SomaFM
540 by Datenstrom | 128 comments on Hacker News.
Tuesday 31 May 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around
Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around
501 by RoseBuckler | 262 comments on Hacker News.
I've been programming on and off since the age of 16. Unfortunately, I have never been a rockstar programmer. I've always pieced code together from multiple sources to create programs but I've always failed to come up with a solution from scratch of my own and provide any value. I've always wondered how other smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch. I've devised countless ideas only to never execute them for various reasons or get started with them only to never fully complete them and see it all the way through. I've already wasted my entire teens and 20s, current 28 years old, working as a software engineer (Full-Stack) at a startup for ~4 years. I've been feeling like a loser and not good enough for this career even though I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team. I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks; being a loner helps with working long hours. My salary also hasn't increased much, and feel like I'm severely underpaid based on the # of years of experience but I struggle with evaluating my value in the market to determine my worth. I assumed working hard would pay off but that hasn't been the case at all; I truly believe I've been doing the opposite of "Work Smart, Not Hard". I've been trying to get back to learning DS and Algos so I can apply to places but I struggle with LeetCode, which is making me feel like even a bigger loser for not being able to solve problems. I'm stuck in a rut, wanting to better my skills and earn a good amount of money but unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog, and unsure of my future. My self-confidence and self-esteem are taking a hit. I am terrible at networking, so I don't have others to reach out to for tips and advice, hence I'm turning to HN. I apologize if this isn't the place for a post like this. How can I turn my directionless life around and find satisfaction with my career?
501 by RoseBuckler | 262 comments on Hacker News.
I've been programming on and off since the age of 16. Unfortunately, I have never been a rockstar programmer. I've always pieced code together from multiple sources to create programs but I've always failed to come up with a solution from scratch of my own and provide any value. I've always wondered how other smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch. I've devised countless ideas only to never execute them for various reasons or get started with them only to never fully complete them and see it all the way through. I've already wasted my entire teens and 20s, current 28 years old, working as a software engineer (Full-Stack) at a startup for ~4 years. I've been feeling like a loser and not good enough for this career even though I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team. I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks; being a loner helps with working long hours. My salary also hasn't increased much, and feel like I'm severely underpaid based on the # of years of experience but I struggle with evaluating my value in the market to determine my worth. I assumed working hard would pay off but that hasn't been the case at all; I truly believe I've been doing the opposite of "Work Smart, Not Hard". I've been trying to get back to learning DS and Algos so I can apply to places but I struggle with LeetCode, which is making me feel like even a bigger loser for not being able to solve problems. I'm stuck in a rut, wanting to better my skills and earn a good amount of money but unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog, and unsure of my future. My self-confidence and self-esteem are taking a hit. I am terrible at networking, so I don't have others to reach out to for tips and advice, hence I'm turning to HN. I apologize if this isn't the place for a post like this. How can I turn my directionless life around and find satisfaction with my career?
Monday 30 May 2022
Sunday 29 May 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?
Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?
433 by stArrow | 140 comments on Hacker News.
I am a 26 year old learner who is really into Machine Learning. But my lack of understanding in math has held me back. Skipping and hating math classes in high school have been my biggest regret. Now, I am slowly trying to learn, but I don't know where to start. I need some guidance.
433 by stArrow | 140 comments on Hacker News.
I am a 26 year old learner who is really into Machine Learning. But my lack of understanding in math has held me back. Skipping and hating math classes in high school have been my biggest regret. Now, I am slowly trying to learn, but I don't know where to start. I need some guidance.
Saturday 28 May 2022
Friday 27 May 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: I turned my face rec system into a video codec
Show HN: I turned my face rec system into a video codec
484 by jacobgorm | 138 comments on Hacker News.
