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merciBienon SPARKNaCl: A verified, fast re-implementation of TweetNaCl [pdf] [video]

PDF links to this GitHub https://github.com/rod-chapman/SPARKNaCl

merciBienon How long does music stardom last? A statistical analysis

that's good to hear! I always wonder when I see a band playing a live gig how they're doing. My friend's bandmates are very creative, but struggle with the professionalism part.

merciBienon How long does music stardom last? A statistical analysis

Insightful article, music celebrity is fascinating. I have a musically-gifted friend in her twenties who got a full-time job singing and playing in a band in a live-music nightclub, she's the only musician I've met who plays music for a living, without a non-music side gig. Her own band has never toured and has a tiny instagram presence, she seems happy with that.

merciBienon Microsoft signs nuclear power deal with Constellation for Boydton data center

According to the article, Constellation owns 30 nuclear power stations in the US. I was surprised at that number, I thought there were far fewer. According to Wikipedia there's over 50 active nuclear power stations in the US, more than France or China or Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations

merciBienon Ultimate Stunts: Not just another racing game

This project looks abandoned, but I was able to compile it from source and get it running with the help of ChatGPT :). Amazing it is still playable on Ubuntu 22.04, the last code release appears to be 2012.

merciBienon Ask HN: Any Sugestions for Proceures Documentation?

A doc that doesn't get updated quickly becomes either useless or dangerous. Creating documentation in a tool that doesn't allow easy updating increases the chances that it won't get updated. I think wikis or Google docs are the simplest.

merciBienon Rules for Tools [pdf]

This seems like the only solution that's going to work long-term. The technology is available, and it will be used, better to embrace it.

   1. All media and tools are allowed. You may use any media (texts, videos, . . . )
   and tools (apps, calculators, . . . ) in my course that you find useful. 
   This also applies to AI tools such as ChatGPT, which can be very helpful in generating ideas and writing texts, for example. 
   So these tools are available to you in my course just as they are now in your everyday life and later in your job. 
   By the way, the use of tools will also be subject of our course. Let’s find out together how to use tools in a meaningful way to solve tasks!

   2. You are responsible for your results. All tools have their limitations. 
   Information in media can be wrong. Calculators cannot work with real numbers. And AI language models like ChatGPT can produce well formulated texts, but they make errors and reproduce biases. 
   So before you proceed with results and impulses, you need to check them and revise them if necessary. The tool does not think for you, but you think with the help of the tool. The theoretical background is the approach of distributed cognitions:
   ”Cognitions become ‘distributed’ in the sense that the tool and its human partner think jointly. Whatever is produced is product of the joint system, resulting from the pooling together of the intelligences of both partners [. . . ]“ (Salomon, 1993, p. 182). In the end, however, you stand up for your solution. You have to be able to explain your solution to others. And you (not the tool) are responsible for errors in the solution.

Edited for readability

merciBienon Marc Andreessen on Elon, Nietzsche, and America's Thousand Year Empire

Moment of Zen is a weekly podcast on tech, business, and culture featuring Dan Romero (Farcaster), Antonio Garcias Martinez (Spindl), and Erik Torenberg (Village Global/On Deck)

I don't think you need to worry about nazi propaganda from this group, that's actually pretty amusing. For example, the group includes Erik Torenberg, I believe he may actually live in Israel.

Whoever titled the video was trying to be clever, there's nobody here saying America should create a 1000-year kingdom.

I think the title refers to Antonio Garcias Martinez saying America introduced liberal democracy long before other nations, i.e. at 36:35 he says "the US is chided for being so young, but it's not. American (democratic) institutions are way older than (European) ones. Spanish democracy is younger than me. Italy and Germany were unified after the state of Florida existed."

merciBienon Ask HN: What are some great items you own or want?

Brooks Gravitas running shoes. More comfortable for my wide feet than my Hokas. I walk about 40 miles a week, comfy shoes are important to me.

merciBienon Free Pluralsight Skills access for one week

Has anyone found pluralsight instruction useful? I wasn't impressed with the last free trial I tried with them. Video quality was fine, but the instruction wasn't compelling. Any courses you can recommend?

merciBienon Show HN: My Weight over 18 Months

Congratulations on losing weight! I also found eating less after dinner helps. How do you deal with hunger when you know you shouldn’t eat anything?

merciBienon Test Your K8s Knowledge

Pretty engaging, nice job! The “scoreboard” button that appears after you submit each answer was confusing for me. Could it say “next” instead?

merciBienon Thing

I think it’s an unfortunate typo, OG’s profile links to https://uprise.us/

merciBienon Ask HN: What to do when struggling as junior swe?

I think your problem is confidence, I was like this as a junior engineer, afraid everyone would see how dumb I was compared to them so I never asked for help. Every new employee is different, and nobody comes in knowing everything. They expect you to ask dumb questions, if you don't you're cheating yourself and the team.

I learned this the hard way, I took down the company website on a Friday night, the lead dev had to call in from a camping trip with his kids to fix my error.

yuppie_scum's post is smart, the job market is hot for anyone who can code, even a little bit! Follow directions and keep learning, probably they won't fire you, and with time you'll get better. If they fire you, move on, learn from it and do better at your next gig.

What I did was learn to unblushingly ask questions about the things I didn't understand, and REALLY LISTEN to the answer. Listening is the key, close your laptop if you have to, turn off your external monitor and put away your cellphone. The devs I worked with would carefully explain stuff, and respond to my dumb questions. But if I didn't remember what they told me, they'd stop answering my questions. I learned to use the research skills I learned in school, read up on the tech the team used, take notes, played with it on my own time.

