New best story on Hacker News: SomaFM

SomaFM
527 by Datenstrom | 124 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: So I Took a Corporation to Arbitration

So I Took a Corporation to Arbitration
576 by snapetom | 267 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around
516 by RoseBuckler | 274 comments on Hacker News.
I've been programming on and off since the age of 16. Unfortunately, I have never been a rockstar programmer. I've always pieced code together from multiple sources to create programs but I've always failed to come up with a solution from scratch of my own and provide any value. I've always wondered how other smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch. I've devised countless ideas only to never execute them for various reasons or get started with them only to never fully complete them and see it all the way through. I've already wasted my entire teens and 20s, current 28 years old, working as a software engineer (Full-Stack) at a startup for ~4 years. I've been feeling like a loser and not good enough for this career even though I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team. I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks; being a loner helps with working long hours. My salary also hasn't increased much, and feel like I'm severely underpaid based on the # of years of experience but I struggle with evaluating my value in the market to determine my worth. I assumed working hard would pay off but that hasn't been the case at all; I truly believe I've been doing the opposite of "Work Smart, Not Hard". I've been trying to get back to learning DS and Algos so I can apply to places but I struggle with LeetCode, which is making me feel like even a bigger loser for not being able to solve problems. I'm stuck in a rut, wanting to better my skills and earn a good amount of money but unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog, and unsure of my future. My self-confidence and self-esteem are taking a hit. I am terrible at networking, so I don't have others to reach out to for tips and advice, hence I'm turning to HN. I apologize if this isn't the place for a post like this. How can I turn my directionless life around and find satisfaction with my career?

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New best story on Hacker News: Dragonflydb – A modern replacement for Redis and Memcached

Dragonflydb – A modern replacement for Redis and Memcached
514 by avielb | 217 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Reasons to ditch Chrome and use Firefox

Reasons to ditch Chrome and use Firefox
565 by ddtaylor | 375 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Terraform should have remained stateless

Terraform should have remained stateless
371 by ricardbejarano | 300 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Marginalia Goes Open Source

Marginalia Goes Open Source
340 by georgehill | 71 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor
485 by rdpintqogeogsaa | 333 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: What did Earth look like X million years ago?

What did Earth look like X million years ago?
496 by hwayne | 110 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: My students cheated... a lot

My students cheated... a lot
642 by benjyhirsch | 566 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Neon – Serverless Postgres

Neon – Serverless Postgres
527 by nikolay | 238 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Knots 3D – Learn how to tie over 150 useful knots

Knots 3D – Learn how to tie over 150 useful knots
512 by kosasbest | 118 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B
547 by squidofbits | 362 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: I turned my face rec system into a video codec

Show HN: I turned my face rec system into a video codec
485 by jacobgorm | 138 comments on Hacker News.
Before the pandemic, my tiny startup was doing quite well selling Edge AI systems, based on our own lightweight AI inference engine, with object detection and face recognition for smart city and smart retail & food service applications. When the real world shut down, there was suddenly nothing to monitor on streets and in restaurants, so I set out to try and evolve our real time face recognition system into a video codec for high quality face-to-face online interactions, as I was not satisfied with the quality of Zoom and friends. I got it to work, and the first release for IOS was just approved on Apple's app store, link: https://ift.tt/bfZ39Ks The way it works is that you create a meeting URL, which you can share out-of-band, for instance via slack or text message. You can also share as a QR code which the app can scan to join a call. You then place your device on a surface in front of you so that the front camera can see you, and it will recognize you face and assign you to your own session, which is broadcast to the meeting channel. If more than one person is in view, both of you will be broadcast but with separate session ids, like if you were on separate cameras. Other meeting participants will show up on your screen and you can start talking. It is optimized for eye contact, meaning that the eyes will actually make it through to the other side as more than just dark pixel clouds, so thinks should feel a bit more personal than the standard Zoom/Teams/or Google Meet call. Because it uses face rec, you can ONLY show your face, and if you disappear from view your audio will stop after a while, to avoid situations like when you need to go the the restroom but forget to mute. This also solves dick-pics etc. The CODEC is not based on H26[45], but is pure AI that runs on the GPU. There is a neural network that compresses the video in real time, and another one decompressing on the receiving end. Finding a tight network architecture that would do this in real time with acceptable quality was a major part of the effort. There are several quality settings possible, but right now it is set fairly high and for 20FPS maxes out around 700kbit/s, though typically uses about half. I've demonstrated good results down to around 200kbit/s, so in theory it should work over satellite links or even Bluetooth. The protocol is UDP with no congestion control but with (Wirehair) FEC to protect against mild packet loss, future versions will detect packet loss and adapt to available bandwidth. The audio just uses OPUS and may click a little bit, I blame AudioEngine or the fact that the last time I wrote audio code was for the game I published for the Amiga in 1994. If you don't have a friend around or multiple devices to play with, there is an "echo test" server mode that allows you to be in a meeting with yourself. Traffic will be peer-to-peer if possible, but otherwise you will be relaying through my tiny Raspberry PI server, so YMMV. I plan to try to switch to something like fly.io soon to improve scalability. There is also a MacOS version coming very soon, and the underlying AI engine also runs on Windows & Linux. Android support is planned. Please take a look and let me know what you think.

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New best story on Hacker News: SQLite 3 Fiddle

SQLite 3 Fiddle
548 by sgbeal | 90 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Original Pong did not have any code or even a microprocessor

Original Pong did not have any code or even a microprocessor
530 by colinprince | 131 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Learnings from 5 years of tech startup code audits

Learnings from 5 years of tech startup code audits
524 by lordofmoria | 159 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo

Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
451 by strongpigeon | 141 comments on Hacker News.
Edit: Wow #1 on HN. Y'all are making my day. Hey HN, I'm mostly a lurker on HN who's always super inspired by other people's small project that end-up making money. (Huge fan of Ben Stoke's Tiny Project [0]) After being burnt-out in big tech, I decided to write my own weightlifting app and set myself a humble goal of reaching $1000 in total proceeds. See [1] for my initial launch post. I've now surpassed that goal and am now making about 500$/mo by selling premium features in the app. Android version is coming soon too. Doing the whole thing end-to-end (code, launch, marketing, support) was super gratifying and taught me a whole lot. I have to admit that I got almost teary eyed the first time someone bought one of my IAPs. I'm not making a killing out of the app, and that was never the goal. But the personal satisfaction I got out of it was worth everything. I can't pretend to have derived any life lesson that applies to everybody from this, but this whole mini-journey was worth it for me, and I hope it will be for you too, should you embark in a similar one. [0] https://ift.tt/DZnqG8w [1] https://ift.tt/4udLYUQ

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New best story on Hacker News: FTC fines Twitter $150M for using 2FA phone numbers for ad targeting

FTC fines Twitter $150M for using 2FA phone numbers for ad targeting
552 by averysmallbird | 158 comments on Hacker News.


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New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?

Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?
438 by jharohit | 1198 comments on Hacker News.
I have usually kept a short list of games that would be fun if they existed. Long ago one my bullets in the list was a procedurally generated planet-sized planet with a full diaspora to explore. No Man's Sky fulfilled that for me. What are some games that you wish existed?

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