Before the pandemic, my tiny startup was doing quite well selling Edge AI systems, based on our own lightweight AI inference engine, with object detection and face recognition for smart city and smart retail & food service applications. When the real world shut down, there was suddenly nothing to monitor on streets and in restaurants, so I set out to try and evolve our real time face recognition system into a video codec for high quality face-to-face online interactions, as I was not satisfied with the quality of Zoom and friends. I got it to work, and the first release for IOS was just approved on Apple's app store, link: https://ift.tt/bfZ39Ks The way it works is that you create a meeting URL, which you can share out-of-band, for instance via slack or text message. You can also share as a QR code which the app can scan to join a call. You then place your device on a surface in front of you so that the front camera can see you, and it will recognize you face and assign you to your own session, which is broadcast to the meeting channel. If more than one person is in view, both of you will be broadcast but with separate session ids, like if you were on separate cameras. Other meeting participants will show up on your screen and you can start talking. It is optimized for eye contact, meaning that the eyes will actually make it through to the other side as more than just dark pixel clouds, so thinks should feel a bit more personal than the standard Zoom/Teams/or Google Meet call. Because it uses face rec, you can ONLY show your face, and if you disappear from view your audio will stop after a while, to avoid situations like when you need to go the the restroom but forget to mute. This also solves dick-pics etc. The CODEC is not based on H26[45], but is pure AI that runs on the GPU. There is a neural network that compresses the video in real time, and another one decompressing on the receiving end. Finding a tight network architecture that would do this in real time with acceptable quality was a major part of the effort. There are several quality settings possible, but right now it is set fairly high and for 20FPS maxes out around 700kbit/s, though typically uses about half. I've demonstrated good results down to around 200kbit/s, so in theory it should work over satellite links or even Bluetooth. The protocol is UDP with no congestion control but with (Wirehair) FEC to protect against mild packet loss, future versions will detect packet loss and adapt to available bandwidth. The audio just uses OPUS and may click a little bit, I blame AudioEngine or the fact that the last time I wrote audio code was for the game I published for the Amiga in 1994. If you don't have a friend around or multiple devices to play with, there is an "echo test" server mode that allows you to be in a meeting with yourself. Traffic will be peer-to-peer if possible, but otherwise you will be relaying through my tiny Raspberry PI server, so YMMV. I plan to try to switch to something like fly.io soon to improve scalability. There is also a MacOS version coming very soon, and the underlying AI engine also runs on Windows & Linux. Android support is planned. Please take a look and let me know what you think.
484 by jacobgorm | 138 comments on Hacker News.
Before the pandemic, my tiny startup was doing quite well selling Edge AI systems, based on our own lightweight AI inference engine, with object detection and face recognition for smart city and smart retail & food service applications. When the real world shut down, there was suddenly nothing to monitor on streets and in restaurants, so I set out to try and evolve our real time face recognition system into a video codec for high quality face-to-face online interactions, as I was not satisfied with the quality of Zoom and friends. I got it to work, and the first release for IOS was just approved on Apple's app store, link: https://ift.tt/bfZ39Ks The way it works is that you create a meeting URL, which you can share out-of-band, for instance via slack or text message. You can also share as a QR code which the app can scan to join a call. You then place your device on a surface in front of you so that the front camera can see you, and it will recognize you face and assign you to your own session, which is broadcast to the meeting channel. If more than one person is in view, both of you will be broadcast but with separate session ids, like if you were on separate cameras. Other meeting participants will show up on your screen and you can start talking. It is optimized for eye contact, meaning that the eyes will actually make it through to the other side as more than just dark pixel clouds, so thinks should feel a bit more personal than the standard Zoom/Teams/or Google Meet call. Because it uses face rec, you can ONLY show your face, and if you disappear from view your audio will stop after a while, to avoid situations like when you need to go the the restroom but forget to mute. This also solves dick-pics etc. The CODEC is not based on H26[45], but is pure AI that runs on the GPU. There is a neural network that compresses the video in real time, and another one decompressing on the receiving end. Finding a tight network architecture that would do this in real time with acceptable quality was a major part of the effort. There are several quality settings possible, but right now it is set fairly high and for 20FPS maxes out around 700kbit/s, though typically uses about half. I've demonstrated good results down to around 200kbit/s, so in theory it should work over satellite links or even Bluetooth. The protocol is UDP with no congestion control but with (Wirehair) FEC to protect against mild packet loss, future versions will detect packet loss and adapt to available bandwidth. The audio just uses OPUS and may click a little bit, I blame AudioEngine or the fact that the last time I wrote audio code was for the game I published for the Amiga in 1994. If you don't have a friend around or multiple devices to play with, there is an "echo test" server mode that allows you to be in a meeting with yourself. Traffic will be peer-to-peer if possible, but otherwise you will be relaying through my tiny Raspberry PI server, so YMMV. I plan to try to switch to something like fly.io soon to improve scalability. There is also a MacOS version coming very soon, and the underlying AI engine also runs on Windows & Linux. Android support is planned. Please take a look and let me know what you think.
