erikprotagonist's comments

erikprotagonist | 2 years ago | on: Heat pumps can't take the cold? Nordics debunk the myth

Checking the prices here in Norway a Mitsubishi Uwano 8700 (Mitsubishi's most high-end model) costs 2700 USD before any government rebates. It guaranteed to work down to -30C, but has been tested down to -36C as well. At -25C it produce 6000W. The "SCOP" value of the Mitsubishi is 5.2, so over the heating season it should produce 5.2x as much heat as you otherwise would get for the same amount of electricity.

Most of the heatpumps available are about 1200USD cheaper, but only go down to -25C, which really is plenty where most people live (not too far from the coast). Installation typically costs around 600-900USD it seems.

Given our 25% sales tax and high wages it should be considerably cheaper in the US.

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Huawei MatePad Paper – eInk Tablet

The Remarkable tablet uses a Wacom EMR stylus - I picket up a Remarkable 1 from a recycling container and it worked fine with my Samsung Note 8 (or so?) stylus, at least for pressure. Similarly, the Remarkable stylus works with the Samsung Galaxy S21 and S22 Ultra models.

Wacom clone styluses are a bit more expensive than resistive styluses, but they can be bought for less than 20$.

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

During the 1800s there were four sets of building regulations (or rather, laws) for Christiania (the name of Oslo back then), which regulated everything from the width of the streets to how many floors buildings could be. In 1827 the minimum street width became 11.35m, then 12.60 in 1842, 15.75 in 1875 and 20m in 1899. (https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murbyen_(Oslo) has a good overview).

The background for the regulation was the switch from unregulated wood buildings to requiring mainly brick as building material - there were some major fires before using bricks became the law.

I live just around the corner from one of the photos - the building in that photo hasn't changed much since back then.

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2022)

Okay | Android / iOS / Java (back-end) developers | Skien, Norway | Preferably onsite, but remote possible | Full Time | https://okaythis.com

Okay does Strong Customer Authentication and transaction security for mobile devices. We're looking for people with a strong interest in computer and mobile security, who would like to work on securing payments on Android and iOS. Experience programming in Java, Kotlin, Flutter, Swift and Objective C is welcome. We're looking for both back-end (Java) and front-end (Android/iOS) developers. Onsite in beautiful Norway is preferred, but we're open to remote work as well, but preferably from a time-zone not too different from Central European Time.

You would be working with a team from all over the world, mostly located in a really nice small town a couple of hours by train south of Oslo, Norway. If you're looking for a change in lifestyle, with decent benefits and salary this might be the job for you. Norway is a place where vacations and reasonable work weeks are not just encouraged, but legally required.

Please note that we're not looking to outsource development.

I'm the CTO. More information here: https://okaythis.com/careers

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

The last Synology box I configured, a RS4021xs+, has currently a "System health" status of "Danger: The system is now in a dangerous status". In Storage manager every drive is listed as "Unverified" and with a red triangle. (Seagate ST18000NM disks, so quite common.)

I configured it about a year ago. Before I updated to what was then a beta version of DSM it refused to install all together, which was quite frustrating.

The list of supported drives according to Synology is depressingly short for this model - the only non-Synology or Toshiba drive is a single Western Digital.

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2021)

Okay | Android / iOS / fullstack developers | Skien, Norway | Preferably onsite, but remote possible | Full Time | https://okaythis.com

Okay does Strong Customer Authentication and transaction security for mobile devices. We're looking for people with a strong interest in computer and mobile security, who would like to work on securing payments on Android and iOS. Experience programming in Java, Kotlin, Flutter, Swift and Objective C is welcome. We're looking for both back-end (Java) and front-end (Android/iOS) developers. Onsite in beautiful Norway is preferred, but we're open to remote work as well, but preferably from a time-zone not too different from Central European Time.

You would be working with a team from all over the world, mostly located in a really nice small town a couple of hours by train south of Oslo, Norway. If you're looking for a change in lifestyle, with decent benefits and salary this might be the job for you. Norway is a place where vacations and reasonable work weeks are not just encouraged, but legally required.

Please note that we're not looking to outsource development.

I'm the CTO. More information here: https://okaythis.com/careers

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Going from $110k to $24k for more skin in the game

If it is not obvious - this company was started in 2015, and is doing consulting while building a product.

