Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers
560 by balboah | 582 comments on News.
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Inflation spikes to 39-year high as prices soar
12/10/21 5:38 AM
Inflation spikes to 39-year high as prices soar
12/10/21 5:38 AM
New best story on News: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday
Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday
698 by 7tech | 283 comments on News.
TLDR; never use google cloud systems for production. Google cloud suspended all our projects due to the billing issue in their system they had. Despite reassurances "your account will not be suspended" while communicating with billing support, all the projects were suspended at 1am on Saturday. All the account payments were made and the billing cards are valid. There are no outstanding bills. Never use GCP for production. ---- Edit: full story by request, long read: ---- Previous month billing didn't went through. Not sure if this was due to the billing outage google had (https://ift.tt/7iHJaF8) or financial transaction issue, however we went ahead and made a manual payment covering all the outstanding amount + extra. Despite the payment made, about a week+ later we suddenly started receiving threatening emails "Your Projects are at risk of suspension". Edited and updated the billing cards. Opened a billing support request clearly mentioning this is a production environment and all the bills are paid. They were "investigating" the issue and assured the project will not be suspended.
698 by 7tech | 283 comments on News.
TLDR; never use google cloud systems for production. Google cloud suspended all our projects due to the billing issue in their system they had. Despite reassurances "your account will not be suspended" while communicating with billing support, all the projects were suspended at 1am on Saturday. All the account payments were made and the billing cards are valid. There are no outstanding bills. Never use GCP for production. ---- Edit: full story by request, long read: ---- Previous month billing didn't went through. Not sure if this was due to the billing outage google had (https://ift.tt/7iHJaF8) or financial transaction issue, however we went ahead and made a manual payment covering all the outstanding amount + extra. Despite the payment made, about a week+ later we suddenly started receiving threatening emails "Your Projects are at risk of suspension". Edited and updated the billing cards. Opened a billing support request clearly mentioning this is a production environment and all the bills are paid. They were "investigating" the issue and assured the project will not be suspended.
New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday
Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday
698 by 7tech | 283 comments on
TLDR; never use google cloud systems for production. Google cloud suspended all our projects due to the billing issue in their system they had. Despite reassurances "your account will not be suspended" while communicating with billing support, all the projects were suspended at 1am on Saturday. All the account payments were made and the billing cards are valid. There are no outstanding bills. Never use GCP for production. ---- Edit: full story by request, long read: ---- Previous month billing didn't went through. Not sure if this was due to the billing outage google had (https://ift.tt/S8cBkiH) or financial transaction issue, however we went ahead and made a manual payment covering all the outstanding amount + extra. Despite the payment made, about a week+ later we suddenly started receiving threatening emails "Your Projects are at risk of suspension". Edited and updated the billing cards. Opened a billing support request clearly mentioning this is a production environment and all the bills are paid. They were "investigating" the issue and assured the project will not be suspended.
698 by 7tech | 283 comments on
TLDR; never use google cloud systems for production. Google cloud suspended all our projects due to the billing issue in their system they had. Despite reassurances "your account will not be suspended" while communicating with billing support, all the projects were suspended at 1am on Saturday. All the account payments were made and the billing cards are valid. There are no outstanding bills. Never use GCP for production. ---- Edit: full story by request, long read: ---- Previous month billing didn't went through. Not sure if this was due to the billing outage google had (https://ift.tt/S8cBkiH) or financial transaction issue, however we went ahead and made a manual payment covering all the outstanding amount + extra. Despite the payment made, about a week+ later we suddenly started receiving threatening emails "Your Projects are at risk of suspension". Edited and updated the billing cards. Opened a billing support request clearly mentioning this is a production environment and all the bills are paid. They were "investigating" the issue and assured the project will not be suspended.
New best story on News: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday
Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday
650 by 7tech | 268 comments .
