News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

jathu

Re:Ask HN: What's your proudest hack? on Monday December 12, 2022 @12:43PM (#33957636)
We had a very large monorepo at my previous company and building Docker images required us to set the context at the root of the directory (libraries, protos and helpers scattered around the repo). On macOS this is extremely slow as Docker copies the context into the daemon. This used to take several minutes.

Fortunately, we also used Bazel. So I created a custom Bazel rule that aggregates all the required files of a target/service then builds the Docker image within the Bazel sandbox which only contains the files we need. This massively reduced the context size and thus the image build time. From several minutes to single digit seconds.

Hi Peter, thanks for doing these AMAs! I’m a Canadian currently working in the US on a TN visa. I am interested in starting my own SaaS startup.

I’m currently exploring my options to raise a pre-seed round as a solo founder. Will I be able to stay in the Bay Area to start a company as a solo founder with some pre-seed and angel investors?

If not, will it be possible with an American co-founder? If not that, what is the best way for a Canadian technical founder to continue to stay in the Bay Area to startup?

Re:Ask HN: What do you use to make CLIs? on Friday August 26, 2022 @11:55AM (#32609069)
I made fx at Flexport, which hosted many of our CLI tools. I liked it a lot, so I made one for myself when I left: https://github.com/jathu/fx

fx is a workspace tool manager. It allows you to create consistent, discoverable, language-neutral and developer friendly command line tools.

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool? on Friday March 23, 2018 @04:55PM (#16662568)
I made something similar to this for iOS: http://sweetervibes.com/

However, because of Apple's new strict rules on what it considers user aggregated content, privacy, and etc. It's been stuck on beta for a while. I originally wanted to create a YouTube aggregator (like yours) however, I'm almost certain Apple will reject it.

Re:Kowloon Walled City on Thursday December 21, 2017 @01:37PM (#15981529)
I love Kowloon because it feels very r/outrun. I'm sure actually living there probably sucked though.
Re:3D scatterplot of an image on Friday December 15, 2017 @08:38AM (#15931685)
I'm not sure if they are mapping every single pixel or using some average pixels, but it's pretty fast.

Here is a shameless plug for one of my color extracting library: https://github.com/jathu/UIImageColors/

It currently takes around ~0.3s on average to extract the colors. However, with my new PR (https://github.com/jathu/UIImageColors/pull/54), it takes around ~0.14s on average. IMO this is still slow, I would like to bring it below 0.1s.

I tried to optimize this with k-means to reduce total number of colors, but the result was slower and worse color choices. If anyone has methods to improve the performance, please make a PR.

Re:Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy on Friday August 11, 2017 @10:02AM (#14989727)
I've been reading a lot about this "ancestral hijacking" lately and have tried to cut out on a lot of them. My phone now only has two possible notifications: phone calls and Things app. I have 0 social apps or games. I am also slowly cutting out sugars and extra carbs. I think you guys should read about supernormal stimulus [1].

There is this comic [2] about supernormal stimulus that shows how man, and man alone, has the ability to overcome it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

[2] http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/supernormal-stimuli/

Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2017) on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @12:35PM (#14902553)
Location: Toronto

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: Yes, preferably to the US.

Technologies: Python, Java, Swift, web stack, iOS, NumPy

Résumé/CV: http://jathu.me/resume/2017.pdf

Email: [On my resume at the bottom right]

=============

I have a lot of experience in designing and developing products from web to apps (please look at my site for some examples: http://jathu.me/). However, I am really interested in CS + finance and looking to get into a HFT, quant firm, hedge fund or a bank.

Re:Ending the cult of the CEO on Monday April 24, 2017 @04:26PM (#14187958)
This is reminiscent of auteur theory in film, which essentially says that the director is the author of the film. Similar to corporations, making a movie requires a lot of people with different skills/talent. The director overshadows everyone and is the person primarily credited with authoring a film, they even overshadow the writers of the screenplay. One of the leading arguments for auteur theory is that the director has the vision of the film and they set out to create it. This is the same narrative used in the startup world: the founders have the vision. So this extends to why we credit founders for the invention of products, just like how we credit directors for films.

Maybe 100 years from now we will say "Steve Jobs invented the iPhone/smartphone", just like how we say "Thomas Edison invented the light bulb" or "Martin Scorsese made Taxi Driver".

Re:Ask HN: Resume check and critique on Friday February 17, 2017 @02:07PM (#13670810)
* Your layout is a bit confusing. It's kind of difficult to figure out what title is the company name and your job title. I suggest you keep the EXPERIENCE and EDUCATION labels on the left and move everything else to the right. I've done a rough mock: http://imgur.com/a/g2t0c

* I'm not a fan of the design, but that's just my opinion. You can search for better resume templates

* Add a section where you point out what languages you know

* Another section for all the frameworks, tech stack, experiences and etc.

* "Netted over 700 hours...", I'm not sure if quantifying something like that is a good thing. 700 hours is kind of arbitrary, even as a developer I don't know that that really entails. You should just say you know how to build web apps, you're a full stack eng. and etc.

