mgkimsal
mgkimsal on Hacker News
Apologies for delay in replying!
I initially had this call 3x per day, but find I'm typically taking one or two. I'm rolling out a change to allow more granular schedule per day, and will adjust like that.
Tested vapi.dev and telnyx and openai - current version is telnyx with openai for now, talking to my server backend.
I've taken a somewhat different approach, although more reliant on voice. Tied up a phone number to some agent/llm service, tied to some APIs on some of my own code, and I have a system that calls me regularly to let me brain dump. I can tell it what I need to get done, it can remind me of things I mentioned before, clear things that are no longer important or required, etc. The key for me is the incoming call - something that regularly pings me and lets me just... talk it out, then sorts it out for me - it's useful. There's probably folks already doing some of this with claude and whatnot, but this also gave me some ability to learn how the best way to fit some of these together. Or... at least a way - might not be the best way yet :)
Would have been nice to have a test demonstrating the fix.
That was Perl though, wasn't it? mod_perl more specifically, IIRC. That alone relegated to a small pool of users.
Maddening for a bit - I've got problems that Flash is better on, and some Luna is better on, but I generally don't know until one has wasted time/tokens. Then I switch to the other one and... it's often just... bam - done. Correctly. I can't find the patterns ahead of time to determine what model I should be using first. :/ That said, I've been alternating between both the last month or so and they've both been pretty good compared to earlier models.
I haven't looked in to this in ... decades, but I seem to remember stored procs executed measurably faster 20+ years ago. That was one reason a project I was on pushed them. And the benchmarks they showed... it wasn't unreasonable. But we have faster networks, more memory, ssd, etc - I'm unsure if speed is a big reason any more. IIRC cached execution plans was a big win back then, but may not be as a win today. I'm thinking about sybase and mssql from the late 90s when I was first getting in to this topic.
But... over the years, I've seen push to sprocs where the logic was never version controlled or subject to the same level of testing the regular app source code was. The DBA folks had total control and were treated as a separate class of engineer than mere 'app' engineers, which caused all sorts of problems...
Logo unit testing supports a mock turtle.
Or you got the epyx fast load cartridge and could hit 'run/stop-restore' keys together to automatically type LOAD "*",8,1 and ENTER
> But reading that headline is bittersweet: I was nine in 1982, I'm now 53. Where have all those years gone? Don't get me wrong, I had a great life (so far) and I'd replay it just the same but... It's still bittersweet to think about my mates and I learning to code on those 8-bit machines. And the games. So many games...
Yep. 10 here. A lot of the same feelings.
It was a good buy for folks who got in early to build software/games for it. Friend of family was building games in 1982/1983 and had some early clones of games out (pacman, centipede, frogger clones, etc) and... while there were a lot of early publishers, it was fairly cheap to do in the early days, and they made more than enough to justify the $595 price (multiple units, IIRC).
Location: Raleigh, NC (US)
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: PHP/Laravel/vanilla, Grails/Java, Javascript/Vue/React, SQL (sqlite, postgresql, mysql/maria), AWS, Docker, Junie/Claude/OpenAI, ElasticSearch/SOLR, Testing
Main: https://kimsal.com
Résumé/CV: https://kimsal.com/kimsal_resume_2026.pdf
Email: [email protected]
Ideally looking more for fractional/part-time engagements - short term or long term - can be flexible around your needs. Interests include web app performance optimization, ideation/prototyping, addressing weird data integration problems (getting data from a->b without any obvious/direct path).
IIRC the monica team already did this between v1 and v2, so v2 to v3 as another rewrite would be the same move.
Expanded rights for some at the direct expense of others. That's not the same as simply expanding rights, unless you count other people being 'offended' in the same category as someone being physically assaulted or killed.
I'd go further and say chatgpt offering continuing service just with degraded model keeps me in their 'free web use' tier. I have API keys for coding stuff, but for most of my day to day use of public llm, I know I won't get 'blocked' using ChatGPT. Yes, the model may change, and I'll get 'worse' output, but usually I can't tell the difference. Using Claude for day to day stuff, I get completely locked out after so many hours. Again, I have API keys for Claude as well, and use it for 'pro' work, but day to day chat stuff... it's not my daily driver.
Our Lidl has those (north carolina). We've had our local Lidl about... 7 years? I can not actually remember if they had them on day one, or if it was introduced during covid years. But... it's quite handy. I seem to think our Aldi previously had them, but my last trip there last month they'd redone the whole place - more self checkouts, and I only saw single conveyor belt setups.
not as much as grocery stores. Most stores are big enough where I can get lost in them for a bit. A lot of bakeries tend to be smaller, a bit more crowded, more transactional, and I don't always speak the language well. It's not that I've never been, but they tend to invoke a bit more anxiety than browsing in a larger store.
BUT... have had some great breads, pastries, pasties and such in Moscow, Romania and Iceland. With that said... they may not actually have been great. The article touches on it - some of my memory of "great food" is just... the experience of having that food while abroad. I've told friends "oh, i had some great ____ over at _____" only to get told that that place is garbage and has the worst ____ ever and I should go to ____ instead. They may be right, but part of the 'taste' is 'first time trying $foo in $bar' which adds to the memory (usually good). Also... whether I'm with someone or on my own has an impact - usually the whole memory is better when I'm with friends or family.
