Hacker News: jhwhite

New comment by jhwhite in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

jhwhite — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:55:23 +0000

LifeKit did an episode on this recently. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/06/nx-s1-5667582/how-to-build-a-...

Some things I do: I organize a monthly brunch for friends. I try and grow it, invite people I've recently met.

If someone asks me to do something, I try and do it. Get invited to poker night, I'm there. Asked to play Fantasy Football, yep! Even though I don't watch football and have never played.

New comment by jhwhite in "Who still uses cash?"

jhwhite — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:38:11 +0000

The ice cream lady that rolls down our neighborhood. My 4 yo hears the music and freaks out. We have to keep cash around now.

New comment by jhwhite in "Show HN: EnkiTask: Lightweight Project Management for Freelancers"

jhwhite — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 18:51:37 +0000

On your pricing tab "Expiration" is spelled incorrectly on Pro and Elite levels.

New comment by jhwhite in "Take the Pedals Off the Bike"

jhwhite — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:25:19 +0000

This is what I did with my son. Take the pedals off, teach him balance, then put them back on.

There's a hospital here that does a clinic on teaching kids to ride a bike and this is what they do as well.

New comment by jhwhite in "Why we use our own hardware"

jhwhite — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 18:03:49 +0000

> It makes me wonder: how do people get so sold on a thing that they'll go online and fight about it, even when they lack facts or often even basic understanding?

I feel like this can be applied to anything.

I had a manager take one SAFe for Leaders class then came back wanting to implement it. They had no previous AGILE classes or experience. And the Enterprise Agile Office was saying DON'T USE SAFe!!

But they had one class and that was the only way they would agree to structure their group.

New comment by jhwhite in "Evidence of the use of silk by Bronze Age civilization"

jhwhite — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 17:27:35 +0000

I'm probably wrong but since it was discovered in a sacrificial pit I assumed the bronze age people burned the silk as a way to "communicate with heaven".

New comment by jhwhite in "Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs"

jhwhite — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 17:09:21 +0000

I reached out to a recruiter I know about a job posted on their company's site. They replied that wasn't a real posting it was just to get people in the pipeline. They did say if it was a "real" posting they were hiring for it will have as ReqID at the top of the page. Too bad that's not something you could filter for.

New comment by jhwhite in "How I ship projects at big tech companies"

jhwhite — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:43:35 +0000

Yeah but a good technical PM / whatever will have that understanding. Not a role that just checks milestones and statuses.

New comment by jhwhite in "How I ship projects at big tech companies"

jhwhite — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:09:48 +0000

I see so much backlash against Project Managers and they're just Outlook Calendars with legs, but this post is basically a love letter to good Project Managers/Release Train Engineers/Delivery Leads, whatever you want to call it.

New comment by jhwhite in "I sent an Ethernet packet"

jhwhite — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 20:34:04 +0000

I'm not sure it's Jira-fication. I think it's mapping effort back to something that has a direct result to the bottom line.

Example: I used to work for a company that basically made slot machines. We needed to produce something called parsheets to give to submit to get our slots certified and to the casino. I was given the project but no manager wanted to give any developers to implement it. No one wanted to give the money to buy a computer with enough power to run simulations to produce the theoretical hold. But this was something we NEEDED to help get our games approved.

New comment by jhwhite in "Is the world really running out of sand?"

jhwhite — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 17:58:09 +0000

> Add me to the long list of people who heard the bit about desert sand not being suitable for concrete and believed it. I'm happy to be corrected.

Cristobol and Hank's whole business strategy down the drain! (From Barry)

New comment by jhwhite in "Backlash over Amazon's return to office comes as workers demand higher wages"

jhwhite — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:57:01 +0000

Right, but how much work is done when in the office. You might have the same amount of downtime in the office than at home, but now that down time can't be spent doing something else.

They'd rather pay you to do NOTHING.

New comment by jhwhite in "Backlash over Amazon's return to office comes as workers demand higher wages"

jhwhite — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:54:51 +0000

Depends on the age of the child. A 10 year old is old enough to be at the house without direct supervision but not be left alone. They would need to go to a daycare if someone were in an office.

New comment by jhwhite in "How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)"

jhwhite — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:33:18 +0000

> I want you to look them in the eyes and tell them they are the bottleneck and take it a step further and explain why they are the bottleneck so you both are on the same page.

I've always wanted to be able to tell people they're the bottleneck. I've had talks with management about this. "We need to tell people bluntly so they understand the impact they're having."

Nope, it could hurt a relationship and relationship is more important than delivering.

I don't want to be an ass, but I do love this approach by Mr. Beast.

New comment by jhwhite in "No one buys books"

jhwhite — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 14:41:13 +0000

I was in the local library yesterday for the first time in a while and they had a 3d printer AND THEY WERE HATCHING BABY CHICKS! How awesome is that!

New comment by jhwhite in "NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++"

jhwhite — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 17:50:54 +0000

Notepad++ has a place in my heart. When I was learning HTML back in the late 90s early 00s I was using MS Frontpage or Adobe Dreamweaver GUI.

I read that those would spit out sub-optimal HTML and you should use a text editor. So I downloaded Notepad++ and I learned real HTML using it.

New comment by jhwhite in "The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering"

jhwhite — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 19:37:51 +0000

I feel this article was basically daring Elon to do it.

New comment by jhwhite in "Ask HN: Where are you looking for remote jobs?"

jhwhite — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 19:14:59 +0000

I found mine networking through previous colleagues.

New comment by jhwhite in "My favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank's website"

jhwhite — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 21:06:39 +0000

clinicaltrials.gov let's you save a search term then download the results as a zip. But there's an xml file for each search result for the trial.

One of the first things I played around with was using Python to get that file, unzip it, then iterate through the xml files grabbing the info I wanted and putting it into ElasticSearch to make it searchable then putting an angular front end on it.

I used to have it published somewhere but I think I let it all die. :(

New comment by jhwhite in "Is this Duplo train track under too much tension?"

jhwhite — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 14:25:19 +0000

No one knows the amount of thought I put into this same problem when building train tracks for my son but I had no idea how to solve the problem.