ivyirwin

SEEKING FREELANCER | Remote (US)

Intermediate Drupal PHP Developer

Looking for a Drupal Developer to help on a number of university web projects. Includes custom builds and maintenance. Must know and be comfortable with Drupal internals – i.e. not afraid to write your own hook, preprocessor, or inspect config yamls when needed.

We're a small team with 15+ years of university site builds and overloaded for the next 3 to 4 months. Our team is in multiple timezones (including EU) but can only support US contractors. If interested, please send us an email with a subject of "HN Drupal Contractor" to [email protected]

I was hoping the article was going to be about a physical device as well as the software to manage and play songs. A few years ago I wanted to get my 10 year old son an mp3 player – he's really into listening to music but wasn't ready (still isn't) for a phone. I was shocked by the state of the mp3 player options. When Apple discontinued the iPod they created a huge vacuum that no one seems to have filled.

I think the iPos shuffle (usb stick form) is still the best mp3 player I ever had – it was small, pluggable without extra cords, and battery lasted a really long time. It didn't have a screen to browse music but that was part of the idea – just let the shuffle do its thing. Even this relatively simple concept has not been replicated in the hardware market.

People will say it's not a hardware problem but a software/drm issue. I think that's a real shame. I wish there were a good, inexpensive, portable device that would just play my music.

The International Airlines Travel Agent Network (https://webstar.iatan.org/WebStarExtranetWEB/login.jsp) website, in addition to being extremely dated in its design, keeps business hours for accessing things like ID registration or travel agency certificate renewals. At first I thought it was a joke as the message displays something like, "we want to respect a work life balance and therefore only offer online services from X to Y." But for real, you can't access the online services during US based business hours.

It is wrong in so many ways. First of all the site is determining when the appropriate business hours are for its users, not taking into consideration moonlighters or other night owls. And second, it's a service for travel agents!! who are supposedly traveling to other time zones.

I get it if the people behind a service need to set limits on when they are expected to handle requests, but that doesn't mean the service shouldn't be available all the time. Good messaging and setting expectations for when requests will be handled are a much better solution in my opinion.

That takes the fun out of it! No in reality there doesn’t even seem to be a material difference in the amount of water used by each button. But I think in the spirit of this thread, why isn’t the interface obvious. At my last house it was a two lever flush where the “eco” flush was a green tab. Much more obvious.

So glad I'm not the only one. My house has four different two button toilets and I can't for the life of me figure out which does what. My wife says smaller button is for less water, but on one toilet the small button is tiny and integrated into the bigger button which makes me think it can only be there for when you need a power flush and you press the whole thing. I have no idea.

Not OP but working on a project in similar domain (ndaok.com). The technology is definitely making it easier to replace lawyers. The biggest barrier right now is lawyers themselves. In fact our project stopped trying to sell to lawyers because it's almost like they purposefully refuse to adapt new technology. Instead we've had success with customers trying to find a way not to use lawyers when they are not needed.

For SaaS, React frontend and Laravel/Lumen on the backend. DB is usually Postgres.

Oh wow, you just sent me down a really intriguing path. I was not familiar with IFC, but looking more into that now. No, it does not look like their repo [0] has IFC files, but I don't imagine it would be that difficult to export the additional needed file information.

[0] https://github.com/wikihouseproject/Skylark/tree/main/SKYLAR...

The last time wikihouse showed up on HN (September '23) I did a deep dive on the process I still haven't come out of. 20 years ago as a grad student getting my masters in architecture, I definitely would have had similar comments to most of what's on this page. But I don't feel that way any more and I'm actually disappointed by the negativity toward this project – not because it's not warranted, but if this were a software project I feel like the criticism would be more constructive rather than so dismissive.

WH is not a perfect system, but the approach is commendable for its comprehensive take on building systems. And building systems are broken. For the past two years I've been trying to build my own house (using a contractor), and even as a trained architect the process is ridiculously opaque, costs are exorbitant, and quality control is difficult to manage.

I applaud the fact that WH has tried to tackle the entire structure (and for that matter the entire building process – their parent organization has additional projects [0] for design, local building codes, and innovative financing structures). Yes, in the US 2x framing is cheap and relatively inexpensive, but is still complex in its own ways. Floor systems are different from wall systems are different from roof systems. I like that WH has tried to make one unit type (plywood boxes) work for the different systems. Is it the most efficient way? Probably not, but it affords other opportunities.

From an ideological perspective I also like that they prioritize sustainability, low energy use, and accessibility of design information to laypeople. On top of that, they've organized their building information like a programmer – they use GitHub to track versions and even have the start of a components database. They are an API short of making this really something the HN community could easily play with.

That said they have a long way to go. Framing a house is the easy part. I think if they could standardize the interface for cladding and interior finishes they would be in a better position to disrupt the building industry, but for now contractors will still be a requirement – so there goes your budget and quality.

