jeffshek (u/jeffshek)

jeffshek commented on What I’ve learned from users paulgraham.com/users.html... · Posted by u/sginn

JL-Akrasia · 3 years ago

Caveat - The best type of mentors for founders are other founders. VCs, Incubators, are not optimal mentors, rather those are key folks to have in your pocket.

My suggestion for all founders - find a mentor who is a founder & builder.

jeffshek · 3 years ago

In defense of YC, many of them are previously founders of startups.

jeffshek commented on The US Navy F-14 Tomcat aircrew that inspired the Top Gun Movie theaviationgeekclub.com/t... · Posted by u/rmason

sydthrowaway · 4 years ago

Can someone explain in the latest movie why the US couldn't use its 5th/6th generation fighter?

jeffshek · 4 years ago

Not sure if you mean why in the movie or why they couldn’t in real-life

in the movie, they bring up the mission requirements at low altitude render a certain tech of the new gen planes useless under the scenario because of its dependence on radar iirc

in real life the decision behind avoiding 5th is because most of the information about the planes are still highly classified, ie there is no full feature spec of 5th gen planes available, so no way united states military would let them film a plane

jeffshek commented on Google Docs New Feature: Pageless support.google.com/docs/t... · Posted by u/eddyerburgh

tomComb · 4 years ago

I preferred notion initially, for many of the same reasons you outlined, but eventually I just couldn’t stand how slow notion is. Google Docs is so much faster.

I’m interested to try Google’s new tables product when I get a chance.

jeffshek · 4 years ago

I had a similar feeling a while ago - but revisited Notion after a year or so and they've made a lot of speed improvements to it!

A couple of months ago, I got a Apple M1 and a lot of these electron apps load much snappier. (Slightly impractical fix)

jeffshek commented on Django: Reformatted code with Black github.com/django/django/... · Posted by u/tams

heavenlyblue · 4 years ago

Why do you even care? I never look at that part of the code. If PyCharm automatically removed/added imports without me managing them I would be a happier person.

jeffshek · 4 years ago

There is an option to hide and autoformat inports.

jeffshek commented on Tango: Create step-by-step documentation with screenshots tango.us/... · Posted by u/amrrs

jeffshek · 4 years ago

We've recently been using this at work, and it's seriously amazing.

jeffshek commented on Fixing under-engineered code vs. fixing over-engineered code github.com/Dobiasd/articl... · Posted by u/Dobiasd

xnx · 5 years ago

GO4?

jeffshek · 5 years ago

Gang of 4 - 4 authors from the book

jeffshek commented on Why I have zero faith in crypto venture capitalists bennettftomlin.com/2021/0... · Posted by u/shoto_io

crazygringo · 5 years ago

Venmo is instant.

Clawbacks are an entirely different matter.

And while yes, the absence of clawbacks means your money is then "yours", it also means that if you're hacked or defrauded, there's no way to recover funds because it's now "theirs".

For people who aren't engaged in illegal activity, the ability for banks and courts to retrieve illegally (or even accidentally) transferred funds is widely seen as a feature. Most people prefer the legal system to be able to ultimately determine who owns money (or real estate or shares of a company), instead of something anonymous and irreversible. After all, enforcement of property and contracts is the main reason government even exists, if you're a libertarian -- which means restoring property in case of theft and fraud and breach. (If you're a regular liberal or conservative, then it's one of the main reasons.) Are you suggesting it's beneficial for cryptocurrencies to be outside the realm of property rights and the legal system?

Your concerns about your funds being "yours" are really only worth worrying about if you live in a failed/anarchic/warlord/etc state... which fortunately isn't the case for most HN'ers, or most people generally.

jeffshek · 5 years ago

Venmo isn't instant. Send yourself more than 15k. If that goes through, try to send it back.

Sure, the row in the database is instant though.

I agree it is a feature for a bank to be able to undo mistakes. The problem happens when a bank commits the mistakes and refuses to acknowledge it.

This is akin to all of us submitting to google and gmail, its great unless our account gets flagged by an algorithm by mistake. No mistake, i would be screwed.

jeffshek commented on Disasters I've seen in a microservices world world.hey.com/joaoqalves/... · Posted by u/gregdoesit

jameshart · 5 years ago

I guess you just won’t get traction on HN writing ‘Disasters I’ve seen in a monolithic world’.

