Hacker News: j_heffe

New comment by j_heffe in "Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?"

j_heffe — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 16:01:20 +0000

I think the general resistance from older devs comes from the velocity of software in the past decade. I just connected with a former manager I worked with at IT services from my university and we talked about how crazy tech has moved since my time working there. I had the privilege of working on the data center before the university moved to AWS. The entire backend was written in pure C, running on BSD. We had monitoring scripts written in Perl before getting a contract with Splunk. My manager worked on the design of the distributed file system for the university, and is still an active contributor to the distro. It wasn't the greatest system, but it sure was cool. I'd be a little salty too if some MBA came in and said, "we're moving to AWS, Okta, Workday, and Splunk. And oh by the way, we have to rewrite the system in node.js, and these interns are going to do it. Have fun!"

New comment by j_heffe in "Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk"

j_heffe — Thu, 08 May 2025 20:28:46 +0000

I think audio really took a hit in the 90s and early 2000s when home theater became a lot cheaper and a lot more accessible and so too did the quality. Guys would spend their life savings on some crazy Polk or JBLs back in the day, and they were genuinely good quality and expensive.

I always thought "Blinded by the light" was a garbage song hearing it on the radio all the time, but after listening to the album on my dad's JBL L100's, I understand why he's such a vintage purist. It changed the sound of the song completely. The speakers picked up things I had literally never heard before.

I know nothing about audio engineering, but it does seem like the art has sort of died out or became "more productionized".

New comment by j_heffe in "NSA F9T53 Opsec Special Bulletin: Signal Vulnerability"

j_heffe — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 02:22:34 +0000

Wow that was really comprehensive and much easier to read than I thought it would be for a military document.

New comment by j_heffe in "ChatGPT Search"

j_heffe — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 18:01:30 +0000

My gut reaction here is that the hallucination is caused by how you [rightfully] formed the prompt. GPT has no way of reliably determining what the fourth book is, so it infers the answer based on the data provided from Wikipedia. I'll bet if you changed the prompt to "list all books by Paul Edwin Zimmer", it would be incredibly accurate and produce consistent results every time.

New comment by j_heffe in "Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane"

j_heffe — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 20:59:19 +0000

I'm curious - are older models generally less reliable as well? Like driving a 70s Impala vs a new Tesla?

New comment by j_heffe in "Why are most sofas so bad?"

j_heffe — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:36:08 +0000

My Room and Board sofa from 2011 is still rock solid. I was a bit nervous buying it used a few years ago because of the age but it turned out to be a great purchase.

New comment by j_heffe in "Hacking ADHD: Strategies for the modern developer"

j_heffe — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 20:57:06 +0000

I believe there is research into rapid eye blinking followed by slow blinking causing the brain to "calm", so perhaps an external source has a similar effect?

New comment by j_heffe in "Spain lives in flats: why we have built our cities vertically"

j_heffe — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 16:05:16 +0000

Single family homes are fine. The problem in the U.S. is that it's illegal to build anything _but_ single family homes in the majority of suburbs. Wouldn't it be better if people had access to a walkable grocery store, coffee shop or park? Or if kids could safely walk or bike to school? Many communities have absolutely zero options and are completely reliant on cars in order to go about daily life.

New comment by j_heffe in "Restoring nature is good for farmers, fisheries and food security"

j_heffe — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 16:46:15 +0000

Coming from farm country in Iowa, I'm glad to see Allan Savory's work getting more publicity. Regenerative grazing definitely works. The problem is restoring a distressed ecosystem (typically soils) back to its natural state after desertification has already occurred in an area that livestock continually grazes. There are a few agTech companies looking at doing just that via different GMO seeding products of native grasses and plants, but the cost is still far too high economically coming in at around $50/acre. I don't think any farmer or rancher would argue that we need more free-range livestock and less confinements/stockyards, but it's a slow process.

New comment by j_heffe in "Coastal Cities Priced Out Low-Wage Workers. Now College Graduates Are Leaving"

j_heffe — Mon, 15 May 2023 15:45:02 +0000

It's insane that our mountain towns are essentially playgrounds for the rich while European mountain towns still have a fair amount of housing supply.

New comment by j_heffe in "Coastal Cities Priced Out Low-Wage Workers. Now College Graduates Are Leaving"

j_heffe — Mon, 15 May 2023 15:26:32 +0000

It makes sense. Low-wage workers simply can't afford to move to a lower cost of living city, even if there were better job opportunities and cost of living.

New comment by j_heffe in "Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake"

j_heffe — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 19:18:09 +0000

> build government rental-housing projects again

It's a cultural thing too. We're brainwashed to look down on government housing simply because of the racist practices of the past. It wouldn't even have to be government funded necessarily. The problem could be fixed with non-market housing similar to Europe, where the building costs are fulfilled by a loan, and the HOA or housing entity is setup without the goal of making a profit off the rent, setting rental rates at a margin to cover only the loan and necessary expenses.

New comment by j_heffe in "Replacing Mapbox with open source solutions"

j_heffe — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 19:29:07 +0000

We used https://github.com/developmentseed/titiler (and rio-tiler, the underlying library) at my last company which does dynamic tiling based on some input raster. It's an awesome project and there's nothing else quite like it in the geospatial space.

New comment by j_heffe in "Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk"

j_heffe — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 17:19:45 +0000

Not to mention the opposition of public transportation here. People are already up in arms about the light rail expansion cost, plus the people angry about losing parking on Hennepin Ave for the proposed 24 hr bus lane.

New comment by j_heffe in "Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow"

j_heffe — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 19:14:40 +0000

I'd imagine Atherton would remain more or less the same with the exception of some homes being converted to duplexes and triplexes. At least in Minneapolis with the 2040 plan, more affluent neighborhoods tend to stay that way.

New comment by j_heffe in "Apartment rent growth set to keep slowing this year"

j_heffe — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 20:44:55 +0000

Taking that a step further, I've been interested recently in the feasibility of moving entire structures/homes to new locations. There's plenty of houses in rural America that are withering away. If there was a way to economically move homes to land in urban areas, it could help to solve the problem. I'm assuming the unit economics and feasibility simply don't work out, or else my million dollar idea would've been taken already.