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seymour333

86 karma · joined March 22, 2018

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seymour333··on Here is my collection of 600+ “old” digital cameras
This reminds me of a time when I had become jaded as a camera store employee. I got in the habit of telling people that the cameras they were hoping to buy were essentially landfill filler. This website would have been a useful resource for confirming that point.

Oddly, it was an effect tool for up-selling cameras. The higher end cameras tended to last slightly longer before getting binned.

seymour333··on Ask HN: Is web development still a viable career choice?
A few years ago I made the decision to go back to school (for two years) to be a web dev. It cost me approximately $25k. Immediately after graduation I added $25k to my yearly income. There is a ton of work for web developers, and there will continue to be for some time (even if something comes along that makes web devs redundant, there is still decades of maintenance work in the market).

It may be important to clarify exactly what you mean by web developer though. I work in many different portions of the web stack every day (database, server side code, front-end code, etc). The more diverse your skill set, the more opportunity there will be.

At any rate, web is a really good entry point, and after a few years in industry you'll probably start to see different branches of development that appeal to you more. If you start out as a web dev there will always be different avenues and opportunities as your career advances.

seymour333··on How much less efficient are north-facing solar modules? (2016)
This probably applies more to homes with an East to West facing pitch, but I find it really odd that it isn't standard issue to have a track system that moves the solar panels from one side of the roof to the other. A simple track and something basic like a garage door motor would allow the panels to be in a more optimal position throughout the day.
seymour333··on Facts about smell (2014)
As someone who developed parnosmia later in life (I can only smell certain things), I found this article very interesting. Living without the ability to smell is somewhat more isolating than one would think. That, and I have to really trust someone if I want an opinion of whether the milk's gone bad
seymour333··on K-Cup creator John Sylvan regrets inventing Keurig coffee pod system
We definitely need to give Swiffer an honorable mention. Dust in your house? Why not clean it up and create an enormous pile of trash at the same time!!!
seymour333··on Write good git commit messages
I always appreciate commit messages that are informative and well structured. That said, I'm not a fan of specific formats for commits. The commit messages in a project are where a lot of that project's collective "personality" is stored. If you look through the commits for a project with a "colorful" variety of messages, you'll get a sense not only of the work that was done, but of the people who helped create the project.

Somewhat related: @git_commit_m on twitter has some great (and amusing!) examples of what not to use for commit messages, which are pulled from github's public data set.

seymour333··on Making Penicillin at Home
This whole article seems like an offhand way to get people to stockpile aquarium antibiotics. This guy is obviously on Big Aquarium Pharma's payrol.
seymour333··on The Squishiest, Sweetest Sleep
“It’s like salmon,” he said. “They’ll return to the place where they were spawned.”
seymour333··on A portmanteau of every word in English (2015)
Mark my words, someone is going to memorize the entire thing and use it as a party trick.
seymour333··on Show HN: Tabulator – Easy-to-use JavaScript library for interactive tables
The company I work for pays for Ag-Grid, which makes me sad. Overall I find it has been fairly difficult to work with, and there are a lot of breaking changes when upgrading from older versions. I think we could get away with something like Tabulator for most of our use cases. I'm definitely going to try to sell it to the team
seymour333··on Show HN: Tabulator – Easy-to-use JavaScript library for interactive tables
Anyone have comments on how this might stack up against AG-Grid?
seymour333··on The Art of Job Interviewing
"Start with a phone screen interview"

I have to disagree with this point. Phone and screen interviews are awkwardly paced and some individuals simply don't come across well in this type of setting. If the qualifications on their resume fit your requirements, just bring them in!

seymour333··on World Draw
I feel like this essentially exists for the sole purpose of generating a large training set for some sort of drawing analysis.

I wonder if google has some new use case where they want to be able to quickly tag human doodles with their subject matter?

seymour333··on Don’t work “remotely”
Semantic pedantics and the developers who love them
seymour333··on Why Sleep Apnea Patients Rely on a CPAP Machine Hacker
I've witnessed this first hand. After having a sleep study and finding that I have mild OSA my ENT suggested removing my tonsils, uvula, and part of my palate to open up my airway. I told him that sounded like the nuclear option and he seemed somewhat surprised by that conclusion.

He also suggested palate coblation, which seemed more reasonable. I chose to forgo both of those procedures and eventually ended up with a mandibular advancement device from a TMJ specialist, which has made a huge difference.

seymour333··on Why Sleep Apnea Patients Rely on a CPAP Machine Hacker
There is a secondary solution to CPAP machines that may apply to some people who find their breathing/sleep improves with sleeping position. About a year ago I got a Mandibular Advancement Device from a TMJ specialist that pushes the jaw forward, preventing the tongue from pushing the against the palate and obstructing airflow.

I had tried a CPAP machine previously and still felt that it wasn't working (although the data said otherwise, I just felt like I wasn't breathing properly).