If you have never gone through a significant dependency upgrade on a large monolithic codebase, you might not appreciate the value of microservice architecture. I’ve been at companies where the number one technical achievement for a tech organization for an entire calendar year was ‘successfully moved the app from .net 2 to .net 4’. Have you ever gone through the process of integrating an acquired company’s monolith into an acquiring company’s monolith? It’s futile. With a microservice architecture though I’ve seen acquisitions integrate significant systems (things like billing and auth) in a matter of weeks where monolith projects dragged on for years.

Sure, there’s no silver bullets. But there are a lot of problems with monoliths which microservices eliminate. Not without trade offs, naturally.

jeffshek · 5 years ago

In those organizations, I highly doubt microservices or monolithic decisions would have made a difference.

Disorganized management won't magically get fixed if the root problems of ASAP, priority, techinal debt, etc features aren't fixed.

The fact that the organization was trying to combine two large monolithic codebase into one is an obvious smell that technical decisions are made by someone non-technical.

jeffshek commented on Rejected from a VC due to tech stack indiehackers.com/post/rej... · Posted by u/nreece

jeffshek · 5 years ago

I suspect the tech stack was merely the 5th or 6th reason for not funding, they were just looking for a way to move on.

If they were reasonably interested, VCs won't say no - they just pretend to not see your emails until someone is about to lead a round.

jeffshek commented on Ban Cryptocurrency to Fight Ransomware wsj.com/articles/ban-cryp... · Posted by u/mgh2

soonnow · 5 years ago

In my opinion Cryptocurrency is going to be attacked from three directions:

- Environmental Reasons: Bitcoin alone is using as much power as a small country. "Bitcoin production is estimated to generate between 22 and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year" (in 2019). A typical car emits 4.6 tons of Co2 per year. So immediately not using Bitcoin would save as much CO2 as 4.5 million cars of the road. The effort to remove that amount of CO2 through innovation or legislation is steep and faces backlash.

- Monetary Control: The US have fought hard to become the reserve currency of the world and they will not give this up without a fight. As well as monetary easing and restrictions are one of the few ways to control economic cycles, to flatten a boom or bust curve. No country will give up this power without a fight, as has been seen in Turkey, which already declared Bitcoin illegal.

- Crime and Money Laundering: I do not have hard numbers on this, but clearly cryptocurrency is being used in criminal activities and money laundering. It's like the perfect match for Columbian drug gangs who now can move money anonymously around the world without having to transport it in suit cases. The same is true for ransomware attacks. Those unmarked bills will be replaced with cryptocurrency for any competent criminal.

For any of these reasons I would already expect states to make certain cryptocurrency illegal. Bitcoin being the most important one here. I see the future of cryptocurrency in coins that are: - Locked to a currency (as in notated in US dollars) - Reasonably environmentally friendly - Traceable, with basically the same tracking as any banking transaction today.

I fully expect states will set these requirements at some point in law, once alternative coins exist that fulfill these conditions. I believe that Bitcoin will be illegal or irrelevant at some point and be replaced with better coins.

I might be wrong on this. I'm not invested in the cryptocurrency space at all and I'd love to hear why I'm wrong.

jeffshek · 5 years ago

Disclaimer: I own some (not enough, I wish more).

I think your points were valid when cryptocurrency first started, but now it's now a bit too entrenched to be easily squashed.

1) Many miners use renewable energy. China uses a bit of coal for mining, but recent news (or FUD) has most miners scrambling for "greener" energy. Bitcoin's energy usage is talked about quite a bit, but doesn't seem to really dissuade.

2) If Bitcoin had been started by a large organization versus grassroots - this likely would have been squashed. Instead, considering now how widespread it is, and how many politicians own crypto, along with Coinbase being affluent enough to lobby against this - this scenario now seems unlikely. However, I do agree, there will be a fight for monetary control and it may be ugly, but ultimately cryptocurrency will survive in some way or another.

3) Yes - in the beginning, the vast majority of crypto in was used for illegal reasons. Monero is probably a better use case as it's untraceable. Bitcoin has a public ledger making it much easier to track. However, the percentage of overall transactions (crypto) for illegal activities has decreased over time.

USDC is probably the best bet of what you're imagining of a crypto pegged to the US Dollar. It also allows for a blacklist of addresses known in illegal activities.

With all that being said, DeFi may prove to be a larger use case, as it's now possible to create "virtual" banks that run on code and no humans, etc.