init | 4 years ago | on: Launch HN: Lemonade Finance (YC S21) – Digital Bank for the African Diaspora
init's comments
init | 4 years ago | on: GitHub.Dev is now available on any GitHub repo
Another feature of Github1s is that it allows you to jump to definitions and references. Github.Dev doesn't do this yet.
init | 4 years ago | on: Extremely burnt out at 25. Considering quitting job and taking an extended break
The usual advice is to pick up a hobby like sports, weight lifting, woodwork or martial arts. Definitely do that.
You haven't mentioned your location but I assume you're in the US. You were great at your job in FAANG and have a large amount of savings. Consider moving to continental Europe and work for a FAANG or similar company there to improve your work-life balance and reduce cost of living.
Take a look at Germany, Netherlands or Sweden. You don't have to learn the language before moving there, you get more vacation days a year, longer parental leaves (in the case of Sweden you may qualify for the paid parental leave even if have a small child who was born before you moved to the country), and good public transport, no need to be stuck in traffic jams. Free healthcare and education are also a plus.
Good luck finding your mojo again!
init | 4 years ago | on: The True Size of Africa (2015)
As the other commenter responded, I'm referring to the linguistic, socioeconomic and judicial homogeneity. Even though the US is culturally diverse, it still has a single currency, a single dominant language and a single jurisdiction (with minor state specific legal requirements). I only need one US visa to travel to all 52 states. A software company taking payments in the US has access to all 52 states. A peach cobbler is called the same throughout the US even though the recipe might change a little bit from place to place.
This is not the case in Africa or Europe, where countries use different languages, scripts, legal codes, currencies, driving directions, etc...
EDIT: I'm referring the land masses included in the visualization and what they entail in practical terms.
The US can be seen as a single market, the same applies to China and India. Europe has the schengen area, the EU and the EEA. Africa needs similar initiatives.
init | 4 years ago | on: The True Size of Africa (2015)
I'm referring to the European countries included in the visualization.
init | 4 years ago | on: The True Size of Africa (2015)
Africa has 54 countries, thousands of languages and 1.2 billion people.
As an African, whenever I see this map I'm more astonished by how densely populated Europe and India are, how big and populated China is and how homogeneous the US is compared to its size.
init | 4 years ago | on: A serverless email server on AWS using S3 and SES
Cool project! I designed a similar system many years ago with SES and the AppEngine data store instead of S3.
init | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why do you use the Linux distro that you use?
Using Ubuntu because it was the easiest to setup back in the days. Canonical even used to send boxes of free CDs if you promised that you'll distribute them.
init | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: I got a Raspberry Pi what should I do?
Things I did recently:
* Control the lights on the christmas tree
* Install Pi-Hole
* Run nginx and flask to serve videos of courses I've downloaded over the years.
Things I plan to do:
* Build an embedded operating system by following Stanford's CS140E course: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25272229
* Control more LED lights
init | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Continue using Mac or switch to Linux?
I've been on Ubuntu as my primary OS for the last decade or so. The only Mac I ever owned was a Mac Mini (mid 2011). The machine was working great until it started getting unbearably slow with every OS update unless I added more RAM. Then finally came Catalina which just refused to work. The hardware was still great but Apple decided they won't support it anymore. I vowed to never buy a Mac again.
Linux distributions have gotten much better at supporting new hardware, I have a home built machine that I wanted to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows but it refused to take the Windows OS installation USB disk. Ubuntu just worked on first try so I gave up on the dual boot idea.
As much as I would recommend switching back to Linux, there are still hair-pulling issues to be aware of:
- Some software like Gimp just look awful on a 4K monitor, the icons look way too small and I haven't figured out how to fix it.
- Fractional scaling is still hit or miss on some desktop environments. I use gdm and sometimes you'll see artifacts on the date/time indicator caused by fractional scaling. Firefox will sometimes display the menu on the far right corner of the screen while I have the window tiled on the left of the screen.
- Nvidia drivers were a nightmare during the transition from CUDA 10 to CUDA 11 on Ubuntu 20.04.
- Upgrading from a system where python defaults to 2.7 (Ubuntu 18.04) to a system with python3 by default (Ubuntu 20.04) broke so many things that I just had to do a fresh install of 20.04.
