Recent submissions

Comment · 1 year ago
What was the main learning you got from building the engine? Was there some feature you wanted that no other engine at the time had? If you built an engine today, what would you do differently?
Comment · 2 years ago
I hope Dr Fernando E. Rosas writes a book for non-technical people someday. All of his research topics are super interesting and it would be cool to have him explain how they're connected in his mind in a way that's more accessible.
Comment · 3 years ago
yeah, imagine only creating software when you know it's useful by every measure.
Comment · 3 years ago
interestingly, i find that many of the things that also make money aren't even really useful, they just exist and people want them for some obscure reason. so you're right, and also it might actually lead to making money anyway because what might seem useless doesn't exclude valuable.
Comment · 3 years ago
> clutter the ecosystem what ecosystem? > diverts community to spent time on "useless" projects what community? > addressing real-world challenges. what challenges?

i'm curious to know what the criteria or thresholds are for releasing vs not releasing.

Comment · 3 years ago
Well yes, a certain number of the public service or political parties will believe things that are simply false (whether legitimately or as a means to serve their goals), in fact, many political parties in Germany and other developed countries are based entirely on false premises to the extent of being named after them. But this is actually the point of democracy, so as much as the observation is humorous it also highlights a certain level of naivety.

Digging even a little into German history reveals why the whole digitalisation and bureaucracy situation is the way it is. In fact, it also shows a side that if one doesn't believe that our tech-centric disruption culture is a corruption of society and people, then one might actually be the one who is delusional. Remember, there's a whole class of people out there who depend heavily on things working the way they do - no so much for gain, but for the benefit that any 'digital' alternative may cripple them (e.g. many elderly, disabled, and poor members of society). To some, providing a secondary tool isn't simply an alternative, it's the first step towards a complete replacement of the thing they find more useful (a good example of this is 'cashless societies').

Comment · 3 years ago
I think this is uniform across Germany, and I think the legal requirement might be either be registered or have an appointment to be registered, similar to other legally required appointments, which (from my understanding) causes issues regarding endless-reschedule loopholes.
Comment · 3 years ago
to be fair, many countries' governments have this same issue, and even when they do something the UX feels like something from 2002. The thing is, its complex, often the job pays way below market rate and government jobs often have rigid salary tiers, hiring might not be done like a normal tech co. as you might also have specific public servants to do it, and then you have culture, which might rule out certain people or cultivate attitudes towards work. Beyond that, in developed democracies like Germany, what gets funded long enough to be pushed to production can depend on election cycles and public opinion. Additionally, the big 4 have a big presence in developed countries and they often get these 100 million <currency> contracts to do stuff like that and... enough said.
Comment · 3 years ago
This is highly useful. You could take the idea, generalize it to be reusable for any German form, and make a plan to develop such a thing as open source with funding from: prototypefund.de as their applications close end of the month.
Comment · 3 years ago
'many people' - less than a third of germans live in big cities. The vast majority of adults have licenses, almost all from the stats I see.
Comment · 3 years ago
There are many cars and many car owners and many car drivers in Germany, I think the stat is something like >3/4s Germans own cars. There happens to be public transport and bicycle infrastructure proportionate to the density of a region (ie more in cities), but lots of Germany is still rural, sparsely populated, and dominated by cars for getting around. If you aren't from/in Germany and visit it, you'll see how popular cars are here and that is unlikely to change soon.
Comment · 3 years ago
document.querySelectorAll('.backdrop-blur-lg').forEach(item => item.classList.remove('backdrop-blur-lg'))
Comment · 3 years ago
Not author but if you're sharing these assets, distributing them in the gltf (json/ascii, not binary) format is really helpful, as it seems to quite easily be imported into tools like blender and threejs.
Comment · 3 years ago
Exactly, look ahead and automate the new drudgery.

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton