Hacker News: smnrchrds

New comment by smnrchrds in "New Washington state law bans noncompete agreements"

smnrchrds — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:17:49 +0000

Same here in Canada. I have had three non-competes in my career, none of which were paid. All of them were probably unenforceable if it went to trial, but I would have never gotten that far in the hiring pipeline. I instead opted to switch industries and move to a jurisdiction that doesn't allow non-competes.

New comment by smnrchrds in "New Washington state law bans noncompete agreements"

smnrchrds — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 23:05:20 +0000

Most non-competes are at least 6 months but usually more than a year, and I have never worked in a company that was open to hiring someone with a start date that far in the future. Plus, the clock wouldn't even start running until they leave their job, so if you hire them for a start day in 12 months, they have to quit now and spend their savings. I have never met someone who was open to doing that. I am sure it could happen in very rare circumstances, but most jobs would be closed to most people with non-competes. I am glad that I live in a jurisdiction that doesn't allow them anymore.

New comment by smnrchrds in "New Washington state law bans noncompete agreements"

smnrchrds — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:06:20 +0000

You may not even get as far as an interview. More and more, I see job applications asking whether you are subject to non-competes, alongside asking about visa etc. I imagine answering yes will unceremoniously move your application to the reject pile.

New comment by smnrchrds in "I turned Markdown into a protocol for generative UI"

smnrchrds — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 01:09:33 +0000

I disagree. Hexagons are the bestagons.

New comment by smnrchrds in "Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing"

smnrchrds — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:00:22 +0000

According to the link posted above, the choice is up to the customer, not the retailer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366595

New comment by smnrchrds in "Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing"

smnrchrds — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:18:10 +0000

According to the article, the law says B. If that makes for bad law, it's up to the legislature to change it, not up to the retailer to unilaterally decide to stop following the law.

New comment by smnrchrds in "Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings"

smnrchrds — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 15:01:59 +0000

> From the site: Get back what it'll actually look like on a random Tuesday in November

It's Calgary. The landscape will be a lot snowier anytime in November.

New comment by smnrchrds in "Just Get a Better Job"

smnrchrds — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:35:12 +0000

Sure. But this post resonated with me even though we have universal healthcare in Canada.

New comment by smnrchrds in "A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash"

smnrchrds — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 22:49:08 +0000

In my defense, I remember it because I expect Option key to modify the original character and Shift key to make it bigger, so remembering that Option plus Shift makes hyphen into a bigger alternate version of it, i.e. the em dash, is not difficult. I acknowledge that not everyone would see it this way.

New comment by smnrchrds in "A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash"

smnrchrds — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:47:53 +0000

> Well the em dash remains difficult to type on a normal keyboard

Not on Mac:

hyphen/dash: -

En-dash: ⌥-

Em-dash: ⇧⌥-

New comment by smnrchrds in "Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF"

smnrchrds — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 20:59:08 +0000

First of all, thank you for making this. I used it in my recent job search and it was fantastic.

Second, if I may make a request, could you please follow SemVer? I tried rendering my resume again last week, only 3 or 4 months after having made it originally with RenderCV version 2 point something I cannot recall, and it would not work. The design schema and perhaps also the CLI options have changes so much that I expect I would need to spend 2 to 4 hours getting it to work again, and there is no guarantee that it would not break again in another month. I would have appreciated if the versioning scheme followed SemVer, so I would know that any v2 engine would work and v3 engine would not.

I also would appreciate it if you could write detailed migration docs between versions and/or recommendations in error messages. The reason I think migrating my CV would take so long is that I have to go by trial and error, searching for similar-sounding parameter names and replacing them one-by-one. I gave up after an hour of this as I was nowhere near done.

Third, is markdown render supposed to miss information or is it a bug? Some sections of the resume would not end up in the markdown version, only showing section title and nothing else. If this is not expected behaviour, please let me know.

Again, thank you for making this. I look forward to using it again in the future.

New comment by smnrchrds in "Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break"

smnrchrds — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 06:12:20 +0000

Thank you for writing this post. Your writing is insightful and thought-provoking. I would love to follow your blog to read your future posts as well, but I could not find an RSS feed or an email newsletter option. Is there any chance that you would add RSS to your blog in the future?

New comment by smnrchrds in "Layoffs hit highest level for the month since 2003"

smnrchrds — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:31:55 +0000

I can see the logic. Layoffs are always terrible. But if I am getting laid off anyway, I would prefer to know about it before I spend a whole bunch of money during holidays.

New comment by smnrchrds in "Harnessing America's heat pump moment"

smnrchrds — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 05:36:35 +0000

I see. Thanks for the explanation. So the system is slow to come up to the set temperature. Is it good at keeping the temperature though? After the house temp gets to 70, does it consistently stay at 70, or are there shortcomings in this aspect too?

New comment by smnrchrds in "Harnessing America's heat pump moment"

smnrchrds — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 01:52:06 +0000

I have never had a heat pump, so I wasn't aware of this shortcoming. Could you please explain a bit more how different it is with heat pump compared to furnace?

New comment by smnrchrds in "US tariff negotiations with Canada terminated over advertisement"

smnrchrds — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 05:30:27 +0000

Also Canadian here. Have been closely following US-Canada trade for years. What you are saying is news to me. I am leaning towards believing you are simply mistaken, but if you have specific evidence about these two assertions, I would love to study them:

> tariffs on a ton of stuff

> we are rebuked because we have tariffs on a bunch of their goods

I can guess why one might think some of this (tariffs on Chinese EVs directly led to agricultural counter-tariffs from them and dairy trade barriers have always been a source of frustration), but in general, Canada's tariffs and barriers are by all indications in line with peer countries (US, UK, EU, Australia, etc.) and not particularly noteworthy. If you have concrete evidence to the contrary (not just that some trade barriers exist between Canada and its trading partners, but that they are out of the ordinary and much higher than other countries'; and that the world, in particular EU does not want closer ties with us because of them), I would love to study your sources and update my understanding.

New comment by smnrchrds in "Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser"

smnrchrds — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 03:24:35 +0000

I didn't know digital twin had an official definition. Could you please share a bit more on what makes a simulation a digital twin?

New comment by smnrchrds in ""Your" vs. "My" in user interfaces"

smnrchrds — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 14:16:30 +0000

For example, in Arabic, nouns have three forms: singular, dual, and plural. Dual and plural are not interchangeable.

New comment by smnrchrds in "Job Listing Site Highlighting H-1B Positions So Americans Can Apply"

smnrchrds — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:06:23 +0000

H1-Bs are indefinitely renewable as long as you keep your job.

New comment by smnrchrds in "Job Listing Site Highlighting H-1B Positions So Americans Can Apply"

smnrchrds — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 19:46:13 +0000

The only effect of applying to jobs on jobs.now is that someone who is already working in the US on H1-B, and was gonna get green card if you hadn't applied, would instead stay on H1-B.