AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?

Top comment by ploxiln

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Have I just been incredibly lucky and every boss I have had is too incompetent to notice? Do I have imposter syndrome and I am actually a 10x developer whose laziness makes them a 1x developer?

Lazy developers don't really bother me, if you do a couple hours of high-quality work a week I'd have no complaint. (Many weeks I do as little, some weeks I do a decent amount of real work :) The problem is developers making negative progress, usually messes that need to be cleaned up ... and it's an awkward situation, no matter your relative authority. I'm in the "we should consider them lines spent, not lines produced" camp.

An old disputed quote:

> I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities.

> Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.

2. Ask HN: Why is building Windows apps so complicated?

Top comment by Dayshine

1. Install the .NET 6 SDK: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/6.0

2. Terminal ,pick a folder, `dotnet new wpf`

3. `dotnet run` and you have an (admittedly empty) hello world app

It's telling me it took 1.5s to build the app.

Want to publish the app?

`dotnet publish -o ./publish -r win-x64` which takes a bit longer as it has to download some runtimes (60 seconds max, then cached). Zip up the resulting folder and ta-da you have an application. Just unzip and run the .exe.

If you want a single-file exe (as in completely statically compiled without self-extraction) that's a bit more advanced and requires a few properties in the csproj to configure how to handle native assemblies that expect to exist on disk. If you want it to have no runtime dependencies, add `--self-contained`

3. Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?

Top comment by gnfargbl

If you are a freelancer then your contract should allow you to do work for others. In which case, your response to this client has to be "Sorry, but my business laptop potentially has data from other clients on it. I can't let you install this monitoring agent without violating my contractual confidentially agreement with those other clients. I always maintain client confidentiality and will do the same for you. If you want to ship me a dedicated laptop for your engagement, I would be happy to install whatever you want on it."

4. Ask HN: Why have we accepted the cookie pop-up situation across the web?

Top comment by y4mi

Well, it's basically malicious compliance. They're supposed to be super annoying because the people which need them do things which have been deemed unacceptable from the legislature. Instead of complying, they choose this obnoxious practice so they could continue with what they've been doing for years, which is monitoring every action a visitor does.

You don't need a cookie banner to be allowed to create Cookies. You only need them if you're using them for something like tracking.

A session cookie, selected theme etc is all fine without that banner

5. Ask HN: Best Way to Contact YouTube

Top comment by logicalmonster

I feel for you and you have my upvote for the signal, but good luck getting any action unless this goes sufficiently viral.

I've had this discussion with Googlers here before and this is apparently what they actually believe.

* They're content with algorithmic approaches to spam prevention and other moderation that results in numerous false positives and don't see the problem with that.

* They think their support channels are more than adequate.

* They think their bans result solely in bad actors being harmed and don't realize that shady businesses that actually do spam have endless fake companies at their disposal to keep on trucking.

6. Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

Top comment by bgroat

Is it possible that you're not making the "right" moves because you're the CTO?

Leadership is hard and it's hard because you're making bayesian calculations on suboptimal choices. Almost by definition.

Say a Jr. dev has a problem that they can't solve. They kick it to an intermediate.

The intermediate can't solve it so they kick it up to a senior.

The senior can see a couple of solutions, but want's to run it past the architect.

The architect takes these options, weighs them against n number of considerations + the dev roadmap and sees strengths and weaknesses to all of them.

They package those pros and cons and brings them to you, the CTO to make a decision between these sub-optimal choices.

In this kind of environment EVERY move you make is going to be a little bit wrong. You just kind of have to minimize the wrongness

7. Ask HN: Apple revoked developer account for 2.5 years and counting

Top comment by nerdjon

You said other apps are fine, but are those other apps advertising themselves as parental controls or as stalking software?

I took a look at your website https://truple.io and... there is very little mention of this being for parents. TBH looking at the website is... deeply concerning for anyone that would legitimately want to use this product. Especially on a spouse?!?

I am willing to bet part of the issue is the targeting for this app. The functionality is likely second, but they may have special rules when it comes to parental apps. But there is a very very fine line there that can be dangerous when it comes to surveillance.

Last... I find your focus on "online filth" insulting.

8. Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?

Top comment by lcvw

I’m also very interested in an answer. We use Alexa a lot, but this week I had to unplug every Alexa in the house because a distant family member had gained access to the family Amazon account and was trying to use the “drop in” feature to listen to our conversations. In the course of our investigation I found out that Alexa does not log privacy related events at all (there is no record of a drop in stored anywhere), and the UI for locking down which profiles and contacts have access to which feature is unbelievably bad. At this point I can’t prove that this person doesn’t still have access somehow (every single contact taken from your phone has unique permissions to drop in) and I can’t delete the profile this person created without contacting customer support. So the devices are going to stay unplugged until I have time to nuke the Amazon account and create a new one.

To be clear, I’m not concerned about cloud processing or even mining my data. Just something I can have a reasonable amount of control over and that doesn’t constantly enable features I don’t want on its own.

9. Ask HN: 27, accidentally became wealthy, lost drive. What should I do?

Top comment by diego

This is normal. You will get used to it, and you will likely bounce to your personality before the windfall. You have solved one problem in life that most people never solve, and that puts you in a very small group. However, the rest of the problems are still there. The need to work for money can no longer distract you from them. You still need human connection and purpose. You still will age, have to worry about your health, etc.

There are many jobs you will not want to take because you know that you don't need to, and that makes it hard to put up with all the bullshit of a typical job. Ultimately you may want to focus on creative pursuits, perhaps investments, maybe start a business or a nonprofit to do something you find fulfilling.

Right now I'd say be patient, get used to your new life, focus on investing the money wisely. I'd say buy a place to live and invest the rest in a conservative portfolio designed to keep up with inflation. Roboinvesting is the easiest, or you could do it yourself via traditional brokers: a mix of bond and stock index ETFs, perhaps a small amount of crypto (I'd say no more than 10%) if you still believe in it.

10. Ask HN: Life Changing Books?

Top comment by alecst

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I delayed for too long reading this thrilling book. It was like getting a brain massage. So many wonderful lessons in rational thinking packed into a truly enjoyable and memorable story.

In response to some questions:

It's not a kids book. It's a fan-fiction inspired by the original books, but written with adults in mind.

You can read it for free at http://www.hpmor.com/.