker··on Memory leaks are crippling my M1 MacBook Pro
For me (on Catalina), it's May 10, 2005.
marktucker··on Losing Covid-19 antibody immunity after six months after Pfizer vaccine
Maybe you had a recent exposure?
marktucker··on Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address
I don't have any opinion about "made in Switzerland" for software (other than that it does make a good impression for my customers), but anecdotally (at least when shopping within Switzerland) I have noticed that the "made in Switzerland" stuff at the store is better quality. And sure it's more expensive, but all the crap products are expensive too.
marktucker··on GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down
Kevin Wayne is one of the authors of Algorithms 4th ed. by Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne and he has a github repository called "algs4". Pearson sent github a DMCA notice for this repository and another. I'm not sure exactly what content he hosted in "algs4".
marktucker··on Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment
I have a small b2c business and one of our key differentiators is the customizability. Users LOVE to turn stuff on and off and customize fonts, colors, and every bit to their liking. Sure it makes bugs and some users post ugly screenshots, but there’s definitely still value there that users recognize.

I’ve also noticed that surprisingly many of my friends have changed their Gmail theme.

marktucker··on Nearly 28M licensed Texas drivers hit by data breach
2.8e7 records ;)
marktucker··on macOS is required to develop – no questions asked
What laptop stand is that?
marktucker··on Facebook employees speak out on political ads
Facebook has major platform lock-in for me, though, since that's where all my friends are. The proper solution is to vote with your ad-blocker.
marktucker··on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2019 – Show and tell
https://amazingmarvin.com/ has been my side project since 2016 (wow!). I will finally quit my job at the end of the year to go full-time on it (co-founder is already full-time). I worried a lot about doing something that had already been done 1000 times (a productivity tool), but now that it's working out I realized there's always room for a better mousetrap! Another surprising learning: it's still possible to have a product that people will pay for in 2019 with a mediocre phone app.
marktucker··on MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy
My wife recently bought a macbook pro and I hate the keyboard (her comment was "you get used to it"). My 2015 MBP is running real slow and I didn't want to wait for next year's refreshed keyboard so I just ordered an oryx pro with ridiculous specs for less than I would have spent on a MBP (although probably the screen is worse and definitely the battery too - we'll see about the rest of the hardware). Really curious to see how it will feel to back to linux.
marktucker··on React profiling component to measure the "cost" of rendering
6 months in I rewrote my meteor app in react for a startup. At the time I was worried it was one of those developer procrastination moments, but it ended up as a HUGE win for us. Our customers are amazed at how fast we can implement features and fix problems, which I credit to react and doing things client-side as much as possible (i.e. pouchdb).

Alas, there's a login.

marktucker··on Show HN: Dark Mode List – A List of Apps That Support Dark Mode
I use Amazing Marvin in dark mode :) for day planning and task management.
marktucker··on Lessons from migrating a large codebase to React 16
You can do:

    npm install --save react-router@3
which will add "react-router": "^3.2.0" to your package.json.
marktucker··on Lessons from migrating a large codebase to React 16
They are maintaining two branches. The 3.x branch has the same API as 2.x and works with React 16.
marktucker··on Revisiting 64-bit-ness in Visual Studio and elsewhere (2015)
In my experience, Visual Studio performance has improved significantly since VS2010, but if you compare it to VC6, it's a joke. There's still an old PC at the office running it, and double clicking a project opens the IDE and loads the project in less than a second. It's beautiful.
marktucker··on Show HN: Wonderling - Questions app for connecting with friends, family, and S.O
Dev here. Wonderling asks you and your friend the same question, and once both have responded, the answers are revealed. Things like "What would you do if you were invisible for a day?" or "Have you ever been caught naked?".

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, one of the things that really appealed to me about this app was how simple it is. It felt like something I could implement by myself relatively quickly (wife did design, sister did content). Of course it ended up being a ton of work.

Built with react-native + redux, go appengine backend, and SNS.

marktucker··on Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)
That's just to get the work visa. If you are married to a Swiss, for example, and get a visa via family reunion, companies can employ you without having to make this argument.
marktucker··on Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)
Are you sure about that? Federal taxes in Switzerland are peanuts. And depending on which Canton/Gemeinde you live in, taxes could be MUCH lower than what you would pay in the USA.
marktucker··on Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)
In my experience, all you have to do is (passably) speak swiss german to be accepted by the locals. A lot of Germans live here 10+ years without speaking swiss german and I notice some distaste from the Swiss since a Swiss guy will feel like it's rude if he doesn't speak high german with a German, and many really don't like speaking high german.

There's definitely other forms of xenophobia here, though. There are a lot of negative stereotypes about some of the refugees that have come to Switzerland over the years, and many Swiss I talk to dislike the idea of refugees coming to Switzerland and choosing not to work (being unable to work is a different story).

marktucker··on Cash: An absurdly small jQuery alternative for modern browsers
I find fetch very painful to use since the promises don't reject on non-2XX! I use axios instead. This is especially so sad when using async/await :( https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/18

  fetch(url)
    .then((res) => {
      if (res.statusCode < 200 || res.statusCode > 299) {
        throw new Error("Why do I have to write this with every request?");
      }
    });
marktucker··on My Development Environment, Part 1: GNU Screen
I just use a different prefix on the remote machine. Would that help?
Page 1 of 2Next →