Some years ago, I would say that this job title might have come under Middleware or Integration Engineer, or something like that, especially in big banks or firms like IBM. You might also try looking at job listings at a messaging vendor (e.g. Confluent).
Readit Newsmonodot commented on Ask HN: Is "messaging systems specialist" a real job title or niche? · Posted by u/pella_may
monodot commented on My first attempt at iOS app development mgx.me/my-first-attempt-a... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
Fascinated to read this post as I’m doing almost exactly the same thing. Just started using Xcode for the first time, a month ago. I’m not inexperienced with software development, but having to rely mostly on Xcode, Apple’s Developer documentation, information embedded inside WWDC videos, and random forum posts, has been a pretty rough experience.
So Claude has been a massive help, to get to a working app quickly. I am using it in a similar style to the author. Discuss in the UI, try really hard to cherry-pick from the code it generates, while trying to understand what it’s doing. Claude is not clever enough to realise it’s selling you out-of-date APIs, so i feel I need to be super vigilant, which chimes with what folk are saying here about the iOS upgrade treadmill. I’ve supplemented with a couple of technical ebooks as backup.
But the feeling of having your own app, that does something which improves your own life, running on that computer you’ve been carrying in your pocket for years, is extremely rewarding! (In my use case it needs to be an app not a PWA because it needs to integrate with device APIs.)
I use Pocket and I like the article recommendations. I've found some interesting article through it. I'd be happy if they continue to improve that. It means I won't have to turn to sites like Google News or even Reddit.
Agree, the Pocket recommendations on Firefox’s New Tab page are good and have helped me discover new websites outside my usual bubble.
monodot commented on Zendesk pretends to be open source? zendesk.co.uk/help-desk-s... · Posted by u/tailspin2019
They’re not the only company to do this. “InVideo” (a totally not open source SaaS product) also does the same.
monodot commented on Ask HN: Why have we accepted the cookie pop-up situation across the web? · Posted by u/LightG
There's not exactly a centralized directory of cool tech coops, but there's a few places that list some or where they hang out. [1] There's also a fair bunch of coop orientation in the XMPP/ActivityPub ecosystems.
Some projects are driven by direct donations, some others via grants (all NLNet-supported projects) and business partnerships (Blender foundation), some provide paid services to fund R&D (SourceHut).
Overall, it's technically possible to derive a decent income from such schemes, but that's not exactly widespread. Many dedicated hackers will work for minimum wage or less, but some will arrange either:
- to reduce their expenses, by moving to cheaper places [2] or living in shared flats or communities; if you're organized as a collective even food and furniture can have close-to-zero cost [3]
- or to have a high-wage part-time job on the side, or support contracts to pay the bills; if you get half-time to work on your pet projects, that's already quite an achievement
Overall, building a cooperative economy asks the question of where does the money go? The more autonomy we can achieve, and the more money we can "recycle" into other cooperatives, the less of our resources leak into the pockets of the 1%.
So yes, if you make a really cool project people appreciate and/or can depend on for their business, you can sure make a living out of it: just be sure to use copyleft licenses (eg. aGPLv3) so you're not scammed out of your work by big businesses. But personally, i'm more interested in non-profits driving R&D with a vision (like Framasoft does with the Degooglize Internet campaign and eg. Peertube/Mobilizon project).
[1] for example libreho.st, chatons.org (french-speaking) for hosting coops
[2] for example in France, if you don't insist on living in the big cities, you can find places to rent for close to free once you subtract housing support from the rent ; i guess the same is true in many places
[3] skipping unsold food from (super)markets or growing food in the backyard; we could also mention utility hacking for free electricity/water but i can't say most devs i know do that
Thanks for this. Didn't know about the 'tech co-op' scene, so appreciate the detailed info!
monodot commented on Ask HN: Why have we accepted the cookie pop-up situation across the web? · Posted by u/LightG
It's not all personal, but it's all unrelated to business. As an anarchist, I refuse to work on projects i find unethical, which includes any form of profit-driven project. Sorry i can't give you pointers on how to hack around capitalism, my only solution is pure abolition :-)
I should note that i'm also not a professional hacker. Programming/sysadmin is more of a passion than a trade to me, and i'm just a lowly amateur unworthy of much praise.
But to be fair, there's amazing non-profits and worker cooperatives building cool software (Framasoft comes to mind). If only more fellow hackers stopped working for evil bosses and started to work for public interest...
How does one find out more about this scene, and more importantly does it actually provide you with enough income to live on? (Rent is expensive in cities)
Ad blocking is fairly mainstream these days but I've never seen (or even really considered it could be done) it in this format. The marketing material is unsurprisingly light on technical details but, assuming this is real, possibly it installs itself as a network device and filters DNS queries similar to Pi-Hole..?
What confuses me is that, surely you could achieve the same outcome using software with very little overhead. Doing so saves all the manufacturing and distribution costs so you'd expect it would be a more profitable approach. So why the stick? Is the filtering overhead large enough to justify a dedicated co-processor or is the form factor used here really a placebo? In the way that a heavier wrist watch feels more valuable, does plugging a physical device into your computer to protect it/make it faster, _feel_ more effective than installing software that does the same job?
I wonder if this is aimed at elderly folk or people with elderly relatives. It looks like a device (with dubious reviews!) that you can give to them, which they just plug in to their laptop. That seems more convenient than setting up some software, especially if they live far away.
monodot commented on Ask HN: M1 MacBook Pro or Lenovo X1 Carbon with Ubuntu · Posted by u/krisdigital
I’ve had an X1 Carbon for almost 2 years now as a development machine, and I really like it. My previous laptop was a 13” MBP.
The X1 is light and fast. I run Fedora, and work often in containers. I have the likes of Podman, VS Code, IntelliJ and Atom running and many Firefox tabs open, all without any problems.
Other good points are the 2xUSB ports, HDMI, and good battery life.
The main downside is the 256GB HDD, which fills up far too quickly, so I end up having to do a bit of housekeeping quite often. But as a dev machine, I can recommend it.
monodot commented on Ask HN: What's the best Linux distro for fullstack development? · Posted by u/Arisaka1
I would also like to know anything rhel based.
If you want to work in a RHEL-like environment (use a similar package manager, configuration, and so on), then you could look at Fedora (Workstation edition), which is in the same branch of the Linux family tree as RHEL.
Fedora/RHEL uses RPMs to install software, so you can check in advance whether your favourite application offers an RPM. Most of the major dev tools do, including VS Code, etc.
But whichever distro you choose for your desktop OS, you can still try out other distros by running them inside a container.