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ajakate

Re:A Plain Anabaptist Story: The Hutterites on Sunday March 15, 2026 @11:43PM (#47395002)
I first learned about the Anabaptists through this episode [1] of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History.

It's not mentioned in the article, but an interesting event in the early history was Anabaptists taking over the city of Munster and forming a sort of commune, later having the city sieged upon [2].

It's a little lengthy, but one of my favorite episodes of a history podcast and definitely worth the listen.

[1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophe...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Münster_rebellion

Re:Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026) on Friday January 16, 2026 @09:21PM (#46654680)
Cool site! For paths it might be nice to have to the option to place an X where a light bulb definitely couldn't go. Unless if you left that out on purpose of course :)
Re:Can You Lose Your Native Tongue? (2024) on Friday February 21, 2025 @09:18PM (#43135444)
I think it's pretty common actually among some immigrant groups (2nd gen Indians in the US at least, of which I am one).

I was born in the US, but my first language was Marathi, and it was really the only language I was fluent in until I was around 4. After learning English in school, I started to always answer my parents in English. We didn't really live near a Marathi community, so it came to be that I could understand Marathi fluently (albeit with very limited vocabulary) around family but couldn't form a sentence to save my life.

Same story for all my US/Canadian cousins, and most other 2nd gen desis I've met.

Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2025) on Thursday January 02, 2025 @02:30PM (#42577841)
Location: Chicago, IL USA

Remote: yes, or hybrid

Willing to Relocate: probably not, but maybe for the right role

Technologies: Python (pandas, flask, dbt, sklearn, spark), Ruby (Rails, sinatra, chef), Java (spring/sringboot), HTML/CSS/JS (react, angular, jquery), SQL, Terraform, AWS, Clojure (no professional experience but a lot of side projects)

Résumé/CV: upon request

Email: [email protected]

Hey there! I'm a software engineer based in Chicago with 11+ yoe working in consulting and startups. I've had a good amount of exposure and experience across the stack, working with devops heavy projects, microservices APIs, and frontend applications. Most recently I've been deep in the world of data cleansing/pipelining/analytics, but not sure if I want to continue that path or return to more traditional application systems development.

I'm open to senior/lead eng roles at product shops or consulting shops. Would love to either work in an interesting tech stack or solve interesting domain problems. Would love to be in a role that's science/environment/medicine adjacent. Preference for teams with mature CI/CD and testing practices

I downloaded the app, but running into an infinite spinner on the main "Artists" tab, so can't really comment on the what the app is like...

What I will say is that it seems a little unfortunate that so many "matching" apps take the tinder swipe model these days when it really makes the matching experience worse.

I have a friend who's a drummer in central Illinois. He's used https://www.bandmix.com to find multiple groups that he's been jamming with for a while now. The UI is such that you can see a grid of all the bands/artists matching your criteria, and can facet and filter your search in the sidebar with a lot of other options including distance, commitment level, genre, etc.

Melancholia. I don't think I've seen a movie that depicts depression and disaster so brutally. It's a film I keep thinking about every now and again.
Re:Language Learning with Netflix on Sunday May 07, 2023 @04:37AM (#35849229)
If you have a Roku or Android TV box you should check out Pluto TV. It's a free live TV streaming app. There is a channel on there that is only star trek in Spanish. Personally I've never seen anything on that channel that wasn't TNG
Re:Tunnel of Eupalinos on Sunday May 07, 2023 @04:30AM (#35849186)
Numberphile video about this tunnel: https://youtu.be/kwrDX5qkwvA
Re:Google Maps launches Street View in India on Wednesday July 27, 2022 @12:57PM (#32252992)
It's interesting to see how certain regulatory requirements of countries can disrupt the ubiquity of google maps. For the longest time South Korea looked completely different when you zoomed in on it in google maps. South Korea didn't want high-resolution map information to fall into the wrong hands, so they disallowed storing that kind of map data on foreign servers. I believe it was also hard/impossible to get driving directions [1].

Curiously, I just checked gmaps and it appears to look normal now. This must have happened in the past few months, not sure why I can't seem to find any info online.

[1]https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/one-thing-north-k...

