AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: How should I setup a phone for a newly blind relative?

Top comment by nezza-_-

Couple of things I learned from helping some blind people:

- All used iPhones (Check out https://www.apple.com/accessibility/vision/ )

- Disable passcode if he's okay with it

- Enable VoiceOver (Settings -> Accessibility) and learn how to enable/disable it (triple-tap the side button. Might be difficult for elderly) - Apple video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDm7GiKra28

- Having a learning partner really helps the blind person. Try to learn to use a phone blind with him, it will allow you to help debug his (most definitely occuring) issues

- Watch some videos on how blind people use the iPhone, lots of tips there. For example Molly Burke, or even simple ones like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FVjLXIaBC4

- For elderly, an iPad is really nice. Especially as dexterity gets worse it's easier to use blindly. Also usability between iPhone and iPad is almost the same, so easy transition between both (i.e. on the go)

- For movies, check out Greta. It plays the AD in parallel with a movie via the iPhone - so they can watch movies together with the family, without everyone listening to AD https://www.gretaundstarks.de/starks/GretaAndStarks

And bring lots of patience :)

What is really amazing is how fast people tend to improve: VoiceOver lets you adjust the speech speed etcpp, and so it "grows" with you

2. Ask HN: Any comprehensive courses on Auth?

Top comment by SushiHippie

What made me understand these things the most, was setting this up just for myself.

For example host your own instance of Zitadel, Authentik or whatever you find most appealing. Tinker a bit around with it. Then use that instance to authenticate yourself somewhere, i.e. another service where you can set up your own oauth provider. Take a look at the API requests, take a look the code of some OAuth implementation, for example in projects like Gitea, Nextcloud.

May not be it for everyone, though I really like learning by doing.

3. Ask HN: What's the state of the art for drawing math diagrams online?

Top comment by franciscop

I made https://vector-graph.com/ a while back and documented it pretty thoroughly. While I never "finished" it, it's working pretty fine and as long as you fix it to a specific version, you won't have to worry about changes if/when I continue working on it.

Feedback would be greatly welcome! It's made specifically for the usecase you mention, blog-like website with Katex to add pretty graphics. Example usage:

4. Ask HN: Is Unlimited PTO a Scam

Top comment by josephmosby

At best, the primary reasons companies do unlimited PTO is that it's just not worth it to invest in official rules and some sort of tracking system. Just say "take what you need" and move on.

But at worst, companies don't pay attention to the psychological impact.

If you're a manager or leader in this sort of environment, I suggest telling your teams something like "I consider 4-6 weeks of PTO to be a healthy amount. You should take somewhere around that. If you need to take more, I'd appreciate it if we talked about that. And if you still feel pressure to take less, let's talk about that too so I can help you feel more comfortable."

taking no PTO isn't mentally healthy. I've never felt like we got "more done" over the course of a year because no one took PTO. Eventually it was just burnt out employees grinding through the days.

5. Ask HN: How do you keep going without burning out?

Top comment by navs

I've quit my job from burnout multiple times and on the 3rd iteration, it's been even more difficult to get back to a non-burnout stage. So I would try to focus on a long term strategy as opposed to bursts of productivity.

I've had to slow down. This means reducing all the things that distract me. It means coming to grips with "missing out".

I've leaned into some life hacks like:

- Designating social media time to just after work but not after dinner (includes HN).

- Leaning into meditation. Not just 10min via an app but a walk to and back from my favorite cafe every morning without my phone or any headphones.

- Going to bed early and waking up early. The quietest, non-distracting moments are in the early morning.

- Using a pomodoro timer. For both work projects and personal projects.

- I try to spend some time focusing on activities that are intentionally slow like writing poetry and personal essays.

6. Ask HN: What did you buy or considering buying this Black Friday?

Top comment by k310

Absolutely nothing.

I did check the status of my IRA RMD's, to make sure they were scheduled by end of year, and feeling the need for some fresh air, went out and lopped a lot of mostly dead brush that was hiding a magnificent 30 foot tall (or more) Manzanita tree's trunk. I sent some photos to my family.

I don't like crowds, in person or online. My mom introduced me to "Walden" by Thoreau at an early age, and hence to Transcendentalism. Thoreau wrote a translation of the Lotus Sutra, I later found out.

Sometimes, the best things are already there, just hidden.

7. Ask HN: I can't find a job. What do I do?

Top comment by elmerfud

You say you're from India but don't say where you're at now. Since you used term CV instead of resume, maybe still in India or maybe a European country? If the job market where you're at is largely expecting a University degree regardless of experience level then I would say at 27 go back and get your University degree. It is not a step backwards to get the University degree it will teach you valuable things that you will never learn from experience alone. The theory about why things are done the way they are is an important thing to develop future skills in future problem solving.

Your other option would be to change job markets to where they don't prioritize the University degree after you've had some job experience. That being said 3 years of job experience is not a replacement for a 4 University degree. Even in the United States where it is still possible to work your way into positions without the University degree that is simply not enough experience to be considered. At dropping out of college and 3 years of experience you would still be looking at a non-software engineer entry level position. You would be doing support or systems administration and from there you could demonstrate the skills to move into a software engineering position.

Some other red flags are you say this is your first job you've had and you got it 3 years after you dropped out of University. Health, family, life situations do come up that cause you to take this kind of break in these kind of gaps but employers don't care. As people they may understand these things happen but as an employer looking for an employee they don't care. That's why I really think overall your best option return to University complete the degree and then with the degree your prior experience will matter and that Gap will go away.

8. Ask HN: Are job referrals worthless now?

Top comment by tyingq

There's two kinds of referrals...the official ones with a program that goes through HR, then the unofficial where someone you know knows a hiring leader with an open spot. The latter is infinitely better.

9. Ask HN: How many people on Hacker News live in rural areas?

Top comment by defrost

I was born and live in Western Australia, a state almost half the land area of Australia, three times larger than Texas, with a population of ~ 2 million most of whom live in and around the one big city in the south west corner.

I grew up in the Kimberley on cattle stations, went to high school in the Pilbarra , and travelled 1,000 km to university (1980s).

I did a lot of STEM courses, built robots, remote signal aquisition instrumentation, pre Google Maps global mapping software (and data processing) travelled the world (two thirds or so of the 190+ countries) zeroing in WGS84 against old mapping systems and doing a bit of exploration geophysics.

I currently mostly live in the wheatbelt district, large farms you can shoot 5,000+ yards across (*), and live a fairly rural lifestyle - with drones, GPS controlled two storey machines, multi spectral crop imaging, etc.

(*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE

We like walking and do a bit of track maintenance (**) and prefer motorbikes over cars (***)

(**) https://www.bibbulmuntrack.org.au/

(***) https://youtu.be/mdx5xttosxY?t=124

10. Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police?

Top comment by streptomycin

There's two things called "safety":

1. Making the AI not say anything offensive

2. Making the AI not kill everyone

They aren't generally overlapping issues, people interested in one of those are usually not particularly interested in the other.

The fact that these different things are both called "AI safety" has led some in the second group to jokingly refer to their issue as "AI notkilleveryoneism", such as https://twitter.com/__nmca__/status/1676641876537999385 from someone at OpenAI working on their super-alignment project.