Thursday 26 May 2022
Wednesday 25 May 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
449 by strongpigeon | 141 comments on Hacker News.
Edit: Wow #1 on HN. Y'all are making my day. Hey HN, I'm mostly a lurker on HN who's always super inspired by other people's small project that end-up making money. (Huge fan of Ben Stoke's Tiny Project [0]) After being burnt-out in big tech, I decided to write my own weightlifting app and set myself a humble goal of reaching $1000 in total proceeds. See [1] for my initial launch post. I've now surpassed that goal and am now making about 500$/mo by selling premium features in the app. Android version is coming soon too. Doing the whole thing end-to-end (code, launch, marketing, support) was super gratifying and taught me a whole lot. I have to admit that I got almost teary eyed the first time someone bought one of my IAPs. I'm not making a killing out of the app, and that was never the goal. But the personal satisfaction I got out of it was worth everything. I can't pretend to have derived any life lesson that applies to everybody from this, but this whole mini-journey was worth it for me, and I hope it will be for you too, should you embark in a similar one. [0] https://ift.tt/DZnqG8w [1] https://ift.tt/4udLYUQ
449 by strongpigeon | 141 comments on Hacker News.
Edit: Wow #1 on HN. Y'all are making my day. Hey HN, I'm mostly a lurker on HN who's always super inspired by other people's small project that end-up making money. (Huge fan of Ben Stoke's Tiny Project [0]) After being burnt-out in big tech, I decided to write my own weightlifting app and set myself a humble goal of reaching $1000 in total proceeds. See [1] for my initial launch post. I've now surpassed that goal and am now making about 500$/mo by selling premium features in the app. Android version is coming soon too. Doing the whole thing end-to-end (code, launch, marketing, support) was super gratifying and taught me a whole lot. I have to admit that I got almost teary eyed the first time someone bought one of my IAPs. I'm not making a killing out of the app, and that was never the goal. But the personal satisfaction I got out of it was worth everything. I can't pretend to have derived any life lesson that applies to everybody from this, but this whole mini-journey was worth it for me, and I hope it will be for you too, should you embark in a similar one. [0] https://ift.tt/DZnqG8w [1] https://ift.tt/4udLYUQ
New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?
Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?
470 by jharohit | 1252 comments on Hacker News.
I have usually kept a short list of games that would be fun if they existed. Long ago one my bullets in the list was a procedurally generated planet-sized planet with a full diaspora to explore. No Man's Sky fulfilled that for me. What are some games that you wish existed?
470 by jharohit | 1252 comments on Hacker News.
I have usually kept a short list of games that would be fun if they existed. Long ago one my bullets in the list was a procedurally generated planet-sized planet with a full diaspora to explore. No Man's Sky fulfilled that for me. What are some games that you wish existed?
Tuesday 24 May 2022
Sunday 22 May 2022
Saturday 21 May 2022
Friday 20 May 2022
Thursday 19 May 2022
Wednesday 18 May 2022
Tuesday 17 May 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner
Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner
460 by jessegrosjean | 203 comments on Hacker News.