- If you use a printer or scanner then sometimes things just refuse to work until you do some magic invocations and restart the computer or the printer.
init | 5 years ago | on: Artificial diamonds creation process generating lonsdaleite
In common parlance "artificial" means man-made. Moissanite can be naturally occurring so it's a diamond-replacement or a "fake" diamond when used in rings and jewelry.
init | 5 years ago | on: To Delay Death, Lift Weights
Body weight exercises alone are boring but they become so much more enjoyable when combined with some demanding martial arts like boxing, kick boxing, muay thai or mma. The gains become obvious within a matter of weeks if you practice at least 2 times a week. Your lats and abs stand out very fast!
init | 5 years ago | on: AMD Announces Ryzen Threadripper Pro: Workstation Parts for OEMs Only
I picked this exact same motherboard for my custom built worstation with ECC RAM and a Ryzen 3k series processor.
It was impossible to find an OEM workstation with those specs so I ended up building it and it's been working with no hassles.
init | 5 years ago | on: CUDA 11.0
This has been problematic for me after upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04. Every time I apt update cuda or some nvidia package my x server fails to start for several different reasons.
Just today I've already spent 30 minutes trying to start x with this latest cuda update. Too bad I can't switch back to the open source nouveau driver.
init | 6 years ago | on: Rare Gabon burial cave sheds light on little known period in African history
I was thinking more of the kingdoms of Kongo[0] and Benin[1] that are geographically closer to present day Gabon.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kongo#First_Kongo-P...
init | 6 years ago | on: Rare Gabon burial cave sheds light on little known period in African history
The site is from the 14th century. Europeans came to central Africa in the 15th century when there were still many well organized kingdoms and societies there. European interference in terms of guns and the slave trade was a major part of these cultures dissolving.
init | 6 years ago | on: Ask HN: Coolest/most useful tools implemented in browser?
www.soundtrap.com uses the web audio APIs and WebRTC to build a music making app in the browser.
init | 6 years ago | on: Brasília – Buliding a City from Scratch
The quoted article[1] mentions Berlin's Tegel airport being built in just 3 or 4 months. This is an amazing feat! Contrast that with Berlin Brandenburg Airport that started being built in 2006 to replace Tegel and is still under construction and massively behind schedule.
[1] https://patrickcollison.com/fast
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport
init | 6 years ago | on: Congolese doctor discovered Ebola, but didn't get credit until now
> But would the Congolese have had electron microscopes but for Belgian colonialism?
Probably yes. Europe and Central Africa were already connected and trading since the 1400's[1]. The kingdom of Kongo sent an ambassador to Vatican in the 1600's[2]. Things would have played out differently if the slave trade in the Americas did not precipitate the downfall of many African kingdoms. The part of Congo where Ebola was discovered would probably not have been called Congo today.
Colonialism's goal was not to trade or bring technological advances but rather to accelerate the exploitation of the continent[3]. Belgian colonialism in particular was vicious at that.[4]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogo_C%C3%A3o
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuele_Ne_Vunda
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Conference
[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...
init | 6 years ago | on: Languages of India
Nope. Not at all. Even though they are all Romance languages they aren't mutually intelligible. They share many stems but have too many differences in grammar to be called the same language.
You can perhaps argue Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are different dialects of the same language, or say the same for Portuguese and Galician but most linguists, Nordic and Iberian people will be offended by such a notion.
Moving to the US and Europe was a shock for me. It is hard to send money to my home country. If a relative back home needs money within two weeks I usually have to ask other people to send money on my behalf or I have to ask other relatives back home to help them until I can pay them back. This is constant source of stress when you have a poor family.
I ended up quitting my job in another domain to go work in Fintech with the ultimate goal of solving this problem.
Some issue that make it hard for me to send money:
* Transfer fees are very high for both bank transfer and remittance services.
* The large remittance services like Western Union and MoneyGram have draconian processes to the point that they can just block your transfer with no clear explanation and on multiple occasions they even blocked all customers from sending money to my country.
* Only one bank back home has online banking services and they have lamentable security practices.
* Many banks in the west don't let me send money back home. If they do then they require you to physically go to a branch and prove your identity. This was/is a problem during the pandemic.
* You can only send up to a certain amount. Too little, it gets eaten away by the transfer fees, too high, they don't let you send it unless you give them a sob story and they feel sorry for you and approve it just this one time.