grownseed

United Nations Development Coordination Office (UNDCO) | Drupal and JS developer | Full-time | REMOTE

DCO is seeking a talented and creative professional to lead content management and web design for the UNSDG country websites using Drupal, including supporting and oversight of hosting/maintenance infrastructure, web design of new elements of the websites, as well as working with data sources and APIs to visualize results effectively.

The work would ideally later shift its focus slightly to contributing to the main API (Node.js/PostgreSQL) and frontend (React) development as well based on the candidate's skills and interests.

We are a great little team within the UN with people from all around the world. We've successfully just launched our main platform and are excited to take it further.

I'm the Dev Lead here so if you are interested or have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me (Hadrien) at [email protected]

Added a javascript version, for those who want to try it out without compiling anything: https://gist.github.com/munificent/b1bcd969063da3e6c298be070....

Online version: https://jsfiddle.net/dfu7ws69/

Morality of the death sentence aside, I think the underlying issue here is that this may also be a driver for killing people in the first place. For example, the presence of "re-education" camps was brought up again recently, in particular relating to Uighur muslims and more generally political and ideological dissidents, whereby the camps have grown considerably (despite contradicting statements on the international scene) and people seem to get "re-educated" indefinitely.

A few other advantages of working remotely, at least in my view:

- less office politics

- no forced socialization, sorry but I have absolutely no interest in your private life while I'm working, I want to get work done and be done at 5, not pretend to be a busy body for the sake of it while having chats all throughout the day

- re. saving money, tax breaks are also a good incentive

- less personal but in my view as important: road decongestion/less pollution/etc.

As the author notes however, working remotely is not for everybody. Routine and self-discipline are extremely important, and a lot of people can't do that without being on site.

Fusion 360, which looks like is what is being used in the article, has a free license as long as you're a hobbyist or your business makes less than $100000. Fusion 360 has its quirks, but it remains my favourite tool for this type of work, and it's relatively simple to learn (though like any powerful tool it can also get pretty complex).

My partner and I are the proud owners of a Toyota Corolla CE 2003. We often joke about how it has to be the most nondescript car ever made. It has no extra features (with the exception of the CD/radio stereo perhaps), it just drives, really well, it's very efficient, nobody would ever think to steal or break into it as long as there's pretty much any other car in sight, it requires very little maintenance, and when it does we can go pretty much anywhere and it's very cheap.

There'll come a day when we have to replace it, and I'm dreading having to pay more for something that most likely won't be as reliable, but will attempt to squeeze yet more "value" out of me. The corporatization of everyday goods and services at the expense of consumers absolutely sickens me. I can't go to the movies without having to watch 15 minutes of ads, even though I already paid for my seat (and tickets are more expensive than ever). I fear giving my email/phone number/etc. to anybody because I have no idea how they'll be used. I have to regularly remind my ISP/phone provider to stop trying to push more crap and use me as some sort of advertizing platform for my friends. And so on.

People complain about Facebook, Google, etc. all the time for their underhanded tactics, but at the very least I haven't already paid for the product before being amalgamated into it... For all the people on HN who work for these companies and help them implement these things, I do have to ask, how do you sleep at night?

There is "complex", and then there is "complicated", I believe the author refers to the latter. A complex solution involves a lot of moving parts, but each of these parts serves a specific purpose, such that it is possible to break down the solution into relatively simple, understandable blocks. On the other hand a complicated solution will have inefficiencies, some of its building blocks may be too big or convoluted to be broken down further, causing implementations that are hard to understand and/or may be redundant, feeding back into the complications. I think Rube Goldberg's Inventions are an excellent example of the difference I'm trying to make.

Social posturing is certainly largely to blame for over-complications, but I think more deeply, a lot of people hate to let go, to be told that the very thing they were responsible for, that they worked hours/days/... on isn't necessary any more, or perhaps never was. And then in the other direction, there are what I refer to as "exponential requirements", for lack of a better term. You buy a large bag of coffee that you could simply use as you go and store in the fridge. Or, you could have a jar with some of the coffee in it, and the rest of the bag still in the fridge. Then a plate to put the jar on. Then a new shelf to put those plates and those jars. By the time you've followed this track long enough, you're looking at buying a new house, even though your essential requirements haven't changed from the beginning.

