Hacker News: bigtimesink

New comment by bigtimesink in "Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?"

bigtimesink — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 17:43:00 +0000

There are zombie startups. The business has stalled out, but breaks even. The staff and investors are checked out. Ambitious product people show up with big ideas that never work and then leave. They keep going until someone finds a buyer or the business fails.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise?"

bigtimesink — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 17:39:33 +0000

Promos before the terminal level are easy because your manager wants to retain you. After the terminal level, they're used as carrots to squeeze more work out of you. One scenario to look out for is the company doing well. You realize your RSUs are worth more than job hopping, so you aim for adequate, but the company doesn't like that you opted out of the staff promo rat race.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Ask HN: EM to Director"

bigtimesink — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 18:47:32 +0000

I've been on the IC version of this. You have to be on the right team, do well, and have the right friends to get a promotion past the terminal level. Ask yourself where the team is in its lifecycle and how much growth it really has ahead of it.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls"

bigtimesink — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:02:56 +0000

> Great points - however this can keep your fridge running for 2-3 days (a pretty long outage).

$1,000 buys a lot of groceries. It's cheaper to to have a small supply of shelf stable food for outages.

> It can also do arbitrage and charge when it’s cheap and deploy the power when it’s expensive.

This has the same problem. It takes a long time to make back the $1000.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Former Facebook execs are running Firefox adtech"

bigtimesink — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 21:35:23 +0000

Where does it say Mozilla has your browsing history or sells it?

New comment by bigtimesink in "Former Facebook execs are running Firefox adtech"

bigtimesink — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 19:00:08 +0000

> Mozilla is selling your browsing activity in Firefox "privately" to advertisers

Do you have a better source for this?

New comment by bigtimesink in "Firmware update bricks HP printers, makes them unable to use HP cartridges"

bigtimesink — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 01:05:56 +0000

> no one asked for water resistance

Manufacturers put water-sensitive indicators in electronics to flag this during warranty claims. Before water resistant phones, people would desperately google for how to save their phones.

> don't care about phone thinness either

There are rumors the next iPhone with have a thin model. You should also look into the original Motorola Razr. It was the original sexy phone precisely because of how thin it was.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Firmware update bricks HP printers, makes them unable to use HP cartridges"

bigtimesink — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:21:50 +0000

Now you're trading off water resistance, size, and capacity. Choose 2.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Firmware update bricks HP printers, makes them unable to use HP cartridges"

bigtimesink — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 22:33:43 +0000

It doesn't take very much effort to look at ink costs when buying a printer, so this is on consumers. It might even be the rational choice for low-income consumers since it's cheaper in the long run than buying a more expensive printer with a 25% APR credit card.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Firmware update bricks HP printers, makes them unable to use HP cartridges"

bigtimesink — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 22:27:58 +0000

I had one of these phones that would crash under load and the update fixed it. The technical fix was sound. Batteries can't supply full power as they age, and the CPU needs high power when it runs faster. It's an annoying reality of battery powered devices that looks like a conspiracy to boost sales.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Music labels will regret coming for the Internet Archive, sound historian says"

bigtimesink — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 22:19:43 +0000

Are you talking about Coyote Vs. Acme?

New comment by bigtimesink in "uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store"

bigtimesink — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 22:04:21 +0000

If this doesn't give FF a noticeable bounce, FF really is a lost cause.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Layoffs Don't Work"

bigtimesink — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 17:09:49 +0000

This happened to me. There was a layoff, I got overwhelmed with work that had to get picked up, lost motivation, and burned out.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Layoffs Don't Work"

bigtimesink — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 17:06:01 +0000

> there are a lot of jobs that make it difficult to continue past a few years

This has been a lot of my career. All my long, successful jobs have lasted around 2-3 years, and it's the time it takes for the company to realize the initiative wasn't worth it. I count four of these stints where I left, and the team was essentially dissolved within a year. I'm not saying I was the key person for the project; I just saw the writing on the wall.

It's been career limiting not having a large-scope project on a growing team, but I don't know if this is something about me, something about the projects I'm a good fit for, or the reality that a lot of projects and teams don't survive 5 years, and I've been exposed to some survivor bias of smart people who have gotten lucky.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Strobelight: A profiling service built on open source technology"

bigtimesink — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 16:56:55 +0000

Maybe, but the gold chain, million dollar watch wearing CEO talking about masculine energy doesn't help the brand.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026"

bigtimesink — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 07:07:51 +0000

I'm not sure if it's accurate, but a certain nautical themed torrent directory currently lists Office 2016 as the third most popular Application torrent.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Ask HN: How much employee resume verification is done in practice?"

bigtimesink — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 18:27:13 +0000

I got a copy of my background check a few times. They contacted my university (who has my graduation date wrong). I'm not sure if they actually contacted previous employers (who usually just confirm start and end dates) or just checked theworknumber. Contacting references is hit-or-miss.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Youth and what happens when it's gone"

bigtimesink — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:56:50 +0000

> In Youth, you fantasize about one day meeting your idols

Towards the end of my youth, I got to date a celebrity crush and work at my dream job. Both sucked and left me heartbroken.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Jeff Bezos exerts more control of Washington Post opinion"

bigtimesink — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 22:10:00 +0000

Not WaPo, but chuckr is back at Meta because of the political shift. Chuckr is well-known for being a firearm enthusiast.

New comment by bigtimesink in "Jeff Bezos exerts more control of Washington Post opinion"

bigtimesink — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 22:00:20 +0000

When he killed the Harris endorsement, that sent a stronger signal than endorsing her.