skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We Launched on Product Hunt and got to #1
Today was an exciting day at Amy.

After a 4 month sprint, we've launched on Product Hunt today. I'd call it luck, but frankly, it was 95% hard work, preparation and our team's engagement that put us at the #1 spot an hour after launch. A longer post will come soon, but these are the main points:

1. We set our goals - by knowing exactly where we want to get, mapping out how to get there was fairly simple.

2. Engagement - from day 1, our team got to work on Product Hunt. We created discussions, kept active and grew our following base to hundreds of followers. This really helped bring in organic traffic to our PH post.

3. Great visuals - Talking about your product is great. Showing your product is even better. With the help of a video production studio and our design team, we created 4 simple, to-the-point visual aids that showcase Amy to its full extent.

4. Working with users - It was super important for me, as head of product to talk to our users and test different marketing elements with them. This helped sharpen not only our value proposition, but copy, testimonials, and visual elements.

5. Our team - I've launched on PH several times, and got some great results (my last company was a 2 hour hackathon that ended in a product launch that grew to 50k users and +$1M revenue). This time, we had a full team working around-the-clock to execute on our plan. Amy team - kudos!

As I stated earlier, a long, deep-dive blog post will come out after our launch ends, and I'll post it here.

In the meantime, I'd love to get your support and feedback. Please head over to https://www.producthunt.com/posts/amy-2 to check out Amy!
I agree with pretty much everything you said, except the part about the "VC-fueled startups". Google and fb were once startups, they were just earlier and Google in particular was smart enough to see the future. As part of a multi-faceted effort (including for instance, Chrome and gmail), they saw the need to head off the Web 3.0 standards, delivering us instead the web we have today. I wish I could have seen things as clearly then.

In the end though I'm not sure it ever would have been any different. People want it "now" and they want it "convenient".
Homepage: https://epns.io/
The insurrectionists at the Capitol killed and injured Capitol police officers. If Mike Pence had been complicit with their wishes not to certify the election, we'd be living in a dictatorship. It was a very serious and pivotal moment for the country.
Bitcoin mining uses more power than the country of Sweden.

[1] - https://www.thebalance.com/how-much-power-does-the-bitcoin-n...
Governments could apply a carbon and electronic waste offset tax to declared cryptocurrency income. The people making money from cryptocurrencies should pay enough to fund projects that will fully offset their environmental costs.

Of course, those taxes will probably just disappear into general tax revenues and wind up paying for other things, but it would encourage crypto miners to pursue green energy sources and, perhaps, find better uses for obsolete graphics cards.
The core idea that I wanted to discuss is: If money is easy to debase then it will get debased a lot in the long term. That leads to inefficiencies in the market, and in particular to less sustainable behaviour of people and less sustainable societies.

Bitcoin is just an example for an attempt to create hard money.
It doesn’t make much sense, how would money be guaranteed to come back after making its way to through the government and back? The cost of electricity already functions more efficiently; don’t take money out of peoples pockets so you don’t need to give it back.

A pigovian tax by insurance would work better, I definitely think environmental protection is needed but politicians will just use the money they get in nefarious ways.
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/amy-2
Sounds like they should make a trade, Assistant for Speaker Group volume adjustments.
Just a quick digression: If you decide to upgrade from Mojave to Big Sur, make sure you create a bootable USB installer first, and back up anything that you don't want to lose. I decided to upgrade because Mojave is no longer getting security updates, but ran into some issues took 2 entire days to resolve.

During the in-situ upgrade process, I probably got hit with this installation bug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_Big_Sur#Criticism) where the installer never finishes if you have more than 20,000 folders in an obscure folder. I'll never know because I was forced to wipe the disk and perform a clean install. But before you wipe your disk, do a search for "Macintosh HD - Data" and "Macintosh HD - Data - Data", because the Big Sur installer is apparently not idempotent, so you need to delete the "Macintosh HD - Data" volume if the installer breaks halfway through the process.

You should create the USB installer before all this because the clean install may download the Big Sur image, then throw it away, and proceed to download and install Snow Leopard instead. At least that's what happened to me. But Snow Leopard not have the certificates necessary to connect the App Store. So the machine can't download the Big Sur image anymore. The only way around that is to own a second Mac to download the image and create the bootable USB drive for Big Sur, and do another clean install.
Will random tech people with blogs ever going to stop submitting clickbait-titled blog posts?

The actual subject of the rant:

> Why in the world has this idiotic trend of abstracting everything away by layers upon layers of complexity gained such a strong foothold in the industry?
I have a first gen iPad. Due to lack of software updates or the option to run another OS, I am using it as a clock. It’s a real shame. I’d love to be able to use it for something else.
The idea is that entropy increases unless you put in energy. If you are specifically working to keep the code clean of course that’s possible. But entropy, bit rot, etc is the default state without any work being put in to combat it.
That actually isn't what iMessage does. iMessage maintains a database of phone numbers that are iMessage, and then intercepts and routes the messages through Apple and not through SMS.

