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Issue #250 - December 24, 2023
Here are the top threads of the week, happy reading!
1. Ask HN: What's your "it's not stupid if it works" story?
Top comment by sowbug
Not my idea or implementation.
Our startup built a plugin for Microsoft Outlook. It was successful, and customers wanted the same thing but for Outlook Express. Unfortunately, OE had no plugin architecture. But Windows has Windows hooks and DLL injection. So we were able to build a macro-like system that clicked here and dragged there and did what we needed it to. The only problem was that you could see all the actions happening on the screen. It worked perfectly, but the flickering looked awful.
At lunch, someone joked that we just had to convince OE users not to look at the screen while our product did its thing. We all laughed, then paused. We looked around at each other and said "no, that can't work."
That afternoon someone coded up a routine to screenshot the entire desktop, display the screenshot full-screen, do our GUI manipulations, wait for the event loop to drain so that we knew OE had updated, and then kill the full-screen overlay. Since the overlay was a screenshot of the screen, it shouldn't have been noticable.
It totally worked. The flickering was gone. We shipped the OE version with the overlay hiding the GUI updates. Users loved the product.
2. Ask HN: Terrified I wont find another job
Top comment by kirubakaran
Whenever you need just one of something (job, relationship etc), it's going to look hopeless, right up to the moment that you get that one thing, and then you'd wonder why you ever worried.
You have the experience. There is demand for your experience. You're going to be fine. Just keep applying. Try not to waste your energy on worrying, and redirect it towards sending out applications etc. Easier said than done, I know.
3. Ask HN: Does anyone here use Haxe?
Top comment by cxr
> Papers, Please was originally written in Haxe/OpenFL, a combo of modern ECMA-ish language, Flash-alike API, and multi-platform build system. [...]
> When I finally committed to this port my first decision was to rewrite the game in C#/Unity. After Obra Dinn I’m a solid fan of Unity – the editor, the entity/component design, the build system, the ubiquity, just about everything.
> I made it a few days into rewriting before finding that although I like C#, I like Haxe more. [...] Still it’s hard to overstate how appropriate Unity is for someone in my position: a solo developer targeting multiple platforms and desperate for a popular, proven, and well-supported engine and build system.
> Fortunately, Haxe is a transpiled language, meaning that you write in one language (Haxe) and it gets converted to another language (Javascript, PHP, Python, C++, C#, Lua, etc) before being compiled/interpreted for whatever target you’ve got. So it’s possible to write code in Haxe and have it transpiled to C# that can be loaded and compiled in Unity. Which is how I decided to roll this.
From "Cramming 'Papers, Please' Onto Phones" (last year).
Original post: <https://dukope.com/devlogs/papers-please/mobile/>
HN comments: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32371423>
4. Ask HN: Where should I incoporate my business
Top comment by Symbiote
Taxes pay for society: education, healthcare, infrastructure, defence, culture.
You benefit from these, and expect to benefit in the future from them (e.g. expecting to employ someone with a good education). You should pay your share.
5. Ask HN: What are your hobbies?
Top comment by robotguy
I have moved beyond hobbies into METAHOBBIES.
Specifically: Collecting Hobbies.
I find that following my ADHD hyperfocus until the next shiny thing comes along has led to a massively diverse array of introductory knowledge and mediocre skills (as well as a garage stuffed full with bins of unfinished projects). Specifically in the last two years I have dabbled in:
home automation (incl. Node Red, LoRa, MQTT on Raspberry Pi)
weather stations
terrariums
greenhouse climate control
making wooden boxes
Minecraft
mechanical pencils
fountain pens
notebooks
bookbinding (custom notebooks)
Dungeons & Dragons
I have found that I learn something and increase my skillset with every unfinished project. That leads to, over the long run, being able to get more accomplished in less time on newer projects. The real treasures are the friends you made ^h^h^h^h^h things you learned along the way.
6. Ask HN: Best modern file transfer/synchronization protocol?
Top comment by orbz
No need to get fancy, scp or rsync are the tried and true options here.
7. Ask HN: What's the coolest non standard application of LLMs you've seen?
Top comment by ilovefood
I'm using it to filter out the content that's displayed in my browser screen as I browse: https://karimjedda.com/llms-in-the-middle-content-aware-clie...
Essentially, I wrote a small browser extension, that takes the content of LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube posts/titles, and filters them out based on if they are clickbait, low effort, etc.
It's liberating :D
8. Ask HN: How to figure out a good direction/goals for the year ahead?
Top comment by kiernanmcgowan
One thing that worked for me was to break up the year into three 100 day chunks. In each of these chunks you focus on establishing a habit that you want to have and you do that action every day. At the end of the 100 days you’ll be doing that activity as second nature which helps to lay the groundwork for a better life.
My three habits from this year were:
* work out everyday
* do something “interesting” everyday
* read everyday
As I look back on the year I can definitely say I’m in better shape, more active in finding cool stuff to do, and reading more books than I have in my adult life.
YMMV, but I suggest focusing on the little things that point you towards where you want your life to go.
9. Ask HN: Show Your Homelab and Home Server Setup for Inspiration
Top comment by ewweezdsd
Used corporate mini-pcs make excellent home servers if you don't need too much storage (typically they support two SSDs), and want low power consumption & noise and small form factor. Right now ones with 7th or 8th gen i5 are a pretty good deal, often around 50-120 USD on ebay, a bit more in the EU. Idle power cosumption is about 10W. If you want to play around with virtualization, a higher-end model with Intel NIC is recommended due to some Linux driver issues (at least with Proxmox).
https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic...
Corporate thin clients with Pentium J5005 or similar also make decent raspberry pi replacements, usually just not as good price-power ratio as proper minipc. Certain models have pcie slot, which makes them ideal DIY routers when fitted with pcie NIC & pfsense/opnsense as OS. If you're using a consumer router, such project can make lots of sense.
For NAS, I recommend building your own. Personally I use Asrock J5040 mini-itx board with Node 304 case and Unraid as OS, houses 4x 3.5" drives, so far happy with it. For maximum reliability you might want a mothebroard that supports EEC memory though.
10. Ask HN: Why aren't all heaters computers?
Top comment by orbital-decay
Datacenter heat reuse is a thing. Mostly in European countries with cold climates. Notably, Finland has a few datacenters like that (Remov, Telia). I believe some countries might even mandate the feasibility study for reusing the heat for new datacenters.
I have no idea why it's not everywhere, but I see some issues right off the bat:
- you need a district heating system to dump the heat into, and to be really close to consumers
- the integration into the heating system isn't free
- heating supply doesn't match demand well (not seasonal; datacenter scaling depends on computing demand, heating is just a byproduct)