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zainhodaon Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

I installed a Mr. Cool DIY mini split in my home for 2 rooms and so far it’s been great. That initial foray was a bit of an experiment. I’d like to just replace my central air now with a ducted heat pump but I haven’t found a good solution that doesn’t cost a ridiculous amount for a professional to install.

I think you have a big problem with selling direct to homeowners. Most HVAC companies will not touch a homeowner-purchased system. So if you’re selling direct, then you’re going to need DIY quick connect line sets like Mr. Cool.

zainhodaon Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python

I inadvertently built something similar:

https://www.pycob.com

We should talk. If your open source roadmap includes getting rid of your npm dependency then we might just migrate to Pynecone for our front-end.

zainhodaon Joint statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC

I think this is probably where we will end up: Deposits above the FDIC insured level have to automatically go into money market funds with a weighted average maturity of 5 days or less instead of the loan portfolio of the bank.

zainhodaon SVB Used Former McCarthy Staffers to Weaken Regulations, Lobby FDIC

I conducted Dodd-Frank Act Stress Tests for one component of a large bank. For a $400B portfolio I was able to do it with a team of 4 people including myself plus a $100k/year license to Barra and it takes about a week of the whole team’s focus.

The thing is, we were already employed by the bank to run risk management and the bank already had the subscription to the software. So from the bank’s perspective it was close to 0 marginal cost to conduct the stress tests because even if they weren’t required, we would be doing them anyway as good risk management practice.

If a bank says that stress tests are too expensive to run, that means that absent regulatory requirements they would perform no risk management.

zainhodaon Ask HN: What simple web apps do you wish existed? Seeking ideas for sample apps

I don’t believe you should be getting an error. Could you share what you’re seeing? Feel free to submit a GitHub issue or email me at my username at gmail

zainhodaon Peter Thiel's Founders Fund pulled cash from SVB before collapse: Report

Yes. There’s a reason that MBAs are a thing. The actual MBA degree is worthless but if you’re trying to run a company, you need to understand that you have to know all of the material that is typically taught in an MBA.

zainhodaon Peter Thiel's Founders Fund pulled cash from SVB before collapse: Report

Even for insolvent banks, a bank run is typically rare or if it happens, is a very slow-moving event because of FDIC insurance.

The difference here is that SVB’s customers did not understand proper corporate cash management practices and had deposits far in excess of FDIC insurance. So from a game theoretic perspective if you hear a whiff of insolvency then you want to pull your cash as fast as possible.

This is on startup CEOs as much as it is on SVB.

zainhodaon Ask HN: What's the fastest and simplest way to prototype a web app in 2023?

If you know Python, maybe Pycob could suit your use case? https://www.pycob.com

zainhodaon Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely

I think the fundamental issue is that there is a distribution: 1. “the coaster”: won’t do anything on their own initiative and needs to have a manager to get anything done 2. “the clock in, clock out”: they do the job for a full workday and don’t need supervision but they don’t go above and beyond 3. “the always on”: loves what they do and is always working and contributing. They may work weird hours like really early in the morning or really late at night. They use the saved commute time as an opportunity to get started earlier or work later

If your firm’s hiring process has inadvertently optimized for #1 then WFH will not work. If the firm has managed to find enough #3, then RTO will damage company productivity.

Ironically, the fact that Apple was able to make the migration from PowerPC to Intel back in the day was because they gave a #3 type employee a special exemption to WFH.

One of the things remote-first companies are going to need to do is to migrate from interviews that are centered around “what you know” to “show me you can get stuff done”

zainhodaon Show HN: PyBroker – Algotrading in Python with Machine Learning

Pycob is also open source

https://github.com/pycob/pycob

zainhodaon Getting Past “Ampersand-Driven Development” in Rust

Spot on. I think Rust could have been even better if it didn’t have all this ugly syntax. I would like to see something more akin to Swift.

zainhodaon Show HN: PyBroker – Algotrading in Python with Machine Learning

This looks awesome! I might try giving it a front-end using https://www.pycob.com

zainhodaon Ask HN: What simple web apps do you wish existed? Seeking ideas for sample apps

How's this?

The home page is a setup where you setup your dataframe. If you already have some csv or something, you can read that rather than getting user input.

The app will randomly select 2 rows of the dataframe and display them as side-by-side VS cards. You then pick the winner from the two. Then the app will repeat random selection/winner as many times as you want.