I don't travel abroad as much as I'd like, but I always enjoy bringing back some foreign candies for friends. Some things we can get locally in upscale shops, and much you can get from Amazon, but most folks don't bother. I recently came back from Iceland and brought probably $20 in little candies. Lots of licorice-based stuff - that's apparently a big thing there. Just little fun bits to pass out to friends when I come back.
But I've always enjoyed poking through grocery stores traveling abroad - China, UK, Russia all were interesting in their own way. Seeing what's similar and what's different. Yeah, cool - they have Pringles too - but... wow... such weird flavors. I do remember seeing canned horse in a couple of Russian stores. And in one upscale Moscow grocery, they had a huge fridge case for 'cheeses from around the world'. Germany, Italy, France, UK... kept going... got to the 'US' portion and ... tubs of 'Philadelphia cream cheese'. I thought I'd taken a pic of that but sadly can't find it any more. I really thought it was a joke.
Given that almost everything is a subsidiary of Unilever, the 'I wonder what they'll have' question has faded. But finding local flavors of things is still fun. Greece is likely my next bucket list trip. Any suggestions on foods to try or candies to look for - let me know! :)
been a few days but... I'm not actually seeing a whole lot of 'reshore manufacturing'... at best, it's uneven, but price increases across the board (even before iran/oil shock) have been quite prevalent. Without this being formalized, we're left with monthly changes based on one lunatic's emotional state. There will be no big long term reshoring of efforts because the requirements will constantly change.
Yes, lunatic, nut, unstable, whatever. I went there (very edgy, I understand). The person inflicting all this chaos does not have the country's best interests at heart. To whatever extent his own power and money grabs have some positive spillover to the country... it's an unintentional by-product.
We're just left with 'higher prices' and 'continually increasing prices' as far as I can see, without concurrent higher wages and increasing jobs (or even flat jobs numbers). I'm seeing very little positive outcomes here for anyone except the already-elite rich folks.
global tariffs via ieepa or similar legislation - base flat tariffs against all imports from all countries - I think those will go. Biden kept some targeted tariffs, but didn't massive expand or do country-based tariffs.
> thus paying more in taxes
If the taxes were being spent to help those who were not working (unable to or for whatever reason) maybe that would be fine. We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?
> Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.
Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.
I must be at least the 5th 13mini user.
> and then who would argue with devs when we'd need to do pretty normal things like, say, list users in a webapp.
Was forced to use MSSQL for a web app in ... 2004. Needed to paginate. We also were using PHP, but, the problem would have been similar in Java (the other alternative).
We needed to paginate sets of records. Show 1-50 - click next, see 51-100, click next, see 101-150, etc. There was no limit/offset in MSSQL. The DBAs told me I was stupid for wanting to do that. "No one has ever asked for that and we've never needed to do it. Your system isn't designed correctly - let's have a new planning session in 5 weeks where we can tell you the only things we'll allow you to do with the data". We were already... weeks behind but hey... I had no pull to push anything else through.
I think by 2004, web apps that showed paginated data were not uncommon, but I was supposedly asking for the impossible.
Weeks later I'm being sent technet (?) articles on how to use cursors in ADO (IIRC) but in a pinch, I should just select top() from everything. I pointed out that trying to show info from, say, rows 500-550 means I'm having to pull 550 rows instead of just the 50 I wanted. They didn't understand until I did a prototype their way and they started saying my code was slowing down the network because I was pulling too much data. So... select top(550), then reverse that data in a nested select, then select the top(50) of the reversed set, then reverse it again - all in db memory... I believe someone handwrote custom sprocs for every variation of every type of select we may have needed, and tweaked multiples indexes to try to get it to be moderately usable speeds with the final large set of data.
Eventually, years later, MSSQL got limit and offset, but it felt to me like they dragged their feet on that maybe because other databases had variations of that before they did, and they were somehow 'above' needing to support such pedestrian functionality?
would be nice to be able to link to an individual menu.
cool collection, just harder to share some specific ones with friends.
go further and let me have the same persona in townsquares across various sites. or have you already described why you wouldn't want to do that?
I've never been to a place where you order by QR code where somehow the bill is joined together in one order for the table. Everything I order on the phone I pay for before they bring the food.
A couple places near me have QR codes for seeing a menu, but you still place an order with a person. If I order via QR code, payment is tied to me as a person, not the group.
Never (yet?) seen it any other way.
In the senior realm here - would love to chat with folks over lunch, brainstorm, assist, mentor, guide, etc. Can't do that
AND be expected to deliver code at a 'full time' expected pace. What I would be delivering is... some code, some guidance, some assistance, etc. I've seen inside enough places to know that many senior folks end up being guarded and solitary because the deadlines aren't ever set to accomodate that sort of work. You're a 'Senior Developer(tm)' and the measuring stick is... lines of code.
Orgs get what they measure for. If your team values that sort of interactivity and support, it will ... observe it, measure it, and hire for that sort of person. I've seen groups evolve towards that, and they've been great, but it doesn't seem to be a default - most groups/orgs have to work towards it and and keep working at it.
This is under-recognized by many folks. That full impact of the that aspect of the 2017 TCJA was hard to predict when it was so far in the future, and when it hit, we were dealing with the latter economic impact of covid in addition to these deduction changes.
I think the more useful part is the parts that checks a ticket, fixes a bug, then opens the PR automatically. Whether you get an email or a phone text or call from a voice agent is ... somewhat secondary, im.