AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?

Top comment by arkanciscan

Quantum Computers. Not like I'm five, but like I'm a software engineer who has a pretty decent understanding of how a classical turing machine works. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say "qubits are like bits except they don't have to be just 1 or 0" without providing any coherent explanation of how that's useful. I've also heard that they can try every possible solution to a problem. What I don't understand is how a programmer is supposed to determine the correct solution when their computer is out in some crazy multiverse. I guess what I want is some pseudo code for quantum software.

2. Ask HN: What website, from your early days on the net, do you miss?

Top comment by geocrasher

The old slashdot.org

The old digg.com

Web Rings were amazing, and I think the idea still has merit. Why did everyone stop using them?

My ealiest memories were pre-net, on Prodigy and AOL, long before they were 'net connected and could email each other. I learned what connectivity was at 2400 baud. I didn't discover BBS's until much later, around 1993-4,and was at 14.4k at that point. I never really understood fidonet, but played some of the BBS games and downloaded some warez from a "31337" BBS with a backdoor whose login was "elite". At least the sysop didn't call himself "Crash Override".

3. Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

Top comment by godelski

I may be off base here, but it sounds to me like you just aren't interested in the subjects. One of the biggest factors to learning is how much interest you have. There are tricks you can do to get yourself more interested, but it does take a fair amount of work and isn't always effective. But if you wonder why sometimes we can remember silly details or whole complicated plotlines from stories but can't remember a simple math formula, a lot of it is actually your interest levels. Your brain prioritizes the stories because it is interesting, you can relate, and thus form strong neural connections. It is much harder to do that with a math equation that is fairly abstract and not in constant use.

So I would start at finding which thing interests you the most. What meets the job criteria that you are looking for BUT also excites you? Then focus on moving in that direction.

4. Ask HN: Advice for passing a FAANG background check with a criminal history

Top comment by jpeg_hero

Absolutely would not bring it up.

California has "ban the box" and as a practical matter:

1. most "boxes" on employment application ask about Felonies not misdemeanors.

2. I'm not an expert but the few times i've looked into it "criminal background check" is nowhere near as comprehensive as people think. it involves going to each county where you think the person resided and looking up records there. so according to you even if they thought to look in the county where your record is, they wouldn't find anything.

https://www.shouselaw.com/california-ban-the-box-laws

California law still prohibits employers from asking about, or considering, criminal convictions that have been expunged. AB 1008 takes the law a step further. It bars employers from considering any criminal conviction, expunged or not, prior to making a conditional job offer. The law applies to both felony charges and misdemeanor charges in California.

5. Ask HN: Intellectually simulating Podcasts/conversations/Talk

Top comment by chrisin2d

In Our Time with Melvin Bragg from BBC Radio 4. It’s a colossal podcast series split into six podcasts discussing Literature, Culture, History, Philosophy, Religion, and Science. Each episode Melvin Bragg brings together a panel of professors and experts (mostly from within the UK) to discuss a topic, event, or famous figure.

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish from Farnham Street. “Master the best of what other people have already figured out” sums it up.

EconTalk with Russ Roberts from the Hoover Institution. Russ brings on distinguished guests to talk about economics, finance, and more. It’s a neat way to discover interesting thinkers. The topics are far ranging: he once brought on Judith Donath to talk about human-computer interaction and online communities and identities.

6. Ask HN: Learning the business-side of things as a developer?

Top comment by ksahin

I think it really depends on what kind of software business you want to create.

For example, being a solo founder running a profitable bootstrapped SaaS business requires different skills than a venture-backed B2C social mobile app!

If you want the former, I suggest you read interviews and follow companies on IndieHacker: https://www.indiehackers.com/

You'll find lots of resources and case studies of people that made the switch from developer to founder.

I quit my software developer job two years ago to build a SaaS API business with a co-founder. We're at $4500 MRR and we are documenting almost everything we do: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/scrapingninja

About business books, Traction[1] is a must-have in my opinion as a developer. You'll learn a lot about marketing, which is often the problem most developers face when launching their first company.

I also love "Start small stay small, A developer’s guide to launching a startup with no outside funding" by Rob Walling.

If you need solid advice in terms of code & technology choice/architecture to launch a startup, you should read Hello Startup.[3]

With these three books, you'll have a solid understanding of what to build, how to build, and how to market your software.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/19... [2]: https://startupbook.net/ [3]: https://www.hello-startup.net/

7. Ask HN: I’m already fluent in English. How can I improve further?

Top comment by Baeocystin

Joseph Conrad is considered one the greats of English literature, yet his sentence structure and flow is strongly influenced by his native Polish.

Would have he been a better writer if he had worked to eliminate this obvious influence on form? I highly doubt it.

At a certain point, you have achieved native fluency. From there, what you do with grammar and flow is up to you- the rules are not cast in stone. Borrow what you think is best from any and all languages at your disposal, and knead it in to English. If it works, we all benefit.

8. Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%

Top comment by kosigz

Lyft engineer here.

I agree that this is an unfortunate turn of events — and I would be sad to be in your position.

To add a bit more context:

• we just parted ways with 23% of our staff (layoff + furlough) this week.

• remaining team members are taking a 3 month 10% cut in base salary.

• unlike many companies, we're still conducting our internship program — so it's good that you at least have the option to continue with your internship, unlike many others whose internships were canceled.

At $9600 per month, Lyft had one of the highest salaries for an internship; $4800 per month is still a decent chunk of change, particularly as you don't have to be in Seattle, NYC, or San Francisco anymore.

If you have other options, I think everyone would understand if you chose to pursue those instead. If not or if you choose to join us anyway, having an internship at Lyft can lead to a full-time offer and/or make you more competitive when applying for full-time jobs in the future.

The real value of an internship is more-so in giving you practical experience rather than the compensation.

9. Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2020)

Top comment by JoeMayoBot

SEEKING WORK | Las Vegas NV | Remote

Available for work with Microsoft Bot Framework. Also, well-rounded in Microsoft development technologies. #chatbots #ai, #nlp

Technologies: Azure, Bot Framework, C#, LINQ, ML.NET, MVC, Web API, WPF, more...

Linked-In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemayo/ GitHub: https://github.com/JoeMayo Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoeMayo

10. Ask HN: What is the real difference between Terraform and Ansible?

Top comment by digitalsushi

Terraform is for building infrastructure, you know foundations, skyscrapers, streets. Build an empty restaurant with a giant yellow excavator (Terraform)

Ansible, Chef are for building configuration, you know menus, staff schedules, grocery lists. Ensure a restaurant is configured correctly to serve customers with its wait staff (Ansible)

You can use an excavator to configure the stuff inside the restaurant. People do it. It's just not generally the most efficient way to do it. And you could have the wait staff at a restaurant pouring concrete for their second place a town over. You could do that too, but a lot of people would use the excavator.

So what really makes these tools effective is when you start using them at scale. They start to become helpful once you realize how much you can do with how little, and they each have this same strength solving different levels, and their strengths become weaknesses at the other end.