Hacker News: jackgolding

New comment by jackgolding in "Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence"

jackgolding — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 03:24:07 +0000

RE: I was not in a position to help him address his mental health,...

I just had a friend commit suicide last week and have been feeling the same, if only I was there. Another friend (a mental health nurse) shared this:

"Fortunately or unfortunately I don't think we can hold ourselves responsible responsible for the decisions of others"

New comment by jackgolding in "I've largely replaced Google with ChatGPT for looking things up"

jackgolding — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 02:26:30 +0000

I tried this but lasted only a day using ChatGPT instead of Google

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: Best books written on “How to think”?"

jackgolding — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 03:30:22 +0000

Learning to Learn the coursera course is always recommended

New comment by jackgolding in "Looking for Comprehensive Resources to Systematically Learn Generative AI"

jackgolding — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 05:43:25 +0000

I haven't found a list like you've specified as it is an emerging field, however I would recommend aligning yourself with langchain which seems to be leading in the area. They have a great amount of resources and tutorials, I would start with the deeplearning.ai short course.

New comment by jackgolding in "MemGPT: Towards LLMs as Operating Systems"

jackgolding — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 02:31:32 +0000

This is the case with all neural nets/black box AI models and a lot are used in various industries.

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: Stories of founders going back to self hosting from Shopify, Squarespace"

jackgolding — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:43:29 +0000

Basecamp is the best reading I've found on this. https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-re-leaving-the-cloud-654b47...

New comment by jackgolding in "Cory Doctorow: Platform Capitalism and the Curse of “Enshittification” [audio]"

jackgolding — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 05:54:58 +0000

Great comment, I can fill in some of your references.

The Essay you were referring to is the brilliant "The Gervais Principle"

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Reforge talks about your cycle - I can't find the exact artcile but you can see it with marketplaces a lot - i.e. Facebook creates APIs for events, 3rd parties build platforms on these APIs, Facebook kills the API access. This is the closest article I could find related to "tactics" https://www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loops

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: Looking for Google Analytics alternative after v4"

jackgolding — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 05:31:32 +0000

I've been working in Digital Analytics for 10 years as a freelancer for SMEs and implementations for billion dollar companies. I am very comfortable saying for 99% of websites there is no better alternative, paid or free to GA4 and based your requirements you fit into that 99%. Happy to debate this in comments.

edit: I believe the 1% exceptions are:

- if you are a are a tech company

- run multiple Adobe tools (CMS, CRM)

- have niche privacy requirements

- have an app

New comment by jackgolding in "The rise and rise of e-sports"

jackgolding — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 04:24:23 +0000

Yep, one game I follow Hearthstone Battlegrounds has had a majority of funding for events slashed by Activision Blizzard. Very unfortunate for the professional players who are incentivised more to be successful streamers rather than competitive gamers and us fans.

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: What's your favorite illustration in computer science?"

jackgolding — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 02:11:44 +0000

Love these for finite state machines - one of my favourite topics at uni.

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: Has a life coach ever worked for you?"

jackgolding — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 05:08:21 +0000

I saw a life coach for 12 weeks and a therapist weekly for a year - similar cost. I found the therapy (gestalt/CBT) much more beneficial in general but like a muscle it needs to be maintained. The life coach was quite interesting at the time but what they called "self limiting doubts" was framed a lot better through psychotherapy.

New comment by jackgolding in "Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes"

jackgolding — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 00:18:46 +0000

But about half of average Australian household assets are held in the value of the home, accounting for an average $A509,000 out of a total average household assets of $A1.1 million.

---- Source: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/too-many-eggs-in-the...

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?"

jackgolding — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:15:36 +0000

Finally finished the "Gervais Principle" essay, was real high quality.

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: Anyone use only resistance band to workout at home?"

jackgolding — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 01:43:11 +0000

I did this during lockdown here's some comments.

- It was not as fun or engaging as weightlifting. I agree with @gateorade about the progression too. - I have a background in weightlifting and so was not worried about injuries - Gloves help quite a bit with annoying hand issues - Some exercises are very ineffective - i.e. back - I think they are more suitable as a more involved stretching routine than as a workout replacement - You can buy no name brand sets VERY cheap

I am overweight, if I wasn't overweight I would do bodyweight exercises. I have never tried yoga but maybe thats helpful too.

I also agree with top comment that dumbells and a bench are much better.

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: Who runs a small/medium website supported by ads?"

jackgolding — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 00:17:15 +0000

There are a massive amount of people doing this with their ads or affiliate programs - I suggest looking at affiliate lab or authority hacker which are paid courses but have a lot of examples and interviews of founders who operate in this space. Also Empire Flippers does write a lot about these businesses.

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: How do you name behavioral tracking events when building web apps?"

jackgolding — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 02:54:22 +0000

It is always a battle of strict taxonomy vs agility in my experience and in nearly every company I've worked for someone somewhere chose agility. And all it takes is one poorly thought out migration/project to undermine the whole activity of taxonomy. Believe me most large businesses with multi-million dollar investments in digital analytics aren't even doing the most basic campaign tracking correctly, let alone worrying about taxonomy.

I always try to align names with internally used terminology but even a simple thing like "log out" can be complicated for self-service reporting. For example is USER_LOGGED_OUT a dimension (fired on all events), fired by an event listener on a button click or fired after a user-session is cleared by the applet. Are the differences between each platform/operating system?

I don't think theres anything better than good documentation (even within the tag management system) and testing tools like Amplitude's event explorer so that analysts can actually verify what has happened. A few analytics vendors have written about this and segment uses the object-action framework like you've suggested. https://segment.com/academy/collecting-data/naming-conventio...

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: How to politely decline requests to meet?"

jackgolding — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 23:41:50 +0000

Currently reading “never split the difference” and one of my takeaways has been for negotiations (or trust-building in general), people are anxious/frustrated about saying “no”, so enabling an environment where people can say no allows for better trust.

Personally understanding how neurotic/anxious I am empowers me to be able to say no, as I try to consciously be aware that subconsciously I am less likely to say no when it’s in my best interest.

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: Does social media use lead to mental/physical fatigue?"

jackgolding — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 03:12:09 +0000

Sample size of 1 I've been using a blocker for the last week (do this a few times a year) and yes I can attribute it to social media, I will ebb and flow between being on social media too much and being too antisocial - its okay to swap them in and out

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: How important are real time analytics?"

jackgolding — Mon, 24 May 2021 12:58:05 +0000

I'm the digital analytics manager for a company that does multi-billion dollars in ecommerce. The real time analytics our ops team use doesn't use any of this behavioral information.

Only place it's been asked for by an operations team is during large (1m+) email sends to ensure there isn't a spike in traffic to error pages.

New comment by jackgolding in "Ask HN: No Adsense/Admob, what options do I have for generating ad revenue?"

jackgolding — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 01:07:22 +0000

Outbrain (content advertising), Media.net, Clickbank (affiliates), amazon affilaites, pubmatic

These aren't flashy but they are alternatives.