In Canada, also get a few of those every day, even though I barely ever give my number out. I noticed that some of those numbers are within the same area code as mine, but not the area I live in. I attempted to call some of these back on occasion, and was surprised to have an actual person on the other end of the line, absolutely clueless as to why I was calling them. I'm not sure whether hijacking a caller ID could allow that, or if some those phones have been compromised and become part of one of the great botnet...

Meanwhile, I'm still dealing with large organizations (BestBuy, Fido/Rogers, TD, etc.) still sending promotional offers through all possible media, despite Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation being in full effect since 2017 and me having never explicitly consented to that garbage in the first place.

Maybe we ought to bring the hammer down on all spammers, "legitimate" or not...

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) | Full Stack JS Developer | Full-time | REMOTE

Within the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Programme Support Branch (PSB) is responsible for helping OCHA country offices and humanitarian partners implement the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC). PSB, in partnership with OCHA’s Information Services Branch (ISB) is currently developing the suite of information services which support the HPC. This includes online database applications for the administration of systems such as those for the Financial Tracking Service (FTS) and the Online Projects System (OPS); as well as new online systems to facilitate the creation, management and monitoring of humanitarian response plans (HRPs). These are being built on technologies including PostgreSQL, Node.js and AngularJS.

For more details and to apply, please see: https://jobs.unops.org/pages/viewvacancy/VADetails.aspx?id=1...

Commenting on this while my 3D printer is making parts for my new 3D printer, with parts I designed from the comfort of my own home. 3D printing and the RepRap movement have managed to get me truly excited about something for the first time since I took up programming 20 something years ago.

We're not quite at the fully consumer-ready stage yet, there is a lot of tinkering and know-how that would be too much for the average consumer. I'd say the current state of 3D printing is at the same level 2D printing was ~40 years ago (comparatively), but I'm confident we'll reach a similar stage within the next few years.

For those interested, the RepRap community is extremely active and there are lots of open-source projects (including hardware) to get involved with.

Facebook recently started sending me notifications that somebody unknown was trying to log into my account, that they'd temporarily blocked it, and later re-enabled it. The emails actually come from Facebook, the problem is that the email address they're contacting me on is one I've never used for Facebook. The email contains a link to log into Facebook to "fix" the situation, but I obviously can't log in. The other link in the email is to unsubscribe from their notifications, but not from Facebook. There is absolutely no way for me to say "yes, this is my email address, and no, it should not be tied to Facebook in any way". There is also no way for me to check what Facebook account is supposedly attached to this email. This feels incredibly underhanded, it's either "join Facebook, or risk having somebody steal an account you never created". So back to the point of the article, Facebook is at the very least passively encouraging this fake profile stuff, and the cynic in me thinks it might not be that passive...

The Github page shows a nice overview and some examples: https://github.com/hanzhanggit/StackGAN. Interestingly it seems to struggle with the birds' legs (e.g. merging them with branches, blurring them or just not generating them). Is this is a problem with the size of the feature or the colors or ...? I know very little about this field but I find it fascinating.

Hi, just wanted to say you've built something very nice! I just tried it out by re-making a fairly complex diagram and it took me like 10 minutes, including learning the syntax, very nice idea, done well!

I did notice one annoying bug, as I change and break the code sometimes, the editor just stops working and it's hard to tell what's happening (the loading indicator just stays there). Opening the dev tools, it appears you're not catching all errors when your parser (peg.js) fails.

  SyntaxError: Expected ":" or [^\t\n\r :;[\]] but "\n" found.↵    at peg$buildStructuredError (https://code2flow.com/worker-flow.js:2:12222)↵    at Object.peg$parse [as parse] (https://code2flow.com/worker-flow.js:5:1413)↵    at exports.FlowWorker.onUpdate (https://code2flow.com/worker-flow.js:5:4410)↵    at callback (https://code2flow.com/worker-flow.js:2:8619)"

Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't work through PIA, they apparently aggressively block IP ranges from most major VPN providers, so the issue isn't specific to PIA. This is a bit of a "screw you" to privacy-conscious people, but then again Netflix have their own issues to deal with (whether legitimate or not is a different conversation). Two things I do on occasion: have a box dedicated to watching Netflix, that isn't on a VPN (which might not help if you're trying to bypass national licensing restrictions), the other is to tunnel my connection to one of my servers through the VPN, which works fine, though it's a bit of a pain.