You can see this since if you switch away from Apple after using iMessage, anyone using iPhones will not be able to message you unless you go through a procedure to remove your phone number from iMessage.
Thanks to all the comments here, I just applied.

I'm building a registry[0] and registrar[1] for my portfolio of Handshake[2] names. I have no idea if it'll be interesting to them but it doesn't hurt to try.

Regardless of the outcome, I intend to release by end of Q1 of this year. After the codebases are stable I'm gonna open-source everything. The $500k will just enable me to work on it full-time, eliminate minor debt, and allow me to release faster.

I'm in no rush though.

- [0]: https://twitter.com/Neuenet | https://neuenet.com

- [1]: https://twitter.com/beachfront_

- [2]: https://handshake.org
Strong agree, and here's my anecdote:

Around the time that they started f-ing around with 15 different chat apps and killing off products, and integrations with other products, was when a Google account with "integration" started to become more of a hassle than worthwhile to me, personally. I used to use gChat, Hangouts, etc. but now I just use iPhone stuff since everyone I know has iPhone stuff. Apple hasn't deprecated anything since at least 5 years ago (the last time I had a work iPhone) so to me that signals that I can keep iPhones and not have to continually figure out what the "new way to chat" is, like I had to with Google. I've almost completely migrated from Google, except for Photos (which is superior to alternatives, IMO; I can actually backup my Google Photos from my Linux CLI whereas I couldn't figure out how to reliably do that with Apple Photos) and Google Search usage. I have had my Gmail account since ~2004 and I basically killed/deleted all of the services in my Google account now (even Google Voice sucks now, so I basically abandoned my phone number I used from ~2001 that I ported into it) except for forwarding email to my new email address and using Photos. I used to be "all in" with Google, but they made it too hard to keep using stuff that kept being killed off, so they dug their own grave.
I think OPs point is that Android allows you to use an app other than the stock app to send SMS, Apple does not.
The video about dhs issuing a statement?
I think this may be what they were referring to.
https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisor...
>all the modern networks go down, commands can still be issued from anyone, to anyone using off-the-shelf hardware.

Yep, and if there's any single salient characteristic about Nuclear C3, it's redundancy. Normally the launch crews, subs, command posts, bombers, tankers, and strategic reconnaissance aircraft would get their message over secure terminals, but there are many other ways to get a valid EAM (to include via voice transmission).

There's a famous (and perhaps apocryphal) story about Jimmy Carter touring the SAC underground. He supposedly told the senior controller he wanted to talk to the boys in the launch control centers, so they set up the circuits and told the crews to STAND BY FOR A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

This caused quite understandable consternation, as the crews were certain most of the comms networks had been taken out and the nation was somehow in the midst of a general nuclear exchange (though their detonation detection systems were not sounding). A voice message from the President never occurred again.
> the company applies end of March, you get notified of your selection early April, if you are selected you can enter the US in October

From experience, this is the main reason why companies don't want to deal with sponsorship. And also as mentioned USCIS is a dumpster fire currently (covid + trump legacy)
> This is an example of Jevon's paradox, namely that increases in efficiency or quality are offset by increases in demand.

That is kinda the main point of a carbon tax... it is to make carbon usage LESS efficient, since you have to pay an extra tax in addition to the cost of the energy itself. Ideally, the money gained from the carbon tax is then redistributed to everyone equally, and that money can then be used for whatever you want.
I'm assuming you only meant to quote the first part of GP's post but including the second part followed by "they aren't entirely wrong" makes it look like you're agreeing that it being less white than it used to be is why it's turned into a shithole. Do you really think those two things are connected?
"...helped the adoption of renewables and made them cheaper." How so?

Miners are chasing profit margin so they'll use whatever's cheapest. If that's renewable where some of them are, so be it. And if everyone else start reducing use of coal and that becomes cheap, miners who exploits that to derive higher profit margin will grow faster I imagine.

I would attribute growth and economies of scale that renewables have achieved to renewable proponents, industries, government subsidies and loan prorams. Crypto miners are energy consumers and some of them use renewable energy. But how do we go from there to miners being some kind of force for good in this context?
The 6500 XT is bad at everything. I haven't bought a dGPU with 4 GB of VRAM in a decade. This is just PR.
Almost half the country incorrectly believed that it won the election, as did the sitting president, and a large fraction of congress (147 Republicans, to be exact).

