HackerX

By year

2018

Ideas that Hacker News readers were still recommending in 2018.

16 posts cited76 citations

Counts show how many picks Hacker News readers cited in each year, not when the post was written.

@mxcl

Career

@mxcl

View on X
Recommended by 42 HN users
From the Hacker News threadleetcode seems to agree with your definition [0]. the meme isn't to say that inverting a binary tree is particularly difficult - anyone familiar with coding challenges and trees could trivially produce a solution. the meme is more pointing out how ludicrous it is that senior/staff/principal interviews can hinge on these types of problems, despite the engineer proving their proficiency by doing something like running DOOM in typescript types or writing homebrew [1]. [0] leetcode.com/problems/invert-binary-tre…... [1] x.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768@LiquixTypeScript types can run DOOM [video]2025
117

@andy_matuschak

Programming

@andy_matuschak

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Recommended by 4 HN users
From the Hacker News threadWell there's nothing absolutely 'wrong' with them. You can write good and bad apps with view controllers (I've done both). But they're an architectural blank slate, mainly offering access to UI objects & lifecycle callbacks. You need some architecture on top in anything but the most trivial app. The naive approach is to have 'no architecture', which actually is an architecture of just throwing masses of state, ad hoc, into the view controller, and using this to effect the UI any old how (so a 3rd party has no idea where to look to find out where things happen). Or you can go maximalist and select from MVC, MVP, etc, all of which are an improvement on the naive approach. It just so happens that I've found RN (React Native) to be the nicest improvement, to my taste. Simple unidirectional data flow & UI state being a simple function of app state make for a beautifully clean and unambiguous model for how everything fits together. One can argue the costs and benefits of app architectures all day, but there's really no substitute for trying them out, for the sake of curiosity & learning. All the devs I know who have written RN groan a bit when they're back in iOS and/or Android native development, and absolutely not because they love javascript! Check out Andy Matuschak's celebrated Tweet on RN (twitter.com/andy_matuschak/status/56051…). I point to it not as an argument from authority. But if one of the people who wrote UIKit thinks RN's model is the superior one, surely that should pique curiosity just a bit? > Are you suggesting React solves the programming language problem completely I'm not sure what you're getting at here. What 'programming language problem'? And why would an improvement have to solve something 'completely' to be of value?@crispinbTakeaways from KotlinConf 20172018
6

@ziobrando

Philosophy

@ziobrando

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Recommended by 4 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI opened the video. Saw that it is edited (It does not show the entire meeting from the beginning to the end unedited. He puts clips of himself in the middle. He does his signature "ask for donations" thing. Etc). Given literally the entirety of his work history, I know it is going to be misleading if not an outright lie. So I spent 1 minute realizing it won't be worth my 30 minutes and closed the tab. And if you are going to argue that this is not enough to refuse to believe the video and I should present more concrete evidence, I will refer you to the bullshit asymmetry principle: twitter.com/ziobrando/status/2896350607…...@smnrchrdsToronto is gathering cellphone location data to find people congregating2020
6

@michael_nielsen

Learning

@michael_nielsen

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Recommended by 4 HN users
From the Hacker News threadPart of the value is just to be reminded of ideas I've had. But Anki can be used to support creativity in other ways as well: - "Card browser" lets you view the cards in various sorting orders. Alphabetical, time of creation, last reviewed, next reviewed, etc. This is already better for going through cards than the Memo app on my phone. - You can tag cards and sort by tags. (I think doing this also creates a memorization deck for each tag, too. I just don't use this feature...) - I like to put "elements" into Anki which I think could potentially become a part of a creative idea. Being reminded of those things makes it easier to think up new ways to combine things, different ways to do things, etc. - Like Michael Nielsen (who works for Y Combinator), I believe in putting everything into just a single deck. So I see a lot of random seemingly unrelated cards one after the other. I feel like this helps my brain to make unusual connections and relationships. (Nielsen's writings about Anki and spaced memory repetition- reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/8xi9r4/augme…... twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/9577…... ) - Cards can be starred or suspended. - Visually, the design and flow of the Anki app is fantastic, in my opinion. I genuinely enjoy using it. Tons of user controlled settings, and nice Anki forums. - Use of shared decks can be fun (publicly available decks). Really though, the most important thing is getting the reminders, and having control over when I see Anki cards next. By keeping everything "alive" and stronger in my brain, it just makes it easier to remember things, think of things, see different possibilities, etc. And you can put literally anything in there. I put in literally everything I think is worth reminding myself about. Attitudes, knowledge, quotes, tasks, task elements, ideas, notes about the people in my life, things that are fun, memories from my life, exercise ideas, foods, supplements, etc. etc.etc.@data_requiredAsk HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?2019
5