[0] https://www.opensystemslab.io/projects

Agreed. Ben, although he doesn't know it, is one of my biggest inspirations for what I do. Back in 2005 or so he did a presentation to my class at the GSD on his genome visualizations. I was blown away, but even more so when I asked him what language he works in and he said Processing. I said I was unfamiliar with Processing and he said, "Oh, I wrote it." Mind. Blown.

On days I'm looking for inspiration I revisit that day in mind or visit benfry.com to see what other cool projects he's been working on. Thank you Ben for your amazing contributions to data visualization programming and for being an inspiration to an aspirational hacker.

Same here. One of the things that made me a loyal Linode customer was that often they would have a resource upgrade (i.e. "we've doubled your RAM!") without a price increase. Not pairing this with some kind of resource upgrade feel anti-Linode. Thanks Akamai...

Interesting, I have a similar goal but in the Drupal space. My partner and I have been building Drupal sites for clients for almost 15 years and we keep running into hosting issues for our clients at scale. Most of the "managed" options get extremely expensive very quickly, but they're also not managed from a content/modules perspective.

We're trying to do the best of both worlds and provide a managed (albeit opinionated) install that leverages our experience on the development side with performance and ease of use on the hosting side. Would be happy to compare notes as it comes together. Our website is in my profile and our email is hello@ the domain listed there.

Excited to check this out. I'm a long time Linode user and recently came across some projects that could leverage a managed DB. As always, I find the prices competitive – especially compared to AWS which I was starting to look at again for this component, but now I can try it out here instead.

Thanks for your work on Postico. Was looking for a Mac based GUI when I made the switch from MySQL to Postgresql almost 10 years ago. Sequel Pro was my go to interface for understanding my database tables in MySQL and I wanted something similar for Postgresql. I bought a license years ago and it is part of my daily workflow. Didn't know about v2, will have to check that out!

Congrats on the launch. My company tried to tackle collaborative trip planning too by doing a shared itinerary (https://www.lunamoons.com). We went as far as collaborative booking where people could split the charge at time of reservation. It's a tricky space but would be happy chat about lessons learned in the monetization space if you're interested. Email is in profile, shoot me a note if you want to connect.

The River Why by David James Duncan. A coming of age, meaning of life book with fishing as the central metaphor.

Same here. Linode has been my go to infrastructure ever since I decided I needed to leave MediaTemple and become serious about my server infrastructure. I feel like Linode made me a better developer by helping me learn the devOps side of the business. Back in the day, their guides were the best in the business, though I feel like DO is winning that game now, especially from an SEO standpoint. These days I look for DO guides on how to tune my Linode machines.

Congrats to the Linode team, please don't leave us hanging!

Yes, scope creep can significantly change the time requirements or even the entire, shall we say "scope". But I think it's just as important for us as developers to be aware of that on the initial request, in order to suss out the actual requirements.

What does the process look like when we ask back, "are you going to need to have a total and rolling sum? should we think about making a gui so other people can use it too?" Engaging the requests early on not only helps our planning, it helps the "client" figure that out sooner than later.

I think I've been successful in my career because I've been able to listen to a client's request and then help them figure out what they are actually asking for instead of taking it at face value. That can be easier said than done on an internal team, but it changes the quality of the product and dynamic of the team significantly.

Congrats to the Stripe team. I can't believe it has only been 10 years. I actually had to go check my inbox to see when I started using Stripe and it looks like I received my account notification on 8/30/11!

As other have said here, Stripe was one of those things that just made sense. As a web developer I was tired of jumping through the many hoops of authorize.net or praying that people would complete the purchase path on PayPal. When Stripe came out I (apparently) jumped immediately on it and haven't looked back. It is the only payment solutions provider I offer my clients or use on my own projects.

But the larger impact it has had on me is that it gave me that much more faith in HN as a source of emerging technology solutions. I still comb through batch announcements or check out Show HNs to see what's coming, because I feel like there's a good chance another Stripe is launching today. And it's just as cool that Patrick Collison still is involved in HN. Thanks pc and the rest of you all at Stripe!

I get the spirit of the document, but disagree with the goal. I'm biased, I've kind of made my career writing web applications for people reliant on Excel. While I've come to respect it's power – I had a colleague in architecture school design buildings using excel and I've seen some ridiculous formulas based on crazy pivot tables and conditionals.

I've seen more spreadsheets than I would care to admit, and what drives me crazy about each and everyone is that it is not readily apparent where the work is being done. I think you could say the same about a "programming language" except that the programming language is usually not also the product. When the interface is the code and the output, the lack of consistent implementation is something I find frustrating.

It's a nice thought experiment, but in my mind I think the world would be a better place without excel.

