<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: chojeen</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=chojeen</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 23:45:26 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=chojeen" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm looking forward to having the same experience as COBOL engineers did after retirement: companies backing up the brinks truck to anyone with the skills to keep the lights on.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 16:15:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421961</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421961</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421961</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Grok is enabling mass sexual harassment on Twitter"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A better analogy would be "remotely swing a hammer as a service". You can't build something like that and act shocked when a significant fraction of your users use it to harm people instead of driving nails, and you certainly shoulder a large fraction of the responsibility.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 02 Jan 2026 18:20:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467695</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467695</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467695</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Iceberg, the right idea – the wrong spec – Part 2 of 2: The spec"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I really don't get a lot of this criticism. For example, who is using iceberg with hundreds of concurrent committers, especially at the scale mentioned in the article (10k rows per second)? Using iceberg or any table format over object storage would be insane in that case. But for your typical spark application, you have one main writer (the spark driver) appending or merging a large number of records in > 1 minute microbatches and maybe a handful of maintenance jobs for compaction and retention; Iceberg's concurrency system works fine there.<p>If you have any use case like one the author describes, maybe use an in-memory cloud database with tiered storage or a plain RDBMS. Iceberg (and similar formats) work great for the use cases for which they're designed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 02 Aug 2025 20:24:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44771089</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44771089</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44771089</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Riot and Blizzard both have large flagship franchises that they practically decorate their offices around, statues and all. When I was talking to recruiters in the past, Riot stood out as one of those "don't bother applying if you aren't absolutely shitting passion for our games out of every hole" as culture fit.<p>I interviewed at Riot when I was trying to move back to Saint Louis. I could not muster up very much enthusiasm for League, and you could just feel the room shift into "just get through this interview ASAP" mode.<p>Can't help but feel I dodged a bullet.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2021 21:27:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27977883</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27977883</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27977883</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Facebook senior software engineer interview"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Do people have any pride? Why would you subject yourself to this?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 Jan 2021 18:26:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25660577</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25660577</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25660577</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Why we are suing the Administration"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's hard to know how to feel about this complex situation. On one hand:<p>- The Chinese government clearly has its tendrils in TikTok and uses it to push its oppressive censorship policies around the world<p>- The security implications of giving China a backdoor into a large percentage of American phones is too concerning to ignore<p>On the other hand:<p>- Explicitly targeting specific companies feels wrong. If security and censorship are real concerns here, Congress should be passing laws that apply to all companies, not just TikTok<p>- Even though there are sound reasons to restrict TikTok, this is still a transparently protectionist policy by the Trump admin and fits right into his nationalistic, totalitarian, xenophobic playbook. A broken clock is still right twice a day, I suppose<p>- Requiring a sale to an American company is the mirror image of China's forced technology transfers for foreign companies. Two wrongs don't make a right<p>I think the best scenario is for Congress to preempt Trump with laws that protect American security and free speech interests without executive action. That's easier said than done, though.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2020 16:00:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343215</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343215</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343215</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "That coworker who never stops refactoring"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>At a startup, there's a good chance Fred's time would be better spent knocking out feature work (you only have so much runway, after all). But at a mature tech company, assuming he's good at his job, Fred is likely providing a ton of value by<p>- Keeping his coworkers sane (barely functional codebases that are difficult to work with have a way of killing morale)
- Having an intimate knowledge of the code base that can inform future feature work
- Paying down tech debt that's generally uninteresting to more feature-oriented coworkers<p>Having a whole team of Freds is probably not a good idea, but having one in a senior engineer or tech lead role is really useful.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2020 15:14:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121153</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121153</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121153</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I can't imagine forced remote for all employees would ever become the norm. It feels like likely that companies would move from dedicated offices to leasing co-working spaces for those that want it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2020 15:09:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23167599</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23167599</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23167599</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "U.S. wants the EU to accept chemical-washed chicken as part of trade deal"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Do they still have to label irradiated food in the EU? IIRC many people avoid it because radiation is scary sounding. I have to imagine that chemically treated meat would be an even tougher sell, regardless of how benign it might actually be.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:55:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22171979</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22171979</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22171979</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Acid reflux drug linked to more than doubled risk of stomach cancer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For a couple of years, the only thing that worked for me was mega-huge doses of PPI's.  After several pH studies, endoscopies, and other tests confirmed that I don't have abnormal reflux, food allergies, gluten sensitivity, or anything else, my doctor(s) and I found after years of trial-and-error that a combination of H2 blockers and a low-dose of antidepressants mostly controls my symptoms, which are probably caused by an overly-sensitive gastric nervous system.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Nov 2017 15:45:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602348</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602348</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602348</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Acid reflux drug linked to more than doubled risk of stomach cancer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>FWIW, one of my GI doctors recommended trying alternatives to PPI's, while the other was highly skeptical of these data mining studies and recommended staying the course unless a causal link is established.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Nov 2017 15:35:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602226</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602226</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602226</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Acid reflux drug linked to more than doubled risk of stomach cancer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Some people (like myself) suffer from functional dyspepsia, in which GERD-like symptoms are observed with no apparent cause.  There's really no standard treatment: some people find relief from PPI's, H2 blockers, small doses of SSRI antidepressants, or changes in diet.  Every doctor I've talked to (including one of the top gastric neurologists in the country) agrees that, given a choice between taking PPI's long-term or suffering from functional dyspepsia, they'd take the former every time.<p>References:<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28271513" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28271513</a>
