Hacker News Reader

phatboyslimon Why is no one making a new version of old Facebook?

My attempt to speculate on potential obstacles which exist today over the (I believe, 2009) version shown:

- Eroded public trust in (all) social media

- Increased regulatory scrutiny today vs 2009

- More competition today (i.e. TikTok)

- Changing demands from advertisers

phatboyslimon Deno Cron

Anyone here using Deno in a production workload? Genuinely curious about your experience.

phatboyslimon Python: Just Write SQL

Technologists have a hard time accepting an established standard. Email is a perfect corollary to this conversation. There is a graveyard of companies that have attempted to "Solve email", yet it is still ubiquitous and attempts to 'improve' it continue to fizzle out. I'm not saying that progress, or an attempt at progress, is pointless, but to argue that writing vanilla SQL is somehow antiquated or archaic is false and OP makes several valid points highlighting why it is a perfectly valid approach.

phatboyslimon PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

Pornography, social media, 24/7 news... will all be looked back on in history as having profound negative mental health effects, akin to how we today view smoking in the 1950s. There is a mountain of growing evidence that this is verifiably true. The exact means that Utah is using to provide ID check may be for debate, but the concept there should be an age restriction, liable to the ISP or the content provider, should not be in dispute.

phatboyslimon Ask HN: How do you synthesize books that you read?

> "Read a little, act a lot. The acting is the most important part. You want to learn some thing? Just do that thing"

Took me a long time to learn this but also came to the same conclusion.

phatboyslimon What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

The origin story is paramount to preventing future outbreaks and to the loss of, and disruption to, our way of life. The US took the same position on combating terrorism when it rooted out Al-Qaeda. To stop future loss of life, the root cause needs to be identified and dealt with. I vehemently disagree with the assessment that the origin is not instrumental to the defense of future outbreaks.

phatboyslimon Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm

I had the same initial reaction as most here when reading the article. This data has caused me to think more critically about the concept, thank you.

phatboyslimon Show HN: Django and React SaaS boilerplate tutorial

I admire the motivation here to offer a boilerplate to the community using these tools, but it feels like a lot of this has been solved by the Baas providers like AWS Amplify, Azure Static Web Apps, Firebase, etc.

These services all support your choice of front-end and back-end programming language. All these providers also allow hooks into features like security, database, apis, ci/cd, and so on. You would be in a serverless architecture also which provides scalability and keeps costs low up front. Not trying to discredit the author here, which is admirable in the intent, but feels like it's trying to solve for something that several other solutions exist for unless I'm missing something critical.

phatboyslimon Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

Most families (who likely pay the most in property tax) live in the surrounding suburbs, which as you have noted are indeed much higher in terms of property tax. Similar suburbs around Nashville are averaging 50-70% lower property tax rates, which is significant enough to move oneself out of the state. This is only going to increase the tax burden for the remainder of residents of the state. The city proper only comprises 2.7m residents per the 2010 census, while the metro area is 9.5m residents.

My evidence on the other items is anecdotal, but that is my opinion and I'm understanding of the fact others may disagree.

phatboyslimon Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

To counter this, as someone who lives in Chicago, there are some additional drawbacks beyond the weather:

- Taxes are extremely high here, with no sign of slowing down

- Political corruption is rampant in the state

- Crime is mostly relegated to south side of city, but it's still an issue

- Public works are decaying: train stations, airport, and everything else look like they need work

- Schools are undesirable and a magnet/charter school has very high competition.

My wife and I have lived here our whole lives and are considering joining several friends who have recently moved to the Nashville area to alleviate the above mentioned items. There is no state income tax in TN, public schools in suburbs are good w/ only a 20 minute drive into the city. There are some drawbacks but we're comfortable with the trade-off.

phatboyslimon Seattle judges throw out 15 years of marijuana convictions

This comparison isn't useful IMO because alcohol had actually been legal prior to prohibition introduced by puritanism. If anything I'd say prohibition gave people pause since alcoholism and heavy drinking was quite common prior to it being introduced. (Note: I'm not against marijuana legalization/decriminalization - just making an observation).

phatboyslimon Lenovo Launches Ultra-Thin ThinkPad P1: X1 Carbon Meets Workstation

To be completely honest, I don't use the nub. The trackpad was 5/5 on the MBP, but I feel the trackpad is 4/5 on the X1. It's plenty fine to use... I also carry a portable mouse in my laptop bag.

phatboyslimon Lenovo Launches Ultra-Thin ThinkPad P1: X1 Carbon Meets Workstation

To add some anecdotal experience here, I replaced my 2015 MBP which I loved, with a 5th Gen Lenovo X1 Carbon and I can honestly say I have no regrets. The machine is wonderful for development. Light but powerful, very pleasant to type on, checks all the right boxes. You can use Linux or Windows (which honestly has come quite a long ways and works quite well). Also, you can game with these laptops now thanks to USB-C external graphics enclosures, giving you a work machine on the go, and a gaming machine at home.

phatboyslimon Ask HN: Which blogs/newsletters would you be willing to pay $5/month for?

