AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: What do you self-host?

Top comment by mavidser

I reworked my servers a while ago to host literally everything through docker, managed via terraform.

All web-services are reverse-proxied through traefik

At home:

    loki + cadvisor + node-exporter + grafana + prometheus
    syncthing
    tinc vpn server
    jackett + radarr + sonarr + transmission
    jellyfin
    samba server
    calibre server

    loki + cadvisor + node-exporter + grafana + prometheus
    syncthing
    tinc vpn server
    dokuwiki
    firefox-sync
    firefox-send
    vscode server
    bitwarden
    freshrss
    znc bouncer + lounge irc client + bitlbee
    an httptunnel server (like ngrok)
    firefly iii
    monicahq
    kanboard
    radicale
    syncthing
    wallabag
    tmate-server

2. Ask HN: How did your startup change after an exit?

Top comment by vechagup

People spent a lot less time working and a lot more time checking the stock price and estimating their net worth. As the stock headed south, and the press started writing mean articles about us, morale went south.

Lunchtime talk started to focus on money. Some people nursed unrealistic fantasies about an upward turn in the stock. Those of us who were more cynical sold our shares earlier and were happier in the long run. Eventually most of us moved on to other companies. The company is headed down the drain, but many of us are still friends. I bought a condo.

3. Ask HN: How many of you have been impacted by a layoff?

Top comment by edent

Yup. Happened to me. Big corporate decided most of our floor were surplus to requirements. Got an email on Sunday telling us to be in early on Monday for an off-site meeting.

Got handed my redundancy / compromise agreement and told not to return to the office. And, the kicker, told my non-compete meant I couldn't work for a competitor during the redundancy process.

It was devastating and emotionally wrecking. It was like being dumped, out of the blue, from a multi-year relationship. And being told you couldn't see anyone else. I went through all the classic stages of grief.

And then...

I contacted my Trade Union and explained the situation. They took a look at the contract I'd been given, passed it to a very expensive lawyer, who made a couple of phone calls.

The next week I was free to work for whoever I wanted and was paid ~7 months salary (tax free).

Join. A. Union.

Your employer has more lawyers than you do. Pay a couple of quid per month to have decent legal representation on hand when you need it.

That layoff was the best thing to happen to me. Shook me out of my cosy job, forced me into building my own consultancy, and taught me the power of solidarity.

4. Ask HN: What's your worst undefined C story?

Top comment by koala_man

I was unable to find the quote, but someone once said that "We always focus on the negative effects of undefined behavior, but literally anything could happen. It doesn't have to be bad! Let's replace fear with hope."

5. Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

Top comment by Aperocky

For all cli apps, the importance of cli itself can't be understated. While there are only a few cli programs available to ALL unix users (grep/ps/awk/sed/xargs/etc), the value of the pipe are one of the defining features of CLI that amplify any program made to work in CLI.

A command I often run: `ps aex | grep $common_denominator | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill` to deal with multiprocess testing runs demonstrate this well. The pipe character is what uniquely enabled unix shells to be the great software it is that GUI have almost no real way to replicate.

6. Ask HN: Which online communities do you hang out most on?

Top comment by ChefboyOG

HN mods do a fantastic job with moderating. I don't pretend to know how any of it works, but I consistently enjoy content on the front page of HN, which I can't say about subreddits, even my favorites.

Besides HN, a handful of subreddits (r/MachineLearning in particular), and I used to spend a decent amount of time on Product Hunt.

I do miss the hell out of forums though. I feel like i "knew" everyone on a better level and could burn through hours talking.

7. Open letter to all developers with blogs

Top comment by pixelbath

I would also add:

No screenshots of code. I don't care if it's not syntax-highlighted, but I would like it to be in plain text, hopefully fixed-width.

If you're going to reference another blog, please include the relevant information in your own blog before the linked site goes down and I have to hope that site's owner didn't block archive.org from indexing it.

I'd like comments enabled, but I know some people have a hard-line stance against it (I was once told, "oh, you're thinking of a forum" when I suggested a developer add comments to their blog). Sometimes people smarter than me comment on my blog, and that adds value to my post when it has incomplete or incorrect information.

8. Ask HN: How do you move up in professional status as a remote worker?

Top comment by rinchik

You change jobs. That's it. Even though you might think it's a simple approach, no, it's not. It takes guts. And on the positive side, you also get a chance to show off, demonstrate your true abilities.

It's a gig economy. Mobility is one of the features. You can spend your life proving your "worthiness" at one company when other will see it right away.

9. Ask HN: People are looking for a meetup.com replacement – what are the options?

Top comment by evv

"freeCodeCamp is building an open source alternative to Meetup."

Announcement: https://twitter.com/ossia/status/1183845054449930241

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/vbRUYWS

Repo: https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/event-tool

10. Ask HN: What are your biggest regrets?

Top comment by CM30

Probably not networking or trying out different activities in university. Basically just took on the classes and got my degree, and that was that.

Unfortunately, I realised afterwards that who you know is a lot more important than what you know, as well as that university is one of the best times to both meet interesting new people and get involved in new hobbies. Not knowing anyone afterwards probably made it much more difficult to get my first job afterwards, as well as to find startup cofounders and what not.

Also regret shutting down my first major internet community/forum site, since it was pretty damn popular at the time (about 300,000 posts/a few thousand users), and when merged with my later ones, could have become the base for a much larger community.

Also regret not jumping on a few internet bandwagons/gold rush scenarios too. Seeing how successful some channels became on YouTube/Twitch/whatever kinda makes me wish I'd made the investment and gone all in on one of these platforms back when they were starting out. Writing doesn't exactly pay anymore, and those who made the transition to video earlier have sometimes built entire careers out of it.