News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

ben_pr

Re:Raspberry Pi is merging with a coding foundation on Friday May 26, 2017 @01:15PM (#14425648)
> but I dream of the day when I can carry my whole computer in my pocket and be able to use it anywhere.

Have you tried the compute stick[1]?

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-c...

Re:3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go on Friday March 24, 2017 @10:25AM (#13949050)
I'm looking forward to my first project with GO. It appears to offer a lot with minimal complexity.

> Because Go has so little magic, I think this was easier than it would have been in other languages. You don’t have the magic that other languages have that can make seemingly simple lines of code have unexpected functionality. You never have to ask “how does this work?”, because it’s just plain old Go code.

That lack of magic and his comparison to C# sounds like a really good mix.

Re:Modern JavaScript for Ancient Web Developers on Thursday March 23, 2017 @02:07PM (#13942372)
I see that JavaScript has it's place in the browser but the whole back-end thing scares me. The ugly code (callbacks, etc), npm injecting only God knows what into your back-end servers, tons of work-arounds for trying to make JS not so ugly, are over the top.

The JS everywhere is so much like the "only tool you have is a hammer, so every problem looks like a nail" thing, it's amazing.

Creating a simple, secure, extensible middle-tier is a solved problem and is not in need of JS trying to solve it in a much more obtuse way. I've created many myself in everything from Delphi, PHP, C#, Groovy, to Java and I would never pick JS for that layer.

And a final thought, PHP used to get tons of bad press for being messy, etc, etc. But this JS stuff takes that mess to a whole new level. Perhaps PHP devs moved to node/js so they could make a mess and everyone would still think they are the cool kids?

Re:They Used To Last 50 Years on Monday March 20, 2017 @08:48AM (#13913631)
I just changed a refrigerator, stove is basically dead, both 8 years old, Whirlpool brand. My Mom is still using the same appliances from when I was a kid. Nearly every family member I have says the same thing, new stuff lasts about 8 - 10 years and why can't we just get one like Mom's that will last 35+ years. My bosh dishwasher runs like new and is 8 years old.
Re:Why we are not leaving the cloud on Thursday March 02, 2017 @01:37PM (#13776834)
I'm a little shocked at this decision. The issues faced are all solved problems from PB storage to HA on server clusters even across Data centers. Good solutions do have upfront costs but the math that cloud hosting is 5-10X more than co-location company owned/leased is still in the ball park. It sounds like they may need an architect with enterprise experience to help them out rather than random comments on HN.
A few years ago Bluecross Blueshield in Chattanooga would hire almost anyone that wanted to learn Cobol and train them, I have a friend that got in on this. I also have a relative making insane amounts of $ as a Cobol developer, but honestly Cobol is no fun (for me) and I wouldn't do it. There are a lot of Cobol devs retiring now and in the next few years and not many people want to replace them.

I can't think of anything that is Web Dev, Remote, $100 hour, and less than 5 years of experience.

Re:Ask HN: Good Career Alternatives for 50+ on Tuesday January 31, 2017 @11:47AM (#13532306)
One of the best hires I ever had was someone that was 50+ about 10+ years ago. He didn't have a technical background but wanted to be a programmer. It was a big risk but in two years time he became my top developer out performing those with 10+ years more experience. Now I primarily look to hire those with a few white hairs as they are much more stable and cause a lot less personal issues than those right out of school. If I was hiring and you really wanted to be a programmer I would certainly give you a shot at it. If you want to be in technology I don't see anything stopping you.
Re:Dedicated Server Price Increase on Thursday December 15, 2016 @11:03AM (#13185484)
I used to use OVH and most of the time their stuff works but when it doesn't there is very little chance of their tech support figuring out what the problem is and fixing it. They basically deny anything is on their side and you really have to move to a different VPS/Dedicated server or whatever instead of the issue actually being resolved. I use a dedicated server from a place in FL now that is a small shop but I get a real person(with a brain) when something goes wrong and they actually take me seriously and fix their stuff.
Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Team Viewer? on Wednesday June 01, 2016 @12:25PM (#11815731)
I use nomachine, works on Linux and Windows. I have a VPN installed at all locations and the software runs behind that.
Re:Introducing Twilio Add-ons on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @01:32PM (#11763612)
Having worked with Phone Systems for call centers and financial services for more than a decade I found this very useful.

