kucing's comments

kucing | 2 years ago | on: Klack – Satisfying sound with every keystroke

I tried it, wouldn't really recommend if you are using laptop speaker (like to be used in private space / at home). I'm not sure how well it will work cable earphones.

My main issue with it is the sound direction. I'm using MBP 16 and it feels like the sound is coming from in front of me (like coming out of the screen) rather than from below around the keyboard area. It's just not comfortable.

It also lack on the bass sounds so feel very high pitched. Or maybe the sound not matching the physical feeling. Maybe could work better if you already using (silent) mechanical keyboard.

kucing | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do you deal with work pressure?

This is really interesting. I never really think of it from their perspective. And the case of:

- either you can, just be calm and act rationally / work within reasonable limit, focus on overall productivity.

- or you won't be able to catch up anyway

makes the case much clearer. I think there would be a category "you might or might not be able to survive, depending on how much work / luck you have" might exist, but the chance to fall on that sweet spot is quite slim.

I like your idea regarding the mind game about hiding/boasting the pressure.

kucing | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do you deal with work pressure?

Yeah there's part of me that feels "I want to prove I can do this on time / accountable". And that partly is reinforced when I get comments like "Oh okay good progress! But keep watch of the deadline, seems like we are a bit behind." (no sarcasm intended by the commenter). Maybe I can simplify it by saying like "there's little empathy" (?). The turnover rate is already quite high and I doubt they will worry too much about me (of course it's still not easy to find good hire but probably they are used to losing one).

Anyway thanks so much for your reply! I feel much better now and by other replies too. :)

kucing | 4 years ago | on: How I Practice Piano

Your point about the commonality is "the act of creating something" is really touching. I really value the character to being "brave" to get creative, and also knowing that you can do/make/change things to the way you want / make it better.

I can see how it relates to various "creation" activities like cooking, painting, electronics/arduino,film-making, or even open-discussion/forum in general (creating community through participation).

kucing | 4 years ago | on: How I Practice Piano

Slightly OOT. It is refreshing to see how common an article about piano appears at the front page of HN. I have been struggling with the stereotypes / pre-assumption that most software engineers' hobbies (esp fresh grads) seems to be always around tech / electronics.

kucing | 4 years ago | on: How I Practice Piano

Totally agree that exercises are good and sometimes mistakenly ignored by people.

Although I'd like to also note that the best practice method is what works for one and are actually used by the person.

Especially if someone is not going to be a concert pianist, to enjoy practice & playing is invaluable IMO.

kucing | 6 years ago | on: DuckDuckGo Traffic

> In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Verizon Media (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.

Hmm I think the Bing is overemphasized if we say that "DuckDuckGo uses Bing underneath so the company whom you should really be complaining to is MSFT."

CMIIW!

kucing | 6 years ago | on: Time Complexity of Matrix Determinant

I wanted to start a blog but find it really difficult to commit to a long, complete and thorough topic. So I'll probably start with an easier format of 30-45 minutes writing of the most interesting stuff I learn each day. Let me know what you think! Thanks.

kucing | 6 years ago | on: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

Coming from a small town in Indonesia, went to Singapore to study. Will end up with about 30k SGD (~22k USD) in student loan. Fresh graduate pay for software engineering in Singapore ranges mostly from 60-100k.

I think the decision worth it* because it opens up horizon, opportunities to working overseas (not just Singapore) and much better living standard.

I didn't even know what a CS degree will do after graduation and just randomly chose it because I like Math back in HS. I guess the real benefit of a degree is the pointers and community you get. Surely this can be replaced with a good mentorship, but that requires a good network beforehand.

*the quality of education in Singapore University IMHO is far from the quality of the content I found in the publicly shared course content in US universities.

kucing | 6 years ago | on: Go + Services = One Goliath Project

Looking at the case where khanacademy is migrating their server only after about 10 years. I realize more that I don't have to worry that much about being locked into certain technologies (unless it's clearly untransferable, e.g. storing part of customer data in 3rd party server), because after all, we might keep it only for about 10-20 years, and the thing I'm working at almost certainly will only last < 2-3 years.
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