Hacker News: leemac

New comment by leemac in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"

leemac — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 03:49:38 +0000

This is wonderful. I've often wondered about small, human-only groups forming in tighter social circles, which can be hard to find.

New comment by leemac in "Tell HN: macOS 26.4.1 bricked my MBP"

leemac — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 19:49:55 +0000

Same issue here. I updated and left my machine for a few days. Came back and was unresponsive. I had to use the 26.3.1 firmware and DFU restore. I have a 16" M2 Macbook.

New comment by leemac in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

leemac — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 05:07:15 +0000

https://leemckinnon.com/

I haven't had anything interesting to post over time, but glad I bought my domain years ago for various reasons (yikes, 2007 it looks like, 20 years?!). Will try to throw a PR up, young kids keep me busy.

New comment by leemac in "How Postgres Triggers Can Simplify Your Back End Development"

leemac — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 17:59:37 +0000

I spent the better half of a decade trying to rid us of the business logic in the database. At some point, the hole was too deep as we had stored procedures calling each other, such a mess. I could go on and on but also found hiring difficult, we were a small team so a database-only developer was a hard pill to swallow.

I eventually left. We pivoted to a new product and leadership agreed the old system was legacy to remain untouched. Eventually this thinking changed and the old product was to be integrated with the new. Sprocs were back baby! My battle was lost, I was done.

New comment by leemac in "GitHub was down"

leemac — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 18:49:18 +0000

Sent in a commit to fix a few PR suggestions. It went through, but nowhere to be found on the PR. Guess I'll have to wait.

New comment by leemac in "Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies"

leemac — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 23:51:09 +0000

Ahh! This is so cool!! Really neat idea, very slick.

Played around with the demo, very well done! I love the walk-through.

Small issue: I noticed you can click on multiple music/sounds and they start to stack with each playing over the other (using Windows/FireFox). That was the only issue I encountered during a quick play-through.

Good luck!

New comment by leemac in "How to make pizza like a Neapolitan master"

leemac — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 12:37:06 +0000

A few years back I gave the Roccbox a shot (https://us.gozney.com/products/roccbox). It takes a special flour (Tipo 00 is what I use) so it doesn't char at 850F. The oven is certainly not cheap and there are cheaper alternatives, but I wanted something portable and more rugged-makes camping fun and we cook more than pizza. It get's me that nice charred bottom, but I typically tend to overcook the cheese.

I still continue to use my oven at times, especially when the weather isn't helping. The broiler is helpful there with a pizza stone.

No matter what I use, it's a fine dance to get things right. Sometimes it comes out great, especially when I give things a few days to cold-rise in the fridge. Usually something goes wrong, either too burnt, not fully cooked, or simply not enough pizza :)

New comment by leemac in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

leemac — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 22:07:00 +0000

I'm working on a self-hosted app to track family history and stories. I've got photos going back to the 20s and my dad seems to have so many stories I want to capture around them. I also had an uncle pass recently and finding photos of him for the services was so manual. I'd love to have some photo-tagging of sorts. Perhaps allow family to upload their stash of photos.

It's also giving me a fun chance to dive deeper into ASP.NET Core/React/TypeScript, something I work with professionally, but just haven't had the time to fiddle.

New comment by leemac in "Ask HN: How Do You Read?"

leemac — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 21:19:39 +0000

Very cool, thanks for the link to your notes repo. I share your pain with a horrible memory. I may very well start taking notes and storing it similarly to how you've done it.

New comment by leemac in "Swedish Couple Builds Greenhouse Around Home"

leemac — Sat, 22 Jun 2019 00:06:42 +0000

Ah, I had a feeling I'd seen this before. Fascinating project, thanks for the link to previous video I had seen a while back!

New comment by leemac in "Starsky Robotics Becomes First Uncrewed Truck to Hit 55 MPH"

leemac — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 02:08:39 +0000

Interesting stuff. I'll certainly tell him about this. He's been talking about retirement for some time (early-to-mid 60's) but he's a workaholic like my own father. He's always had a challenging time finding trucking jobs that are local in the Vermont area, but should an opportunity arise where he can drive anywhere closer to home, I think his ears will perk up.

New comment by leemac in "Starsky Robotics Becomes First Uncrewed Truck to Hit 55 MPH"

leemac — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 19:40:43 +0000

This is exciting technology! My father in-law is a trucker, although nearly retired. He's fascinated by the developments made by you guys.

I'm not entirely familiar with the industry and day-to-day of a trucker, but I'd imagine you'd need some "on the ground" personnel, at least initially, to perform tasks such as fueling on long hauls.

Aside from this, it'd be interesting to see how quickly you can go coast-to-coast without a human needing a break/sleep.