@worrydream

Internet

@worrydream

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Recommended by 3 HN users
From the Hacker News thread«60% of my fav links from 10 yrs ago are 404. I wonder if Library of Congress expects 60% of their collection to go up in smoke every decade». And the discussion that follows about how to preserve not just the bits but also their meanings: twitter.com/worrydream/status/478087637…@FiceBret Victor Redesigns Classic Strogatz Paper (2011)2018
3

@elonmusk

Business

@elonmusk

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadThe reorg of GM by the Obama administration does not tick all the boxes [1], but is the most recent example that would come to mind of government support via BK management and recapitalization. The administration did this to save jobs and the manufacturing supply chain [2]. Capital is made up, management is fungible, manufacturing supply chains and systems are the hard part (which is why, after incredibly aggressive financialization, Boeing is having to acquire Spirit AeroSystems, which had previously been spun out for cost savings...which went to management comp and shareholders). If you are optimizing for a specific outcome, it is important to understand the malleability and limits of the components that make the whole. Even Elon recognized this during Model 3 production hell [3]. I suppose we must always learn the hard way for the lesson to be of value. If management is the problem (and it is very clear Boeing management is the problem), it must be replaced so that the people who do the actual building can build. This is no different than the tech culture of "employ great people and get out of their way." [1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Ch…... [2] obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/economy/jo…... [3] x.com/elonmusk/status/984882630947753984 ("Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.")@toomuchtodoBoeing, Union reach wage deal to end strike2024
6

@NetflixUIE

Web Development

@NetflixUIE

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI humbly disagree. I've never built a highly interactive application with React, only simple sites where the guys before me chose React, so I can't speak to its relative strengths or weaknesses there, but I've found that it doesn't scale down very well to simple sites. For a simple sign-in page, it's easy to just store state in the DOM and use a element to send the credentials, and maybe a little JS for the password show/hide button. But to implement it in React you have to go on a steep learning curve to learn about JSX, hooks, the component lifecycle, building the app for dev, packaging it for prod, and more. Other frameworks, like Vue and Alpine, let you use them "progressively" and you can even do so with a CDN to avoid having to set up npm/vite from the get go. Their intro docs have instructions for how to do so, along with the relevant caveats React claims to be progressive, but since it's JSX it requires a compile step. Its intro docs do not have instructions for using it via CDN. You can make it work if you really want to, but it basically requires shipping the compiler to the client along with the JSX and doing the compilation client-side, which obviously scales so poorly that their docs don't cover it. To recap, my whole point is that React scales very poorly down to simple sites. And since most site are not Facebook or the Spotify web player or Netflix (and even Netflix is moving away from React: x.com/NetflixUIE/status/923374215041912…), I think it's very hard to argue that React is effective or well designed.@actinium226React is winning by default and slowing innovation2025
3

@TomerAshur

Security

@TomerAshur

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadNSA put (effective) backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG: schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the…... Thread by someone directly involved on why the ISO rejected NSA ciphers in the past (hint: they refused to justify design decisions, lied, and attacked the credibility of people who had put out actually-secure crypto): twitter.com/TomerAshur/status/988696306… Either they're too incompetent to be trusted or are bad actors and should be treated as such.@kickDon’t Rush Quantum-Proof Encryption, Warns NSA Research Director2019
3

@patio11

Open Source

@patio11

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadAn open source project for external customers (i.e. us) operated by a bunch of unpaid volunteers will never really be able to compete with an application with paid developers, invested users, and the supporting departments. I'm not saying that open source projects can't get better, that they can't be good, but they will never be as good. For a corollary: twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785…@falcolasHey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking2018
3

@cabel

Security

@cabel

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Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadFor me, mostly useless. I do however, enjoy using Touch ID for sudo permissions. HT to: twitter.com/cabel/status/93129210737283…@myinitialsaretkAsk HN: After 2-3 years, what are your favorite Touch Bar use cases on the Mac?2018
2

@eastdakota

Hardware

@eastdakota

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadA blog post is coming, so I might have jumped the shark here. An interesting note from a Cloudflare engineer: Most powerful Xeon is the 28 core Platinum 2180 at $10k RSP and >200W TDP. Due to the nature of Intel turbo boost it almost always operates at TDP under load. Our ARM is the Centriq 2452 at less than $1400 RSP, 46 cores and 120W TDP, that it never hits. Beats Xeon 9/10 workloads. twitter.com/thecomp1ler/status/97661788…@AissenCloudflare CEO: Why we’re switching to ARM-based servers2018
3

@fs0c131y

Hardware

@fs0c131y

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadNot that Huawei is the only and surely some other brands are even worse, but still Huawei phones are full of spyware, just open NetGuard or another example here : mobile.twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/1051…... But once again surely other brands, Western companies included, are also spying, but it doesn't change the fact that Huawei does it too.@asituopSuper Micro says review found no malicious chips in motherboards2018
2

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