AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Have You Left Kubernetes?

Top comment by derefr

We started with a full-stack k8s approach (on GKE); left (switching to plain GCE VMs); then came back much more conservatively, just using GKE for the stateless business-layer while keeping stateful components on dedicated VMs. Much lower total maintenance burden.

(Hard-won bit of experience: k8s + Redis really don't like each-other if Redis 1. is configured to load from disk, and 2. your memory limit for the Redis container is somewhat-tightly bounded. At least from the k8s controller's perspective, Redis apparently uses ~400% of its steady-state memory while reading the AOF tail of an RDB file — getting the container stuck in an OOM-kill loop until you come along and temporarily de-bound its memory.)

However, we're considering switching back to k8s for stateful components, with a different approach: allocating single-node node-pools with taints that map 1:1 to each stateful component, effectively making these more like "k8s-managed VMs" than "k8s-managed containers." The point would be to get away from the need to manage the VMs ourselves, giving them over to GKE, while still retaining the assumptions of VM isolation (e.g. not having/needing memory limits, because the single pod is the only tenant of the VM anyway.)

2. Ask HN: Working in tech for climate?

Top comment by ttiurani

I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but the answer to your question depends on your analysis of the problem.

If you're an ecomodernist, who believes we can stop and reverse the transgression of planetary boundaries (climate change, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, ocean acidification, etc.) without any meaningful system changes, the sibling comment tips might help.

If you are, like me, unconvinced by the ecomodernist argument – and have a grasp on all of the different ways the environment is being destroyed (not just "climate"), know Jevons paradox and rebound effects, are up to speed with the empirical knowledge of decoupling rates of both energy and material flows compared to "safe" limits – then "working for climate" almost exclusively means working to bring about a big political change.

Unfortunately that limits quite a bit the income potential of the work, but for me that's what "working for climate" means.

3. Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?

Top comment by antioppressor

Recommendation system is long time broken. I am subscribed to 100+ channels and check 10 channels on a weekly basis, meaning I watch all the new videos these creators make. So that means I want the new stuff from the frequented ones on my front page ASAP. Yet, it's a hit and miss. From the remaining 90 channels I never get anything recommended. Why?

If I subscribe to a new channel it gets recommended like hell, then it forgets about it.

BUT! Totally irrelevant things that I never watch, is kept on my front page for weeks. Like it wants me to check it or wants me to mute it, but fuck them I'm not giving them any more metrics. If I clear the fingerprints and block the acquiring of these metrics the front page gets filled with new, interesting content. Who the hell understands this? I have also observed that if you have an adblocker enabled it gives you trash all the time.

When the absolutely disgusting, braindead, bottomfeeding "depp vs amber" nightmare was ongoing I had to "mute" the same channels multiple times and then 55 others, because it just slams it into my face. Watch it, watch it, you must see this muck.

The topic of my fav channels represent... I get nothing relevant from them. :DDD

The shorts... was the pinnacle of YTs innovation. :DDDD

Goog is all about control now. Look innovation for somewhere else... well... if you can find any, lemme know........

You can't do shit with godzilla and now he does whatever he wants.

4. Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

Top comment by ggambetta

This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19584921 And it wasn't even my post!

A long time ago I found myself teaching Computer Graphics at my alma mater. Over the following years my approach to the subject evolved, and I really got the hang of it. After I stopped teaching, I took my notes, handouts and slides, and made them into a series of articles that I put on my website, where they remained in relative obscurity. Hacker News managed to find it every once in a while, and it was generally well received, but nothing came out of this. Until April 2019, when that post made the HN front page again, except this time it caught the attention of an editor in No Starch Press.

Long story short, my materials are now a book, Computer Graphics from Scratch, sold by No Starch Press [0], and also available for free on my website [1].

This genuinely wouldn’t have happened without your support. THANK YOU, HN community :)

[0] https://nostarch.com/computer-graphics-scratch

[1] http://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch

5. Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

Top comment by zimbatm

The best thing to do is to decide where your boundaries are, and then tell them.

