Hacker News: dandano

New comment by dandano in "Show HN: I've built a nice home server OS"

dandano — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:22:55 +0000

So I’ve just set up my home server with Ubuntu server, installed docker with one line and I’m off to the races. What’s different/ exactly the value prop of this? You mention maintenance, of what exactly? Is your server a slimmed down version to run on less powerful hardware? Genuinely curious as I’m new to setting up a home server so seeing how this would benefit me.

New comment by dandano in "Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others"

dandano — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:14:08 +0000

Deserved? If their product said, ensure that you have the 3,2,1 method then you could claim that. You pay for a backup, OP and everyone is rightly pretty mad about it.

New comment by dandano in "Leaving Google has actively improved my life"

dandano — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:19:31 +0000

> My inbox is so much cleaner now, and I patiently await the newsletters I’ve signed up for like a gleeful child waiting for the postman.

The author didn’t go into detail here - but has anyone got a good system to achieve this? Or Is it a specific feature within Proton? I’ve just got mainly the one email and I’ve wanted to change to a better way for ages.

New comment by dandano in "Choosing learning over autopilot"

dandano — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:10:53 +0000

Interesting how you write the code first then put it into claude. What's the reason there? I guess that is where I find the most benefit is not writing out the syntax, even though I could I just can't be bothered. I often start with the snippet then refactor to the style of code I like. For code I don't know that well like c++ I like to get a snippet so I can then research into those functions that is used and go from there.

New comment by dandano in "Choosing learning over autopilot"

dandano — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 22:58:07 +0000

Lately I have had the cursed vision as I'm building a new IoT product. I have to learn _so_ much, so I have stopped using claude code. I find directly altering my code too hands off.

Instead I still use claude in the browser mainly for high level thinking/architecture > generating small chunks of code > copying pasta-ing it over. I always make sure I'm reading said library/code docs as well and asking claude to clarify anything I'm unsure of. This is akin to when I started development using stackoverflow just 10x productive. And I still feel like I'm learning along the way.

New comment by dandano in "State of the Fin 2026-01-06"

dandano — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 03:50:45 +0000

I'm almost like you, I just download what I want to watch. But instead of going through network files - I have Plex Media Server on my M1 Macbook Air. Plex looks at the downloads folder, indexes it into a nice viewing experience that I use Plex app on the TV to connect to my local Plex server. It's a very seamless experience.

New comment by dandano in "Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?"

dandano — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 06:37:01 +0000

The Will of the Many. I’m about to start Red Rising series as it’s similar to it.

New comment by dandano in "Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?"

dandano — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:20:34 +0000

Same here! I’m on the final 200 pages. It’s going to painful waiting so long for the third in the series. I went straight from book 1 to 2 with no wait thankfully.

New comment by dandano in "Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?"

dandano — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 20:56:00 +0000

The Will of the Many. An epic high fantasy adventure. I’m just about to finish the second book in the series - The Strength of the Few. I haven’t gasped this many times reading a book in while.

New comment by dandano in "Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time"

dandano — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 01:18:50 +0000

My parents literally just gave my daughter the alphabet puzzle for Christmas that was linked in the article as a terrible clean up vs play-time. I might send them this link!

New comment by dandano in "How to Attend Meetings"

dandano — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 22:43:55 +0000

These are fantastic! I've done similar and seen some positive outcomes at work. As the one usually sending meetings - I have been leaning heavily on asynchronous first (teams chat) then if needed we hop into a focused meeting with a clear agenda. It's been liberating to see the reactions that other people like this too instead of another meeting. More often than not we never needed the meeting.

New comment by dandano in "Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn?"

dandano — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:46:19 +0000

But don’t fall into the trap of that’s all you do. This can lead to procrastination of the thing you’re trying to do.

New comment by dandano in "Vanilla JavaScript support for Tailwind Plus"

dandano — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 09:13:01 +0000

Tailwind plus has saved me 100s of hours for my rails based development. JS was the only thing missing for me, so stoked for this.

New comment by dandano in "Red Hat Technical Writing Style Guide"

dandano — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:08:32 +0000

Pretty solid - I'll add this to my list that I refer to for writing. I often use the Australian Style Manual [0] and Divio Documentation System [1] as a foundation to technical writing and also user documentation.

[0] https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/ [1] https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/

New comment by dandano in "When Figma starts designing us"

dandano — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 01:29:17 +0000

I disagree with this take. I work very closely with my UX lead and we always do lo-fi in Miro/Figjam before hi-fi designs in Figma. This gives us flexibility of expression to quickly mock things up loosely before going into the final design. Auto-layout, components is a huge win for designers. We were on another design product called UXPin which didn't have this sophistication and it was an absolute drag.

New comment by dandano in "Postcard is now open source"

dandano — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 04:04:51 +0000

Been a big fan of Postcard, especially seeing how it was another success story of a solo dev making something great using RoR. I’ve been looking through the code base for only 15 mins and I’ve learnt a few things already. Thanks for making this open source!

New comment by dandano in "I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric"

dandano — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:15:58 +0000

Of course, you can code whatever you want into the event that I hook into - that is my idea for the IoT device I mentioned.

New comment by dandano in "I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric"

dandano — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:13:20 +0000

This was going to be my next idea if the bot didn't go well! For unread messages in Discord, you have to actively go into the discord app to check it. The fact that the bot only sends a notification when someone has taken the action to jump into discord signals that you're ready to chat right now. It avoids the 'I'll be on in 30ish', where in reality that might not happen. Talk is cheap.

New comment by dandano in "I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric"

dandano — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:07:53 +0000

We really only use discord for voice chat. I also loathe discord for communities and anything else. Funny you mention the notifications - every now and then discord won't send the notification till hours after my bot has sent a message. I think it has something to do with having the discord app on your desktop open and it not knowing how to handle the notification.

I guess my friend group is somewhat techy - but they aren't on HN. We've been on discord since its inception. We moved to Signal as we wanted to get off Meta products.

New comment by dandano in "I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric"

dandano — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 12:28:05 +0000

I think it was the fact that actions spoke louder than words for us. It’s easy to say “I’ll jump on” but then you get distracted and then 30 mins later you go online. Similarly to when people say “leaving now” and then they start getting ready to leave. Because we are notified that someone has taken the action of going online they are 100% available to chat or play a game.