tobych (u/tobych) - Readit News

tobych commented on What is the most useful project you have worked on? · Posted by u/laksmanv

tobych · 2 years ago

I worked on software that runs in an IoT gateway on bucket trucks used in the power industry, that raises audible and visual alarms if a worker doesn't have their harness clipped onto the bucket while they're operating it. In particular, I wrote a Finite State Machine library in Python that supports what tracks what's happening with the bucket, and helped develop the (MQTT) protocol to communicate with the backend. It was a lot of fun, and very satisfying.

Having said this, some of my more cynical friends have told me: "You weren't saving lives. You were just helping these companies reduce their insurance premiums."

tobych commented on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2024) · Posted by u/whoishiring

tobych · 2 years ago

Actively looking for a new role, after a year-long break.

    Location: Seattle area (USA)
    Remote: Yes, though prefer hybrid, or meeting up every few weeks
    Willing to relocate: No
    Technologies: Python, Linux admin, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Terraform, SaltStack, Docker, AWS, Lambda, Git
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobych/
    Résumé/CV: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7szydmprdyturaigbxmcn/Toby_Champion_Resume_1Mar24.pdf
    GitHub: https://github.com/tobych/
    Email: toby(at)tobychampion.com

Generalist software engineer with 30 years experience consulting, contracting, and as an employee, in academia in the UK and commercial organizations in the US. Most comfortable in well-funded start-ups. Strong Computer Science background. I've primarily been using Python for 20 years, but it's time to learn Go and Rust, so I'm doing that.

Home lab includes Proxmox, OPNsense, VLANs, gitea, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, a Docker registry, openwrt, Home Assistant, Mediawiki.

tobych commented on US achieves first moon landing in half century with private spacecraft reuters.com/technology/sp... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

bombcar · 2 years ago

Is it literally using WiFi as in wireless Ethernet via the standard bands?

tobych · 2 years ago

(As far as I know, Wi-Fi is an alternative to Ethernet, not wireless Ethernet.)

I've looked at a few articles and it does look like they're actually using Wi-Fi.

(This will no doubt confuse some non-techie people, who use "Wi-Fi" to mean "an Internet connection".)

tobych commented on YouTuber who staged plane crash faces up to 20 years jail news.yahoo.com/youtuber-s... · Posted by u/tafda

avazhi · 3 years ago

Remember boys, don’t fuck with the FAA.

I hope Mr Jacobs ends up serving several years (5-10 seems reasonable) to very strongly dissuade others from having similar ideas in the future. General aviation is already a relatively high risk activity without bringing reckless attention whoring influencers into the equation.

tobych · 3 years ago

And girls.

tobych commented on YouTuber who staged plane crash faces up to 20 years jail news.yahoo.com/youtuber-s... · Posted by u/tafda

rbosinger · 3 years ago

> Over the next few days, he cut up the plane into small pieces, and dumped the parts in trash bins in and around Lompoc City Airport.

I once helped a friend do something like this with a bunch of garbage from a house party he threw at his parents place and wanted to cover up. We drove around dropping bits of the 10+ bags of trash in bins here and there. I'm in awe imagining doing this with a plane.

tobych · 3 years ago

First time in a decade I've ever laughed out loud at a HN comment.

Gorgeously absurd. And I believe you. Thanks. I needed a laugh.

tobych commented on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2023) · Posted by u/whoishiring

tobych · 3 years ago

  Location: Greater Seattle area, WA, USA
  Remote: I prefer remote or hybrid roles. Something that's worked well has been spending a few days with team members every couple months, or two or three days a week together.
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Python (Pandas, Numpy, Django, FastAPI, GraphQL, Celery), Rust (learning), C (long ago), AWS (IAM, EC2, ECS, S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, Kinesis, CloudWatch), IoT (MQTT, CAN bus, Embedded), DevOps (Vagrant, SaltStack, Terraform), Jupyter, Consul, Jenkins, Docker, JavaScript, Domain Driven Design, SQL (PostgreSQL), HTML and CSS (reluctantly these days), Linux (very familiar), JIRA (I don't hate it), GIS (QGis).
  Résumé/CV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xw92bna8wfhp72w/Toby_Champion_Resume_2Feb23.pdf
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobych/
  GitHub: https://github.com/tobych
  Email: toby [at] tobychampion.com

Well-rounded Software Engineer (Solutions Architect?) with 30 years' experience built on a strong Computer Science background. I've solved difficult problems and built successful products for ambitious enterprises, big-thinking start-ups, and international academic research projects.

Amongst other things, I've worked with a lot of scientists, data scientists and machine learning folks, helping get their code into production, and building libraries and automating things so they can concentrate on doing math and science stuff instead of trying to do something they weren't trained to do.

Contributed to a few open source projects, including WordPress (I helped get the REST API built).

I've kept up with modern development practices enough that I've ended up working with a couple teams recently where I kept wondering when the rest of the industry is going to catch up. I'm currently reading Dave "Continuous Delivery" Farley's "Modern Software Engineering", and Woody Zuill's new book about mob programming, "Software Teaming". I'm keen to not end up in this situation again but I'm not quite sure how to do that.

I try hard to avoid Microsoft Teams, Scaled Agile Framework, and PHP.

Outside of work: I'm a musician, composer, and do community theater stuff. Currently taking an improv class.

tobych commented on The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020) missing.csail.mit.edu/... · Posted by u/saikatsg

closeparen · 3 years ago

My school handled this cleverly by taking people with prior programming experience into a Haskell sequence, which suitably kicked our asses to the same degree as what the first-time programmers were getting.

tobych · 3 years ago

My CS course at the University of Sussex, UK did this (in 1988) with ML, the functional programming language. Plenty of us had already been coding in C or Pascal before starting at college. None of us had done any functional programming. I loved ML: it seemed all elegant and beautiful and magical.

When I hear people starting their CS degree with C++ or Java, it makes me cringe.

tobych commented on Show HN: I built a little online drum machine using 808 style samples peel.fm... · Posted by u/berkcebi

tobych · 3 years ago

In the Air Tonight: https://peel.fm/985d7e0

tobych commented on Dublin Whiskey Fire en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub... · Posted by u/pepys

tobych · 3 years ago

YouTuber Qxir, last year, did an eight-minute piece on this event, with his usual roughly-sketched illustrations and sound effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1hvvTm85UY

tobych commented on Phrases in computing that might need retiring sicpers.info/2022/07/phra... · Posted by u/mpweiher

tobych · 3 years ago

Perhaps "API" could be added to this list. I've been jobhunting this week, and first I heard recruiters use "API" to refer to what I'd call a "service", then heard other quite senior developers do the same thing.