It's trivial to tip that sort of situation into a successful coup. All you need is a convenient excuse (All electronic/late/mail-in/democratic ballots are fraud, and should be disqualified! There's a state of emergency in the capitol!).

Do you think democracy just keeps working, regardless or whether or not all the mechanisms that ensure the transfer of power were carried out? If certification of the results is unnecessary, why do we do it? At what exact point is the winner of an election determined? It's not when CNN/MSNBC/FOX call the race. It's not when the last ballot gets counted. It's not when the electoral college votes. It's not when <some common sense thing> happens, because the law doesn't care about your common sense.

It happens when Congress certifies the results. If Congress certifies that Mickey Mouse won the election, that's who you'll be seeing at the inauguration. If the only people voting to certify are those 147 Republicans, guess who will be getting certified?

The transfer of power after an election is binary process. It either happens, or it doesn't. Any binary process, by definition, has at least one single point of failure. In the United States, one of those points of failure is certification.

The transfer of power is the most important aspect of a democracy. It has to happen correctly, every single time.
> I wouldn't want an adversary to know when or with what severity I am commanding my nuclear force.

If you make the communications mostly continuous, then real messages are lost in the noise.
Trucks move people and items. Bitcoin allows us to buy porn, pot and run scams on a mostly centralized network.
The piece is kinda whiney and comes off like "get off my lawn!" and doesn't really add much beyond the myriad of other complaints. Thing is that I don't really think that many people love developing this way, it's just that nobody will pay anyone to shovel our way out from under this mess of technical debt. GUI development on windows is a schizophrenic mess and then you want to be cross platform? The only options are Qt, Wx, and Electron... or imgui... or lispworks CAPI or something. Electron has permissive licensing and you can hire JS devs and most importantly you can externalize a fair bit of the debt onto the end user as power and compute resource consumption.

It's just like everything else in today's economy -- incredibly short sighted and whatever you make will either evaporate or be someone else's problem in short order. But, that's how you behave in such an environment! You'd get fired for writing a cross platform toolkit if the the expectations are set through the current climate of shipping shit apps quickly. Apps that function just well enough to retain a subscription or shovel ads or mine data or upsell or whatever.

You'd have to change the entire reason why people are paid to write software to fix this. People aren't "stupid," they're on average lowish skill (JS bootcamp to first hire...) and behaving rationally under the incentives.
You have a misspelling in your second sentence.

You also seemed to be focused on only web development. I would argue that "IT people" are not limited to web development -- and that you're overlooking the entire maker movement (including Raspberry Pi's and Arduinos), the breathtaking development going on with self-driving cars, and the development still taking place with AI.

But as always -- follow the money. Old school engineering shops got their money from the military (the internet is thanks to DARPA, after all). Web 1.0 got it's money from selling physical goods. Web 2.0 got it's money from venture capital and digital goods. What are we selling now?
Don’t Give Up the Ship
Ha ha. But clothes dry themselves. Clothes do not wash themselves.
Would you support Visa and Amex if their next generation networks required you to burn x minutes of natural gas or x pounds of coal to complete a transaction? Why is this an acceptable architecture for Blockchain? It is a race to the bottom.
> Yes, labor is how wealth is produced, but in a sense, an individual's labor is more than that: a person's unrealized wealth is the discounted future value of their lifetime income minus necessary survival expenses. That's not a constant number - it depends on the individual's choices, but nevertheless, that is some number. And that number has some associated optionality.

Economics is the study of scarcity. Wealth is real stuff like the house.

"Unrealized wealth" or "The potential to create wealth" or "the future value of your skills" shifts around, sure. Not the same thing as actual wealth though. And these shifts of theoretical outcomes are not transfers of wealth. This sounds like straining to fit something to emotional language.
For a flight sim, 45fps. Forza Horizon 5 runs at 60+ on high settings (despite telling me I need more memory, it doesn't crash). I mostly play CS, which runs at 200+ (yes I know it's an older game, Doom Eternal also runs at 60+ on high).
Are you suggesting that you could use Raytracing at all in modern games on a low end card like the RX 6500 XT? If you would use it you would lose the marginal performance increase of the updated architecture. Also content creation is a big point for younger generation if it is livestreaming, recording clips or general gameplay. This will both not be doable with this card if you don't have a good cpu. There is no discussion that more cards are good in the market we have right now. The card is 50% over MSRP right now at most retailers.
But did enter the Capitol building with hand held weapons, body armor, zip ties to subdue people, and were heard talking about locating members of Congress. Enough with the disingenuousness.
China has WeChat and QQ (though WeChat is way more popular). Both are basically mini OSes at this point, with apps and other third party functionality able to be built on top of them. I'm not Chinese, but use both of these apps to stay in touch with Chinese friends and family.
> Not me, but you seem to be hooked on fear. May you find some peace in life.

