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rohithkp

379 karma · joined May 10, 2020

meet.hn/city/nl-Amsterdam

Interests: AI/ML, Books, DevOps, Fintech, Fitness, Healthcare, Investment

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Email: hn [at] r18i [dot] me

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rohithkp··on Ask HN: What country would you like to relocate to and why?
I asked o3-mini-high this question after outlining some criteria that I deemed necessary in a city:

I want to live in a city that: - Is highly walkable with excellent public transportation infrastructure - Prioritizes safety for women - Has clean air and good environmental standards - Functions as a major hub for either tech or finance industries - Ideally offers: * Good work-life balance * English-speaking environment * Strong expat community * Easy travel connections

> Based on your criteria, Amsterdam stands out as a top contender. Here’s why:

Walkability & Transportation

Amsterdam’s compact, historic center makes it extremely walkable, and its extensive cycling culture—as well as an efficient network of trams, buses, and trains—ensures that you can get around easily without a car.

Safety for Women & Clean Environment

The city is known for its progressive, inclusive atmosphere and strong safety standards, which contribute to a secure environment for women. Additionally, Amsterdam places a high priority on sustainability and environmental standards, so you’ll enjoy relatively clean air and plenty of green spaces.

Hub for Tech & Finance

Amsterdam is a major European hub where both the tech startup scene and finance sectors thrive. Many global companies and innovative startups are based here, creating ample professional opportunities in both industries.

Work–Life Balance, English-Friendly, & Expat Community

With its relaxed yet dynamic work culture, Amsterdam offers an excellent work–life balance. Even though Dutch is the native language, English is widely spoken—making it very accessible for expats. The city also boasts a robust expat community, providing a welcoming network and plenty of social opportunities. Moreover, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport offers excellent travel connections to destinations around the globe.

Overall, Amsterdam ticks all the boxes for a walkable, safe, environmentally conscious, professionally vibrant, and expat-friendly city.

rohithkp··on CernVM File System
The Neurodesk Project[1] uses CVMFS to fetch Singularity container images dynamically on-the-fly from a central repository.

[1] https://neurodesk.org

rohithkp··on Ask HN: Which book are you reading, since when?
Reading Flash Boys by Michael Lewis since last night.
rohithkp··on Ask HN: What is one tech product you still can’t comprehend how it’s built?
Palantir/Foundry
rohithkp··on I made a virtual bookshelf
This is very cool! I just setup an instance for myself!
rohithkp··on Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young – Mary Schmich
Yup, articulated excellently.
rohithkp··on Indian online merchants cannot store credit card information from 2022
Any card details that are being stored in the merchant's database need to be tokenised. It applies to all entities who are retrieving card details from customers, irrespective of PCI/DSS compliance.
rohithkp··on Ask HN: How do you build your personal start page?
I use the Flame Dashboard [1].

It runs in a docker container, has support out of the box for custom bookmarks and links and also detects other docker containers running on your machine and automatically lists them on the dashboard. It is even opensource, so you can customise it to your liking [2].

[1] https://hub.docker.com/r/pawelmalak/flame

[2] https://github.com/pawelmalak/flame

rohithkp··on Bank transfers as a payment method
UPI can potentially be scaled to all countries. I think the biggest USP of UPI is the interoperability between payment apps(Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe, etc), VPAs(alice@icici, bob@axis, dan@upi, 9848123456@paytm) and banks. One could have an account with bank A, create a VPA with bank B and use that VPA to pay a business through virtually any of the payment apps(GPay, Paytm, PhonePe, BHIM, etc). The main pain point UPI addresses is instant transfer, zero cost transfer irrespective of transaction size and removal of friction due to credential exchange. NPCI (the creators of UPI) are already in talks with the UAE and other neighbouring countries to build a cross nation interoperable payment stack. Since no player in the entire stack can charge a service fee, the way that payment apps have monetized UPI is by acquiring customers through payments and selling value added services like insurance, prepaid mobile recharges and mutual funds/ETFs. Interoperability allows for balancing and decentralisation of network load across multiple providers, making transactions less likely to fail. Also cross border exchange is another problem that is still unsolved. Maybe a UPI backed approach to real-time currency transfers is a pipe dream but in a ideal world every transaction, irrespective of point of origin, size or currency would be as seamless as an UPI transaction.