Been using these guys for a few years now, best use of $40/yr. You'll occasionally get blocked on certain sites (which you can often fix by simply changing location), but their infrastructure is definitely impressive. I get to use the full speed of my connection, which ironically is not always the case when I'm not connected through PIA (there's definitely some selective throttling going on, even though my ISP pretends there isn't).

So sure, I'm probably on a bunch of watch lists, but at this point it's hard to care anymore, it feels like everybody is in one way or another, everybody will be found guilty should someone decide so... I actually have legitimate reasons for using VPNs, but moves like this from governments around the world just give me even more of an incentive to use VPNs.

One can only hope that politicians will be done in by the very same rules they're blissfully pushing through.

Thank you so much for sharing!

I attended an event called "We The City" in Vancouver last year where Teju Cole gave a talk. He was, in my opinion, a far more interesting speaker than the others. He's what I suppose I would refer to as a pragmatic artist, he's extremely knowledgeable, yet humble and composed, which somewhat contrasted with the other artists present who, while sorta nice, felt pretty shallow. I've read some of his essays from "Known and Strange Things" and I would highly recommend them, they're genuinely insightful.

You have a point, I think the costs probably depend on a lot of factors, and I suppose a "lot of money" is relative. I expressed some of my frustrations in this rather long comment here [0]. I went through CEC, and in order to get points I had to pass language exams in English and in French, even though I have certified Education in both languages, had to certify my degree, get background checks for a number of countries, etc. It all added up very quickly for me, but that likely varies from person to person. That said, I'm aware that I'm luckier than most.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11879503

A few points I think are relevant:

- I find leaving your country only because you didn't vote for the winner is rather cowardly, you can still do something about it, we're not quite talking systemic harassment yet...

- as a friend of mine pointed out, Canada is not a consolation prize for disgruntled americans, it's a real country, with its own real people and its own real problems

- having just aquired my canadian permanent residence after years and lots of money, it was a harrowing process. Clogging the already dysfunctional immigration system en masse as a whim is not just stupid, it's insulting to people currently going through immigration, and downright threatening to people who are in very real danger

If you're a disgruntled US citizen, I can understand your frustration, but please don't take this lightly.

Boy do I miss the N900... Mine is sitting on my desk like a museum piece gathering dust, and it makes me sad that no modern phone has come remotely close to it.

I used it as my main phone when travelling for years and it worked everywhere I needed it to when other phones wouldn't. I'd use it for getting unwacoughted access to WiFi when I was in a tough spot. I'd manage my servers with it. I'd use it to emit music through the radio on car trips and such (why is this no longer a thing?). I could even push my own programs on it without having to make a sacrifice to the phone gods. I'd also kill for a keyboard like that again.

But no, instead you have to get a hobbyist device or get one of the many shiny slabs running (poorly) one of three (and I mean, really, two) ecosystems.

If I understand correctly, this is not "worldwide internet usage", but actually "page views", which I think is a fairly important distinction to make (at least for the people of HN I would imagine). I would personally be more interested in a breakdown by protocols, volume, automated vs human, etc. Though I guess this company, dealing with web analytics, would be unable to present such information.

As an aside, I'm also curious whether a lot of these page views are triggered by ads, since I would imagine adblockers are not nearly as ubuquitous on mobile as they are on desktop.

Perhaps not quite the answer you're after, but I was deaf as a child, though I was able to hear as a toddler and had therefore been exposed to spoken language before going deaf. I absolutely had inner voices while I was deaf, to a practically debilitating degree. The isolation inherent to deafness caused me to have strong inner dialogues, to develop a full world inside my head. I would often "go away" in my head, to the point that I was completely detached from and unresponsive to the physical world. It's apparently very unsettling to people standing right by you.

My grandfather used to be fascinated by it, he'd say that I'd gone to my secret garden and that it was ok to leave me alone. Even after recovering my hearing years later, I kept this habit (whether it's good or bad is debatable). Over the years I developed a better hang of it and I can now trigger it mostly at will. The level of introspection that came with all this is rather hard to explain, though for all my quirks, I don't regret it one bit.

> "[...] he has demonstrated absolutely no interest in protecting it"

> "The filing described Mr. Martin as computer genius who easily outsmarted government efforts to protect secrets and said he possessed an advanced understanding of how to encrypt messages and hide information in cyberspace."

This doesn't really make sense and the wording also hints at sensationalism. It reads like a classic case of deflection, making the accused appear considerably more powerful than he actually is.

