bigtimesink (u/bigtimesink)

bigtimesink commented on Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise? · Posted by u/throwaway929997

NoMoreNicksLeft · a year ago

Startups though, ugh. Maybe tomorrow you will end up a millionaire with stock, or you're eating catfood and hoping the grocery bill difference will be enough to pay the mortgage next month while you desperately look for a job in the worst economy since 2008. If there's an in-between, I've never seen it personally.

bigtimesink · a year ago

There are zombie startups. The business has stalled out, but breaks even. The staff and investors are checked out. Ambitious product people show up with big ideas that never work and then leave. They keep going until someone finds a buyer or the business fails.

bigtimesink commented on Ask HN: Any jobs that don't force you to always be advancing career wise? · Posted by u/throwaway929997

dnissley · a year ago

Even there giving the impression of not wanting to advance is often a good way to mark yourself as a "low performer". A savvy understanding of politics is required in these circumstances.

bigtimesink · a year ago

Promos before the terminal level are easy because your manager wants to retain you. After the terminal level, they're used as carrots to squeeze more work out of you. One scenario to look out for is the company doing well. You realize your RSUs are worth more than job hopping, so you aim for adequate, but the company doesn't like that you opted out of the staff promo rat race.

bigtimesink commented on Ask HN: EM to Director · Posted by u/emthrowaway123

gpapilion · a year ago

Scope, it’s all about scope of your team. Em to director requires opportunity as well as performance.

For you that means focusing on a growing area of the company, and finding new areas to grow your team in. You also need to have a team of managers, who are growing their scope as well.

bigtimesink · a year ago

I've been on the IC version of this. You have to be on the right team, do well, and have the right friends to get a promotion past the terminal level. Ask yourself where the team is in its lifecycle and how much growth it really has ahead of it.

bigtimesink commented on Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls pilaenergy.com... · Posted by u/coleashman

nikodunk · a year ago

Great points! This is meant as whole room backup - so it’ll keep your fridge (and a few other small devices like wifi, etc) running for 2-3 days - a pretty long outage.

It’s basically a huge, 21st century UPS.

It can also do arbitrage and charge when it’s cheap and deploy the power when it’s expensive.

The main problem with a powerwall is it doesn’t work for renters, and costs 20,000+ (and permits, etc) if you do own your home.

A pull-sting generator (gas) is great - and a push-button one is around 1K also btw- but it doesn’t go on automatically if you’re out, and be noisy, can only be started after the hurricane, etc

Finally, local-first is super important to us for outage or otherwise - we integrate with Home Assistant and have public MQTT topics you can directly hook into no matter what happens to Pila the company, as long as your hardware lasts (predicted 10 years).

Idk - that’s where we feel like the position and gap in this market is? But we may be wrong :)

bigtimesink · a year ago

> Great points - however this can keep your fridge running for 2-3 days (a pretty long outage).

$1,000 buys a lot of groceries. It's cheaper to to have a small supply of shelf stable food for outages.

> It can also do arbitrage and charge when it’s cheap and deploy the power when it’s expensive.

This has the same problem. It takes a long time to make back the $1000.

bigtimesink commented on Former Facebook execs are running Firefox adtech goblin.band/notes/a55nxem... · Posted by u/jordigh

rvz · a year ago

This is a better source: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/anonym-technology-overv...

bigtimesink · a year ago

Where does it say Mozilla has your browsing history or sells it?

bigtimesink commented on Former Facebook execs are running Firefox adtech goblin.band/notes/a55nxem... · Posted by u/jordigh

rvz · a year ago

Lots of expletives in the article, but the TL;DR:

Mozilla bought an ad-tracking company run by ex-Meta executives and Mozilla is selling your browsing activity in Firefox "privately" to advertisers.

Mozilla has given up on privacy.

bigtimesink · a year ago

> Mozilla is selling your browsing activity in Firefox "privately" to advertisers

Do you have a better source for this?

bigtimesink commented on Firmware update bricks HP printers, makes them unable to use HP cartridges arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/speckx

behnamoh · a year ago

no one asked for water resistance, but literally everyone said "we want replaceable batteries and don't care about phone thinness either", but Apple doesn't care.

bigtimesink · a year ago

> no one asked for water resistance

Manufacturers put water-sensitive indicators in electronics to flag this during warranty claims. Before water resistant phones, people would desperately google for how to save their phones.

> don't care about phone thinness either

There are rumors the next iPhone with have a thin model. You should also look into the original Motorola Razr. It was the original sexy phone precisely because of how thin it was.

bigtimesink commented on Firmware update bricks HP printers, makes them unable to use HP cartridges arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/speckx

brokenmachine · a year ago

Imagine a world with replaceable batteries.

bigtimesink · a year ago

Now you're trading off water resistance, size, and capacity. Choose 2.

bigtimesink commented on Firmware update bricks HP printers, makes them unable to use HP cartridges arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/speckx

neilv · a year ago

I wonder whether HP will get its comeuppance, for years of jerkiness, when an LLM is involved in most printer purchasing decisions, and that LLM will have been trained on Reddit, HN, etc.

Or will consumer "AI" services offer "integrated placement" for brands, which also has the effect of neutering valid criticism of the brand?

bigtimesink · a year ago

It doesn't take very much effort to look at ink costs when buying a printer, so this is on consumers. It might even be the rational choice for low-income consumers since it's cheaper in the long run than buying a more expensive printer with a 25% APR credit card.

bigtimesink commented on Firmware update bricks HP printers, makes them unable to use HP cartridges arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/speckx

jancsika · a year ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724

Notice that Apple admits it did this, for the date that makes sense for what the user is claiming.

The only debate point is whether they actually did it for the reason of trying to save failing batteries, or whether that was a smokescreen for incentivizing users to buy a new device.

Given the evidence, I think it's wrong to call for receipts here.

bigtimesink · a year ago

I had one of these phones that would crash under load and the update fixed it. The technical fix was sound. Batteries can't supply full power as they age, and the CPU needs high power when it runs faster. It's an annoying reality of battery powered devices that looks like a conspiracy to boost sales.