On a side note, I wonder if something like this could be built in the web3 space. A totally decentralised public blockchain implementation of the payment network using UPI-esque interoperability between payment providers and banks.

rohithkp··on Ask HN: What steps do you take to protect yourself and your family online?
Ideally, going by the cancerous nature of the internet in 2021, web browsers should ship with ublock origin, automatic https upgrades, an usable js-blocking toggle and LocalCDN-esque features out of the box. Chrome would never do something like that but maybe firefox could. Improves privacy and usability overall.
rohithkp··on Ask HN: What steps do you take to protect yourself and your family online?
Bitwarden, Adguard-Home/NextDNS, UBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Disable Flash, LocalCDN(Replacing Decentraleyes), Selfthosted Paperless-ng and Nextcloud instances for storage and documents with seperate accounts for each family member secured behind authelia with 2FA. Docker-Mail-Server instance with catchall emails for each family member. Enabled 2FA for every sensitive account. Private Selfthosted Wireguard tunnel to access local network services publically (behind a CGNAT network). Non technical family members have been instructed to never use real names while signing up for trivial services online. Guacamole to provide remote assistance when required.
rohithkp··on How does a game engine work? an overview (2016)
A college course[1] I recently took involved working with LibGDX and Box2d to build a game from scratch.

Rudimentary documentation, but the wiki[2] does a good job of breaking down how each component fits in, including MPC/NPC components, Game Screens, Areas, Animations, Texture Atlases, Sound, Collisions, Physics, etc, all of this using Entity-Component, Factory design patterns.

[1]: https://github.com/UQdeco2800/2021-ext-studio-2

[2]: https://github.com/UQdeco2800/2021-ext-studio-2/wiki/Getting...

rohithkp··on Ask HN: How do you do login for your side project?
Maybe take a look at htaccess/htpasswd. I've been setting up docker containers and have proxied them using traefik. Most of them have built in auth of some kind but for those that don't, htaccess seems to be doing the job. Not sure about the security implications though.(I've mostly used it on a local network so security was not a concern for me) This works well for services that you want to use for yourself only.
rohithkp··on Show HN: Ampie – See HN or Twitter discussions mentioning the page you are on
Similar extension for Hacker News discussions - https://github.com/pinoceniccola/what-hn-says-webext
rohithkp··on WhatsApp – About multi-device beta
Did you experience any quirks or problems using the bridges for WhatsApp? Are you running a matrix bridge instance on a personal cloud instance?
rohithkp··on WhatsApp – About multi-device beta
Doesn't Apple implement XMPP for iMessage as well?
rohithkp··on Ask HN: Where are all the old Show HNs?
I just installed and tried out HACK and I think it is pretty neat! I am a long time user of BeeLine, been using it on HN and on the interweb in general. Would love to have a mobile app like HACK for HN with BeeLine integration! Nick is very prompt with his email, I am sure both of you can get it running very soon!
rohithkp··on Show HN: Jam, an Open Source Clubhouse (w/ WebRTC)
Looks great! Would be great if you could share how you went about building this!
rohithkp··on Show HN: I built an online interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Need something like this for Emacs/org-mode
rohithkp··on Lisp and Haskell (2015)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24717285
rohithkp··on CSE 373 – Introduction to Algorithms, by Steven Skiena, Fall 2020
The book for this course - The Algorithm Design Manual - https://amzn.to/30LeCtl
rohithkp··on A REST API for Managing Playlists – Rohith's Blog
https://github.com/kprohith/django-playlist-manager
rohithkp··on Porsche Classifier – Rohith's Blog
Porsche Classifier website - https://porsche-classifier.azurewebsites.net/
rohithkp··on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (MIT 1986)
The book for this course - https://amzn.to/3nt95kW
rohithkp··on How to Design an Algorithm (2018)
The book to go along with this course - The Algorithm Design Manual (https://amzn.to/3iEs48r)
rohithkp··on Thoughts on Foam and GitJournal for Zettelkasten/note taking?
That's great! Would love to try it out.
rohithkp··on Thoughts on Foam and GitJournal for Zettelkasten/note taking?
I have been using [Foam](https://foambubble.github.io/) along with [GitJournal](https://gitjournal.io/) for all my note taking. I believe this is the ideal setup for all my writing needs as 1. this offers support for Zettelkasten-like tags(although GitJournal needs Graph view implemented) 2. No vendor lock-in 3. Completely open-source

What is your current note taking setup? What are your thoughts on this particular setup?

rohithkp··on Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing
I use a combination of foam, GitJournal, VSCode. Works well for me.