This is an unnecessary insult. You could have left it with "I'm comfortable not treating this as an emergency situation." I'm not sure what you gained from this post. Hopefully you got the performative internet points you were looking for.
With the collapse of the biosphere how do we stop ourselves from falling apart?
> coverage of health, dental, etc

That's not at all the same. I'm not talking about "a few RSUs" or a "small signing bonus". At all of the largest software employers, salary is at best half of total comp.

This year, my salary is less than 1/4th of my total comp. The other parts of my compensation are a cash bonus and RSUs, both guaranteed in my employment contract, both paid out+earned on the roughly the same schedule as my salary.

And the stock is literally better than cash given the inflation rate.

> retirement

This is actually instructive on how salary data can be wildly misleading.

There are tons of careers where salaries have modestly increased (or decreased on real terms) but where total comp as PLUMMETED as pensions were replaced with 401Ks.
There were many exploitable remote root holes then, but no one was attacking them because Windows was a much juicier target.
> do you care about sound money

No, I care about stable money, not “sound” money.
The sad reality is that people will die from the excess carbon and pollution put into the atmosphere by mining crypto.
I don't know. I'd absolutely pay for software that faster and more reliably than $electronAppOfTheDay, and which didn't require updates every two weeks. Maybe I wouldn't pay mars rover money, but surely there's a balance somewhere in the middle.

There are economy of scale issues to consider though. I use OneDrive because everyone else at my company has files stored in OneDrive. Still, I think my company collectively looses a massive amount of time due to OneDrive crapping out, and I think we'd pay more if there was a solution that was really rock solid.

The problem is that no one is doing it. iOS and macOS are on yearly update schedules in which Apple introduces half-baked features just to remove them again a few years later, and Microsoft won't offer Windows LTSC to consumers. I retreated to an eight year old version of OS X and it's great, but I'm also crazy, most people can't do that. :)
Problem solving strategies in a graduate real analysis course (2010)
Machine washing is a significant labor and time saver.

People are usually opposed to line drying clothes because of aesthetics and feeling like it makes their neighborhood look “poor”. Luckily quite a few states have passed laws making it illegal for landlords or HOAs to ban putting up clotheslines.
The US Dollar gets debased significantly. Its value deceases exponentially in comparison to gold (for example).
> Who are you to dictate what someone does with energy they pay for?

IMO this is the strongest case for a carbon tax - it respects individual freedom.

You want to cruise in your diesel-sucking massive launch? You want to take your personal 747 out for a joy ride to the Bahamas?

Fill your boots, do what you want without any guilt - your environmental impact has been offset by your higher fuel bills.
Thank you for articulating this better than I could have. We had HTTPD...Then Apache2, then nginx...and a guy here is messing with GPU visualization and introduced me to caddy...which is better, for reasons. And just today I saw gunicorn (which I thought was gun-i-corn for a moment) and I see it's been around for YEARS.

And I feel old. It used to be you secured a system when you knew every single thing that was running on it. Those days are long looooong gone.

And today, I had to go find Visual Studio 2019 because hashcat needs CUDA needs VS19 and Microsoft REALLY wants you to use VS22, but CUDA doesn't support it.

And so it goes.
Being able to see the instruments, target, etc. during a nuclear war has value even if you're not coming back.
what's the better standard? RCS is trash. Google is literally pulling a "think of the children" campaign when the children don't even care what anyone is using because they're all on snapchat, whatsapp, and everything else.
A home is where you live. If you stop to think about it, it's a very US sort of bias to define a 'home' as the single family detached house, whereas other things like apartments are not considered a 'home'. Not picking on you; people do this all the time. You even see it in the press, where they'll talk about some kind of development that includes both single family homes as well as apartment units (which sounds kind of cold and unappealing).
Listen, I'm glad you're optimistic, but again, we've diffused the difficulty bomb what, 5 times? And each time, the merge is 6-12 months out? And Vitalik himself said that the delays are due to the team not agreeing on the specs of ETH2 (vs. technical constraints)?

I guess we at least agree that your definition of "vaporware" is a lot stricter than mine. Hell, even Duke Nukem Forever came out eventually, so I may very well be wrong.
I put a 20% downpayment on my house and it involved a wire transfer that was scheduled for days in the future that required my physical presence at a centralized authority (bank). With Bitcoin, that process takes less than an hour, with very little "fee", and doesn't involve any of the "trust", which was represented in my example by time delays, scheduling, and traveling.
In 2021 I was working for a relatively small engineering services company in the US Midwest. Rates billed to customers for hardware & software engineers were between $150 - $200/hour depending on experience. Most projects were in the $60k - $250k range.