Hacker News Reader

whatnotestson Safe Redis queues using Haskell dependent types

Can we collectively move on from single character variable names?

The code examples are full of variables like "q" "a" and "v" -- it slows down everything as we must grok the surrounding statements like some kind of Rosetta Stone to interpret what "a" could possibly be in this context.

Please fix it.

whatnotestson Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago

Best comment in this thread. Thank you.

whatnotestson Harpy, a “Fire and Forget” autonomous weapon drone

AdiDaaS

whatnotestson Harpy, a “Fire and Forget” autonomous weapon drone

How long until private drone manufacturers deploy many drones into areas of conflict, and grant control of said drones to the highest bidder?

whatnotestson Does the world need polymaths?

Came here to say this.

whatnotestson The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution (2002) [pdf]

> Tor and Amazon had an abortion and named it OpenBazaar.

There. Fixed that for you.

whatnotestson 0x – A Protocol for Trading Tokens

Brilliant idea. Wish I would have thought of it myself!

whatnotestson Ask HN: How did you buy your last pair of shoes?

Kenneth Cole website.

They have this great feature to help you ensure the correct size based on othe brands+sizes you already have.

That one feature alone helped me gain confidence in a buying decision I otherwise would not have made.

whatnotestson Researchers unravel the biosynthesis of psilocybin

Hopefully they can make it taste better?

whatnotestson Most archaeologists think the first Americans arrived by boat

So they invented boats that can travel across the ocean, but after more than ten thousand years they never invented the wheel?

And we have consensus on this?

whatnotestson Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts

It says "US Citizen cannot be registered"

whatnotestson United States Expatriation at an All-Time High

I hear North Korea has a similar policy.

whatnotestson How Palantir pushed into policing

Any "data" company must have full chain-of-custody for each one of their data points (where did we get it, how did we clean it, how would we update it, what was it previously, what has changed since X time, etc).

Otherwise they're just making accusations without any defense from repudiation.

whatnotestson Roger McNamee: I invested early in Google and Facebook and regret it

Absolve your guilt by transferring your wealth to someone else.

I know just the person...

whatnotestson Squishy Sentience

> I wonder what they could be in another million years.

Dead. All dead.

whatnotestson Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science (2009)

100% agree.

So unless you spend all day writing compilers from scratch or calculating Pascal's Triangle, please stop with the ridiculous CS questions in interviews.

Software Engineering is more of a trade, and requires vocational knowledge and experience. A mountain of theory may not always be required to Get Shit Done.

whatnotestson Mailit, A Tiny REST API to Send Emails

MailHog also looks great --

One thing that I use MailCatcher for is its REST API. I can easily check for new messages from tests (eg: Cucumber).

I don't see anything about that for MailHog on its github page.

whatnotestson Mailit, A Tiny REST API to Send Emails

Looks great!

Also, I'd like to share my favorite email-related development tool, MailCatcher [0]

Running these kinds tools as part of a docker-compose setup locally makes a huge difference, especially for end-to-end testing.

[0] https://mailcatcher.me/

whatnotestson Explaining Programming to Six-Year-Olds

Now if you could just tell me how to explain it to the execs that would be swell.

whatnotestson LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

If the goal of such an operation were to effectively create an alternative to LinkedIn, along the likes of other "claim your listing" sites, then this could be a worthwhile cause.

whatnotestson LinkedIn: It’s illegal to scrape our website without permission

LinkedIn gutted their API a couple years ago and now the information they took out has been moved to a private API

If your business is in the recruiter space, expect to have your API keys revoked and to receive a cease and desist letter as well.

whatnotestson Ask HN: Is the concept of the “next big tech hub” silly?

The center of the tech universe will always be the point of least resistance (to new ideas, cultures, mixing, lifestyles, etc).

For now, that's San Francisco (apparently) but for how much longer is anyone's guess.

Unless the necessary environment changes (i.e. tolerance is no longer a requirement) it will remain in SF or a place like it.

If tolerance and acceptance is somehow no longer necessary for a tech hub to bloom, it might end up anywhere.

whatnotestson Ask HN: Is the concept of the “next big tech hub” silly?

The cen

whatnotestson How to launder $4B worth of Bitcoin

/me takes furious notes...

whatnotestson Docker operations slowing down on AWS

+100 points to the excellent debugging skill demonstrated by the author.

It's great to see someone in top form.

whatnotestson Are We There Yet: The Go Generics Debate

Oy...I don't understand why there appears to be zero overlap between people with the skill to bring generics to Go, and the people who want generics in Go.

This debate has gone on long enough that if it were actually going to happen, it would have some obvious traction by now.

So...how 'bout that Swift?

whatnotestson Elon Musk’s “Innovations” Make the Middle Class Poorer

Call the whambulance for this communist.

whatnotestson Three CTOs Answer: What Is Good Code?

1. Does the code work?

2. Can I make a change, and be reasonably sure it will continue working?