* "After learning about this word from a friend...", totally irrelevant. I don't think a recruiter cares about this. It is a good story to tell in an interview, but just not an a resume. Just get to the point as fast as possible while describing what the app does

* Overall the resume tells me what your projects do but it doesn't tell me too much about you. Tell me what you did, what you learned, obstacles you overcame, etc. This is a good area to quantify things. i.e. "Used CSS to develop convolutional neural network to improve efficiency by 100000000%"

* I'm not sure if your other two work experiences are relevant for a web dev, but you did a good job in making it sound relevant to who you are

Ask HN: Resume check and critique

Since the school year is coming to an end, I think a lot of students are starting to apply to jobs. So, I think it would be really helpful if they got feedback on their resume from the industry itself.Those looking for a job: please post a link to your resume.Everyone else: help someone out!

( Read More... | 15 comments | 11 points | on HN )
Re:IDPF, EPUB Standardizing Body, Has Combined with W3C on Sunday February 05, 2017 @06:39PM (#13575425)
When I was making a simple EPUB app for my own use [1], I found it surprising that many publishers don't follow IDPF standards. Most do, but there are a significant amount that mix and match all sorts of rules.

[1] http://jathu.me/bisheng/

Re:Pebble went from being worth $740M to less than $40M on Thursday December 08, 2016 @10:38AM (#13130909)
How do you differentiate a product and a company? There are obvious examples like most of the stuff on Shark Tank (i.e. cookies, jam, clothing, food products). However, I find it hard to think Pebble was just a product and not a company. Doesn't every company start off as a product? Apple started off as Apple I, Google started off as search and Snap started off as a photo sharing app. By your definition, a product is something that can be superseded by a competitor? Isn't that every company ever? My guess was, Pebble believed it could become a company and not just a product... but Apple had other plans for them.
Re:Ask HN: Which Mac do Apple employees use? on Monday October 31, 2016 @01:14PM (#12838761)
"Most people had a plain 27" iMac. Fusion drives were not even allowed." - Max Howell

https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/792050644093902848

Re:Swift 3.0 Release Process on Saturday May 07, 2016 @07:10AM (#11649144)
for-in is elegant, and you can use enumerate() to access index. However, if we had to do reverse for-loops in Swift 3, we would have to use for-in with either from.stride(to:by:) or reverse(), and to me that is not as elegant as c style for loops.
Re:Every shot Kobe Bryant ever took on Thursday April 14, 2016 @12:48PM (#11498282)
Reminds me of the Jordan commercial [1] where he mentions he lost more than 9000 shots in his career, lost almost 300 games and missed 26 game winning shots. Amazing commercial (like most Nike commercials).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc

Yes, I just added an MIT license to all my work after some people suggested it. I was just too naive to think no one would do this, hence my very loose initial license. Wouldn't the "Please include the original header in any modifications or redistributions" hold up?
I've just emailed him again to please include the original headers and give credit or I'm filing a DMCA takedown notice. I'm going to give him 24 hours. Also, I just went ahead and added a real license to all my work.
Honestly, I wouldn't care if he did steal my work as long as he included the credits. I think I've learned my lesson and will include a license with all my projects from now on.
My license also says:

>Please include the original header in any modifications or redistributions.

Ask HN: Someone is taking my work on GitHub. What should I do?

So my original work is here: https://github.com/jathu/UIImageColors. The person who copied my work is here https://github.com/robipresotto/imageColors.As you can see, he copied everything but my name. When I did try to open an issue regarding this, he pretty much changed my original issue comment and closes all the issues (http://i.imgur.com/mGX0Fyb.png). Also, he blocked me from the repo now...

( Read More... | 10 comments | 9 points | on HN )
Re:How “no worries” infected American English on Wednesday January 20, 2016 @07:47AM (#10937669)
I grew up around Toronto and we started saying this in high school back around 2009/2010. I always assumed it was patois influenced, like ever other slang in Toronto, but I guess it's Australian.

"yeah, no worries bro", or simply in texts as "nw".

Re:Ask HN: Things you created in 2015? on Thursday December 24, 2015 @07:29PM (#10790008)
I made Annex, my first iOS app. http://jathu.me/annex/

It made it on to the front page of Product Hunt and reached top 100 in productivity, so I'm pretty happy!

One thing I learned is that after the media hype dies down, visits/downloads drop A LOT! I knew this from articles I've read before, but seeing it happen is something else (and sucks).

Re:Make 8-bit art on Sunday December 06, 2015 @01:20PM (#10685999)
I made something similar a while back: http://jathu.me/pixels/

Check the source: https://github.com/jathu/pixels. You can also undo/redo by pressing z and y on the keyboard.

Re:The Problem with GitHub Pages on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @02:52PM (#10541937)
Well the main reason is not so much for me (I prefer all lowercase too), but rather other people linking the sites. A 404 resulting from something as simple as the wrong case is costly. Users don't try to fix the URL, they just leave!

Also, regarding the UIImageColors, if I'm making a library for a language that follows CamelCase, then it's only appropriate I follow that standard.

Re:The Problem with GitHub Pages on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @02:19PM (#10541654)
Yes.

One of my projects on GitHub is "UIImageColors", so if I were to create a gh-pages for it, the link would be jathu.me/UIImageColors.

Older »