There's a results page that shows the ELO ranking of all the "players" as well as the history of all the "games" between the players.

I implemented not with a "swipe" interface but just with side-by-side cards and you click on one. It wasn't clear to me how swiping would work when you're choosing a winner between 2 objects rather than making a yes/no decision. If you have an idea for how swipe would be useful, I'm all ears.

Live App: https://compare-and-rank.pycob.app/

Source Code: https://github.com/pycob/sample-apps/blob/main/compare-and-r...

zainhodaon Ask HN: What simple web apps do you wish existed? Seeking ideas for sample apps

This is a great idea! -- I'm going to take a stab at implementing this tonight

zainhodaon Ask HN: Common minimal architectures to build SaaS products from pet projects

I'm working on a project that makes it easy to create Python front-ends: https://www.pycob.com/

Do you have any examples of the pet projects posted on GitHub? I could try to take a stab at giving it a front-end, which would probably be the first step in making your pet projects SaaS

zainhodaon Ask HN: What simple web apps do you wish existed? Seeking ideas for sample apps

How does this look? I'm happy to make changes to suit your needs:

Live App: https://markdown-to-json.pycob.app/

Source Code: https://github.com/pycob/prototypes/blob/main/markdown-to-js...

zainhodaon Ask HN: What simple web apps do you wish existed? Seeking ideas for sample apps

That's a great idea! Is there a specific JSON format you'd need?

zainhodaon Show HN: HN Hiring Data Playground

Nice! I created something very similar but geared towards when is a good time to post on HN:

App: https://hn-analytics.pycob.app/

Code: https://www.pycob.com/view_code?code_owner=hn-analytics

zainhodaon Ask HN: What simple web apps do you wish existed? Seeking ideas for sample apps

Thanks! Could you elaborate on your use case? I'm trying to figure out how much of this can/needs to be client-side vs. server-side

zainhodaon Launch HN: Pyq (YC W23) – Simple APIs to Popular AI Models

Nice! One thing that would be a great add is a how to do “X” in library “Y” where Y is a post-2021 library that OpenAI doesn’t know about yet. I’d love to be able to send my Python library code/documentation to it and have it generate code examples for specific use cases.

zainhodaon Swarmlet: A self-hosted, open-source Platform as a Service

Have you looked into Google Cloud Run?

zainhodaon Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

Instead of focusing on adding LLM to search, they should have rolled it out as a GCP service. There would be less reputational risk and it would give them a chance to learn how it would be used when it did eventually integrate into Search.

zainhodaon Ask HN: What Happened to Elm?

One of Evan’s colleagues from NoRedInk actually started his own language heavily inspired by Elm that aims to fix a lot of its ecosystem problems.

https://www.derw-lang.com

I’m not sure if it’ll go anywhere but I like the idea that it’s interoperable with existing JS/TS packages.

zainhodaon Ask HN: How are you building apps that use LLMs?

I’m working on something like this for Python. Live code editing, forking other users code, and built-in Web UIs that let your end users interact with your prototype. We’ll be ready next week for a handful (probably around 5) initial test users if you’re interested.

zainhodaon Ask HN: Low tech Git alternatives for non-software folks?

Have you tried GitHub Desktop? https://desktop.github.com/

zainhodaon Ask HN: Share your personal site

https://zainhoda.github.io

Just a list of random stuff I’ve worked on, including a lot of abandoned side projects.

zainhodaon Tech journalism doesn’t know what to do with Mastodon

Agreed. I just posted a guide on how to do it in another thread and it’s actually not that hard. The only thing that won’t be familiar to all devs is HTTP signing. I expect that we’re going to have more HTTP middleware frameworks that support ActivityPub if Mastodon gains more traction.

zainhodaon The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

My guess is that older homes in the northeast will have an issue not with adding the outlet but upgrading from 100amp to 200amp service. I was quoted $10k for that upgrade. I had to decide between getting an EV and getting a heat pump. Decided on the heat pump, which I’m very happy with — it’s saving me thousands on heating oil.

zainhodaon The cold hard truth about electric vehicles in winter

Ohh. This explains why the Chevy Bolt in front of me on I-95 pulled slowed to a crawl and pulled over to the shoulder.

zainhodaon Ask HN: “Contact Us” Pricing

That’s what I would have ordinarily thought but I had a vendor who charged $10/user/mo per user for their “Team” tier but $180,000/year for their “Enterprise” tier with up to 150 users. Made no sense at all.