<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4070655/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4070655/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Nov 2017 15:31:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602185</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602185</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15602185</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "The Piracy Box Sellers and YouTube Promoters Are Killing Kodi"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Depends how pedantic you're being, but ripping DVDs for personal use doesn't count as "piracy" in my book.<p>Exactly this.  I got tired of lugging around my gigantic DVD collection and having them scratch or break with time.  I've since ripped all of them, and Kodi makes for a fantastic frontend for my HTPC.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jun 2016 20:26:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11989200</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11989200</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11989200</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "We only hire the trendiest"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As I get older (I am currently thirty), this is something that terrifies me, mainly because it is something that I have experienced from both sides.  I got a B.S. from a major CS university, then started on a Ph.D. in Astronomy.  Due to my dissatisfaction with that program, the fact that programming is my passion, and various life events, I decided to leave after obtaining a M.S. and began to look for work.<p>I attended my university's CS job fair, only to find that I had become almost completely unemployable to tech companies (granted, I only had a 3.3 GPA in CS; damn you, WoW!).  I ended up taking a tech support job with a scientific computing software company after I was promised a quick transition into development.  However, that too evaporated, ironically due to the stigma of working in tech support.<p>After about 8 months, I interviewed for a developer position at a Midwest branch of a major tech company, but was again turned down.  Luckily, I was instead hired to be a QA contractor on a different team, whereupon I quickly transitioned into a non-contracted developer on the original team that didn't hire me about a month before the company's new CEO announced that we would not take anyone with lower than a 3.5 GPA.  I took the opportunity to mention this fact at every opportunity to one of my co-workers who had originally voted not to hire me.<p>After about a year, I started interviewing new candidates at this company.  You would think that, given my prior experiences, I would be more forgiving than my peers in looking at past experience.  While I didn't make any judgments based on school or GPA (in fact, those were filtered out before the resumes ever made it into my hands), I did turn down several candidates who were "too enterprisey", i.e. did not have experience or interest in whatever tech was trendy at the time.  Granted, these candidates also had trouble understanding and debugging simple perl scripts I showed them, so I was already not on board, but when those candidates were borderline hires/no-hires, that was something that swayed me in the "no-hire" direction.<p>Now, as a married thirty-year-old with two kids and several non-coding hobbies, I have neither the time nor inclination to use my free time to learn today's trendy languages and frameworks.  My work keeps me relevant for now, but if that ever changes and I need to look for work, I'm terrified that my experience and ability to learn quickly will be irrelevant to prospective employers, who will just want to see the right technologies appear on my resume.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 21 Mar 2016 15:23:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328686</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328686</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328686</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Yahoo’s Engineers Move to Coding Without a QA Team"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I worked at Yahoo before and during this period, first as a QA contractor and then as a full-time developer.<p>Before the switch, our team (advertising pipeline on Hadoop) used the waterfall method with these gigantic, monolithic releases; we probably released a handful of times a year.  Almost without exception, QA was done manually and was painfully slow.  I started to automate a lot of the testing after I arrived, but believe you me when I say that it was a tall order.<p>Soon after I moved into development, QA engineers without coding chops were let go, while the others were integrated into the development teams.  The team switched over to agile, and a lot of effort was made to automate testing wherever possible.  Despite some initial setbacks, we got down to a bi-weekly release cycle with better quality control than before.<p>Around the time I left, the company was mandating continuous delivery for all teams, as well as moving from internal tools to industry-standard ones like Chef.  I left before it was completed, but at least as far as the data pipeline teams were concerned, the whole endeavor made the job a lot more fun, increased release quality, and weeded out a lot of the "that's not my job" types that made life hell for everyone else.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2015 21:18:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10720117</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10720117</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10720117</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "NASA confirms that the ‘impossible’ EmDrive thruster really works"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As an ex-doctoral student in astrophysics, I can confirm that there are a lot of crackpots out there.  The most common claim was that heliocentricity was correct, if you can believe it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2015 15:15:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507101</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507101</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507101</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "How I missed an engineering interview after getting singled out by Münchner cops"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Getting a response so nasty it's easier to get them into trouble later on. :)<p>I know the comment was tongue-in-cheek, but it bears mentioning: when dealing with the police, your objective should be to escape the situation unscathed, not to provoke them.  Remember that criminal charges, severe injury, or even death are possible consequences of any encounter with law enforcement.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 23 Oct 2015 14:21:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10438700</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10438700</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10438700</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Open-source alternatives to GMail"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you don't need open-source, but instead just want to migrate away from advertising-supported email, I find that FastMail works pretty great and is cheap to boot.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2015 16:52:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10199160</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10199160</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10199160</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "Disney fires 250 tech workers and replaces them with H1B workers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My dad owns a mid-size landscaping company in a medium-sized city in the Midwest.  Until the Great Recession hit, he'd hire around a hundred of laborers from Mexico and Latin America on H2-A visas every year.  He could only do so after proving that they could not hire enough Americans at a reasonable wage (obviously, the meaning of "reasonable" is hotly debated, but at the time, it meant slightly higher than minimum wage).  I've never understood why similar restrictions aren't put on H1-B visas.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2015 17:51:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9660858</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9660858</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9660858</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chojeen in "How to Survive 80+ Hours of Programming Every Week"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My method to survive an 80+ hour work week:<p>1) Actually "work" a 40 hour week
2) Spend the other 40 looking for a new job</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2015 13:24:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9524492</link><dc:creator>chojeen</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9524492</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9524492</guid></item></channel></rss>