TLDR; never use google cloud systems for production. Google cloud suspended all our projects due to the billing issue in their system they had. Despite reassurances "your account will not be suspended" while communicating with billing support, all the projects were suspended at 1am on Saturday. All the account payments were made and the billing cards are valid. There are no outstanding bills. Never use GCP for production. ---- Edit: full story by request, long read: ---- Previous month billing didn't went through. Not sure if this was due to the billing outage google had (https://ift.tt/S8cBkiH) or financial transaction issue, however we went ahead and made a manual payment covering all the outstanding amount + extra. Despite the payment made, about a week+ later we suddenly started receiving threatening emails "Your Projects are at risk of suspension". Edited and updated the billing cards. Opened a billing support request clearly mentioning this is a production environment and all the bills are paid. They were "investigating" the issue and assured the project will not be suspended.
650 by 7tech | 268 comments .
TLDR; never use google cloud systems for production. Google cloud suspended all our projects due to the billing issue in their system they had. Despite reassurances "your account will not be suspended" while communicating with billing support, all the projects were suspended at 1am on Saturday. All the account payments were made and the billing cards are valid. There are no outstanding bills. Never use GCP for production. ---- Edit: full story by request, long read: ---- Previous month billing didn't went through. Not sure if this was due to the billing outage google had (https://ift.tt/S8cBkiH) or financial transaction issue, however we went ahead and made a manual payment covering all the outstanding amount + extra. Despite the payment made, about a week+ later we suddenly started receiving threatening emails "Your Projects are at risk of suspension". Edited and updated the billing cards. Opened a billing support request clearly mentioning this is a production environment and all the bills are paid. They were "investigating" the issue and assured the project will not be suspended.
New best story on News: Ask HN: In 2022, what is the proper way to get into machine/deep learning?
Ask HN: In 2022, what is the proper way to get into machine/deep learning?
481 by newsoul | 187 comments on News.
By getting into machine or deep learning I mean building upto a stage to do ML/DL research. Applied research or core theory of ML/DL research. Ofcourse, the path to both will quite different. Standing in 2022, what are the best resources for a CS student/decent programmer to get into the field of ML and DL on their own. Resources can be both books or public courses. The target ability: 1. To understand the theory behind the algorithms 2. To implement an algorithm on a dataset of choice. (Data cleaning and management should also be learned) 3. Read research publications and try to implement them.
481 by newsoul | 187 comments on News.
By getting into machine or deep learning I mean building upto a stage to do ML/DL research. Applied research or core theory of ML/DL research. Ofcourse, the path to both will quite different. Standing in 2022, what are the best resources for a CS student/decent programmer to get into the field of ML and DL on their own. Resources can be both books or public courses. The target ability: 1. To understand the theory behind the algorithms 2. To implement an algorithm on a dataset of choice. (Data cleaning and management should also be learned) 3. Read research publications and try to implement them.
New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: In 2022, what is the proper way to get into machine/deep learning?
Ask HN: In 2022, what is the proper way to get into machine/deep learning?
481 by newsoul | 187 comments on
By getting into machine or deep learning I mean building upto a stage to do ML/DL research. Applied research or core theory of ML/DL research. Ofcourse, the path to both will quite different. Standing in 2022, what are the best resources for a CS student/decent programmer to get into the field of ML and DL on their own. Resources can be both books or public courses. The target ability: 1. To understand the theory behind the algorithms 2. To implement an algorithm on a dataset of choice. (Data cleaning and management should also be learned) 3. Read research publications and try to implement them.
481 by newsoul | 187 comments on
By getting into machine or deep learning I mean building upto a stage to do ML/DL research. Applied research or core theory of ML/DL research. Ofcourse, the path to both will quite different. Standing in 2022, what are the best resources for a CS student/decent programmer to get into the field of ML and DL on their own. Resources can be both books or public courses. The target ability: 1. To understand the theory behind the algorithms 2. To implement an algorithm on a dataset of choice. (Data cleaning and management should also be learned) 3. Read research publications and try to implement them.
New best story on News: Ask HN: In 2022, what is the proper way to get into machine/deep learning?