I really like this. We've attempted similar ideas on projects before based on first/last initial and it never turned out like I wanted. I like the simplicity of your execution and the range of styles you created. I get that some of the feedback is about them being too close together, but for practical applications, I think you would see enough variation in a small subset for it to be effective. Well done!

My first reaction to this was to be creeped out. Even being in the industry how did all of these sites (560) have data about me that they were willingly sending to Facebook without my permission. And while I have a Facebook account, I am not a Facebook user – as in I've logged in twice in the last year to see a neighborhood post or the like.

But then I went from creeped out to oh shit as sites I run were on the list. The way Facebook puts it, these businesses are actively sharing data with Facebook for the businesses benefit. But as a developer who has been asked to put a pixel on a site many times, I have to rethink the data exchange here. Obviously the sites are not getting the benefit that Facebook is receiving from everyone piping in data – often unknowingly.

I'm super excited by this announcement. Yes, I'm a Panic fanboy and have been since I first used Transmit over 15 years ago. I've long since moved away from Panic software – as the development process changed I didn't feel like their solutions were as relevant anymore. But that's what excites me about their announcement – they're admitting things have changed so much that an incremental release won't cut it, they have to go back to the drawing board. And when they do that, great things happen.

There's a lot of skepticism in the comments about the size of the undertaking and their ability to produce something significantly different in a crowded market. Isn't that what we all do to some degree? And I would argue they have a proven track record of doing that repeatedly (with some flops mixed in as well). Transmit didn't invent FTP interfaces, but the ease of use and speed were head and shoulders above the existing clients. They're getting some flack for their claims about Coda, but it really was a giant step forward over existing editors at the time.

One of the reasons I've always liked Panic is that they dog food their products and it shows. They have always been at the edge of web design and development (including the controversial margin on this page) and that comes from building and using an advanced toolset. Can't wait to see what comes next.

Congrats on the launch! You have a great start to a tough problem. I've been running a collaborative travel planning and booking platform for over two years – it's an exciting space and there's still a lot of opportunity in the multi-person planning space.

Some feedback on the product:

1. Collaborative features seem a little buggy. I registered and then shared the trip with myself in an incognito window. It was easy to trip up the document sync – try to make an edit in incognito and then make an edit to the same element in the registered window and the document gets out sync.

2. Input validation needed for links. I entered an incomplete link (google.com) and it treated it like a relative link, which broke the trip.

3. Is it possible to scope searches? I searched for hotels in a city and the initial results seemed centered on my destination but the rest of the list was from other cities or states.

4. Default map zoom is inconsistent. I started adding locations but all of the pins were on top of each other at the initial zoom level. Managing zoom level as the itinerary fills out will help keep the trip in perspective.

5. I could see edits made in different windows, but was unable to see who was online? Is that part of the UI and I missed it?

Some business feedback (for what it's worth) – figure out a monetization strategy fast. There are a lot of planners in the travel space but not a lot of booking solutions for groups. Affiliate links are okay but still leave a lot of money on the table. I'd be happy to talk about what has worked for us if you're interested – email is in profile. For those interested, my company launched https://www.lunamoons.com as a B2C collaborative planner but we recently pivoted to a full service platform (think squarespace for travel agents) which is live at https://www.trips.app. We tout our trips as google docs for itineraries, but maybe less doc like (i.e. https://sample.trips.app/sample-itinerary/rapid-flower-8635/...)

I agree. Their complaint on the use cases (pun!) for switch seem to ignore the flexibility of the syntax. I don't think the requirement to include breaks/returns is a problem if you know how it's intended to work. I prefer switches for the easy to follow flow but also the ability to "waterfall" multiple conditions, which is syntactically clunky with other approaches.

I too like the magic links. I've been an advocate for them in our tech stack ever since the first one I used on Slack. Yes, it's a paradigm shift, but I don't think that's a reason to avoid using it.

My team is split on whether or not they are a good thing, but the main reason people usually give against magic links are it's too cumbersome to go find it in your email. Am I the only one who always has email open?

From an implementation standpoint has anyone seen a negative consequence of using magic links? I know password resets are always a portion of our customer service handling – is there an equivalent with magic links?

I have had really good experiences with "Who is hiring" – from meeting interesting independent contractors that have heavily influenced projects to making my best technical hire ever.

When hiring I've used a mix of approaches – job boards, recruiters, HN. HN doesn't produce a lot of volume, but anecdotally, the candidates often get through initial screenings because they are generally both technically proficient and well rounded (from a stack standpoint). With other channels I find a lot of spam and/or mismatches on stacks.

My travel startup is powering group planning and booking for pack.spg.com. Our collaborative technology lets multiple people plan a trip together – invite cotravelers, share feedback, create individual and group itineraries, and even split the cost of hotel reservations.

View a sample trip at: https://pack.spg.com/trips/dawn-dream-d04a/invite/e70d9af2a8...