AskHN Digest

1. Larry Tesler Has Died

Top comment by alankay

I knew Larry Tesler as a colleague, friend, member of my research group, manager, etc. for more than 50 years, almost as long as I knew Bert Sutherland.

There is an excellent obit for Larry at: https://gizmodo.com/larry-tessler-modeless-computing-advocat...

... and I expect another one from John Markoff -- who was a friend of his -- in the NYTimes.

In many ways, Larry did too many interesting things and had so much influence in too many areas for there to be any chance to characterize him technically. In short, he was a superb wide-spectrum(real) computer scientist who was also a very talented and skilled programmer.

His passing was sudden and unexpected, and I may return later to this note to add more details of his rich career.

For now, I remember him as great to work with in all aspects of his life. He was a great guy, and perhaps that sums him up as best as can be.

2. Ask HN: A major USA bank is storing passwords in cleartext – what to do?

Top comment by alltakendamned

It seems you're not getting serious answers here, so here's my take.

Please report this via the US-CERT at https://www.us-cert.gov/report

This will allow you to report it, eventually from an anonymous email address, without exposing you directly to the bank which might react bad to you. CERT can handle the coordination with the bank, this is what they do.

3. Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

Top comment by iKlsR

I have a slack workspace that has several bots, some listen for specific keywords and or phrases around the web and post to the relevant channels. Other bots remind me if I'm slacking off (maybe stayed a little too long on youtube), remind me of appointments, to drink water, if a stock price falls and some more. Also have filtered rss feeds for business and finance news etc. All of these bots also have custom identities that make it much more engaging like Axelrod is my bot for finance related news.

Others tell me if my server is getting swamped, forward important emails like renewing a cert, a deploy failed, bug in prod or something else that requires often immediate attention. Chat widgets from sites in production also go directly to Slack so I can reply quickly if needed. (Gmail, Sentry, Freshchat, Ploi etc, integrate them all and filter out what's critical).

Everything generally operates on a 15 min interval or so it's not noisy and I've pretty much tuned it to only receiving specific stuff I want to see. Having a central assistant like hub to go to is very useful and time saving.

4. Ask HN: How do I learn JavaScript?

Top comment by Jefro118

Read the You Don't Know JS series [0] - this tackles much of what people with mediocre proficiency overlook. To go beyond that you would probably want to dive deep in to the ECMAScript specs [1] to really master the language. I don't think it will be that hard, just a slog.

[0] - https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

[1] - https://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ec...

5. Ask HN: Do You Miss IRC?

Top comment by brozaman

I was born in the 90s so I never used IRC outside work. I used it for work on a daily basis until a couple weeks ago, and I hate it with passion. The vpn drops and you miss messages. You are offline you miss messages, don't want to miss messages? set up a relay (seriously?!).

Now I'm on a team which uses slack, and I miss how lightweight hexchat is, but in terms of being able to use it my phone and having something that just works without any additional effort it only has advantages.

6. Ask HN: What do you use tools like IFTTT or Zapier for?

Top comment by bluehatbrit

About six months ago I came across Huginn [1] for the third or fourth time and finally decided to give it a shot. I've absolutely loved it so far! The docs aren't always great for each agent, but I've never struggled for too long before figuring it out. I'm currently using it for:

* Scraping HN search for new appearances of projects I work on, and immedietely alerting me via email.

* Checking the frontpage of HN for topics I'm interested in, and adding it into my daily digest email.

* Pulling in Commit Strip and XKCD comics when they're posted and adding them to my daily digest email.

* Sending me a notification in the morning if it's going to rain.

* Giving me and my friends the cheapest flight price for a group holiday we're planning. It scans google flights daily so we can watch it tick down over time and decide when to buy.

* Sending me notifications if there's a significant drop in the currency for the country we're going to so I can purchase some at the best price.

* Adding the names of people who RSVP to my wedding into my daily digest email so I can keep a pulse on the final guest list.

Hopefully I'll get a few more ideas from this thread as well!

[1] Huginn - https://github.com/huginn/huginn

7. Tell HN: How to run a startup for $6 a year

Top comment by mooreds

Does this count network egress costs (for s3, lambda)? Those are hard to calculate but can add up. Also, you can uses sqs for queues, that has a pretty big free tier.

Finally, I think that bending the architecture of your app around what's free is not the best idea, especially if you are trying to get something out there to see if there is customer demand. (And doubly of you haven't built a cloud native app like is outlined here.)

In my mind the best way to build software for a startup is to build it using what you know as fast as you can. Avoid technical risk, because you have a boatload of business risk.

For me, that'd be using rails on heroku, which is still under $200/year for a fully functional dyno and database. For others it might be some varient of a mvc framework on a hosting provider. For others it might be WordPress (gasp!). For others it might be a cloud native app, as this post describes.

As long as you aren't spending extravagantly, time is more important than money when figuring out what your customers need.

This is true both in companies that have raised money and bootstrapped companies, for different reasons. For the first, you took money and need to figure out your product market for or scaling strategy ASAP. For the second, your time is super valuable because it is tied to your motivation. Doing work directly tied to customer value is a great motivator. (Doing other fun technical things that don't deliver customer value is a good way to learn things, but a bad way to run a bootstrapped business.)

8. Ask HN: Schedule of a solo founder?

Top comment by 323454

The most important thing I've learned is that you need to find a balance between discipline and spontaneity.

For example, it's good to maintain a few "anchor points" each day to break up your time and help you break out of negative cycles or unproductive moods. Things like going to the gym, maintaining a fixed wake up time or lunch time. This is the discipline side, which helps you to train yourself to stay focused on your goals.

But it's also important to listen to your own body and mind, and do things that make sense to you in the moment. E.g. if you're feeling too tired to work, accept it, go home and try again tomorrow. Avoid burnout. If you scheduled a certain task for 11am but when the time comes you're in the zone on something else, stay in the zone! This is the spontaneity part.

Discipline allows you to be spontaneous without guilt, because you know you'll eventually return to the basic system of moving towards your goal that you've established. Spontaneity allows you to adapt as you go to avoid unforeseen problems or take advantage of unexpected benefits.

That said, on a work day (M-F) my schedule looks roughly like this:

6.30am - wake up 7.30-8.30am - gym 9-9.30am - write down what i did yesterday, what i want to do today 9.30-11.45am - on task 11.45am-12.15pm - lunch 12.15-3pm - on task 3.30-4pm - take a break, make a snack, or go for a walk 4-5.30pm - on task. but if i'm tired go home early. 6-7pm - dinner 7-9pm - relax, read, play music, hang out with my spouse 9pm - wind down, start getting ready for bed

9. Ask HN: How to get good at designing big and complex applications?

Top comment by bg4

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system."

10. Ask HN: What is the most underrated skill software engineers should learn?

Top comment by abd12

Writing.

It helps to clarify your thinking. At your job, it will help you explain concepts to others and multiply your efforts.

Externally, it can help make great friends and boost your career if you blog & share things you've learned.