Bike’s most original feature is the “fluid” text editing. Lots of text editors have animated some interactions (cursor movement, insert newline, etc), but I think Bike is the first designed from the ground up to support fluid editing. Give it a try, it feels different. (movie on home page if you don't have Mac) Other Features: • In text mode Bike works like a normal text editor. In outline mode rows are constrained to outline hierarchy. • .bike file format is HTML subset, so files are easy to parse and manipulate. Bike also supports .opml and .txt. • Scriptable via AppleScript. Javascript plugin API also expected in future, though no timing on that. • Architecture needed to support fluid editing also makes Bike faster/more scalable than most (all?) outliners and many text editors. I test performance using the Moby Dick Workout[^1]. Implementation Notes: • View is built using CALayers[^2]. • Animations are performed by Core animation and Motion[^3] lib. • View performance is determined by visible text, not document size. Model representation is interesting in that it’s just a flat list of rows. Each row has a `level` property, outline structure is determined dynamically. View implementation requires that each row has a unique ID. I’m using OrderedDictionary from Swift Collections[^4] to store rows. This is Bike’s performance bottleneck for large outlines. Eventually I may change to augmented b+tree and then should be able to work with gigabytes worth of outline. That will be fun, but not sure it’s actually needed. Already probably fast enough for 99% of use cases as is. Hope you find Bike interesting. I’m happy to answer any questions. [^1]: https://ift.tt/oqw0LTe [^2]: https://ift.tt/1em63FH [^3]: https://ift.tt/aczwlds [^4]: https://ift.tt/qf5AIo1
460 by jessegrosjean | 203 comments on Hacker News.
Bike’s most original feature is the “fluid” text editing. Lots of text editors have animated some interactions (cursor movement, insert newline, etc), but I think Bike is the first designed from the ground up to support fluid editing. Give it a try, it feels different. (movie on home page if you don't have Mac) Other Features: • In text mode Bike works like a normal text editor. In outline mode rows are constrained to outline hierarchy. • .bike file format is HTML subset, so files are easy to parse and manipulate. Bike also supports .opml and .txt. • Scriptable via AppleScript. Javascript plugin API also expected in future, though no timing on that. • Architecture needed to support fluid editing also makes Bike faster/more scalable than most (all?) outliners and many text editors. I test performance using the Moby Dick Workout[^1]. Implementation Notes: • View is built using CALayers[^2]. • Animations are performed by Core animation and Motion[^3] lib. • View performance is determined by visible text, not document size. Model representation is interesting in that it’s just a flat list of rows. Each row has a `level` property, outline structure is determined dynamically. View implementation requires that each row has a unique ID. I’m using OrderedDictionary from Swift Collections[^4] to store rows. This is Bike’s performance bottleneck for large outlines. Eventually I may change to augmented b+tree and then should be able to work with gigabytes worth of outline. That will be fun, but not sure it’s actually needed. Already probably fast enough for 99% of use cases as is. Hope you find Bike interesting. I’m happy to answer any questions. [^1]: https://ift.tt/oqw0LTe [^2]: https://ift.tt/1em63FH [^3]: https://ift.tt/aczwlds [^4]: https://ift.tt/qf5AIo1
Monday 16 May 2022
Sunday 15 May 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: A Full-Stack Web Framework for Go
Show HN: A Full-Stack Web Framework for Go
513 by matthewmueller | 97 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN! I want to share my side project with you. It's called Bud and it's a full-stack web framework for Go. I created a short video to show you how to create a minimal Hacker News clone with Bud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoypcRqn-xA . The framework is free, open source and MIT Licensed. You can find it on Github: https://ift.tt/QK2m7Ma . I started working on Bud 2 years ago after watching the introductory Laracast videos about the Laravel web framework. I was just blown away by how productive you can be in Laravel. However, like many of you, I've been so spoiled by Go. I didn't want to go back to writing PHP, so I decided to try creating Laravel for the Go ecosystem. At this point, I just had the following goal: • Be as productive as Laravel in a typed language like Go. I got the first version working in 6 months and tried building a blog from it... It fell flat. You needed to scaffold all these files just to get started. If you're coming from Rails or Laravel you may shrug, this is pretty