Re:Show HN: I'm building a browser-based DAW on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @11:44AM (#32167407)
Agreed! Around the time the lockdown happened my band discovered bandlab.com, another online DAW. The lag/performance is a little slow to do serious recording (though you can get by by making an audio recording and manually shifting it a few ms in the interface), but it's a fantastic way to share songs/ideas back and forth. Often what some of us do is record tracks in our own local DAWS and upload the track wavs to bandlab. At the very least it allows us to:

- mute tracks easily, change volume on parts

- add tracks where we can upload alternate/extra parts

- visualize the structural flow of a song

- general cut/splice play around :)

the company that makes bandlab also makes a desktop DAW called cakewalk. It seems to have a nice feature where you can sync it with bandlab, which would be killer. It's windows only so I've been unable to try it out though

Re:CityEngine: Build a Digital Twin of Your City on Wednesday June 15, 2022 @06:47PM (#31760402)
Has anyone here played the new Microsoft Flight Simulator Game they released in 2020? I was blown away by how accurate the environment and maps were (at least in Chicago and Bloomington, IL). By far the most realistic representation I've seen in a game before. Even outside of the iconic buildings of downtown, a lot of the smaller buildings in far out neighborhoods were more realistic than I was expecting.

I know the game has gotten a lot of praise on the graphics. I guess they leaned heavily on bing maps to build out the game's environment. Would be crazy to see what could be created with something like google streetview data.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2022) on Monday May 02, 2022 @12:24PM (#31237245)
Landscapehub | Lead Data Engineer | Remote (US) / Chicago, IL | Full-time | https://www.landscapehub.com/about

LandscapeHub is dedicated to streamlining the procurement and fulfillment process in the nursery, landscape, green, and hardscape industry. Our B2B marketplace is engineered for businesses to buy and sell landscape materials more efficiently from a single location saving time, resources and money.

We're series A funded and looking for a lead data engineer to help us grow our new data team. We have a handful of projects lined up for the next year including: - cleaning/building up our data pipelines and infrastructure - integrations with 3rd party APIs for inventory and order management - building a smarter pricing model for our marketplace - Using machine learning to help with standardizing plant names and attributes across the industry.

We're a fully remote team, but will likely be opening a small office in Chicago to optionally work from when it gets safer to do so. More info on the job postings here: https://resources.landscapehub.com/lead-data-engineer-remote

Feel free to send resumes/questions my way: ajay (at) landscapehub (doot) com

You can find all our open positions here: https://resources.landscapehub.com/careers-at-landscapehub

I'm not the hiring manager for most these other roles but I can get more info if you'd like to reach out to me!

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2022) on Friday April 01, 2022 @06:24PM (#30883943)
Landscapehub | Lead Data Engineer / Data Engineer | Remote (US) / Chicago, IL | Full-time | https://www.landscapehub.com/about

LandscapeHub is dedicated to streamlining the procurement and fulfillment process in the nursery, landscape, green, and hardscape industry. Our B2B marketplace is engineered for businesses to buy and sell landscape materials more efficiently from a single location saving time, resources and money.

We're looking for lead and mid-level data engineers to help us grow our new data team. We have a handful of projects lined up for the next year including: - cleaning/building up our data pipelines and infrastructure - integrations with 3rd party APIs for inventory and order management - building a smarter pricing model for our marketplace - Using machine learning to help with standardizing plant names and attributes across the industry.

We're a fully remote team, but will likely be opening a small office in Chicago to optionally work from when it gets safer to do so. More info on the job postings here: https://resources.landscapehub.com/lead-data-engineer-remote... https://resources.landscapehub.com/data-engineer-remote?hsLa...

Feel free to send resumes/questions my way: ajay (at) landscapehub (doot) com

You can find all our open positions here: https://resources.landscapehub.com/careers-at-landscapehub

I'm not the hiring manager for most these other roles but I can get more info if you'd like to reach out to me!

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2021) on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @05:34PM (#29410042)
Landscapehub | Data Engineer | Remote (US) / Chicago, IL | Full-time | https://www.landscapehub.com/about

LandscapeHub is dedicated to streamlining the procurement and fulfillment process in the nursery, landscape, green, and hardscape industry. Our B2B marketplace is engineered for businesses to buy and sell landscape materials more efficiently from a single location saving time, resources and money.

We're looking for a data engineer with 1-3 years experience to help us grow our new data team. We have a handful of projects lined up for the next year including: - cleaning/building up our data pipelines and infrastructure - integrations with 3rd party APIs for inventory and order management into client's ERP systems - building a smarter pricing model for our marketplace

We're a fully remote team, but will likely be opening a small office in Chicago to optionally work from when it gets safer to do so. More info on the job posting here: https://angel.co/l/2vR6DJ

Feel free to send resumes/questions my way: ajay (at) landscapehub (doot) com

NOTE: We're also hiring for many other tech-related positions at our company, including: - Mid/Senior-level Software Engineers (Rails/React stack) - QA - Project Managers / Business Analysts - UX Designer

I'm not the hiring manager for these roles but I can get more info if you'd like to reach out to me!

