algebra-pretext

Location: Seattle, WA (Open to Remote) Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Golang, TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Java, Python, AWS (Systems Manager, CloudFormation, IAM, DynamoDB, S3, CloudWatch, EC2), Real-Time 3D (Nerfstudio, Gaussian Splats, Unreal Engine 5, WebGL/Babylon.js), CI/CD & IaC Résumé/CV: https://www.idkwhojamesis.com/resume/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idkwhojamesis/ Portfolio/About: https://www.idkwhojamesis.com/about/ Email: [email protected]

Ex-AWS Software Development Engineer with deep experience building resilient cloud infrastructure, distributed microservices, and real-time data streaming pipelines. Looking for discrete, milestone-based contracts, fixed-scope feature sprints, or technical writing assignments.

What I can deliver asynchronously: - Cloud infrastructure automation, zero-touch multi-region deployment, and IaC (CloudFormation/Terraform). - High-throughput telemetry and real-time log/event streaming pipelines (Golang, CloudWatch, OpenTelemetry). - Full-stack web consoles, internal tooling, and custom API dashboards (TypeScript, React, Node.js). - 3D/Graphics workflows and data staging pipelines (Gaussian Splatting, Nerfstudio, AWS S3 Mountpoint).

I’m not too familiar with the space, but a friend of mine works at Descope[0] where they offer IAM solutions for agents.

[0] https://www.descope.com/

IIRC this is actually the main purpose of one of these, they run slightly warmer to keep fermentation going while still being cold enough to preserve. Traditonal kimchi was stored underground so maybe a temp close to those conditions.

Haven't seen these in a while, but the H Marts in Washington state would stock a couple of the newest LG ones.

> “Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s minds. The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children. National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into a real improvement of living conditions.” - Amílcar Cabral

Purely observation from team members leaving and browsing the #remote-advocacy channel over the last two years, but the 3-day mandate and the relocations have already pushed most people who can (and want to) quit, to quit.

I think it's encouraged due to milestones always being set with unrealistic ECDs, so every project is always behind and there's always urgent security fixes to 'catch up' on (I work on an AWS microservice as an L4 SDE, and joined 2y ago, for context). So you work in the off-hours thinking you're 'catching up' to the work you've 'missed', when in reality that is just the expected velocity to keep pace, and being 'caught up' is an unreachable goalpost.

I personally just learned to hide lack of progress on one task behind the urgency of another new issue, or keep tasks as vague as possible so that I can slow down on some days and speed up on other days. As a result I don't think I work crazy hours, but there's just a constant, fatiguing pressure of the feeling of 'I should be catching up on work right now'.

And I only recently realized that it's degrading my ability to enjoy any time at all, whether its PTO or just after work hanging out with my girlfriend.

This is my first eng. job though and I can't tell whether its better or worse in other places, and I tell myself it's probably better than the hours required at a startup. And I feel bad complaining to my friends when they're almost all unemployed or working gig jobs. /rant

Same, I've been able to focus best when finishing up something either during the weekend or when I allotted more OOTO time than I actually needed, I think it's just being in that (slightly) more de-pressurized state and no overhead of Slack pings and meetings.

If you’re going for FAANG most of your day isn’t coding anyway.

Hi Max, been following your stuff since Half + Half and it’s cool to see you on HN! Excited for whatever Normal has going on next!

For todo lists, I agree and at most a plaintext file or the Reminders app on your phone is enough. For daily notes though I feel like Obsidian is only as complex as you want it to be. My vault for work notes is mainly a haphazard bunch of copy-pasted snippets and chat records pasted in an auto-dated daily note, and it's saved me a bunch of times when I've needed to go back and search something.

This is awesome, I work at AWS and might use this when the console load times get on my last nerve and I just want to check some IAM policies. The Access Denied debugger sounds like a massive timesaver too.

COLMAP to generate pose data using structure-from-motion; if you use Nerfstudio to make your splat (using Splatfacto method) it includes a command that will do the COLMAP alignment. This definitely is a weak spot though and a lot goes wrong in the alignment process unless you have a smooth walkthrough video of your subject with no other moving objects.

On iPhone, Scaniverse (owned by Niantic) produces splats far more accurately than splatting from 2D video/images, because it uses LiDAR to gather the depth information needed for good alignment. I think even on older iPhones without LiDAR, it’s able to estimate depth if the phone has multiple camera lenses. Like ryandamm said above, the main issue seems to be low value/demand for novel technology like this. Most of the use cases I can think of (real estate? shopping?) are usually better served with 2D videos and imagery.

Not using SLAM like this paper and not transforming splats into polygonal meshes, but I used Luma's Unreal Engine plugin[0] for rendering splats via Niagara VFX to develop a walkable reconstruction of a small mall in my hometown[1]. I believe RealityCapture and Nerfstudio have some built-in abilities to transform splats to meshes but haven't seen good results; you're better off feeding the raw image data into a reconstruction workflow focused on polygonal meshes which is RealityCapture's main feature[2]. They recently got bought out by Epic (creator of Unreal Engine) and photogrammetry is already used everywhere in video games, one recent standout example being Hellblade II: Senua's Saga.

[0]: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/luma-...

[1]: https://idkwhojamesis.itch.io/factoria-2018

[2]: https://www.capturingreality.com/

Around two months ago I stopped by the building and saw through a window that the interior seemed mostly untouched. So, out of concern for the condition of any items that may still be inside, I snooped around the perimeter looking for a way in until a very loud intercom told me to get off the property. Probably not the reason for this announcement but I can’t help but feel partially responsible.

The RE-PC vintage computing warehouse nearby also has a small museum with equipment going back to the 60s, you can’t touch anything but other sections of the warehouse have plenty of 90s and 2000s desktops set up that you can play with. It’s a good place to look for ancient cables, obscure controllers (I saw two SideWinders there last time), and older displays, I’m planning to go back to pick up the Apple Studio CRT https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/studio_cinema/specs/appl...

> But the fundamental question remains: What’s the point?

The only way I could see this being marketed is maybe as a Mac display extension; Meta apps like Immersed show that the idea could be really great with better hardware. Gaming doesn’t make sense, and AR doesn’t really make sense either. If this thing is real it’s definitely not intended for the iPhone audience

I’ll try to find it later but one indie dev is making exactly this, where you construct elaborate machines by recording movements and item interactions in VR.

Edit: The Last Clockwinder https://store.steampowered.com/app/1755100/The_Last_Clockwin...

Support indie devs making cool stuff like this!

This could be interesting. I feel like the problem with MMOs that give you too much freedom is how players with more time will just completely dominate everyone else within days of any new content launching. Also, in my experience bad/unfun behavior in general gets worse the more populated an MMO is (FFXIV being a nice exception), and this solution could help keep traffic down. The only problem is that no dev trying to make money would ever time-limit their players.

It’s been interesting from a middle-class seller’s side as well. Most people planning to sell in the Puget Sound area can only afford to downsize to a much, much smaller home after paying off their mortgage.

I’d like to believe that most people are like you and are just doing their best to make everyone productive and comfortable. I was a bit surprised to see how most people I interact with over the age of 40 or so (my parents incl.) are pretty stubborn about referring to people based on what they consider right, like it’s some act of bravery to disregard how someone else would like to be treated.

I agree with you that this hyper-focus and polarization on the topic is driven by some extremely opinionated media personas, and unfortunately when looking at my parents’ usual YouTube feed it’s apparent that the influence of this niche is far-reaching. I just wish people would get along.