This means that they have to balance spending time on a) paid consulting, on b) unpaid product development, or c) investor financed development, or some mix of these. Investors require equity, so if you believe in your product and you can afford it taking a pay-cut it can make perfect sense.

As an occasional investor it makes sense to me that you would want to invest in a company where the founders value their shares more than their wages - who would want to invest invest somewhere the founders want to cash out through wages instead of a future exit?

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2021)

Okay | Android / iOS / fullstack developers | Skien, Norway | Preferably onsite | Full Time | https://okaythis.com/careers

Okay does Strong Customer Authentication and transaction security for mobile devices. We're looking for people with a strong interest in computer security, who would like to work on securing payments on Android and iOS. Experience programming in Java, Kotlin, Flutter, Swift and Objective C is welcome. We're looking for both back-end (Java) and front-end (Android/iOS) developers. On-site in beautiful Norway is preferred, but we can discuss working from abroad if that is a problem.

You would be working with a team from all over the world, mostly located in a really nice small town a couple of hours by train south of Oslo, Norway. If you're looking for a change in lifestyle, with decent benefits and salary this might be the job for you. Norway is a place where vacations and reasonable work weeks are not just encouraged, but legally required.

Please note that we're not looking to outsource development. You can see a list of our open positions at https://okaythis.com/careers. I'm the CTO of Okay if you have questions.

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Show your costs to boost sales

I used to work with a IT service provider (hardware, support, monitoring, help desk etc) which had to me an interesting pricing policy on hardware - they were an IBM reseller, so they just sent the customer the price list they got from IBM and said they added 10% on top of the IBM wholesale price. I guess the 10% covered installation and configuration and such.

They did quite well, which probably had a lot to do with coming across as honest. Certainly more honest than the kind of vendor where you have to ask some guy with a really fancy watch for a quote - I've met a couple of those.

erikprotagonist | 4 years ago | on: Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit

Around the same timeframe as the Op (late 1990s) I worked for a no longer existing IT company where management some time before I started had the brilliant idea to pay sales bonuses based on forecasted sales. If you didn't make the sales you had to pay back the bonus on your next monthly pay.

Needless to say this really put the pressure on sales to get the contract signed - feasibility or profit margin be damned. Turnover in sales was really big as well, but then the company went from more than 300 staff to about 60 in the 2.5 years I worked there.

The company also had a matrix organization, where everyone in middle management had two bosses, one national, and one international. At one point my then boss got a new title and responsibilities on a Monday, for it to be changed to something else on the following Wednesday.

At least working there was quite educational.

erikprotagonist | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2020)

Okay | Android / iOS developer | Skien, Norway | Onsite | Full Time | https://okaythis.com

Okay does Strong Customer Authentication and transaction security for mobile devices. We're looking for people with a strong interest in computer security, who would like to work on securing payments on Android and iOS. Experience programming in Java, Kotlin, Flutter, Swift and Objective C is welcome. You would be expected to work mostly on the front-end, but some back-end knowledge can be useful, as you would eventually be one of the people responsible for managing our SDK releases. Onsite in beautiful Norway is most likely required, as our customers are very security conscious.

You would be working with a team from all over the world, mostly located in a really nice small town a couple of hours by train south of Oslo, Norway. If you're looking for a change in lifestyle, with decent benefits and salary this might be the job for you. Norway is a place where vacations and reasonable work weeks are not just encouraged, but legally required.

I'm the CTO. More information here: https://okaythis.com/careers

erikprotagonist | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2020)

Okay | Frontend developer and Full-stack developer | Skien, Norway | Onsite | Full Time | https://okaythis.com

Okay does Strong Customer Authentication and transaction security for mobile devices. We're looking for people with a strong interest in computer security, who would like to work on securing payments on Android and iOS. Experience programming in Java, React, Flutter on both the front-end and back-end is useful. Onsite is most likely required, as our customers are very security conscious.

You would be working with a team from all over the world, mostly located in a really nice small town a couple of hours by train south of Oslo, Norway. If you're looking for a change in lifestyle, with decent benefits and salary this might be the job for you. Norway is a place where vacations and reasonable work weeks are not just encouraged, but legally required.

I'm the CTO. More information here: https://okaythis.com/careers

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