Eventually I realized they weren't smarter than me, and if I keep trying, keep researching, almost any problem is solvable. Good Luck!

edit: grammar

merciBienon Poll: What PR option would you prefer to review?

Smaller changes are better for me, considering how often I get interrupted in the middle of a review

merciBienon What would you do if you were me? Coding bootcamp question

The delayed payment boot camp option sounds optimal for you if you don’t think self-study would work for you. Make sure tech is interesting for you, there electrical, welding and plumbing “bootcamps” that pay well too.

I broke out of a dead end QA testing job and into DevOps by getting AWS certified and developing some Python skills. I have to continually update and upgrade my skills, online courses provide enough structure to keep me motivated for that. Not sure if that would work for you. Good luck!

merciBienon Ask HN: How do I help my elderly grandmother remotely?

Yes on recording all her passwords somewhere you will have access. We also took photos of all my grandma’s insurance and financial records, so we’re ready when they need updating.

She’s in her 80’s and any change to her routine completely frustrates her. Password update prompts are the stressful. I’d advise against changing your grandma’s computer if she’s anything like mine, a different keyboard and different screen resolution required me multiple visits to get right.

I have set up my own admin user on her computer, and remote in regularly with RDP on a non-standard port to keep the machine updated. If you have the knowledge, make sure her router is moderately secure.

merciBienon Show HN: The data behind todays world news

Nice work! I like the look of your demo on the front page, no images or ad fluff. Sign up was simple, I’ll evaluate for a few days.

merciBienon Growing a mango tree from seed – one year time lapse [video]

I found a different video from a Mango and Avocado grower who says he typically grafts in a branch of a tree with good fruit behavior onto a newly sprouted mango plant. He says letting an ungrafted plant grow to maturity will produce a tree, but will probably not produce a good crop of fruit, due to the variability of DNA.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2czF7QBxPs

Made me wonder if that’s why industrial produce doesn’t taste as good as natural. Could removing genetic diversity in fruit cause mutations to creep in?

merciBienon Ask HN: Does your company do online coding assignment (DevOps Roles)

I interviewed someone for a Senior DevOps Engineer position earlier this week. We don’t do coding exercises for this position, but we’re unlikely to hire someone for Senior roles who can’t convince us they can automate a project without help. Non-Senior roles don’t need Python coding experience, but it helps.

I asked questions about experience coding with Python and shell scripts, and experience creating and managing infrastructure with Terraform. So far we haven’t found a good candidate for Senior.

merciBienon How do you cross the bridge between Knowing and Practicing?

Excellent perception that sometimes depression isn’t caused by some chemical imbalance or childhood trauma. Life is often just hard, and sometimes you’re going to act like an jerk to try to cope. I’m not perfect, I suspect you’re not either.

Getting something accomplished is key for me, code-wise that might mean I write a script in 10 minutes to pull weather data from an api, or an image from NASA. Keeping the task small lets me get a positive shot before I can burn out.

I have to break project sized work into smaller mini projects, or I get intimidated. I accept that I’m weak and easily distracted, I guess I’m treating myself like a child. Who cares as long as it works?

I also let people take advantage of my agreeableness. Only solution I’ve found is to change jobs every couple years.

merciBienon Ask HN: How to Get Addicted to Studying?

Bargain with yourself, agree if you read for 15 minutes straight each day, you’ll allow yourself an hour of Netflix. Try increasing reading time 5 minutes each week (or more!), until you’re reading 3 hours a day.

If you’re reading worthwhile books, I believe you’ll prefer them to Netflix, eventually.

merciBienon AWS us-east-1 outage

Large Scale Event

merciBienon Yes, Programming Is Hard

I love how this describes my life:

>>> you feel like the smartest human on the planet; even though it can be mere minutes later when you find something so mind-bogglingly stupid that make you marvel that you don’t forget to breathe from time to time.

merciBienon Truths about video game stories

I agree, I enjoyed the self-deprecating, comic tone of the article. I still appreciate the comment pointing out that large numbers of people apparently still read books. I was surprised to learn that!

merciBienon Truths about video game stories

Thanks for posting this comment, I searched for sources on this topic after reading it and was very surprised to see corroboration. Here’s a quote and few links for those interested:

In the US in 2019, a high % of adults reported reading a book recently

https://www.markinblog.com/book-sales-statistics/

…who is reading in the US?

In October of 2019, over 80% of adults, age 18 to 29, have read at least one book in the previous year. Older adults, possibly because they are not spending as much time studying and more time working, read slightly less.

Lockdowns may have increased reading in the US

https://publishingperspectives.com/2021/02/aap-statshot-sees...

Political polarization in the UK appears to drive book sales

https://www.theguardian.com/books/datablog/2017/mar/18/the-f...

(edit for formatting)

merciBienon Ask HN: Toxic work env, what should I do?

Don’t wait to get fired, start applying for new jobs now. I took my first contracting gig after getting pushed out by a bad boss, turned out to be a great experience.

merciBienon Ask HN: What song has been in your head today/recently?

Similar by Atomic Guava

merciBienon Video Games and the (Male) Meaning of Life

Not really a gamer is right, that’s Andrew Yang the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate. He tried to appeal to gamer voters, according to some articles from that period, example:

https://marketmadhouse.com/andrew-yang-is-americas-first-gam...

Not sure if he succeeded at attracting gamers to vote for him, or if he was just unable to get enough support beyond gamers.

merciBienon Ask HN: What’s a simple habit or change you’ve made to be healthier?

I stopped eating after my mid-day meal. It not only decreased my calorie intake by 50%, it helps me wake up each morning. I really enjoy breakfast now!

I have to walk for an hour around my old dinner time to distract from hunger pangs.