Hacker News: dre85

New comment by dre85 in "Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability"

dre85 — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:16:22 +0000

For whatever it's worth I have a personal counter-story to airtag usefulness. Not to get into the debate of indoor vs outdoor cats, we had a cat a few years ago that liked to roam around outside and one time it got spooked and disappeared for two weeks. It came back all skinny and hurt and after that we bought an air tag collar for peace of mind. The airtag worked just fine for a few months until the cat disappeared again. That very day the airtag stopped working so when we actually need it, the signal was permanently lost. We never found out why. I could imagine perhaps a car hit it or a coyote ate it, but there's certainly edge cases where an airtag would fail immediately. Battery life is highly unlikely to be the culprit in my opinion as it was fairly new, working recently before that day and the timing was too perfect.

New comment by dre85 in "1 Dataset. 100 Visualizations"

dre85 — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 14:53:26 +0000

My thoughts exactly! At least half of these are chart types that I've never seen before or at least would never think of using so having this reference is awesome.

New comment by dre85 in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2024)"

dre85 — Thu, 02 May 2024 16:57:54 +0000

Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Remote: yes

Technologies: Python, Django, FastAPI, C++, PHP, Symfony, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Angular, Node, PostgreSQL, Git, Docker, AWS

Education: PhD Nanobiotechnology (mass-spectrometry-based proteomics), B.Sc. Computational Biochemistry Email: andrej_vasilj[at]hotmail[dot]com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrej-vasilj-148b34126

I am a senior full-stack developer with over 10 years of professional software development experience as well as a significant background in biochemistry. The majority of my software experience is with full-stack web applications including database design and cloud architecture, but I consider myself a generalist as I have some experience across many different domains including IoT, desktop applications, classical machine learning, statistics, omics-data analysis and bioinformatics among others. I can confidently ramp up on any new technology and deliver value immediately. I have lead teams and projects before so I can adapt to any kind of software role. Ideally, I am looking to join another biotech or biomedical company as a FTE or contractor, but I am happy to explore other domains as well.

New comment by dre85 in "Ask HN: Any ideas to eat healthier, minimizing prep time?"

dre85 — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 17:13:20 +0000

To me nutrition feels so complicated these days in that pretty much everything that you could think to eat has a bunch of detractors claiming there's reasons why it's unhealthy. I found a video recently listing something like 6 reasons why oatmeal is unhealthy.

With that said, for the last few years I've found a few things that work for me that I've incorporated into my routine. In the morning I'll eat a naval orange and drink green/black tea with a bit of honey and cream. Later I'll have some store bought guac and Costco Mary's crackers. Sometimes I'll have add some Kimchi, feta cheese, fresh vegetables, hummus. Costco frozen fruits are nice too for smoothies or just plain snacks.

New comment by dre85 in "The failure of self-checkout technology"

dre85 — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 13:55:12 +0000

I always use self-checkout and prefer it. Recently though it's gotten really annoying in the Walmart near my house in that there are like 30 checkouts out of which only 4 are working and there's again a line up. Probably again some stupid shoplifting prevention strategy, but it's highly nonsensical.

On a similar note, I'm blown away by the checkout system in Decathlon stores. You literally just throw the item into a checkout bin and it somehow detects what the item is (maybe NFC tags?) And just adds the price on the screen. No weighing or scanning barcodes. Really futuristic!

New comment by dre85 in "NewPipe 0.26"

dre85 — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 13:20:43 +0000

NewPipe is one of the best apps available on Android. The only thing missing for me currently is Android Auto support.

New comment by dre85 in "To make dishwashers great again? (2020)"

dre85 — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 00:39:16 +0000

Not sure how relevant the energy consumption piece is if you just hook it up to the hot water instead of cold? That's what you're supposed to do anyway to get it to actually clean something, right?

New comment by dre85 in "Tidal energy is not renewable"

dre85 — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 03:23:57 +0000

That's exactly what I was wondering as well. I didn't really understand how tapping into the power source could possibly cause an additional loss that wouldn't otherwise happen.

New comment by dre85 in "React is holding me hostage"

dre85 — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 02:57:40 +0000

For reasons that I can't quite explain fully, I like angular much better. For me it's a shame that react won the battle and is used at every company now.

New comment by dre85 in "Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (2018)"

dre85 — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 01:41:02 +0000

I've been there once almost 10 years ago. It was really nice. For me the highlight was the enormous palm trees and the massive lily pads.