This, to me, shows a few things:

- the NSA clearly has no clue who accesses "their" data, when, or how

- the NSA will throw anybody under the bus to save face

- the NSA, to this date, still refuse to put their own inadequacy in the balance and traded their integrity for the power to sustain the organization itself at the cost of everything else (including their original purpose)

Why on earth is this organization still allowed to operate at all?

Perhaps we could start by penalizing companies like HP that actively participate to this waste by producing stuff like their shitty disposable printers (where buying new cartridges can cost more than buying a whole new printer). Likewise, we could also penalize phone providers who keep pushing new phones on people for absolutely no good reason (other than to line their pockets). Or maybe, and I know this is some kind of wild idea, we could require manufacturers to make interoperable parts that can actually be changed and switched between devices, regardless of brand. I don't know...

The idea itself is rather beautiful, I used to believe it was the only way things should be, but the more I think about it and its presentation here, the more I feel uncomfortable about it.

The contents of the article are fairly heavy on the technical side of things, but seem to hand-wave the human aspect of the whole operation, or tend to mostly point out human flaws and rarely qualities. I'm not sure whether it's cynicism or me reading too much into it, but it bothers me a little.

Should this idea (and others alike) ever be implemented, I personally believe they should only ever be decision-support systems that members of society (humans and possibly AIs) would ultimately decide upon. Such a system would be designed for humans first-and-for-all ; I think consistently making it decide for humans would likely remove the relative aspect of morality over time, leaving all your decisions to a "greater entity" and all that entails.

I did enjoy the article, if only as a very interesting thought exercise, but I sincerely hope not too many people take it to heart.

Something I said before on a related topic:

> It is truly fascinating (and of course, terrifying) to watch governments expect, demand and enforce complete transparency and blind trust from the people, while providing absolutely none of either.

The constant flow of such news only makes this feel truer by the day. It blows my mind that so many of the people who defend these actions are the same people who will take any opportunity to disparage other "non-democratic" countries, while gloating about their supposedly unique freedom. The hypocrisy and the superiority complex are palpable.

I think your point is very valid, but my own experience (average white male) suggests that it might not necessarily be true. I used to have really long hair, which I would generally leave untied when travelling (mostly for comfort reasons). I started noticing that I would frequently get "random" pat-downs and searches despite not triggering the detectors. It never seemed to happen when my hair was tied back, so I decided to try it out over a number of flights, and fair enough, I would almost consistently get "randomly" searched with my hair untied, and not once was I "randomly" searched with my hair tied. Definitely not proof of anything, but it does indicate some kind of bias.

These acts of apparent philanthropy from ridiculously wealthy people rub me the wrong way. It feels like those rich patrons from older times who would bestow their "generosity" as they pleased, except that in modern times most countries have frameworks in place to make this sort of work happen, and these rich people choose to ignore them, or worse, disparage them.

Companies like Facebook (and people like Mark Zuckerberg) actively avoid paying taxes whenever they can, in a lot of countries that, for example, have public healthcare and other public institutions that would normally benefit from these taxes.

It's a bit like repeatedly stealing some kid's lunch, and then making fun of the kid for her weakness while appearing strong (and stronger in comparison to the weak kid) and compassionate when the kid passes out and you carry her on your back.

Hilarious article, until it hits a bit too close to home and you realize we're all part of the problem and there's probably nothing we can do to stop the hell train.

Truth is, I've come to terms with the idea that this ridiculous situation is somewhat acceptable, not great by any mean, but simply a reflection of the state of the real world and fleshy humans. Society itself is pretty much an amalgamation of obscure traditions and questionable decisions, held together by myriad of band-aids with hair stuck on them, and every generation tacks its own clean band-aids on it only for somebody else to violently rip them off or rub their dirty shoes on them, or worse.

Programmers are humans, and no matter how logical we like to think we are, we're subject to the same pitfalls as everybody else. But because of that "logical" trait of ours, we like to think everything is fixable, or worse, that everything needs fixing, and when that isn't possible, we lose our shit, we get depressed, we only see flaws and we just accelerate the pace. We constantly attempt to identify the bad in everything, when in reality nothing is inherently good or bad, it's just mostly chaotic.

So yes, we're the architects of our own nightmares, but not necessarily because of the evergoing snowballing clusterfuck we all contribute to, and perhaps simply because of our own warped expectations.