Hacker News: mystickphoenix

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Music for Programming"

mystickphoenix — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:05:31 +0000

for me it's Liquid DnB, anything by Liquicity is amazing, especially their year mixes and the couple that Maduk did on youtube during the pandemic

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Git commands I run before reading any code"

mystickphoenix — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:26:28 +0000

Likely my own personal bias, but I have never once found git log/commit messages to be useful when debugging or understanding what happened. I'm sure that others do so I try to write useful commits (conventional commits syntax is helpful here) but I'd much rather spend my time and effort understanding the current state of the codebase instead of trying to diagnose how "fixed bug related to file naming" relates to a website going down.

Show HN: LogProx – I built a fast proxy that logs out request information

mystickphoenix — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:05:09 +0000

The idea for this came from a previous company. We were accessing external APIs that had fairly restrictive versioning requirements. Not everyone in the company followed those and put our business relationships in danger (yeah, I know...). I had the idea to have all traffic to those APIs put through a proxy that would log the source of the traffic so we could find where those requests were coming from and (optionally) block them. Sadly that company and I parted ways before I could work on it, but hey, that means I get to open source the idea/code now!

Would love to get thoughts, ideas, rotten fruit, etc. Feel free to open issues or PRs on it. Thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504746

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

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

mystickphoenix — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 16:00:59 +0000

I've been working on an idea for a logging proxy to track down where internal->external calls are coming from and optionally block them. Been using various AI tools as a way of both getting more comfortable with prompting and learning rust. It's been a fun project so far. Next steps are to figure out how to ease the integration/deployment process if someone wants to actually, you know, use the thing :D

https://github.com/bryan-lott/logprox

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Ask HN: What are you working on?"

mystickphoenix — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 14:57:45 +0000

Several things while I'm between full time gigs, working on learning rust for my own pleasure:

- Rust Lab Log (https://github.com/bryan-lott/rust-lab-log) a simple CLI to take down notes and timestamp them in a single markdown file. I was inspired by my dad's use of logbooks in chemistry labs growing up so that you can always look back and figure out what went right or what went wrong. Has come in very handy during a couple of incidents.

- LogProx (https://github.com/bryan-lott/logprox) a logging proxy with stupid-low added latency. We had an issue where we were accessing a deprecated version of an API and couldn't figure out where the calls were coming from. The API owner was threatening to turn off our access entirely (long story). The idea being LogProx is to send all traffic through it and create rules to log and/or block calls that match a ruleset. Added latency was so low that I had to drop down to measuring in tenths of a millisecond.

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Show HN: Haystack – Review pull requests like you wrote them yourself"

mystickphoenix — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 18:20:21 +0000

> you should probably take a step back and redefine what a PR is for your organization

I agree with this wholeheartedly if you are in a role that allows you to redefine what a PR is. In almost every organization that I've worked for, the PR is defined several levels above my pay grade and suggesting changes/updates/etc is usually seen as complaining.

Ask HN: How to Work with Seagull Principals?

mystickphoenix — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 20:57:25 +0000

Similar in concept to "Seagull Management" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management), I've run into a similar thing when it comes to Principal Engineers.

I've encountered this phenomenon at a number of companies that I've worked for and it normally comes up during PR/MR reviews, but not exclusively. The general behavior I see is a Principal flies in, shits all over the PR/MR, proposal, document, or project, makes a bunch of noise and then disappears. The shitting all over it usually isn't blatant or obvious but it throws a huge wet blanket on any "lower" personnel reviewing or providing feedback and tends to stall progress massively.

In the most recent case the feedback on the PR/MR was essentially "why don't you just... do this thing that seems simple on the surface". I had already explored the proposed solution but felt like I needed evidence to back up the approach I used instead. Which necessitated a several hour rabbit hole as I tried to make the Principal's solution work. Fun fact, it didn't, and had that added benefit of turning the code into a spaghetti mess. They then disappeared for a day or so and I got zero feedback from the rest of my team as they were waiting for the Principal's response.

I'd love to hear tips on how to work better with Principal Engineers, especially ones of the overworked seagull variety.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44869381

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)"

mystickphoenix — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 17:42:48 +0000

May not be the most shiny/flashy thing, but I'm trying to figure out how to get out of burnout (adhd/autism/tech - all the varieties) without having to quit the world for six months.