New comment by dre85 in "How Southwest Airlines melted down"

dre85 — Wed, 28 Dec 2022 21:37:57 +0000

I don't totally agree with this. Prices between airlines and routes can vary dramatically to the same destination so it's not like saving 20$ will usually be the difference between the cheapest option and a more preferred option. Also if you look at situations like Volkswagen, it seems to me that neither governments nor consumers hit them very hard after their massive scandal a few years ago. I see new VWs all over the place.

New comment by dre85 in "DontBuyDell.com"

dre85 — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 13:57:05 +0000

I've had a great experience with a Xps 13 and currently 15. I'm not even sure what the alternatives are if you want a high end Ubuntu machine?

New comment by dre85 in "Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?"

dre85 — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 12:57:31 +0000

I bought a fairly beefed up Dell xps 15 a year ago and put Ubuntu on it as I usually do. It's an amazing laptop with the only drawback being shockingly crappy battery life. Not sure if this is the laptop's fault though or Linux power management. I mostly use it docked so it's not a big deal for me. Overall I'm super satisfied.

New comment by dre85 in "A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem"

dre85 — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 01:19:55 +0000

I agree with the first point which is definitely a blessing even if we can't see it directly.

To the second point I would argue (and I unfortunately do argue) that "responsibility" can be a vague and subjective term. Like is it a hard-coded responsibility to make your bed every morning? Some would argue yes and use funny arguments like "ask anyone normal" or "all highly intelligent/successful people do it". I would say it's generally a waste of time unless you're bed is so off that you can't comfortably get back into it.

New comment by dre85 in "A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem"

dre85 — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 01:15:04 +0000

Yes, I think you're quite right with the OCD type personality. The communication about these various minor things does also tend to increase when she's more stressed/anxious.

I feel like it's generally under control and we mostly have a good balance/compromise established, but I could be totally wrong, just like the article author!

New comment by dre85 in "A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem"

dre85 — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 01:11:39 +0000

Fair enough, although I think the term "slob" is a bit extreme here. I would say that I'm just not very into what I would call "organization for the sake of organization". For example:

1. As the author already mentions, why put a cup into the dishwasher if you plan on using it again?

2. Why fold and put away my pants if I wear the same pants everyday for a week?

3. Why hang my jacket if I know I'm leaving again in an hour

4. Why make the bed at all ever? (making the bed is its own topic of insanity IMO)

Etc etc etc

I think I just value and emphasize what I consider efficiency (perhaps laziness?).

New comment by dre85 in "A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem"

dre85 — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 22:02:26 +0000

I'm in a marriage and I struggle with this same question. I sometimes feel like the things my wife cares about are essentially endless. Like if I bend to "her way" and put effort into consistently placing the dirty cup in the dishwasher, next week something new comes up. Then it's the clothes on the floor of my side of the bed or not hanging my jacket or not putting my shoes away perfectly in the closet. At times I get the sensation that it just becomes like waking on eggshells to constantly mitigate somebody's upsetness of irrelevant (to me) things.

I found the article really well written and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to it. Consideration for our partners and compromise is a tricky and interesting domain. I'm realizing more and more that there can be a lot of complexity behind benign everyday situations like a dirty cup beside the sink. Like how can a dirty dish even perturb somebody so much in the first place? Is it related to some trauma or childhood conditioning? Can it be addressed somehow?

New comment by dre85 in "One Way Smart Developers Make Bad Strategic Decisions"

dre85 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 16:47:52 +0000

That makes sense, but it also doesn't really support the article's overall argument about the perils of "standardization without understanding". If what you're saying is true then it could very well be that the approach to standardize the queuing would have worked perfectly well had the senior dev chosen a different technology to underlay his library (ie not Kafka), right?

New comment by dre85 in "One Way Smart Developers Make Bad Strategic Decisions"

dre85 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 15:46:45 +0000

Very interesting article! I was left wondering though in what ways the queue abstraction solution failed?

New comment by dre85 in "CSS Zen Garden: A demonstration of what can be achieved through CSS-based design"

dre85 — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 02:23:00 +0000

I hope I'm not the only one who has nostalgia for tables and frames. There was only one way to center content and it always worked. Now there's a hundred and none ever work without a bunch of Googling and troubleshooting.