Hacker News Reader

vstollenon Disagreement among frontier LLMs on real-world fact-checks

Can you share what you mean by this?

> when using dedicated AI resources that I'm paying for

Are there API-based search providers that structure their results differently?

vstollenon Increasing your practice surface area

I like the idea of the article. However, I wonder what are ways to increase the practice surface area for programming / software engineering?

I can think of various high-Level activities such as analyzing systems we interact with on a day-to-day basis. However, I cannot come up with exercises that would improve my code itself.

vstollenon XSLT removal will break multiple government and regulatory sites

One (admittedly niche) use case for XSLT is that it’s the only way I found to make RSS feeds both understandable for humans and machines.

For example, I use it add an explanation of what RSS is and some styling to the RSS feed of my personal website [1].

[1]: https://vstollen.me/atom.xml

vstollenon Ask HN: Which co-location providers would you recommend in EU?

I don't do colocation myself, so I don't know what makes a good co-location provider. However, Hetzner has a Colocation offering: https://www.hetzner.com/colocation

vstollenon Bananas: Cross-Platform screen sharing made simple

Do both the sharing and receiving users need to install the app? If not, it would probably be much easier to start using the app if at least the receiving user could view my screen from their web browser.

Apart from that, I often fall back to https://github.com/adamyordan/laplace when I need to share my screen. It works in the browser and has great image clarity. Sadly, the demo instance is down, so you need to host it yourself. Also, it can have trouble inside some enterprise network/firewall setups.

vstollenon Taskwarrior – CLI Task Management

I've used Taskwarrior (and Timewarrior [1]) for some time and one thing they uniquely do is automatically rank your tasks by a number of factors.

For your tasks, you can set priorities, a deadline, dependencies, and more. Using this information, Taskwarrior computes an urgency score so you can see your most urgent task using:

  task next

Sometimes I wonder what a GUI-based app would look like that does such urgency rankings.

[1]: https://timewarrior.net/

vstollenon SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube

This somewhat reminds me on the discussions around the Web Monetization API [1] a few years ago.

I still wish for a service that gives me access to all paywalled sites or a way to sending all websites I visit a little money in exchange for them not serving ads.

[1]: https://webmonetization.org/

vstollenon "We ran out of columns"

Yess, we were the software team for a university library. There wasn't a lot of pressure and people on my team generally had a chill and comfortable life.

However, there wasn't a lot of room for ambition.

vstollenon "We ran out of columns"

This made me think of my first job. I was the sole developer on a project because the old developer left. Nothing was documented and nobody knew why things were designed the way they were.

We had no code reviews, no design docs, no tests, nothing. We made the changes the way we thought they were right and would git pull them onto the production server.

After I struggled to get productive for the first four months, my manager went on a four-week Christmas vacation. In a moment of frustration, I seized the opportunity and rewrote the whole project from scratch. I don’t remember if my manager ever noticed, but that was the moment I finally got productive.

vstollenon Apple Maps on the web launches in beta

What I miss the most from Apple Maps is their lack of user content (at least in Germany). While I can find many pictures and reviews of every tiny store on Google Maps, Apple usually only has a handful of reviews and almost no photos submitted.

vstollenon Button Stealer

Are (updates to) extensions from the Chrome and Firefox store usually vetted before publication?

I‘ve heard that Firefox will only run signed extensions. Would you trust this process?

vstollenon Button Stealer

I haven’t used it myself, but the LanguageTool browser extension might allow users to use a self-hosted or locally running instance.

vstollenon Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

Along the lines of Julia Evans’ “Optimize for conversions” [1], can you gauge the popularity of your post by the replies you get?

[1]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/02/20/measuring-blog-success/

vstollenon Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?

While I don‘t write much, my website is directly associated with my real name. As a result, friends regularly stumble upon it.

Most of them don’t care for the topics I write about. However, they usually get a little excited, as if they found a real-life Easter egg.

vstollenon Figgie: Simulate stock trading with a deck of cards

I’ve played a few rounds and the group is often surprisingly good at finding it. Players start with their hands and set prices accordingly. If the other players agree, the price difference gets more extreme quickly.

vstollenon Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)

Similar experience with Comdirect. They also have a 6-digit pin.

When I asked support why I have to pay for my depot (even though its free if I have a checking account) they said they signed me up under two separate customer IDs, but they cannot simply consolidate them. I have to open a new depot and transfer my stocks.

vstollenon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://vstollen.me

I don't write much. The most interesting article is probably one where I reflect on my AWS internship. :)

vstollenon Travel across Germany with the 49 Euro ticket

I think the confusion comes from there being lots of transportation providers where you can buy the ticket.

The different providers can differ in what payments they accept and how they send you the ticket. Some also include extra benefits.

According to their website, Mainz, for example seems to sell them in their app and accepts credit card, as well as PayPal payments.

vstollenon We will be shutting down neeva.com

I find lots of value in chat-augmented search. But, Bing is not ready yet. It is slow, hallucinates, only vaguely cites its sources and is therefore not trustworthy.

On the other hand, I am really happy with https://phind.com and find myself using it if I struggle to understand some concept.

For me, the power of the chat based apps is that I can explain my mental model and they can directly build upon that.

vstollenon How to be consistent

The article says that "Omar" would read papers.

I've never read papers out of uni assignments. Do you have suggestions for great papers "everyone" should read or how to find interesting papers to read?

vstollenon Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?

I've tried rescue time, but wanted a solution with as little friction to actual tracking as possible.

So, ideally I'd like to have a one or two click tracking solution which rescue time did not really provide.

vstollenon Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?

Wow, Timing looks really nice!

It's a bummer that no time tracking App really seems to focus on cross platform support. I've been looking for a time tracking app myself and couldn't find one to support my situation.

I have: - A Linux desktop - A MacBook - An Android Phone - Offline activities I want to track

vstollenon Ups and downs of a side project

I wonder how the operational burden for a side project is.

One of my key worries is that if I sell my side project to real users, I have to patch it, I have to monitor it, I have to answer support messages and fix it if it breaks for whatever reason.

vstollenon Windows needs a change in priorities

It's mind boggling how user-hostile one can make a piece of "premium" software.

You pay 145€ for the Home or 259€ for the Pro Edition and they treat it like it's freeware.

I want my computer to support me in achieving what I want to do, but Windows just keeps grabbing attention with intrusive ads and never-ending notifications.

vstollenon The Future of Kubernetes

I'm not too far into protobuf, etc., but do you only prefer them for your internal services, or do you actually see them as a viable solution for public-facing APIs?

vstollenon The road to success is paved with rejection letters

Very encouraging post! Like many others, I've been dreaming to work in the USA for quite some time now.

I've always imagined that my CV would stand out and that it would be easy to send out a few applications and get an internship abroad. Well... turns out it's not. At least for me.

Posts like these remind me, that we should speak about our rejections more open and regularly. They are also part of the process, a source of motivation, and usually an opportunity to learn.

vstollenon I'm so sorry everyone. Or: why I'm switching to Cloudflare

Oh yes. I first discovered Google Firebase some time during high-school and was hacking on some small projects ever since.

Today, I am hosting most of my stuff on GCP and I'm quite reluctant to spend time learning about the other provider's offerings.