If, while laying on your back, moving your jaw forward improves breathing significantly, this type of treatment might be a good alternative to a CPAP (costs are similar though).

seymour333··on Show HN: Not Depressing News
Wait, dogs can get cancer? Fuck. That is super depressing.
seymour333··on Is front-end development having an identity crisis?
As far as I know I made it up. It's the term I typically use to give potential employers (and other devs) a general sense of where my competencies are.
seymour333··on Is front-end development having an identity crisis?
The way this works out at the shop I'm currently at is that you get a bunch of devs who are, for lack of a better description, 3/4 stack developers (back-end, database, anything on the front-end that isn't CSS), and a few other devs who are strictly involved in the design/HTML/CSS portion of projects.

This system seems to work out pretty well on most projects. There is a significant body if knowledge required to get the styling and markup in an application built properly, with a high degree of cross-browser compatibility, and in a reasonable amount of time.

When I think of a front-end dev I tend to lean towards this definition. Which leaves me at somewhat of a loss to describe my role as a "back-end" developer, as I spend a generous portion of my time coding with Angular.

seymour333··on Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe? Start an economical catastrophe.

We need to immediately, and meaningfully, move away from oil, gas, and other carbon heavy industries in any way that we presently have the means to do so.

If everyone who is presently in the market for a new vehicle could afford to buy an electric one, we'd probably be in better shape. If every household could put solar panels and take a load off of the grid, we would be moving in the right direction.

The problem is these technologies are new, and expensive, and they can't be effective at solving the problem they set out to solve without mass adoption.

Mass adoption won't even _begin_ to happen until the average person can pick up a used Model 3 for around $10k. Where populations heavily use mopeds and motorcycles we need a flood of affordable electric alternatives. Both of those scenarios are at least a decade out.

If we need to solve this in 12 years we're screwed. Best bet is to move somewhere cold and inland. Then at least you can be somewhat comfortable while the whole thing goes down. Although the process of moving the world's economy away from oil (to whatever extent that can be achieved while still producing plastics etc.) is going to make life miserable no matter where you are.

seymour333··on Bi-Directional Plasma Thrusters for Space Debris Removal
Ooh, what about a laser on the space side of the debris that heats it, causing the release of gases that propel it towards earth? You would have to be able dynamically re-target the debris for uniform acceleration while also pulsing the laser if the debris is spinning, but it would probably work.

soure: I can't even do basic math, but maybe someone smart will think this is an interesting idea

seymour333··on Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam
I'm guessing this thing is going to run all the time and send Apple a continuous stream of what music is actually playing around people, so they can use the data to better market music.

Having song identification built into your iDevice is a nice value add for the consumer though

seymour333··on Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously
That's exactly the point I'm trying to make to OP. Think about the future and opt out!

It's a super tough sell for most people though, so the majority is likely going to just opt in, or remain opted in by default. Which I suppose means that we should all just try to reap whatever benefits we can now and wish our future selves all the best when it comes time to legislate this whole thing.

seymour333··on Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously
I think it's important to take time and think about some of the potential outcomes of bulk data collection.

Take this for example: there is currently a trend in the insurance industry to require an activity tracking device in order to activate certain life insurance plan discounts and other benefits. The data pulled from the activity trackers is almost certainly going to be used to enhance profitability for insurance providers, which is something that eventually will have a negative impact on some portion of people who buy life insurance.

This data might not affect first generation subscribers, so many people are comfortable to surrender it. Somewhere down the line people are going to have increased premiums or will be denied insurance altogether based on what is currently being collected. There is also the chance that the children of the people who are willingly providing this data will have higher insurance costs based on data collected from their parents, or grandparents.

The bottom line is that every company that is engaging in data collection is, or soon will be, using it to gain an unfair advantage against consumers. The consequences may seem abstract or far off, but every data point surrendered is a will have a cost at some point in the future. I'd rather not help large corporations take advantage of me.

seymour333··on PostGIS 2.5.0 released
Off topic: Do you have any good general learning resources for someone who is relatively new, but getting increasingly more involved in GIS? I'm a web dev, but a lot of the applications I work on involve maps (mostly using esri stuff)
seymour333··on Masque – Wearable that manipulates a user’s perception of their own respiration
Combine this technique with something like this: https://www.medgadget.com/2014/06/mits-wifi-system-detects-p...

and we can start modifying people's responses to any ads or other media that has audio. Just pipe in fake respiratory signals under the source audio and boom, that car ad really got your heart racing.

seymour333··on Apple can delete purchased movies from your library without telling you
They must have spent _years_ printing and aging copies of those books and destroying the originals. You have to admire the dedication
seymour333··on Apple can delete purchased movies from your library without telling you
Is there currently a single source of truth for the content of books and other written media? Something like a hash of all the contents that can be stored in some indelible way (blockchain maybe?) so that as time passes people can verify that the content has remained the same?
seymour333··on Apple can delete purchased movies from your library without telling you
Yeah that, only instead of removing it, they just spend a few decades turning it into an endorsement
seymour333··on Apple can delete purchased movies from your library without telling you
No, I mean a super crazy conspiracy theory where Amazon changes the content of books to better fit some acquired set of political or ideological views
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