AskHN Digest

1. Shopify says remove Stripe billing or get booted from their app store

Top comment by lxe

Not a surprising practice, but:

> Pretty ironic too when you've got Shopify's CEO tweeting about the unfair 30% cut Apple wants: https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1362411841943711744

That's pretty hypocritical

2. Ask HN: What entry-level telescope should I choose?

Top comment by TheOtherHobbes

I wouldn't get a telescope for direct observation. We're all used to stunning images from Hubble and from amateur astrophotographers. But even if you get an 16" semi-professional monster with all the options, you will not see those kinds of stunning views.

I've used a 20" (!) Dobsonian and as an experience it was pretty meh, aside from the novelty value. Space simply doesn't look that impressive that through a telescope - not even a huge light bucket. And a small affordable scope will be even more disappointing. You can see Saturn's rings and craters on the Moon and the satellites of Jupiter with some rough impression of banding, but most nebulae are faint, small, and not at all spectacular.

Instead, I'd consider astrophotography. It's not a cheap hobby, but it's also not as cripplingly expensive as a high-end scope. And you can produce genuinely stunning results by layering the sharpest and best images with software. This sidesteps the problem of poor seeing (optical distortions caused by air movements) which limits good direct viewing to large objects and cold nights.

The amazing thing about modern astrophotography is that amateurs are easily outclassing the images produced by professional astronomers fifty years ago. And you can start without a telescope at all by fixing a DSLR to a tracking telescope mount. There's also a lot to learn so you can start simple, produce some decent visual results, and then continue to be amazed as your skills improve.

3. Shopify employees accessed customer databases without authorization

Top comment by wyxuan

The only icing in the cake is that at least Shopify has been both transparent and quick - it's only taken a couple months and they've managed to get bottom of the case. Couple months might seem long but from what I've seen it takes about a year of lag time from the start of the breach to when the company finds out/acknowledges.

In any case I'm wondering - how did Shopify discover this intrusion? Do they check logs regularly? Did they receive a tip off?

4. Ask HN: What is a creative product you've discovered recently?

Top comment by gijsnijholt1980

Blender3D for video editing is really cool.

iMovie crashed bad on me and I never got it working again. Almost paid 300 bucks for Final Cut Pro.

Then remembered that Blender had this built in. And its really good. No need to import videos into a bin or nonsense like that. Just drag them into the timeline, add filters, drag to reorder, render to mp4/aac and its done.

Best discovery of the year sofar

5. Why can't you get the data used to create the Consumer Price Index (CPI)?

Top comment by alexmingoia

You might be interested in The Billion Prices Project, which calculates price changes by scraping online product prices. They make the data available.

http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/

Spoiler: Billion Prices Project has mostly tracked CPI within 1-2%

6. Ask HN: Can I trust brokers with my stocks?

Top comment by gerdemb

Interactive Brokers has a stock lending program and shares half the profits with their customers who opt-in. They are transparent about how it works. (Basically they deposit cash collateral to your account to cover the stocks they’ve lent out).

https://ibkr.info/article/1839

I think many other brokers do basically same, but aren’t transparent and don’t share the profits.

7. Companies must stop requiring people to link their phone numbers

Top comment by smt88

> With the growing number of people working remotely from anywhere

It's growing, but it's still tiny. Most companies doing this are willing to lose users who don't have permanent phone numbers in order to gain a quick, easy, semi-reliable way to prevent fake account registrations.

> Stick to emails. People barely ever change their emails.

This is factually wrong. People get married, get divorced, change employers, graduate from school, etc. Email addresses change a lot.

Your suggestion also misunderstands (or ignores) the entire point of requiring phone numbers. They're not as easy to register as email addresses, so you're more likely to get a 1:1 relationship between phone numbers and individuals.

I could literally go out right now and activate quadrillions of valid email addresses within 20 min, and all of them would work. I can't do the same with phone numbers.

8. Ask HN: Are you on a technical specialist career path, what does it look like?

Top comment by gwbas1c

This is often called an "architect."

I was on that path in my previous job.

First: I had to defend that path. When my manager was promoted to director, and needed someone to manage my team, he tried to covertly turn me into a manager after I declined. Fortunately, the VP of engineering intervened, but if he hadn't, I'd probably have left for a company that supported the technical specialist path.

Second: You are expected to lead in some way; you can't just do the same job that you did with 5-10 years of experience out of college. In my case, I was architect for a business critical component of the product. I designed critical path parts, reviewed other engineers designs, implemented critical path parts, reviewed other engineers code, ect. We promoted one of my co-workers to manager, and the manager and I worked very closely together, but I directly reported to the director.

2.5: Your job is no longer to "do what you're told." You need to be able to manage up and help management anticipate technical issues. You will need to push for major refactors, rewrites, protocol changes, code quality, ect.

Third: Job changes are going to take more time. No one wants to pay extra just because you have extra years of experience. Finding the match for your technical experience and career experience, with the pay premium, takes time. This mostly has to do with the learning curve of tech stacks; no one wants to pay a guy with 20 years experience in ABC stack to learn XYZ stack from the ground up. You will also have to walk away from opportunities that are just trying to hire cheap people who "do as their told."

Finally: Consider "consulting" when you change jobs. It's an easy way to leave if you don't work out in a new job. There's a lot of reasons why a job won't work out, and may of them aren't your fault. You just can't screen a company closely enough in a job interview to know if it's going to be a good match, so starting with a 3 month or 6 month contract, and not renewing it, is a good way to protect yourself when you realize that you just can't work with someone.

9. Ask HN: What are some hobbies for a 72-year-old retiree? Maybe OSS?

Top comment by jasonkester

Public Service Announcement: Don’t wait until you’re 72 to find a hobby.

Figure out some fun things you like to do when you’re young, and make the time to do them regularly. Get in the habit of doing weekend trips to go fishing or kite surfing or competitive bridge playing or whatever. Max out your vacation time doing so, and get a good set of friends in place who are just as passionate about bicycles or vintage trains or civil war re-enactment as you are. Spreading this work out over a lifetime will leave you in a much better place than trying to think up a hobby and find people to do it with in your 70’s. And you’ll be a lot more keen to retire as early as possible, knowing exactly how you’re going to fill all those new free hours.

A side effect of doing this is that you’ll live a lot more life while you’re young enough to enjoy it. And when you’re too old to spend the entire winter snowboarding anymore, you’ll still have a crew of friends to hang out with and talk about it.

10. Ask HN: Any startups solving for software engineering hiring?

Top comment by bobbydallas

so many its not even funny. AI this and that. Personality and behavior assessments. Automate everything. chatbots to save recruiting. BLAH BLAH Fucking blah. Some have certainly made sourcing and outreach better but as iwang mentioned very few of these address the personal side of hiring engineers.

The idea that you can assess an engineers ability to code AND collaborate with your team in a 3-5 hour window is just a losing battle. Hackerrank and triplebyte are good for the very large corps to rule people out and slim down the funnel. Not a real reflection of the work, code, or problems you will be solving in the job if hired.

15yrs tech recruiting corporate and agency. I have seen almost every tool out there and I will say very few have stood the test of time. Hiring is really hard and the fact remains there just isnt a one size fits all solution. Find the tools that suit your goals.

Personally I think small companies would be far better served investing in sourcing tools to attract and located the right talent. Have your leadership pitch these people directly hunt talent versus tools to automate volume (95% of which are not the people you are seeking any way).