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Ask HN: How to regain the ability to read with focus and learn"

mystickphoenix — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 16:28:24 +0000

Also, don't be afraid to revisit your favorite fiction and/or try young-adult fiction. IMO what you read matters less than building a habit or routine of reading.

New comment by mystickphoenix in "The Books of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin"

mystickphoenix — Fri, 02 May 2025 15:36:07 +0000

I purchased the collection after reading this review. It was always a series that I wanted to read when I was younger but never did. Trying to get back into reading fiction again and this felt like a great place to start!

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Show HN: BookWatch – Animated book summaries for visual learners"

mystickphoenix — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 14:26:26 +0000

The concept of "learning styles" has a pretty large mountain of evidence disproving its validity. Just a quick sample from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Criticism

While it may be a marketing gimmick, it immediately turned me off.

New comment by mystickphoenix in "JJ Cheat Sheet"

mystickphoenix — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 22:51:42 +0000

Just wanted to say thank you for working on this, I'm going to take another read-through of those 2 links and see if it makes more sense given the extra context of this thread. Either way, I look forward to reading the updates and seeing if they click better in my brainpan ;)

New comment by mystickphoenix in "JJ Cheat Sheet"

mystickphoenix — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 16:53:35 +0000

I suppose what I'm looking for is maybe a translation from git to jj from the perspective of working in a repo with other users that are using git. Something along the lines of:

1. init jj in an existing git repo

2. instead of branching, do x, y, z

3. instead of committing after changes are done, do x, y, z

4. when pushing, do x, y, z

5. if someone else pushes to the same branch, here's how to handle it

6. if someone rebases and force pushes the branch, here's how to handle it

7. if you have merge conflicts, here's how to handle that

I think I'm having a hard time trying to grok the jj "mental model" while simultaneously understanding how it translates to an existing git repo.

I suspect for jj to get traction outside of single devs or companies that use jj exclusively, some extra focus in the docs giving guidance in the liminal space between would be super helpful.

New comment by mystickphoenix in "JJ Cheat Sheet"

mystickphoenix — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 03:12:47 +0000

Something that I've been struggling to wrap my brain around is:

1. Can I use jj inside a repo that was already initialized with git? I think the answer is yes, but I haven't found a tl;dr for it.

2. What does the workflow look like to use jj on an existing git repo that all of your coworkers use git for?

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Ask HN: What tech knowledge to back up?"

mystickphoenix — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 17:31:45 +0000

Not trying to hijack, but in addition, I'd love to know how we can fight back beyond just archiving data. HN tends to lean heavily into tech skills. How can we leverage those skills collectively or individually to prevent needing to archive this data in the first place?

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Software development topics I've changed my mind on"

mystickphoenix — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 16:24:59 +0000

Agree - in my 10+ year career, I've run into exactly 2 PM's that have provided enough value to a team or project to justify their inclusion in the team or project. Both were technical enough to understand what the engineers were working on and talking about and were able to offer genuinely good suggestions.

The rest? At best they were glorified QA/QC with a large stick to hit the engineers with when the spec wasn't met exactly. And when it was, and things still failed, they still hit the engineers with the large stick and were usually promoted for it.

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell"

mystickphoenix — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 17:37:46 +0000

Just wanted to say you've built an amazing product. So much so that I got my team hooked on it and am working on getting it out to the rest of the company that needs it. Well done!!

New comment by mystickphoenix in "What App to Use for Notes?"

mystickphoenix — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:43:21 +0000

Currently use markdown files + dropbox for sync. I can't seem to stick with a single notes app for any appreciable length of time but having files in plain text makes it easier to switch.

Currently using:

- Obsidian: this one has stuck the longest

- iA Writer: really pretty, seems to be more useful for longform

- NeoVim: I live it in anyway... may as well

- rlg: my own "dump thought to single file w/ timestamp" rust app), very janky, written specifically for my own use-case, standard "there may be dragons here, might eat your computer just for fun, etc" - https://github.com/bryan-lott/rust-lab-log

New comment by mystickphoenix in "CrowdStrike fixes start at "reboot up to 15 times", gets more complex from there"

mystickphoenix — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 18:07:47 +0000

Taking the opportunity to plug my favorite blog post ever:

"the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone"

https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

New comment by mystickphoenix in "Show HN: From dotenv to dotenvx – better config management"

mystickphoenix — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 12:58:15 +0000

Add another vote for mise. For me it replaced asdf, pyenv, poetry, and direnv. Biggest thing for me is it _just works_:tm:.