I was in your position many times. I was so frustrated to feel like the other person was entitled to my time. Then I had to fight my urges to tell them to fuck off, wasting even more time and energy in the process. Even if I replied, it wasn't helpful to anybody if I was being polite but passive-aggressive.

Then I realized that it was a huge misunderstanding. How can people know what my limits are if I don't tell them? We don't all share the same sensibilities and background. Instead of getting upset, it's possible to tell people and move on. 99% of the time people understand and respect that.

Since then, I adopt the following classification:

1. Is the feature interesting to me? Let them know

2. If not, would I accept a PR for it? Let them know, with also some criteria for inclusion. No half-baked attempts please.

That's it.

One surprising thing I discovered is that I wasn't entirely clear where my limits were. Going through that process over and over again helped me figure that out. And become better at communicating clearly.

6. Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

Top comment by michalu

My company sends a newsletter once a month. We're selling roasted coffee. This single day account for 20-30% of our monthly revenue. In fact email is our single best performing channel. Hope this info helps.

EDIT: I should also add that we're combining every newsletter with some "offer" e.g. we make a new blend or roast couple of bags of some coffee we don't typically stock. We're also keeping it very personal - it's literally just a plain text email (we've got this new thing on stock, here's what we've been up to and here's some new content on blog - have a great month.)

7. Ask HN: Who do you talk to about system architecture and design?

Top comment by ericbarrett

1. Pick a random tech stack

2. Make a blog post and share on HN

3. Let the commenters tell you everything you did wrong and what they would have done instead

Put more seriously—I think if you don't have an external professional network to lean on, then you should blog it, talk at conferences, etc. Saying "we aren't sure this is right but it's what we came up with" will definitely invite comment. Keep an open mind and remember any publicity is good publicity: your harshest critics will still be engaging and giving you feedback.

I don't think chat services (IRC, Matrix, Discord) are a good fit here, unless used to talk to a group of people you already know and have some cachet with. But I might just be old-school.

8. Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

Top comment by woutr_be

One of the absolute worst dark patterns I’ve seen was on Foodpanda. When you’re just browsing, you see prices crossed out, with a cheaper price below it, which seems to indicate there’s some sort of promotion.

You can continue browsing a specific restaurant, and order a “discounted” item, your total price will be the sum of the discounted items. That is, up until you actually want to check out, suddenly your total jumps back to the sum of the original valued of the items. Because, apparently, that discount was only for “pro” users. It’s nowhere mentioned that is the case. And since I’m logged in, they already know I’m not a pro user.

This pissed me of so much, I documented and reported this to the local consumer council, but haven’t heard back yet.

9. Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

Top comment by lijogdfljk

I might be interested, but this group sounds too "serious" for me. Ie i'm serious, but i have a full time job, and i'm obsessive so i'm yakshaving the foundations of my projects. I'm less concerned with the final game, and more concerned with building a platform that helps me efficiently create.

While the game is my goal, i focus on the platform because i feel solo devs have a ton of overhead. I figure if i can optimize my the creative aspects of my work i will have better long term success. Point being, i am interested in this space but not in pushing X game out the door asap. I expect my first/second/third/etc games to be failures, stepping stones. I'm here for the journey. With an eye on burnout.

So i suspect my approach may not be focused enough for your group. As right not i'm working on archival and automation of creative pipelines moreso than games.

10. Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

Top comment by showsover

One app I haven't seen mentioned here yet is Paprika (https://www.paprikaapp.com/). I use it as a general storage for recipes that I tried and like as it's really easy to strip the entire lifestories you find in online recipes. It has a shopping list functionality as well as week planning.

The only downside is that it's quite pricey as you have to buy it seperately on each platform (ios, android, mac, pc). Personally I just have the ios version that works on both phone and tablet and use a browser bookmarklet to import recipes from my pc.