AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?

Top comment by anw

Because Coding is not Working. Coding is not Planning. Coding is not Being Efficient. Coding is not Accomplishing Goals. Coding is not Saving Money. Coding is not Gaining Customers.

I am getting paid to get things done in a good manner. If I wanted to have a house built for me, I would not expect to pay somebody and immediately have them start laying bricks without them looking at the land, taking soil samples, sketching up drafts of what the house should look like within the constraints available, and then plan the foundation of which to start building.

If they came and immediately just started laying bricks, I'd know I have a really shitty house builder.

I mean no offense by this, but "why aren't you X" is a bit naïve and comes off as lacking a good amount of experience in that field. There are many reasons why not doing X is right, including social/mental recovery and prevention of burnout.

2. Ask HN: Team fun event ideas during WFH?

Top comment by noarchy

Related note: do it during work hours, if possible. Not all of us want to be expected to take an evening to devote to work events. Even if I genuinely like my co-workers, there are times that I want to set aside where I don't have to think about work.

3. Tell HN: A case of negative SEO I caught on my service and how I dealt with it

Top comment by Matsta

I'm sorry to say, but the neg SEO didn't drop your rankings, it was to do with the Google algorithm update [1]. Check the screenshot from Ahrefs [2], and your traffic drops on 3rd of December which is when the update went live. [1] https://moz.com/blog/googles-december-2020-core-update [2] https://i.imgur.com/DBkdUEk.png

Google's algorithm is smart enough to recognise Neg SEO attacks. Sure five years ago you could buy a blast of spammy links using Xrumer or GSA with some viagra anchor text and boom you're competition is gone.

From a quick glance, most of your pages have pretty thin content, and I assume it's pulling from an API, so none of it is unique. If there was one thing I would do is try to build some content on pages. A great tool to analyse and develop content that is SEO friendly is SurferSEO - highly recommend it.

I'm surprised your forum doesn't rank as well as your main site as it looks fairly active. However, I'm not sure about how PunBB does SEO wise.

4. Ask HN: Any tips for a programmer wanting to switch into security?

Top comment by robcohen

My advice is to stay as a software engineer, and slowly move towards secure software development. 98% of the security world is complete and utter bullshit, and no one is interested in actually securing anything. Ever wonder why EVERY bank has terrible 2FA practices? It's because they don't care. Same with law firms, hedge funds, governments, etc. Yes you can get great job security with security, but at the end of the day you simply won't be producing anything of value unless you are in the top 2% of the field.

Secure software development is different. Go make high quality software for firms that write in functional languages and use advanced methods for ensuring high code quality and safety.

Source: I did penetration testing for four years, also served in a cyber position in the military. What a giant waste of my time that whole effort was.

5. Ask HN: Startup employees getting nothing after acquisition, is this normal?

Top comment by birken

First of all, talk to a lawyer, most of the people here have no clue what they are talking about.

Any shareholder of the company has shareholder rights, and in fact you would get a vote on any change in ownership of the company (of course your vote probably wouldn't matter at all, but you still have one). Another of these rights is that the executives of a company have a fiduciary duty to all shareholders in their decision making. However I can imagine situations in which the story you've described is both completely reasonable, or situations in which it is grossly illegal. But of course it would only be illegal if one or many shareholders sued the company and won, which is where the lawyer comes in.

There is no sense in sharing any more details here on HN, find a lawyer, talk with them in detail about the situation and listen to their advice.

6. Ask HN: What's your best advice for someone turning 30 today?

Top comment by markus_zhang

Keep fit. Everything else depends on it. If you hate exercising (like me), try to find some sports that are fun to play, and find some friends who are willing to drag you to play.

Also get your tests done regularly. Blood test, etc. are super important and can detect issues early on.

Health is the basic of everything else and you don't want to try to fix it when it's broken because it's going to be too late.

Another thing is try to find a passion. Could be part of work or part of hobby but one needs to have passion on something or he lives like a zombie. It can be anything from chasing girls to star gazing, but something you are so passionate at that you are willing to throw resources into it to get as professional as possible. Do yourself a favor and put up a blog and youtube channel about your passion and advertise yourself.

So now you are mentally and physcially fit, can't be better than that. The point is not to push yourself to do a lot of things in one day, but put a bit of extra care to yourself and invest a bit of time to your passions everyday for ten thousand days.

7. Ask HN: Is it a bad idea to join Facebook as engineer?

Top comment by tppiotrowski

Are you a working for another FAANG company? There are benefits to working on code at scale. You will learn how to commit code alongside dozens/hundreds of other engineers while minimizing bugs. You will become a better coder because other people will scrutinize and review your code. You will have access to some of the thought leaders in the web development space. You will see how professional software engineers maximize their productivity.

Politics aside, if you are an indie developer or have developed only on small teams, spending a year or two at a FAANG company will often greatly improve your effectiveness as a coder that you can then bring to your own projects or smaller companies. I'd recommend it, but don't get attached to the money and set an exit date.

8. Ask HN: Why are we expected to train Google's NN for free through captchas?

Top comment by Crash0v3rid3

Take a step back and consider the owners of the websites you are visiting. They need a way to filter out spammers and decided to use captchas, which is their choice to do so.

As a consumer, it’s your choice to not support them if you feel it has become too burdensome to fill out the captcha.

The legality of this shouldn’t even be a question. No one is forcing you to use these sites.

9. Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?

Top comment by BitwiseFool

There is no single reason for why this is happening but I do have a few suspicions on what is contributing to it.

1) The internet is directly and indirectly incentivizing this kind of attention seeking behavior. It's rewarding to be noticed, upvoted, and retweeted. Pleasant, well reasoned, and evenhanded discussion rarely gets as much attention as sassy clapbacks.

2) Younger generations have been raised to believe that activism is a virtue and that injecting politics into everything is the way to affect progress (intersectionality).

3) Young people tend to be more vocal and more prolific. This is probably because they have more energy and free time than older folks. Additionally, young people tend to be more abrasive/obnoxious, as they don't have as much life experience to tone themselves down and learn how to behave.

10. Tell HN: All your Google Music deleted on February 24th

Top comment by ndiscussion

Daily reminder: Piracy is not about price.

https://archive.is/tFp19