owenwil (u/owenwil) - Readit News

owenwil commented on Show HN: We built an open source, zero webhooks payment processor github.com/flowglad/flowg... · Posted by u/agreeahmed

agreeahmed · a month ago

But you do have to figure out which ones are salient to you and how they map to your specific app's lifecycle.

As a very small example: would you need to handle `charge.succeeded` and `payment_intent.succeeded`? How would you dedupe processing these events vs `customer.subscription.created`? Today, there's a lot of incidental knowledge about your payment processor's specific approach to webhook events that you need to know in order to integrate them.

owenwil · a month ago

Yeah, this isn’t great today. We have been exploring Webhook bundles/groups for common integration shapes that make a bit easier to make the right choices based on what you’re doing and hope to have something out here to help soon.

owenwil commented on Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break urlahmed.com/2025/11/05/w... · Posted by u/linkregister

nradov · a month ago

Canada under its current leadership is probably a dead end. I'm not trying to be cruel but that's just the reality of your situation. Time to think about emigrating if you want a better future.

owenwil · a month ago

My experience (I’m a hiring manager) is that a LARGE number of big US-based tech companies are only hiring in Canada right now for pretty obvious reasons, and are competing aggressively for top talent here. Many companies are backfilling American roles with remote Canadians when someone in the US exits right now. It’s the best I’ve seen in the ten years I’ve been here.

owenwil commented on We revamped our docs for AI-driven development docs.freestyle.sh/blog/do... · Posted by u/benswerd

owenwil · 5 months ago

This is great! AFAIK our Stripe Docs were first to ship the copy for LLMs button about 14-16 months ago, which Mintlify copied the pattern (and some other patterns at the same time) from and proliferated everywhere since everyone uses them for docs out of the box now. It’s really cool to see how it’s quickly become a standard now to have that button! I do think we can do deeper integrations with LLMs that are probably more useful over time.

owenwil commented on Tesla Robotaxi Videos Show Speeding, Driving into Wrong Lane bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

BrandonLive · 6 months ago

Today’s “FSD” has its limitations and requires supervision, but your description of it is not anything like my experience even on a HW3 vehicle. In fact, in many years of using Autopilot and various “FSD Beta” and “FSD (Supervised)” versions for several tens of thousands of miles I’ve literally never seen it “slam on the brakes suddenly for shadows” or “veer into the wrong lane”. I’m not a cult member and my next car won’t be a Tesla because I cannot support Musk after the horrible things he has done these last 2-3 years, but “FSD” is phenomenal when used appropriately and with the right expectations about what it is and what it isn’t. And it has improved a ton over the years, too.

The end-to-end solution was a real game changer, and while the previous solution was still useful and impressive in its own right, moving to the new stack was a night and day difference. With V13 finally taking advantage of HW4, and all the work they’ve been doing since then (plus upcoming HW5 introduction), it’s totally within the realm of possibility that they achieve viable L4 autonomy beyond this kind of small scale demo (and I hope some form of L3 maybe on HW4 before long for customer vehicles).

owenwil · 6 months ago

I can give you a number of locations to visit in B.C. and the time of day for the shadows if you want to experience it for yourself! Hasn’t been fixed in four years yet. It has gotten less frequent in general though.

owenwil commented on Tesla Robotaxi Videos Show Speeding, Driving into Wrong Lane bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

mebizzle · 6 months ago

I have a Model 3 and it drives amazingly well, in Florida of all places. Ive taken it all over back roads in FL/GL with a little bit of AL and MS as well. The issues you described were much more prevalent when I got my car in '23, and I have genuinely been watching them become fewer and further between as time passed. I've driven at least 10000 miles on it in the last two years and I have only had to intervene twice.

I have no motivation to be positive; I own no Tesla stock or position and just like it because its the best car for me currently. I cannot emphasize enough just how different my lived experience has been from how you describe it.

owenwil · 6 months ago

I am confident that two things can be true: a) it can be better significantly in some places than others, especially like Florida, which has a lot of large, wide roads, that are probably mapped more than a lot of places which creates a more stable experience and b) Their choice of hardware and software approach is obviously less safe given their limitations, and has a number of compromises that introduce unpredictability vs other approaches.

It definitely has come a good way since I first got my car, but it's still _unpredictable_ and even seems to progress, then randomly regress, between releases. The big one is just navigating unpredictable environments, which is where Waymo is clearly far, far ahead.

In the real world, I think their approach has clearly hit a ceiling and I definitely feel a lot safer sitting in a Waymo than a Tesla, I'm not sure the gap is going to narrow unless something drastic changes.

owenwil commented on Tesla Robotaxi Videos Show Speeding, Driving into Wrong Lane bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

manjalyc · 6 months ago

A fun anecdote - a lot of people may remember Roomba from forever back with their automated little vacuums. Roomba's market share declined significantly because they failed to adopt Lidar technology as quickly as their competitors, instead they depended on the bumper for as long as possible. This put them at a disadvantage in navigation and efficiency as their competitors started using Lidar. Combined with aggressive pricing from rivals, expiry of its patented roller in 2022, a weird insistence to not combine vacuum and mopping into one device, Roomba (or iRobot now) is a just little fish in the sea it made.