I discovered it primarily as a YouTube channel but the guy who makes http://iliketomakestuff.com has some great projects out there, including a number of arduino based projects. I’m trying to expand my horizon beyond web development and it appeals to my inner maker.

phatboyslimon Airbus Handed A380 Lifeline With $16B Emirates Order

Did anyone catch the Emirates videos put together by Casey Neistat? I often wonder if YouTube celebrities will usher in a new form of advertising, where content and marketing are blended into an entertainment experience. The videos were wildly popular and I wonder if this aided significantly in bookings for Emirates flights, thus leading to the $9B order.

phatboyslimon Ask HN: How to make money while commuting to work?

You could increase your personal value by listening to audiobooks or podcasts to improve your education. There are actually several audio programs from sites like The Great Courses which you can tune to your specific interests.

It's not a direct path to a financial gain, but it does improve your personal value, which should in turn improve your income streams.

phatboyslimon Increase Hacker News Font Size?

I use the relatively popular Georgify extension for HN (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/georgify/ofjfdfale...)

phatboyslimon Next Silicon Valley (list)

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Cache timeout seems to take a while, so posting the brief synopsis here. The article lists a number of cities (actually locations) with a corresponding news article claiming that particular city/location "The Next Silicon Valley". Locations listed were:

US: Mississippi, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, Jacksonville, San Diego, Detroit, New York, Asheville, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Sacramento, Arkansas, Denver

Europe: Ireland, Russia, Ukraine, France, Berlin, Prague, Lisbon

Apac: Beijing, Vietnam, Sydney, Philippines, India, China, Singapore

Middle East: Israel

Americas: Mexico, Cuba

Others: Small Town America

phatboyslimon Chicago’s 'cloud tax'

The question I'm wondering, is how many technology upstarts, which offer some type of hosted computing service, will chose a location other than Chicago for their new business. Alternatively, how many other cities will follow suit with Chicago as well, and which ones.

phatboyslimon First C# 7 Design Meeting Notes

I believe c# has had tuple support since .net framework v4.

phatboyslimon Amazon Reveals the Robots at the Heart of Its Cyber Monday Operation

60 Minutes did a story on robotics in January of 2013 that showed Kiva robots in action. You can jump to 2:45 in the following link to see the demo: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/are-robots-hurting-job-growth-...

phatboyslimon Show HN: Famous Outfits

Fantastic idea. I've seen similar sites, but 99.9% of them focus on fashion for women and I felt this market was undeserved for men. I'm not suggesting you maintain only one gender, but I appreciate that you are showing male outfits. Really love the notion of a daily (at minimum) outfit as well. Perhaps, in addition to Facebook/Instagram/e-newsletter, you could add a link for RSS? Keep fighting the good fight, love the site.

phatboyslimon DocumentDB

Similarly the Azure Search appears to be a competitor to Amazon CloudSearch. I'm not aware of a Lucene based search offering from Google, however.

phatboyslimon Be Nice Or Leave

There appear to be a number of anecdotes in the book Hatching Twitter where Fred Wilson is painted as the bad guy. I wonder how much of this was for the book, or how possibly I am misinterpreting it.

phatboyslimon Feedly gets hit by DDoS attack, refuses to give in to blackmail

If you read the comments on the Feedly blog, they are using Cloudflare.

phatboyslimon How a Car Engine Works

Relevant visual reference: http://www.animatedengines.com/wankel.html

phatboyslimon Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

I disagree. The average user has no time, patience, or knowledge (nor should they) of how firewalls or bandwidth throttling works.

phatboyslimon Coding Horror: I Was a Teenage Hacker

I'm fairly confident this is in reference to a new startup Jeff is working on.

phatboyslimon Please Learn to Code

Computing is taking a similar path in everyday life as finance. As individuals, I don't feel we need to learn how hedge funds, or complex derivatives work, but nobody denies it is beneficial to learn how to manage money, make basic investments, and plan your retirement. The urge to teach programming isn't as much about teaching everyone complex and theoretical computer science, but to teach basics that will benefit them as we move into the information age where technology permeates nearly every business.

phatboyslimon How going to the gym makes you stronger

I agree that comparing to others is mentally unhealthy. This applies not only to the gym/fitness but all areas of life. On the other hand, measuring progress is a good motivator, and I feel a proper way to do that is to challenge yourself. If you were able to shave X seconds off your mile time, or improve your squat weight by Y pounds, then I feel it is a proper motivating factor as well as one that could assist in keeping your mental attitude in the right place when other facets of your life are troubling.