Hacker News: yanokwa

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2026)"

yanokwa — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:17:07 +0000

ODK | Senior Product Manager | Remote (Worldwide) | Long-term contract, 30–40 hours/week | $90–$110/hour USD

ODK is an open-source platform used by thousands of organizations worldwide to collect billions of data points for disease surveillance, supply chain traceability, environmental monitoring, and more. It enables users to build powerful forms and reliably collect structured data, even in places with little or no Internet connectivity.

ODK has been actively developed for 18 years. We have a mix of self-hosted and SaaS users across many sectors. We're looking for a senior product manager who will own product discovery and prioritization across this diverse user base. To be successful, you'll need to find the common needs behind very different workflows and turn them into opinionated product improvements.

Because the team is small and the user base is large, this is a high-autonomy role where product decisions have an unusually direct impact. You should have substantial experience managing complex B2B or technical products. Experience with open source, self-hosted software, and small, fully remote teams is a plus.

Details and application: https://getodk.org/about/jobs/senior-product-manager

New comment by yanokwa in "PeerTube is recognized as a digital public good by Digital Public Goods Alliance"

yanokwa — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 18:47:41 +0000

I think open-source leaders who want sustainable resourcing should focus on building obvious paths for people who find ongoing value in their project to contribute. That to me is the best return-on-investment.

If it's a library, make it easy for developers to contribute code.

If it's an app, make it easy for individuals/businesses who value it to pay (e.g., cloud hosting).

I gave a talk about this at the launch of WHO's Open Source Program Office[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/live/yNK27_6MrF8?t=1215s

New comment by yanokwa in "PeerTube is recognized as a digital public good by Digital Public Goods Alliance"

yanokwa — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 02:02:52 +0000

I run [ODK](https://getodk.org). It's a offline mobile data collection platform that has been an DPG since 2022.

In practice, being a DPG makes your project slightly easier to choose in UN and government procurements. In most cases, they're choosing your platform because it's free, so it's unlikely that money or code contributions will come your way. It can even be a downside, because your software may end up deployed on an under-provisioned government server that generates a flood of support requests. Ask me how I know...

You may also get a bit more visibility and become eligible for some DPG-related funding calls. But in my experience, funding ultimately depends on demonstrated impact, donor relationships, alignment with national digital strategies, and the ability to deliver at scale.

New comment by yanokwa in "Monitoring My Homelab, Simply"

yanokwa — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 06:33:14 +0000

https://mmonit.com is what I use for stuff like this.

New comment by yanokwa in "Open-UI: Maintain an open standard for UI and promote its adherence and adoption"

yanokwa — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 13:53:28 +0000

Some of these are from 2023. Have any of their graduated proposals shipped into a browser? I'm trying to get a sense of their visible wins so far.

New comment by yanokwa in "Dealerships Rip You Off With The “Four-Square,” Here’s How To Beat It (2007)"

yanokwa — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 03:31:29 +0000

In the US? Ally offers savings accounts with great rates (usually 50% off prime, so currently 4.25%) and in my experience is a fantastic bank. Way better than credit unions I’ve banked with. https://www.ally.com/bank/online-savings-account/

New comment by yanokwa in "Why are there suddenly so many car washes?"

yanokwa — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 01:52:47 +0000

People who are into shoes (e.g., sneakerheads) do clean their soles.

New comment by yanokwa in "Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]"

yanokwa — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 16:58:35 +0000

Yup! Mozilla uses this very structure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

New comment by yanokwa in "Apple unveils the new MacBook Pro featuring the M3 family of chips"

yanokwa — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 18:52:19 +0000

Try OrbStack. Should be much better on battery life.

New comment by yanokwa in "So what’s next (personal news from developer of popular CoreJS polyfill)"

yanokwa — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 03:35:07 +0000

I wonder if the sports/talent agent model could work here.

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: What's on your home server?"

yanokwa — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 14:19:14 +0000

You could also use https://nextdns.io. It’s basically pi-hole in the cloud.

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)"

yanokwa — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 20:29:44 +0000

ET adds a layer between application and TCP sockets that persists connections. https://eternalterminal.dev/howitworks has more.

If you are mostly on unreliable and high-latency connections, mosh will likely feel better, but with no native scrollback.

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)"

yanokwa — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 18:08:24 +0000

I've switched from Mosh to Eternal Terminal (https://eternalterminal.dev) because of its excellent native scrolling support.

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)"

yanokwa — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 18:06:59 +0000

ChangeDetection https://changedetection.io. Self-hosted website change detection.

New comment by yanokwa in "Tesla Semi, a Deep Dive"

yanokwa — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 06:23:28 +0000

I don't have a dog in this fight, but just to answer the question. https://elonsbrokenpromises.com and https://elonmusk.today have examples of promises Elon has made that have not come to pass.

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?"

yanokwa — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 23:12:49 +0000

I'm one of the founders of ODK[1]. It's an open-source offline data collection app that, according to WHO[2], helped eradicate wild polio from Africa. It's become the de-facto app that social impact orgs (e.g., Red Cross, Carter Center) globally use to collect data in the field. It's kinda wild to think about, to be honest.

[1] https://getodk.org

[2] https://www.africakicksoutwildpolio.com/the-top-five-tech-so...

New comment by yanokwa in "Mochary Method Curriculum"

yanokwa — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 17:44:45 +0000

See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJZbv4J6FZ8Dnb0JuMhJxTnw...

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: Is there any “PBS Kids” alternatives these days?"

yanokwa — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 10:39:37 +0000

The Khan Kids app is pretty great

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact"

yanokwa — Thu, 26 May 2022 19:07:00 +0000

I don't disagree and we work hard to provide guidance on best practices and software to support implementation. Ultimately, in the contexts in which we work, the organizations are the data controllers and there are complex legal issues at play. For example, in some locales, clinical trial participants don't have the right to be forgotten.

New comment by yanokwa in "Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact"

yanokwa — Thu, 26 May 2022 18:32:04 +0000

The vast majority of users are staff who are hired to collect data for a non-profit. The vast majority of servers are self-hosted by those non-profits. It's very opt-in in that regard. Think of say a census worker counting households or farmer measuring plot yield. And even in those cases, yes, users have a lot of visibility in what is being collected and a fair bit of control.

Sensitive data that is collected from participants that users interact with are typically governed by policies set by Institutional Review Boards or Ministries of Health.