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lizardwalk5's comments

lizardwalk5 | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2020)

hi, this is feedback for HN. thanks for this resource, it is great! I would like to suggest for companies that offer remote work, it would help if they are only considering applicants for a particular time zone (range) or world-wide.

lizardwalk5 | 6 years ago | on: Pizza Hut’s First Website

well, it seems like if the system is tracking you, then it should only be hard the first time. then it should default to your known preferences. unless you order a different pizza every time...

lizardwalk5 | 6 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why aren't brain computer interfaces consumer products yet?

a few years ago, a company called Emotiv got a lot of press (I believe through a TED talk). although I haven't followed them recently, it appeared that they were trying to figure out the killer app (no pun intended) for their tech. it seemed like they were leaning in the gaming area back then.

it seems on a practical level that people who have some neuromuscular disability would benefit immediately from BCI's. but maybe that is not a huge market for a startup/VC's?

lizardwalk5 | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

I think prior to painting in any style, it is useful to learn how to draw. I found this book recently which I think is really excellent. As you progress through the exercises, the instructor has you work in different media, including paints (but in order to learn how to express a 3d object on 2d material).

The Natural Way to Draw by Nicolaides. It might be found at a library but here is a link to amazon (I don't get any credits for this just for ease of searching)

https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Way-Draw-KIMON-NICOLAIDES/dp/...

Otherwise if you're more experimental maybe just study your favorite impressionists and try to copy their style on your own subjects until you find your own way to do it. I personally am into being methodical but this approach (starting realistically) just takes longer.

lizardwalk5 | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2019)

hi, I think there are a couple issues with this form for Front-End Engineer at https://boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/4224952002

(for the questions, "Which team(s) are you interested in?" and "Please choose the country in which you are located." I'm only seeing options to select "Indeed" so I think maybe the code is pointing to a wrong resource for option content, probably pointing to origin site that user was redirected from and not intended resource). I'll try filling out the form for now.

lizardwalk5 | 7 years ago | on: Build your own old-school 3D shooter in a weekend

that title does not sound right. could old-school be removed? I feel like "school" and "shooter" are somewhat misleading and potentially alarming together. could it be something like build your own 3d shooter game? or does this refer to first person shooter? I did not read the entire article so take it with a grain of salt.

lizardwalk5 | 7 years ago | on: Airbnb is squeezing Toronto’s housing market

like some of the other commenters, I would say without data, it is hard to say how much Airbnb is a factor but I would hypothesize that it is a contributing factor to tight housing markets. I was wondering about this impact particularly when using Airbnb for longer stays (like 2weeks - 1 month or longer).

lizardwalk5 | 7 years ago | on: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

I haven't gone through the 152 past comments so apologies if this is dupe. but recently I was on amazon to buy something and the original price was like $17 but it tried to snag me by presenting a deal like $12 so I added it to my cart.

I think I might have misread the countdown clock which appeared to be like 5hours (maybe it was 5 min??). but later when I returned to the cart (less than 5 hours later but more than 5 min later), I had a note saying I had less than 2 min to make the purchase) which I thought I completed in time but was charged full price regardless.

maybe this is a new feature(?) and buggy but I thought it was quite misleading and confusing. I still bought the product b/c it was useful to me but the pricing mechanism could have been more transparent.

lizardwalk5 | 7 years ago

Location: San Mateo/LA

Remote: Preferred (can do on site with reasonable commute)

Willing to relocate: Bay Area (CA); I'm returning to LA mid Jan 2019

Technologies: React, Redux, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Python, Postgres, Node (learning), git

Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D2FPa8TzR3m4Pn69SU6Y-3pX...

Email: [email protected]

Hi, I love to learn and am a self-starter. If you communicate the problem, I will figure out the best resources (human/internet) and get to it. My background is Front-End leaning but I'm open to a role that allows for some API dev. Right now I am most interested in Product development.

lizardwalk5 | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Those who went from programming to tech writing, how did you do it?

I don't fully fit your target audience but will try to provide info. I was a tech writer (software) for a number of years but became unchallenged at the end and so am in my transition to programming. If you have any API programming experience, I think you would have a good niche documenting for programmers. I started writing for users, administrators. Then around the end was transitioning towards API docs.

Not sure if this is relevant now but I found a first job in a newspaper. There is a trade group, Society for Technical Communication. You might try to network with them. Each chapter usually has a regular weeknight meeting (monthly). But membership is not free and usually the meeting is not free.

I was fortunate that my first company was small and treated me as if in a startup. They gave me a software product, gave me a license for help authoring tool (RoboHELP) and expected me to figure it out. Right now I'm not sure what the industry tool is. Some jobs just require using MS Word and some places have their own in-house help publishing tool. It was handy to edit HTML/CSS for small issues with the final HTML output (bad nested list formatting usually).

I'm not sure about the happy part. As a tech writer, I liked having a variety of things to learn but found after 6 months at a new company, the job would feel a little stale. The things I liked were having autonomy. But the downside was typically I was the one person department and usually I wished I had a team for belonging.

After working over 10 years, I think I felt my salary capped out about mid 70K (I think that was including bonus and raise for that job). But the main concern for me was I felt the opportunity for learning significant new things was capped out and I did not feel ready to be in a retirement mental frame.

These were my observations about differences with release for tech writer vs developer. On the release weeks I still stayed late but where programmers might stay until 11p or past 12a, I would typically go home latest about 8 or 9p. At the smaller companies with less process, I still got a bit of stress during release time b/c I would have to find the product changes that programmers snuck into the QA build and update the docs for.

At the end, I got a little burnt out b/c during majority of my career, I was working overtime regularly and doing long commutes but felt like my work was a necessary evil rather than impactful to the company or the product. So that has been my motivation to switch over to programming. Overall I think the main thing I felt wrong with tech writing was I did not feel a lot of job security because maybe it was not as hard as programming or some product managers assumed anyone could do it. The exception was when I had one very good tech writing manager. But if you are strong at selling yourself/marketing within the company then this is probably less of an issue. Best wishes and I don't log in here often but if you have any follow up questions, let me know.

lizardwalk5 | 8 years ago | on: Zora Neale Hurston: “A Genius of the South”

by coincidence, I picked up this book for reading over lunch and it is a compelling story. I got about halfway through before forcing myself to put it down.

during college, Their Eyes were Watching God, by Hurston was required reading for one of my courses. but I never really knew much about her life or personality.

lizardwalk5 | 8 years ago | on: Wolf Puppies Are Adorable, Then Comes the Call of the Wild

I agree. skimming down the article again, I feel about half way through the article starts to go down tangents (which are interesting points but maybe better covered in a book). it seemed like the premise was given that dogs are evolved from wolves so why do they behave so differently. at the end of the article I felt like the content did stray a bit from the reason the title got my attention.

that being said, I feel like the NYTimes in general is a strong news institution. perhaps this piece was more of a feature article given so many images were included and the video. and people love dogs so much maybe the editor(s) decided it was worth the cost to publish the story even though the researchers' answers are inconclusive so far.

so I agree with your critique of the article going off topic and so making the headline feel a bit misleading in the end. but I still strongly support the journalism that the NYTimes does (based on other articles read) and the need for strong investigative journalism in the news in general.

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