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scottlilly commented on I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions   twitter.com/graycrawford/... · Posted by u/aa_is_op
scottlilly · 2 years ago
Several years ago, I wrote a chess-like game where the shape of the pieces showed their potential moves (https://github.com/scottlilly/mogrichess). This was needed because the a capturing piece gained the movement abilities of the piece it could capture, so pieces' movement abilities were always changing.

Unfortunately, I never got around to writing a good AI so you could play against the computer. At some point, I'd like to get back to that project.

scottlilly commented on IDEs we had 30 years ago   blogsystem5.substack.com/... · Posted by u/titaniumtown
jmclnx · 2 years ago
Brief by underwear was by far my favorite in the DOS days. It ran great on the 286 I had at the time.

IIRC, something like it was ported to Linux in the mid 90s for purchasing. But Linux had vi and Emacs so I do not know how successful that was.

scottlilly · 2 years ago
I remember a version named "dBrief", for those of us programming dBase/Clipper code. It was a great tool back then.
scottlilly commented on Repelled by high car prices, Americans are holding on to their vehicles longer   apnews.com/article/cars-o... · Posted by u/LinuxBender
vr46 · 3 years ago
Funnily enough, just today I’ve decided, or submitted to, running my current non-EV car until the death (it‘s, or mine).

I’ve only got 20 years left on my driving licence and I can’t imagine affording a comparable EV (I drive a 2013 Audi 3.0 Biturbo A6 with ALL the trimmings) and then having to modify the house to get a place to park and charge - just for a car.

scottlilly · 3 years ago
The same for me. My current car is a 2014 model, with 42k miles on it. I probably drive less than 2,000 miles a year. The car looks great, drives great, and has plenty of safety features.

Unless there's some life-changing event that requires me to get a larger vehicle, I plan to keep this car until it drops, or I do.

scottlilly commented on Wearing an eye mask during sleep improves episodic learning and alertness   pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3... · Posted by u/mmaia
aksss · 3 years ago
https://mantasleep.com/products/manta-sleep-mask-sound

No experience with it but sounds like the kind of thing you're after.

scottlilly · 3 years ago
I've been using a Manta Sleep mask (no speakers) for the last year and half, and love it. Unlike the cheap eye mask, it doesn't have an elastic strap that eventually gets out of shape. And it blocks 100% of light for me.

As a side sleeper, I can't use masks with speakers or even long ear plugs, as they put enough pressure on my ear cartilage that they make sleep uncomfortable.

scottlilly commented on Dreamhost Shared Hosting Has Been Down for 3 Days   dreamhoststatus.com... · Posted by u/bluedino
dabernathy89 · 3 years ago
Siteground is a decent option for cheap-ish WordPress hosting. Even GoDaddy is actually good these days.
scottlilly · 3 years ago
I'll second Siteground. My WordPress sites were gradually getting slower on DreamHost - with support saying there weren't any problems. I switched to Siteground a few months ago, and so far, I've been happy with them.

Siteground had a "move my WordPress site" plugin that worked much smoother than I expected.

scottlilly commented on Take more screenshots   alexwlchan.net/2022/07/sc... · Posted by u/goranmoomin
suby · 3 years ago
I've gotten mixed reactions whenever I share this, but when I program I like to record my screen with OBS.

* It's a mental hack to keep me accountable, especially now working from home. If I'm in an office anyone can look over and see whether or not I'm working. It started as an attempt to mimic this feeling at home, even though I'll be the only one to ever see the recordings.

* It allows me to go back and see how I worked in the past. I have a few videos of myself working from 2015 which I think is pretty neat just because of how different my workflow was back then compared to now. I'm not using the same tools or even on the same operating system.

* I'm working on video games which is what makes this very useful for me. If something visually interesting happens, or if there's graphical bug of some kind, I can go back and breakdown exactly what happened. I've stepped through videos frame by frame in the past to debug, it's been surprisingly helpful.

* It allows me to go back and see my progress. I can know what I was working on a given day, see how far I've progressed, it's just generally a good motivator. You can of course do this with git, but if you're working on something visual it can be nice to see it in motion rather than a textual diff.

scottlilly · 3 years ago
I've been streaming some of my side projects on Twitch, with OBS.

During the stream, I keep up a fairly constant spoken description of what I'm doing, what I'm thinking, what problem I'm stuck on, etc.

I've noticed I've also been speaking my thoughts out loud when programming, but not streaming. It ends up being a continuous "rubber duck" conversation, and feels (completely subjectively) like it helps me develop easier/better.

scottlilly commented on Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?    · Posted by u/internxt
scottlilly · 3 years ago
For my WordPress site, I replace Google Analytics with Koko Analytics. It provides list visitor information. But, I really just care to see which pages are most popular.
scottlilly commented on Ask HN: What is the best jurisdiction for internationally distributed teams?    · Posted by u/SkyAndSand
rdl · 4 years ago
Not an attorney, not a tax attorney, not your attorney, but US persons are required to report bank accounts they hold globally under both FBAR and FATCA, and signatory authority on business accounts is also a thing. Additionally, controlled foreign corporations are a thing for US people.
scottlilly · 4 years ago
I'm also not a lawyer or CPA, but I believe if a US person is a partial owner in a foreign corporation, the company is required to do their accounting by GAAP standards. So, if the company is in a country that follows IFRS standards, it would have to do their books twice.
scottlilly commented on The joys and sorrows of maintaining a personal website   cheapskatesguide.org/arti... · Posted by u/airhangerf15
user_7832 · 4 years ago
The timing of this post is quite impeccable - just a few days ago I finally went ahead and paid for a domain, to set up a personal blog (despite having decided to make one several years back). I would like to ask fellow HN bloggers, what were some of the unexpected things you encountered in your process? (I'm more curious about the experience, though I am also interested about more technical details.)
scottlilly · 4 years ago
I've had my personal domain since 1999. It was originally hand-coded HTML, but has been WordPress for at least the last eight years.

Back in 2014 I wrote a beginner's guide to C#, with the lessons building a very simple (non-graphical) role playing game. It was mostly to show the thinking behind starting out very simple, with the basics of objects, and eventually build a program that is larger and "complete".

It got a little popular and I've received quite a few messages/comments from people who've told me the lessons helped them understand things better in their programming courses at college or code camps. Those messages have been a lot more fulfilling than being coder #12 on $BigCo's multimillion-dollar, multi-year project.

It's also a nice thing to point to when interviewing. Just like a public GitHub repo, I doubt most interviewers take more than a cursory glance at it, but it is a way to stand out from the crowd of candidates who don't have a technical blog.

I've had times when I've burnt out and haven't posted for a year or more. Other times, I get a burst of energy and write every day. There is a bit of pressure to feel like I should be writing and posting. And, since I have programming guides, there are occasional support questions to answer (especially when Microsoft changes Visual Studio or moves from .NET Framework to .NET Core then to .NET 5/6). But, it usually doesn't take too long to deal with that.

On the technical side, it has been a bit of a pain to go through web hosts every few years. The hosting service eventually gets bought out, service quality goes down, or the site gets slow (and support says, "It looks OK to me"), etc.

scottlilly commented on Ask HN: How can I filter out paywalls from my internet?    · Posted by u/bezoz
scottlilly · 4 years ago
Several years ago, I wrote a Greasemonkey script to do this. I haven't used it in years, and am not sure if there's an alternative for Brave browser (my new standard).

It basically looked for all the "a" elements in the DOM and:

1. Set the href to call a JavaScript void

2. Set the element style's text-decoration to none

3. Set the element style's background color to #f3f315

u/scottlilly

KarmaCake day214December 27, 2010View Original