Re:Project Euler on Saturday November 13, 2021 @04:56PM (#29213541)
For people that love Project Euler, check out project rosalind! http://rosalind.info/about/

Conceptually similar, but the problems are focused around bioinformatics. Most lot of the problems contain some background context that teaches you a little biology/statistics as well.

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2021) on Monday November 01, 2021 @01:13PM (#29069720)
Landscapehub | Data Engineer | Remote (US) / Chicago, IL | Full-time | https://www.landscapehub.com/about

LandscapeHub is dedicated to streamlining the procurement and fulfillment process in the nursery, landscape, green, and hardscape industry. Our B2B marketplace is engineered for businesses to buy and sell landscape materials more efficiently from a single location saving time, resources and money.

We're looking for a data engineer with 1-3 years experience to help us grow our new data team. We have a handful of projects lined up for the next year including: - cleaning/building up our data pipelines and infrastructure - integrations with 3rd party APIs for inventory and order management into client's ERP systems - building a smarter pricing model for our marketplace

We're a fully remote team, but will likely be opening a small office in Chicago to optionally work from when it gets safer to do so. More info on the job posting here: https://angel.co/l/2vR6DJ

Feel free to send resumes/questions my way: ajay (at) landscapehub (doot) com

Re:Which stars can see Earth as a transiting exoplanet? on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @06:50PM (#29020007)
Proxima centauri is actually ~4 light years away. Space is really big, but there are a handful of stars in relative vicinity of us (under 250 ly)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri

http://www.icc.dur.ac.uk/~tt/Lectures/Galaxies/LocalGroup/Ba...

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2021) on Friday October 01, 2021 @12:16PM (#28720334)
Landscapehub | Data Engineer | Remote (US) / Chicago, IL | Full-time | https://www.landscapehub.com/about

LandscapeHub is dedicated to streamlining the procurement and fulfillment process in the nursery, landscape, green, and hardscape industry. Our B2B marketplace is engineered for businesses to buy and sell landscape materials more efficiently from a single location saving time, resources and money.

We're looking for a data engineer with 1-3 years experience to help us grow our new data team. We have a handful of projects lined up for the next year including: - cleaning/building up our data pipelines and infrastructure - integrations with 3rd party APIs for inventory and order management into client's ERP systems - building a smarter pricing model for our marketplace

We're a fully remote team, but will likely be opening a small office in Chicago to optionally work from when it gets safer to do so. More info on the job posting here: https://angel.co/l/2vR6DJ

Feel free to send resumes/questions my way: ajay (at) landscapehub (doot) com

Re:Norm Macdonald has died on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @03:27PM (#28529770)
His interview on Conan with Courtney Thorne-Smith is one my favorite videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6dXcW-_Fc

tl;dw:

1. tabs

2. I used to use microsoft developer studio. we should put more work into compilers

3. N/A

Healthcare in the US.

I went to the ER with my partner over a bit of a scare with some intense abdominal pain late at at night a few months ago. We were mostly ignored for about two hours in an empty ER room, and she received a chest x-ray and blood work. She had to go to the bathroom and one point, and they let her take off the pulse monitor on her finger. She didn't put it back on later and it was left flatlining for the remainder of our time sitting there.

They couldn't diagnose anything, and they ended up sending a bill (after insurance) for 3k+ of "level 5" (apparently the highest) emergency room care.

I don't claim to know much about how medical billing/expenses work, but it's just really sad and frustrating.

Maybe only a little related, but in the five-ish years of ruby dev I've done, there was only one time I can remember interacting with the GC directly in production code.

It was in the context of a sidekiq job that was importing customer data via csv file. We would read in the csv, and for each row a lot of complicated logic was being performed that would translate the data from customer format into our format, and decide how to update different tables in db. These files were sometimes 10k lines or longer (all handled by a single sidekiq job), and would balloon up in memory so much that sidekiq would crash and would keep trying to restart the job. For each row we were instantiating an ActiveModel object that had a lot of attributes/functions. I think the right solution would have probably been to do a (fairly heavy) refactor of that area in the code, and spin up a separate job for each row, but we found that by running a GC.start every few rows we were able to cleanup some of the old AM objects and keep the memory usage low for the time being...

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? on Thursday January 14, 2021 @05:24PM (#25783608)
What drawing apps are you using? Any success with those? I've tried drawabox.com in the past, and try coming back to it every year or two for a stint. It's definitely helped me improve my drawing, but it's hard for me to stay focused with it...

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