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Issue #82 - September 27, 2020
Here are the top threads of the week, happy reading!
1. Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?
Top comment by aleem
On what should you be:
> This guy has gone to the zoo and interviewed all the animals. The tiger says that the secret to success is to live alone, be well disguised, have sharp claws and know how to stalk. The snail says that the secret is to live inside a solid shell, stay small, hide under dead trees and move slowly around at night. The parrot says that success lies in eating fruit, being alert, packing light, moving fast by air when necessary, and always sticking by your friends.
His conclusion: These animals are giving contradictory advice! And that's because they're all "outliers".
> But both of these points are subtly misleading. Yes, the advice is contradictory, but that's only a problem if you imagine that the animal kingdom is like a giant arena in which all the world's animals battle for the Animal Best Practices championship [1], after which all the losing animals will go extinct and the entire world will adopt the winning ways of the One True Best Animal. But, in fact, there are a hell of a lot of different ways to be a successful animal, and they coexist nicely. Indeed, they form an ecosystem in which all animals require other, much different animals to exist.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469831#up_469940
2. Ask HN: Is hydrogen likely to be a major source of power in the next 10 years?
Top comment by 55873445216111
Hydrogen fuel cells are not a source of energy, since hydrogen (H2) is not naturally found on Earth. All H2 must be generated in a process which consumes either natural gas or eletricity. Therefore H2 fuel cells are more aptly described as an energy storage system than as an energy source.
Therefore the relevant comparison is between H2 fuel cells and Li ion batteries. Batteries have much higher full cycle efficiency (energy input -> storage -> energy output), but they are large and heavy. H2 can be stored in less volume and less weight, but it is less efficient. In my opinion, batteries will be a technically and economicly superior solution for all uses other than where weight is extremely critical such as in aircraft.
Top comment by einr
The Obscuritory -- https://obscuritory.com/ -- if you have any interest in the culture surrounding computer games or retrocomputing or even just obscure, weird things in general I can not recommend this enough
OS/2 Museum -- https://www.os2museum.com/
Fun With Virtualization -- https://virtuallyfun.com/
The Old New Thing -- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing
The Byte Cellar -- https://bytecellar.com/
McMansion Hell -- https://mcmansionhell.com/
4. Ask HN: So I Hired a Homeless Guy
Top comment by austenallred
I’m surprised no one is commenting on this directly; it sounds like he has clear mental health problems.
Breaking things arbitrarily and screaming loudly enough to bother other people are signs that something is clearly off, so you should approach it from that angle. That’s important not only in diagnosing the problem, but sadly with mental health problems that severe it may not be safe for you or your other employees to work out of the same location as him (disclaimer: though I probably see more mental health issues than most, I am not a mental health professional or licensed in any way).
That said, while the pragmatic thing would frankly be to fire him (and would have been some time ago), it seems like you genuinely want to help. If he writes good code it could be reasonable to let him work remotely, but absolutely not at the office.
Focus either way should be on getting him the mental health help he needs.
5. Roughly 2000 blogs running on a $7/month dyno
Top comment by helsinkiandrew
I would have thought that the number of blogs/total amount of content any site can serve is theoretically infinite.
It’s the rate of requests it can handle that matters, which may explain why I’m getting an “Application error” page at the moment
6. Ask HN: Video recommendation platform as a way to compete with YouTube?
Top comment by KMnO4
Video hosting is actually a lot harder than it seems.
- For starters, you need the server space to host it. Videos can be large -- a 10 minute 4k video can be nearly 5gb in size.
- Then you need to the CPU to transcode it to various formats and bitrates (Youtube keeps more than 30 different formats sometimes)
- Then you need to bandwidth to actually serve all that data. Ideally you have servers geolocated close to the user.
As someone with a slow internet connection, I generally despise self hosted videos. If your video won't load because I don't have a >100mbit
connection, I will likely leave.
7. Ask HN: What are your instruments for investment?
Top comment by actuator
As rest of your questions seem to have been answered in other comments, if you are new to investing/financial planning. I would recommend you to start at Bogleheads: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started
If you want to read more about Index funds(Mutual fund & ETFs), you might find this helpful: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Index_fund
8. Ask HN: I am “trapped” in a senior engineering role, how can I escape?
Top comment by hinkley
> I no longer have the financial means to take a step back into a less senior role at a company with a larger engineering team.
I'm already the third person to pull this quote out of your post. I think you need to stop and look at this. You are saying "I am living beyond my means."
As long as you are living beyond your means, you are going to have to make compromises in your career. Look around outside. Any of us could be laid off three months from now if something doesn't change soon. As much as you need a career mentor right now, you need to look at how finances trap you too.
If what you say or what I say are true, this may be the last time in a good long while that you can refinance your loans at a lower rate. Limiting your discretionary spending, finding a new 'normal' that is sustainable.
9. Ask HN: How do I learn to write better code?
Top comment by tylerchilds
Probably controversial, but the current scenario of engineering is over engineered. Hacker News is Unicorn-biased, most of the information here isn't practical if you're just trying to solve problems that take your project from point A to point B.
Look into problems, you'll find solutions. Look into solutions, you'll find problems.
10. Ask HN: Is it me or PWAs are pretty much dead?
Top comment by foxylad
PWA stands for Progressive Web App. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application