gedrap
Joined 14 years ago
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Recent submissions
Comment · 8 years ago
Also, it really depends on the environment, the nature of secrets, etc. It's never great, but the level of badness varies dramatically.
If you have a team of 2-3 people, where everyone has access to everything anyway, and the secrets can't be used from outside the company (i.e. you need access to servers in the first place to authenticate with whatever service is configured), then it's one thing. It's bad, but it sure beats 'let's really carefully update it on all machines manually'.
I just really, really don't like blanket statements such as 'you shouldn't do that, full stop, context is irrelevant'.
Comment · 8 years ago
>> storing my.cnf in VCS is a better idea than updating it in prod.
Eh, 'but we can't store things/API keys/passwords in VCS! It's bad!' is a pet peeve of mine. No, let's not 'just update it manually when we need it'. No, if outsider getting your DB password (somehow) poses existential threat... Chances are that you have way more concerning problems.
Comment · 8 years ago
I get you, wrong wording, it's not exactly a standard unit test, etc. But it doesn't change the meaning and intention of it - treat infrastructure as you treat code (I guess that also includes debating whether something is a 'unit' test or 'other' kind of test).
Also, having a file on a container (which is probably the easiest test to perform) often is _the desired behavior_ of a command or something else.
Comment · 8 years ago
My pet peeve with all these time trackers is that... It's just a wrong metric, unless what you're doing is an assembly line equivalent, where you just need to put in the hours.
And don't get me started on such trackers having 'leaderboards' where you're 'competing' with colleagues.
Comment · 8 years ago
Good to see this. I think that hiring remotely and paying Bay Area salaries (or very close to it) does indeed open up access to talent that might be harder to reach otherwise. Especially, if hiring globally remote.
Win-win for everyone involved.
Comment · 8 years ago
I've been working remotely from home for the past 7 months, I live in Vilnius, Lithuania (so the local job market is way more limited than in SF, London, etc).
I think that it largely depends on the company. Because remote work doesn't Just Work -- it requires plenty of regular effort to make that happen. Some companies excel at that, and others, well, suck at it. So if you consider doing, ask a lot. Ask a lot about processes, how decisions are made, why the company decided to go remote, etc. There, you can't really generalize everything under 'remote work is good for you' or similar. Just like working from an office doesn't automatically mean that it's good for your career.
If the company went the remote path in order to access untapped talent from around the globe, communication is heavily written and async, that's great. Ask for specific examples, as pretty much everyone says 'yeah, we are all about written communication!'. If the company provides money to setup your own private home office for maximum comfort and productivity -- even better. That shows that they really care. After talking to a few companies and comparing them, it's easy to tell where a company falls on the 'good for remote' spectrum.
Is it sustainable long term (7+ years) is a whole different matter and I don't have an answer to it. Probably completely depends on the person.
To answer your questions
> Especially if the team is a mixture of remote and co-located people?
I work in such environment and I'm very happy. But I understand how in some cases it can end up really badly. So just do your research.
> How have you tried to mitigate that?
Just do your best to pick the right company. Because if you join one which isn't great for remote work, then it's unlikely that you'll be able to change how it works.
This is my personal experience so far:
Pros: * More available jobs, especially for something which is not full-stack web-dev (SRE side of big data/analytics is my niche). Which is great for developing my technical skills and adding some lovely things to my CV; * I feel overall more positive about work and life in general, which is a result of good time flexibility, not having to commute anywhere, setting up a solid home office, etc. While not directly related to career, this huge! It reduces chances of burning out and similar negatives as well.
The main and very obvious con is non-existing serendipitous networking with people. But that's largely due to my own choices - I could go to a co-working space, etc but I chose not to. Living with my gf helps with having decent social life. That works for me.
So all things considered, that's a solid net positive.
And, I guess, obligatory plug, we're hiring :) https://heapanalytics.com/jobs
Comment · 8 years ago
I've tried both Google and HERE maps when traveling to a number of countries, and found HERE significantly better offline. It was constantly able to detect my exact position and update it as I kept walking, while Google Maps were quite inaccurate.
Comment · 9 years ago
I like iStat for this purpose https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
Comment · 9 years ago
This whole thing looks rather silly. Like, you either find a decent exchange, expect it to be legit and that includes cooperating with IRS and other parts of the government when needed. You know, like you expect responsible financial institutions to do. Or just find some maybe less legit ones at your own risk.
Coinbase can't be both legit and 'oh look we resist The Man'. Urgh.
Comment · 9 years ago
What would be a feasible alternative?
Comment · 9 years ago
That applies to other kinds of reliability testing too, especially everything that goes through a network.
It's easy to handle when something is completely unavailable (i.e. instant error), but when something, be it a database or some endpoint, is available but horribly slow, that's a whole different thing.
Comment · 9 years ago
I don't think that anything new could be said about bitcoins right now, and it's been like that since summer, really.
Some people do indeed believe in them, whether for technical reasons or for simply being invested, while others just keep thinking that it will crash. Both sides have a point, and majority of the people are convinced that they are right, but there's no way to predict the future.
Let's just see what happens.
Comment · 9 years ago
> Yeah I'm pretty disappointing in the quality of this article, especially considering its coming from the Economist.
The Economist is not really written having crypto enthusiasts or HN crowd in mind. The article is a decent summary of the current state of affairs to someone who's just curious about what the hell is bitcoin.
Comment · 9 years ago
I guess quite likely? In this scenario, it sounds like the goal of Series C was just to get some, any return. And getting back your initial investment sure sounds better than getting nothing back.
Comment · 9 years ago
Same. Might be a cultural thing or something but I'd absolutely hate the idea of being pinged about work things on personal channels (whatsapp, messenger, etc), especially after working hours. I know because I used to work at a place where I'd receive feature requests and bug reports, after working hours, on facebook messenger. Nope.
Vilnius, Lithuania.
Email: gediminas.rap at google's mail service github: gedrap