Interesting uses: You want to use sentiment analysis to automatically pinpoint calls with angry customers and bridge in a supervisor.

You want to detect the language of inbound messages to route them to a person who can respond quickly in native tongue.

You want to identify demographics of an inbound sales call so you can prioritize people with the best buying profile.

You want to use spam or fraud scoring on inbound calls and messages so you can drop them on the floor before they distract your staff.

Re:Introducing power saving mode in Opera for computers on Thursday May 12, 2016 @07:35AM (#11682664)
Hmm, kinda odd. Not sure if you are comparing this to Chrome, Safari or Edge but with those you have a lot less control over the start/speed-dial page. Use the gear icon in the upper right to edit nearly everything on the speed dial page including turning speed dial off.

One of the main reasons I switched to Opera was the ability to have more control over the start page.

The biggest reason to switch to Opera now is the ad blocker is much faster than ABP/Ghost/etc and web pages load significantly faster now.

What Payment Gateway are you using? If I'm not mistaken this qualifies as a micro payment (< $5) and the transactions fees can be rather high on a $2 purchase.
I have hired two to three dozen developers over the last 15 years for a fairly boring developer job (finance) in a very big city (Atlanta). Here are a few tips I had for making candidates feel comfortable.

1. Find out as much about them as possible before they show up. Look them up on Github, LinkedIn, etc.

2. Target questions that are appropriate and related to the job. If the candidate offers any sort personal info about interests follow-up with questions and find out what they are really interested in, you should already have a clue from point 1. If their primary love is talking about airplanes or something else then writing code is not their first love.

3. Make the candidate feel at ease as much as possible. Offer Water, coffee, comfortable chair, etc.

4. Have someone on their level take them to lunch. They can find out what their potential future co-workers think of you and you can get some valuable feed back from your devs.

If the person interviewing you doesn't do most of these things then you probably want to run the other way. Remember your managers job is partially to help you be successful and if he can't help you have a successful interview then he most likely can't help you have a successful career. When you leave the interview you should feel that this person has your back and will help you out if you ever need it.

Re:This should never happen on Thursday March 31, 2016 @10:41AM (#11397504)
The shocking part is the number of times:

"This should never happen": 823,044 This should never happen: 16,946,357 vs. "This is screwed up": 59 This is screwed up: 876,393

I had both, the MMR and measles. Clearly the shot didn't work and nearly killed me and so did the measles. Yes a small chance but when you are in that small percentage it really stinks.
I nearly died from an MMR shot. I didn't read the linked doc but I can assure you people can die or have very serious complications from the MMR shot.
Re:PostgreSQL vs. MS SQL Server on Thursday April 30, 2015 @08:27AM (#9464595)
After seeing the title I assumed the verdict would be that MS SQL is way better. If I wrote a comparison that's how the result would end up. I've used MS SQL from 1998 and PostgreSQL from 2001 and have found MS SQL much easier to use. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
Re:Back to the future of automobiles on Monday April 27, 2015 @09:58AM (#9446292)
Timeless Lesson learned: The Dymaxion story cautions against falling in love with your own engineering, no matter how smart you are.
Nice work! I'll have to explore a bit more.
Re:Why we are leaving Dropbox on Thursday April 23, 2015 @01:03PM (#9428146)
6/ Amazon Cloud

7/ Younited (use this if you care about security)

I use godaddy for personal test stuff. Cheapest place i've found and really simple.

In general i'm not a godaddy fan.

Looks nice overall.

I have a hard time reading the light green on grey or white background. Not sure if it's possible to improve the contrast without wrecking your color scheme.

Re:Luajit IO framework on Thursday April 16, 2015 @11:25AM (#9388592)
Very nice! I was looking for something like this a year or two ago, on my next lua/web project I'll try it out.

Older »