New comment by leemac in "Norway aviation firm orders 60 all-electric airplanes, drops operation costs 80%"

leemac — Sat, 13 Apr 2019 15:33:50 +0000

I wonder this as well.

I've only flown 12 hours in a traditional aircraft (piper warrior iii), but there's certainly a few things I'd imagine a pilot would want to know before taking off in something traditional (oil pressure, manifold, switching fuel takes, checking fuel quality, etc.). Maybe just enough training in a traditional aircraft for a few extra hours to be rated properly.

I'm certainly excited for the possibility for electric aircraft, hopefully in my lifetime. Less maintenance, less things to go wrong, cheaper, (quieter/less vibration?) etc.

New comment by leemac in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2018)"

leemac — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 15:57:05 +0000

Ledgex (https://ledgex.com) | Waltham, MA | Full-Time, Onsite OR Remote if in USA | Full Stack Senior .NET Engineer

We're a small group of engineers and investment professionals looking to expand our company. Ledgex is a FinTech company focused on developing software to help multi-asset investors (endowments, foundations, family offices, outsourced chief investment officers, and pensions) better manage their assets and their time.

We're hiring a few people to help start a new product with myself and a few others from the company. This is a greenfield project using our existing product as a guide.

- Full Stack Senior .NET Engineer - https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/207372/full-stack-senior-net-...

Find out more about our company here: https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/ledgex

Tech Stack: ASP.NET Core (MVC on certain products), ReactJS/TypeScript (Backbone on certain products), Azure

New comment by leemac in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2018)"

leemac — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 19:50:06 +0000

Ledgex (https://ledgex.com) | Waltham, MA | Full-Time, Onsite | Full Stack Senior .NET Engineer | UX/UI Designer

We're hiring a few people to help start a new product with myself and a few others from the company. This is a greenfield project using our existing product as a guide.

- UI/UX Designer - https://angel.co/ledgex-systems/jobs/435409-lead-ux-ui-desig...

- Full Stack Senior .NET Engineer - https://angel.co/ledgex-systems/jobs/435407-full-stack-senio...

Tech Stack: ASP.NET Core, ReactJS/TypeScript, Azure

New comment by leemac in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2018)"

leemac — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 16:34:30 +0000

Ledgex | SQL Developer | Full-time | Boston area | Remote

We're looking for a SQL (MS-SQL) developer to assist with our backend. We started in 2010 and have a small close-knit team. Company is 100% remote in the Boston area and we'd prefer someone in the region (within 1-3 hours drive) to meetup bi-weekly in the city. We get together from time to time after hours. We may be getting a physical office at some point for meetups and for those who want to get out of the house.

Our system is ASP.NET based and hosted on Azure with the option for on-premise setups. We have one other SQL developer that you'd be working with along with the application/QA/and product team.

Interested? Job details can be found here: https://recruiting.ultipro.com/EZE1000EZECI/JobBoard/2a337c1...

Read more about our company here: http://ledgex.com/

New comment by leemac in "Drip Irrigation Design Guidelines"

leemac — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 19:19:23 +0000

I have a small irrigation setup that works somewhat well for my needs. I have a small pond/waterfall pump inside a rain barrel that pushes a decent flow to my emitters that water my lettuce and cucumber plants. The pump inside the barrel is connected to an outdoor Z-Wave switch that is ultimately controlled by my SmartThings hub.

The main downside is it's currently manual and water is limited in the barrel. The rain barrel can only hold so much water and at times, I find my ZWave switch will turn off, then back on, which eventually drains the barrel if I'm away. I usually turn it on/off on hot nights when I'm home so I can monitor it.

Next summer I'll take a different approach with some of the ideas from this article. Perhaps use the rain barrel only if it's full (using sonar sensors that ping off the water level), but use the main house line as the primary.

That hacker/tinkerer in me wants to ultimately build a system that waters based on weather patterns/demands. I'll save that for next year.

New comment by leemac in "Elon Musk's Promises and Goals for Tesla, SpaceX, and More"

leemac — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 16:41:57 +0000

I was surprised as well. This is also on the front page which is interesting given the target audience. In a strange way I find it fun, though a bit unusable.

New comment by leemac in "Elon Musk's Promises and Goals for Tesla, SpaceX, and More"

leemac — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 15:48:33 +0000

The UI here is fascinating. I'm so lost, yet I'm so intrigued to keep clicking around.

New comment by leemac in "I Stopped Attending Programming Meet-ups"

leemac — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 15:07:38 +0000

I'm in the same boat. There are a ton of Boston meetups, but I live in the suburbs for many lifestyle reasons. The commute doesn't justify sticking around after hours when I have an hour and a half walk/train/drive home.