normal. Unfortunately, I've also been spoiled by the renaissance in frontend frameworks like Next.js. What I love about Next is that it starts out barebones and every file you add incrementally enhances your web application. This keeps the initial complexity under control. With these newly discovered constraints, I started working on the next iteration. Bud should: • Generate files only as you need them. Keep these generated files away from your application code and give developers the choice to keep them out of source control. • Feel like using a modern JS framework. This means it should work with modern frontend frameworks like Svelte and React, support live reload and have server-side rendering for better performance and SEO. With these new goals, the Bud you see today started to take shape. But along the way, I discovered a few more project goals: • The framework should be extensible from Day 1. Bud is too ambitious for one person. We're going to need an ambitious community behind this framework. • Bud should be able to provide high-level APIs for developers while compiling down to performant low-level Go code for production. • Bud should compile to a single binary. With platforms like Fly.io and Heroku, these days it's easy to not care about this, but I still cherish the idea that I can build a single binary that contains my entire web app and secure copy it up to a tiny server that doesn't even have Go installed. It's still super early days. You can find the the Roadmap on Github: https://ift.tt/C2SvpfY . I encourage you to contribute your thoughts. And here's the current documentation for what's already in Bud: https://ift.tt/DAQhJZo... . Comments are enabled for anyone to chime in. I have big plans for the framework. I hope you'll join me on this journey to build ambitious websites faster with Go!
513 by matthewmueller | 97 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN! I want to share my side project with you. It's called Bud and it's a full-stack web framework for Go. I created a short video to show you how to create a minimal Hacker News clone with Bud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoypcRqn-xA . The framework is free, open source and MIT Licensed. You can find it on Github: https://ift.tt/QK2m7Ma . I started working on Bud 2 years ago after watching the introductory Laracast videos about the Laravel web framework. I was just blown away by how productive you can be in Laravel. However, like many of you, I've been so spoiled by Go. I didn't want to go back to writing PHP, so I decided to try creating Laravel for the Go ecosystem. At this point, I just had the following goal: • Be as productive as Laravel in a typed language like Go. I got the first version working in 6 months and tried building a blog from it... It fell flat. You needed to scaffold all these files just to get started. If you're coming from Rails or Laravel you may shrug, this is pretty normal. Unfortunately, I've also been spoiled by the renaissance in frontend frameworks like Next.js. What I love about Next is that it starts out barebones and every file you add incrementally enhances your web application. This keeps the initial complexity under control. With these newly discovered constraints, I started working on the next iteration. Bud should: • Generate files only as you need them. Keep these generated files away from your application code and give developers the choice to keep them out of source control. • Feel like using a modern JS framework. This means it should work with modern frontend frameworks like Svelte and React, support live reload and have server-side rendering for better performance and SEO. With these new goals, the Bud you see today started to take shape. But along the way, I discovered a few more project goals: • The framework should be extensible from Day 1. Bud is too ambitious for one person. We're going to need an ambitious community behind this framework. • Bud should be able to provide high-level APIs for developers while compiling down to performant low-level Go code for production. • Bud should compile to a single binary. With platforms like Fly.io and Heroku, these days it's easy to not care about this, but I still cherish the idea that I can build a single binary that contains my entire web app and secure copy it up to a tiny server that doesn't even have Go installed. It's still super early days. You can find the the Roadmap on Github: https://ift.tt/C2SvpfY . I encourage you to contribute your thoughts. And here's the current documentation for what's already in Bud: https://ift.tt/DAQhJZo... . Comments are enabled for anyone to chime in. I have big plans for the framework. I hope you'll join me on this journey to build ambitious websites faster with Go!
New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
Ask HN: Is anyone else glad the crypto market is crashing?
602 by blueberrychpstx | 614 comments on Hacker News.
Obviously it's bad if people lose their entire life savings and all that dead horse beating disclaimer stuff. I fancy myself as a somewhat esoteric idea person, and so when I first discovered cryptocurrency a few years ago, I was very excited to explore the mind bending ways we can build __NEW__ things. Instead, JPEGs and skeuomorphic representations of traditional financial vehicles in web3 space. I'm hoping this crash and those in the future rid the space of the toxic backrooms these $30,000 jpegs provide access to and get us to collectively work on building really exciting cool new things. What do you all think?
602 by blueberrychpstx | 614 comments on Hacker News.
Obviously it's bad if people lose their entire life savings and all that dead horse beating disclaimer stuff. I fancy myself as a somewhat esoteric idea person, and so when I first discovered cryptocurrency a few years ago, I was very excited to explore the mind bending ways we can build __NEW__ things. Instead, JPEGs and skeuomorphic representations of traditional financial vehicles in web3 space. I'm hoping this crash and those in the future rid the space of the toxic backrooms these $30,000 jpegs provide access to and get us to collectively work on building really exciting cool new things. What do you all think?
Friday 13 May 2022
Thursday 12 May 2022
Wednesday 11 May 2022
Tuesday 10 May 2022
New best story on Hacker News: No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
No Dislikes has officially ruined YouTube for me
705 by techsin101 | 295 comments on Hacker News.
Spoiler: rant. I don't know what happened exactly but I'm pretty sure it's the lack of dislike stats, that now my suggestions and home page of youtube is filled, and I mean FILLEDDD!, with videos that have 4k stock clips, catchy title, but completely lacking in content. Misleading 100%. Not 1, not 2, but like 8/10 videos are now garbage stock footage with bs commentary over nothing. Example: Nasa just discovered truth about solar system!?!?!?! Science has progressed a lot in last 100 years.... So and so first discovered pluto in 1xxx Mayans used to think balbala... Some historians think.... Now scientist finally have answered.... New evidence (2014 research) shows there might be a planet ... No explanation of study because you know it actually requires some comprehension... Insert failed attempt at humor... Leave a comment on your thoughts.. =========== Same script, like 8th grade essay you didn't study for, but multiplied by 100x. We knew it was gonna ruin youtube, people told youtube it was gonna ruin it, and now exactly that happened. Click baity videos with nice stock footage that is barely relevant and half assed 'answers'.
705 by techsin101 | 295 comments on Hacker News.
Spoiler: rant. I don't know what happened exactly but I'm pretty sure it's the lack of dislike stats, that now my suggestions and home page of youtube is filled, and I mean FILLEDDD!, with videos that have 4k stock clips, catchy title, but completely lacking in content. Misleading 100%. Not 1, not 2, but like 8/10 videos are now garbage stock footage with bs commentary over nothing. Example: Nasa just discovered truth about solar system!?!?!?! Science has progressed a lot in last 100 years.... So and so first discovered pluto in 1xxx Mayans used to think balbala... Some historians think.... Now scientist finally have answered.... New evidence (2014 research) shows there might be a planet ... No explanation of study because you know it actually requires some comprehension... Insert failed attempt at humor... Leave a comment on your thoughts.. =========== Same script, like 8th grade essay you didn't study for, but multiplied by 100x. We knew it was gonna ruin youtube, people told youtube it was gonna ruin it, and now exactly that happened. Click baity videos with nice stock footage that is barely relevant and half assed 'answers'.
Monday 9 May 2022
Saturday 7 May 2022
Friday 6 May 2022
Thursday 5 May 2022
Wednesday 4 May 2022
Tuesday 3 May 2022
Sunday 1 May 2022
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Path to a free, self-taught education in Computer Science 495 by netfortius | 130 comments on Hacker News.
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U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs 444 by lxm | 336 comments on Hacker News.
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So you want to study mathematics 507 by musgravepeter | 292 comments on Hacker News.