alexee's comments

alexee | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: Go Freaking Do It – Smart contract for reaching your goals

Suggestion to make it with lesser scope, but with verifiable contracts, so you can automatically verify that it was done. I'd actually use that service myself :)

For example: 1) Run 10K on Strava. 2) Solve programming challenge on Codeforces/TopCoder. 3) Pass coursera class. 4) Have X bitcoins on your wallet 5) Check-in in some specific location.

alexee | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

Online accredited bachelor degree in CS, it seems there is a lot of resistance in this area too, why it takes so long for Coursera/Udacity to implemented this?

alexee | 8 years ago | on: Couple Proves Facebook Listens in on Conversations with Simple Experiment

On a related topic, I was looking for a rental car and was googling related keywords, and then 30 minutes later chat bot from some car company messaged me on Facebook. Can someone explain how it is possible, how did they know my Facebook account?

alexee | 8 years ago | on: TransferWise announces $280M investment

to your account yes, but not if you want to send money to your friend or employee.

alexee | 8 years ago | on: TransferWise announces $280M investment

I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.

alexee | 8 years ago | on: Anti-aging stem cell treatment proves successful in early human trials

If you google stem cells + <disease name> you can find <promising> research for almost any disease, can anyone explain in simple terms, what is so magical in stem cells therapy?

alexee | 8 years ago | on: Data structures and algorithms interview questions and their solutions

I was asked something like this in Amazon SE interview - find something without using loops, the answer was to use recursion. Sigh.

alexee | 8 years ago | on: What we need from Apple to make standalone Apple Watch podcast apps

Why do you think it isn't there? Actually I bought Apple watch series 2 for exactly this reason, running without a phone. It has everything you need (GPS+heart rate monitor+music), and you can even have podcasts with third-party apps.

alexee | 8 years ago | on: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

at least "What is the European Union?" when voting for brexit would be enough.

alexee | 8 years ago | on: How I learned to code in my 30s

My father is 59 and started to learn programming half a year ago. So far I was giving him algorithmic tasks to learn basic language constructs, he is now comfortable with basic Java and is able to solve most of easy problems from programming contests. And idea where to go from here? I don't think solving more difficult problems (like that involving algorithms or creative thinking) would make sense at this point. I tried to give him simple GUI project (tick-tac-toe in Swing), this kind of worked with lots of my help, but of course it was badly designed with model-view mixed, and he is unable to understand design pattern concepts at this point.

alexee | 9 years ago | on: A Competitive Programmer's Handbook

There is also https://e-maxx-eng.appspot.com/ (translated from russian, original: https://e-maxx.ru/algo/)

alexee | 9 years ago | on: British man with type 1 diabetes to receive tests after coming off insulin

You can order Free Style Libre (online), starter package for $200 or so (check their website). They probably don't ship to the US, as they're not approved there, so you'd have to use some mail forwarder.

alexee | 9 years ago | on: British man with type 1 diabetes to receive tests after coming off insulin

Sadly this article doesn't say if he can eat cakes or cookies without dangerously high blood sugars. This test could say quite definitively if he is cured or not.

Usually term "reversed" is used in context of Type 2 diabetes, meaning that patient can have normal range blood sugar without any medications, but patients still cannot eat cookies/cakes without blood sugar spiking to dangerous levels.

alexee | 9 years ago | on: Google Identity-Aware Proxy

Is there similar service in AWS?

alexee | 9 years ago | on: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity

I'm not sure if it's only me, but I started to see a lot of 1/10x programmers in startups. They can know all newest "cool" technologies, go to various conferences, have a lot of followers on twitter and reputation on stackoverflow, but when it comes to the real work, their value for the company is around zero, usually can't even solve simplest tickets (probably busy tweeting stuff?).

alexee | 9 years ago | on: Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?

It's indeed very sad, but it's not just a view. Russian paid internet trolls are probably another prominent example of multipolar trap. Each individual don't even care about politics, probably just earning some money for living, but together they are an army doing enormous harm to democracy, starting in Russia and then spread to the US and Europe. How would you convince them to stop?

alexee | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

Petr http://petr-mitrichev.blogspot.com/

alexee | 9 years ago | on: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

Is there anyone here who sold pre-IPO equity using companies like https://equityzen.com? Can you describe your experience?

alexee | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do I get freelance developer jobs?

Yes, solely via UpWork. I got a bit better hourly rate since then, and I usually work around 60h per week.

alexee | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do I get freelance developer jobs?

Here is what I did: I applied to 10 jobs at UpWork everyday. After 2 weeks or so, I thought it is impossible to get a job with empty profile. (Even though I had LinkedIn with 8 years of Java experience, I think it does not matter when your UpWork profile is empty). At last I got some job from a student, and earned $50, after that I got some more small jobs for $100-$1000 fixed price, finally I got hourly job at $35/h. I think it took less than a month, but you need to be dedicated. After you have some jobs in your profile everything is MUCH easier. It is 1.5 years since I'm on UpWork and I earned around $200K so far.