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mdw

74 karma · joined November 11, 2015

https://wilko.dev
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mdw··on Solid (formerly Wise) files for bankruptcy
Absolutely wild, I honestly got concerned there for a moment… Wise (Transferwise) must be getting a lot of concerned emails about this…
mdw··on Nanos – A Unikernel
Am I the only one that got excited to see an IRC link?
mdw··on My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)
The animations are unfortunately broken on Mobile Safari :(
mdw··on European summer weather linked to North Atlantic freshwater anomalies
Earths history has had many extraordinary climate changes, we already know of events like Permian–Triassic extinction.

I appreciate many people feel an obligation for humanity to minimise its effect on climate change, but the way I see it, change is constant. If we don’t cause an extinction event, earth will do it just fine without us.

The best result for humanity is if we get off this rock asap and improve our technology. The quicker we do this the better. If we have to ruin earth and its beautiful climate in the process, so be it.

mdw··on UK to replace physical biometric immigration cards with e-visas
Govt policy and communication is pretty confusing around migration in the UK.

On the one hand, net legal migration in the UK is reaching new all time highs.

On the other hand, the main talking points for the current government is about "stopping the boats" and reducing migration.

If you Google "net migration UK" (in the UK) the first link is a policy document describing steps the Govt is doing to reduce migration:

https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2024/02/01/reducing-net-...

mdw··on Russian troops use Starlink licensed and imported from Dubai
Isn't this free intelligence? Monitor the communications from Russian locations and around Ukraine.
mdw··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2024)
Remote: Yes, open to hybrid (uk)

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Fullstack! Go, Javascript, Ruby, React & React Native

Recent projects:

A chat app (like Discord, but more for public communities).

https://wikid.app/c/wikid/-memes

A (Shopify) Helpdesk (kinda like Intercom):

https://www.zenshop.app

Twitter: macwilko

Preferred contact: Twitter

mdw··on Ask HN: Should I put my startup behind me?
I’m a solo founder, bootstrapping a startup called zenshop. I’ve been working on zenshop since late 2019, a good portion of that full time. I have three paying customers, and I’m starting to seriously consider - am I making a mistake to continue building this? Customers of zenshop like it, I think mostly because it’s cheap to run, and easy enough to use. I have built an enormous amount of functionality (apps on mobile, desktop, Shopify integration, websocket updates, push notifications, automations, templating… the list feels nearly endless). There always feels like more to build, more features to catch up to (compared to competitors). I’m starting to feel exhausted from it (I have a high pain threshold… but it’s not limitless). Can I save it? What can I do? Everyone tells me to do more marketing, more sales, but every time I do this I’m also fighting off the feeling of all those features, bugs, all needing my time, I can never get enough time to spend on sales.
mdw··on Remains found in China may belong to third human lineage
I’d be careful cherry picking, similar factoids about X country could just as easily be found.
mdw··on Show HN: I indexed 1.3m+ email newsletters
I can imagine the servers running warm after all this indexing :)
mdw··on Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
Very glad to see this, I’m currently building a SaaS with Rails and can totally use this for our admin panel.
mdw··on Show HN: A Full-Stack Web Framework for Go
I started with golang as the basis for my SaaS I've been building now for 2 years, the first version that shipped (and is still in production) is based on Go.

I personally don't find the go ecosystem very good for people who want to goto market as fast as possible, the libraries are less developed and you're going to have to build your own stack.

Bud and Buffalo seem like great developments, but your comment about the Buffalo one no longer being in active development would just totally suck if you had invested your time into building your SaaS on this.

I'm now using Ruby on Rails in the next version, and I couldn't be happier - maybe it's not as fast, but it certainly helps me ship features faster to customers!

mdw··on Ask HN: How to accelerate the adoption of secure email?
I hope that Apple takes the lead here, because it would fit well with their other efforts in user privacy and security.
mdw··on $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss
I didn’t mean it to be about ‘hiding’ your disability. I wear glasses and I would never wear brightly coloured rims in a professional environment. By my own standards, in a work place you stand out by the merits of your work, not on what you’re wearing.
mdw··on $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss
Having a brightly coloured hearing aid as an adult doesn’t look professional. Are these marketed towards younger people?
mdw··on Building Firefox's Picture-in-Picture Support
Is there a way to disable PIP support? The blue floating icon is quite distracting for me, I wouldn’t mind PIP but I can’t stand the floating icon.
mdw··on Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country
I highly recommend Co-working Bansko (https://coworkingbansko.com/).

It's a mountain ski village in the south of Bulgaria, there is an abundance of modern style flats which sit mostly vacant in the summer months, as well as the charming old town, this makes accommodation very affordable (much cheaper than the capital, Sophia).

Cost of a small studio flat is about 350 BGN per month, a lunch is about 5 BGN, a large dinner about 12 BGN.

There's about 100 members in Coworking Bansko and has two locations in Bansko, one close to the Ski lift (convenient in the Winter if you like to Snowboard/Ski) the other in the Old Town. A third site is underway in a building where many coworkers own their own flats (flats are cheap to purchase outright).

mdw··on Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country
I’ve been living in Bulgaria for the past 4 months, bootstrapping my startup. I can say Bulgaria is a great place to come due to its affordable cost of living, comparable to Thailand/Bali, but easy access to European cities, for me it was the best choice. The community of digital workers in Bansko, Bulgaria is really growing.
mdw··on London pushes to take Saudis off EU dirty money blacklist
Otikik, as a Brit who voted remain, I’ll be proud to vote exit EU if we ever get faced with a ghastly anti-democratic second referendum.
mdw··on Generals.io – Capture enemy generals to defeat them
Really enjoying this game, please don't be down for too long >.<
mdw··on Building an Open Core Company: Interview with GitLab's CEO
You could modify it if you wanted, but the best way is to submit a Merge Request on GitLab.com, otherwise you will need to maintain a fork of GitLab (which might be a trouble to maintain depending on the changes).
mdw··on Git Trident 1.5 has been released
Hey brudgers, sorry for this late reply! V1.5 was a big update (several months of work), but standout features include better ipad support, huge amounts of attention to UX and UI issues, and stablity.

If you install the App there's a full changelog, and in the app store version history there is information.

mdw··on School Is to Submit
> Similar the US did become independent first and then largely developed what is nowadays called western culture.

I stopped reading here. The US developed its own culture, it did not largely develop 'western' culture, though it is very influential.

mdw··on Swift Asserts
Swift will happily message nil also, for example:

delegate?.someOptionalMessage?(param: param)

It's a great language feature I appreciated in Obj-C, and not lost to Swift!

mdw··on “I want to respond to Marc Andreessen's comments about India”
This post would do better to provide citations for these facts (is this 1% growth for nearly 200 years?), and what was the original purpose for the term 'Hindu' rate of growth?

Also, why brand 'many in the west' as ill informed - was that nessisary?

mdw··on Remember the Milk 2.0
Todo Apps must be a crowded market now, are apps like RTM 2.0 profitable? I can imagine lots of time went into building this.
mdw··on A house that costs $20k
I really hope housing becomes a key electoral issue for the next government. The current housing crisis in the UK is impoverishing an entire generation.
mdw··on Ten arrested in Netherlands over Bitcoin money-laundering allegations
Why is BitCoin often associated with money laundering, as you say:

> but in both cases the transactions can be tracked back in the blockchain

It seems to me BitCoin can actually aid law enforcement in tracking down money laundering!

mdw··on Dear open-source maintainers, a letter from GitLab
Appreciate this compliment :) Please open any issues you see with the App in the issue tracker, helps me prioritise new features and candid feedback helps!
mdw··on Dear open-source maintainers, a letter from GitLab
GitLab can be self hosted, you don't need to depend on the Cloud.

The downtime of GitLab.com is something the team are committed (see https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ - 'Disadvantages') to improve this year.

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