owenwil · 6 months ago

100%—I enjoy telling life-long Roomba users about how far behind the technology is when they try to convince me to buy one! I've been using Roborock for a long time and it's pretty astounding how far ahead they are; full on item analysis + avoidance (including poop!) being the big one for us, let alone just knowing their exact location within the house. And there's a number of others that have pushed it a whole bunch... the folks at Matic seem to have pushed it even further (not ironically, with just vision, which actually feels appropriate here) it's a shame it's not available in Canada and no obvious plans to roll out here, would love to buy one: https://maticrobots.com/

Meanwhile Roomba seems to have done...pretty much nothing? Reminds me of the death of Skype when everyone transitioned to literally everything else while they floundered around.

owenwil commented on Tesla Robotaxi Videos Show Speeding, Driving into Wrong Lane bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/jmsflknr

owenwil · 6 months ago

I don’t think this is a surprise to anyone who actually owns a Tesla (I own a Model Y). Full self-driving is just _bad_ in comparison to technology from Waymo et al; it slams on the brakes suddenly for shadows, veers into the wrong lane, hesitates in pretty standard intersections, and doesn’t even understand basic concepts like school buses or trains. Here in BC, it completely ignores the 30kph school safety zones, which seems pretty basic.

My experience with FSD is that while it feels “magic” at times, it’s like a teenage driver that you have to baby sit constantly. It’s genuinely impressive how well it works given the really limited hardware, but if you use it routinely you know it will make at least one weird/dangerous choice on every trip.

Generally, I really don’t trust it in most situations except properly delineated highways, but even then it can be a crapshoot. If you’ve experienced FSD then get in a Waymo, they are night and day different—a lot more predictable, and able to navigate uncertainty compared with what Tesla has built. It’s likely down to a combination of both software and their insistence that radar doesn’t matter, but it clearly does.

I would never get in a Tesla that purports to drive itself, there’s no way it’s safe or worth the risk. I won’t even use it with my family in the car.

I know a handful of others who own Teslas and feel the same, despite what the fans spout online. I generally like my Model Y, but I definitely do not trust FSD—I find it hard to believe that it’s even being taken seriously in the media. Not a great endorsement if even your own customers don’t trust it after use it.

owenwil commented on Does the tech industry need so many workers on H-1B visas? msn.com/en-us/money/caree... · Posted by u/thehrfairplay

Ralo · a year ago

Sorry but that's simply not accurate at all.

The entry positions are FLOODED with new comers. We aren't hiring them because they're the best fit, we have plenty of unemployed locals begging for work. To say we only bring in the best because we cannot fill the roles is a blatant lie.

You sound like you're describing senior position, which I would say is fair.

owenwil · a year ago

I’m talking about intermediate to senior—we haven’t had junior roles for a while, and junior roles have never _really_ been good for immigrants anyway. I’m a hiring manager and can tell you that it’s true in my experience that it’s not about money or being ‘cheaper’ but who is the best fit.

The weirder thing that’s going on right now that’s counter to all of this is US-based companies _only_ hiring Canadians, rather than Americans, when people leave because Canadians are cheaper overall—even though American companies tend to pay more. It’s kind of a paradox, but works out well.

owenwil commented on Does the tech industry need so many workers on H-1B visas? msn.com/en-us/money/caree... · Posted by u/thehrfairplay

Ralo · a year ago

Were you very specialized in a certain field, filling a senior position?

As a Canadian with a CS degree who's been trying to get into tech for years, this is horrible to hear. We have thousands of new grads in Canada who end up working in fast food because they get passed over for cheaper immigrants. I've seen it first hand, all my tech friends have seen it. We're worse than the US for this, and we have even less tech jobs here.

We don't need to be bring more entry level talent, we have tons of that not being utilized here.

There's plenty of talk about greedy corporations until the topic of using immigration to increase their profits comes up. Then it's silence.

owenwil · a year ago

I was coming in as a ‘normal’ developer design manager, but that is likely fairly specialized. I’m guessing that was in my favor. I know others with a couple of years engineering experience under their belt having a similar experience. But yes, the lack of jobs can be an issue. Lots of folks I know, myself included, now working remote for US-based companies.

In tech in Canada, usually we aren’t hiring immigrants because they’re cheaper—visas, moving someone, etc, is a huge expense. It’s often more that they’re the best possible fit for the role. After Covid with remote work etc, I don’t think there’s as much of that immigration going on, though—I don’t know of many Canadian companies sponsoring right now.

owenwil commented on Does the tech industry need so many workers on H-1B visas? msn.com/en-us/money/caree... · Posted by u/thehrfairplay

rednafi · a year ago

This was probably true a few years ago, but Canada’s tech market has shrunk a lot. I had the option to move to Canada or Germany, and I chose the latter, even though I wasn’t happy about having to pick up German and dealing with EU bureaucracies. I had trouble finding a well-paid job in Canada that would give me an okay lifestyle in somewhere that's not Alberta.

owenwil · a year ago

The market is still going, it’s just pretty tight right now, yeah. For what it’s worth, I lived in Europe for 5 years (NL) before this and honestly I think you’ve made a great choice there too. I learned a lot working in the Netherlands, and there’s lots of great things about living there you can’t find in North America. I miss not being bound to a car!