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potta_coffee

1,730 karma · joined October 18, 2017

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potta_coffee··on Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?
I'm hanging on because I love my kids. I look forward to a day when my suffering ends.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: Developer laptop that doesn't suck in 2024 and it's not Apple silicone
I have a Lenovo Legion 5 laptop and I love it. I use it for all kinds of dev work running Windows 11 and WSL. It's technically a gaming machine but the appearance is understated. It has a very nice keyboard and the nicest touchpad I've ever used. Also I was looking at Lenovo business laptops to run Linux. In comparison with those, you get so much more for your money with the gaming machine. It's very powerful and expandable, with extra hard-drive and memory slots. Also the display is top notch.
potta_coffee··on How long til we're all on Ozempic?
It's just human nature. This is the health equivalent of trying to turn lead into gold. It's my unproven opinion that the negative effects of these treatments are understated and this will be a passing fad.
potta_coffee··on How long til we're all on Ozempic?
It would work if people would actually do it. It 100% works. Human nature is such that people would rather take a drug than change their lifestyle. I've done it myself but it requires a complete realignment of lifestyle to make lasting change.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: Which movies did you watch multiple times?
The Thing and Alien are my two favorite movies. Silence of the Lambs is up there too.

Not movies but I've rewatched X-Files and Twin Peaks repeatedly as well.

potta_coffee··on Ask HN: Widespread Apathy?
It's 100% real in my experience. I delivered twice the goal my manager set and got a 1% raise. Since then I've scaled my effort way back. Work is a necessity, not a priority.
potta_coffee··on What's the most radical book you've read?
That's true but let me ask you, why then was Christ crucified? The Bible says to obey all authorities except in spiritual matters over which it (the Bible) claims they have no authority.
potta_coffee··on What's the most radical book you've read?
History is full of examples, IE the Protestant Reformation, when the Catholic church was insisting that the only way to know God was through a priest, and reformers, who insisted that one could know God without a human authority intervening.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: Have your search results gotten worse recently?
Google is essentially useless. If I really want to find something, I'll try Yandex nowadays. For the most part, I don't even search anymore. I just suffer with sites I've had bookmarked for years. Most of my potential searches are for programming language documentation / APIs etc.
potta_coffee··on Bossware is a big legal risk
Ironically, I'm involved with a startup developing fart monitors as we speak. I'm certain it's going to be a huge market. /s
potta_coffee··on Rifle-Armed Robot Dogs Now Being Tested by Marine Special Operators
Your ideological position on should win a war is irrelevant. We're discussing the ethics of using automation to kill humans.
potta_coffee··on Rifle-Armed Robot Dogs Now Being Tested by Marine Special Operators
Who do you think the robots are killing? There are countless videos of drones blowing up Ukranian and Russian soldiers. Drones are being used to kill humans.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: Is the Job Market Still Tough for You?
In 2017 I put in 200 applications to get a single job in the span of about 2 months.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: Has anyone else stopped playing video games as an adult?
My tastes have changed a lot but I still do gaming. Now I'm playing Minecraft with my kids and I have a server where a bunch of their friends can join in and build stuff. I'm not interested in Minecraft for it's own sake but as a social club it's great fun. I also tinker with maps and mods for Quake and Doom. Doom was the first PC game I played - on a demo machine at Radio Shack at 7 years old. I don't play the same way but using the engines as a sandbox to create something still holds my interest.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: How does your company do performance reviews?
There's a fake ass "goals" system. I was supposed to save my company $500k off of our massive cloud budget. I ended up cutting $1,000,000 by optimizing services and deleting old junk, also wrote some automation that saved us ~$250k. Still ended up receiving a "meets expectations". We aren't supposed to know but managers are told that nobody is allowed an "exceeds expectations" review otherwise it would disrupt the bonus / incentive situation which is tilting toward rock-bottom.
potta_coffee··on An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)
I'm in the same boat. I just don't care about EMACS, don't like it, and there's little incentive when I'm just playing around. It's a shame because Lisp is really fun and interesting. I just don't want to spend so much time dicking around with an editor just so I can write some code.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: At what age did you become interested in coding?
I started coding around 10 years old in 1994. I'm starting to feel old.
potta_coffee··on Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe
I love Affinity and I don't love Canva. I'm hopeful nothing much changes but I'm not holding my breath. I'll pay a subscription over my dead body.
potta_coffee··on 'Gen X has had to learn or die': Mid-career workers facing ageism in job market
I'm 40. I've been programming for 30 years. I get turned down for jobs all the time but it's almost always during the coding interview where I get asked to solve some brain teaser that has nothing to do with real work. The most ironic questions are the ones the interviewer doesn't even know how to solve (this has happened 3 times now).
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: Who programs outdoors and how do you do?
I sit on the deck with my macbook. I have to sit in the shady part of the deck to see well enough.
potta_coffee··on Mercedes is trialing humanoid robots for 'low skill, repetitive' tasks
A forklift with the brain of a Roomba
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: How are you making money online in 2024
Thanks for replying, sounds like what you're doing is pretty cool.

Did you publish short stories on KDP as well or did you wait until you had longer pieces to publish?

potta_coffee··on Serving my blog posts as Linux manual pages
Release your blog as an Electron application please.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: How are you making money online in 2024
How did you get started? Also what is the average length of your stories? Do you focus on a specific genre?

I've been interested in writing for ages but I'm such a perfectionist.

potta_coffee··on Programming book authors: put all the code in the book
My monitor stand is all out-of-date technical books!
potta_coffee··on Programming book authors: put all the code in the book
I have a guitar instructional book that I've had more than 20 years, just checked out the CD the other day and it's still good. Also I've only mastered half of the exercises in the book so I'm still getting use out of it after all this time.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: What to do with small units of time during the working day?
Practice guitar.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: How to know what you want to do for the rest of your life.
I'm turning 40 and I'm super burnt out but I have a mortgage to pay. I really want to quit and do something different but I can't afford it.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: Startups Interviewing Like FAANG
I've worked with people smarter than I am but most of them absolutely sucked at producing quality results. I've only worked with perhaps two decent developers in my entire life, the rest were mediocre. I'm also mediocre but I'm less content with mediocre results than some of my peers so I've done ok. I really want to meet the "vastly better" devs but I think perhaps I'm just not good enough myself to work where they work.
potta_coffee··on Ask HN: What's the best car without undesirable features?
My understanding is that AWD systems generally allocate power to a wheel under certain conditions where it's detected that traction is lost. 4WD sends power to all wheels all the time, except perhaps when traction is lost to one wheel and there is no locking differential. I imagine 4WD feels more powerful at getting unstuck because all the power is there right away and you're not depending on a system / sensor to recognize the need for more traction before it's delivered.
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