Ask HN: In 2022, what is the proper way to get into machine/deep learning?
481 by newsoul | 187 comments .
By getting into machine or deep learning I mean building upto a stage to do ML/DL research. Applied research or core theory of ML/DL research. Ofcourse, the path to both will quite different. Standing in 2022, what are the best resources for a CS student/decent programmer to get into the field of ML and DL on their own. Resources can be both books or public courses. The target ability: 1. To understand the theory behind the algorithms 2. To implement an algorithm on a dataset of choice. (Data cleaning and management should also be learned) 3. Read research publications and try to implement them.
481 by newsoul | 187 comments .
By getting into machine or deep learning I mean building upto a stage to do ML/DL research. Applied research or core theory of ML/DL research. Ofcourse, the path to both will quite different. Standing in 2022, what are the best resources for a CS student/decent programmer to get into the field of ML and DL on their own. Resources can be both books or public courses. The target ability: 1. To understand the theory behind the algorithms 2. To implement an algorithm on a dataset of choice. (Data cleaning and management should also be learned) 3. Read research publications and try to implement them.
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back
12/11/21 7:13 AM
Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back
12/11/21 7:13 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns
12/11/21 2:58 AM
Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns
12/11/21 2:58 AM
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game
Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game
387 by sumul | 107 comments on
Hello, HN! Figure is a little side project I’ve been working on. Someone described it as Bejeweled meets Wordle. I built the puzzle interface and website in Next.js and React, which was a first for me and overall a great learning experience. The daily puzzle data is queued up in a PostgreSQL table. Another table stores anonymous solve stats. Once a day, a cron job hits a serverless API that promotes the next puzzle as “live” and prompts Next.js to update the prebaked static site with the new data. The game state is managed with Redux and your stats are persisted to localStorage. Framer Motion for animations. Styling is mostly Tailwind CSS. I use Figma for design and Logic Pro to make the sounds. I get a lot of questions about how the puzzles are generated. It’s not super sexy. I generate random grids of tiles and then run them through a brute force solver (sounds rough but the puzzles don’t feel anything). Every few days, I play through puzzles that look promising based on the solution space and pick some good ones to go into the queue. The rest are sent back to the void (again, painless). I’ve spent a little bit of time tinkering with a procedural generator, but so far the random ones are better. The downsides of the random approach are (1) the curation effort required, and (2) the high variability in puzzle difficulty. I have a feeling there’s a whole body of math and CS knowledge where Figure is an example of something that I don’t know the name for (imposter syndrome intensifies). As for the future of Figure, I feel strongly about keeping it free of ads, login walls, in-app purchases, or anything else that infringes on enjoyment or privacy. I’d also like to make sure Figure is accessible to everyone. English isn’t exactly required to play, but translations for the UI and website would be nice. I’ve tried to build Figure to be friendly to people who have color vision deficiency and people who rely on screen readers and keyboard navigation, but I have no idea if it’s actually any fun in these cases. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts… 1. It’s been surprisingly satisfying to build a web game with a modern frontend stack. I’ve noticed a lot of grumbling on HN over the years from OG web developers who yearn for the days of semantic HTML, a sprinkling of CSS, and vanilla JS. I was in that boat too and have grumbled plenty about the breakneck pace of frontend evolution. One of my goals with this project was to pick some popular frameworks and give them an honest try. I’m now a believer, but there’s still no way I can keep up with all the progress. 2. I found Tailwind awkward at first, but after a while I realized I was using Figma a lot less and just designing in code with utility classes, which is great for focus and flow. Having lived through the Web 2.0 standards revolution, it was hard to let go of some deeply rooted opinions about semantic purity, but overall I’m sold. 3. I really love side projects. At most jobs, you’re pushed toward specialization. Side projects allow you to build out a generalist skillset, which makes you better at your core job function and better at collaborating with others. It’s also liberating to explore and pivot around without time pressure. Figure started out as a 3D fidget toy in Unity where you fling projectiles at floating objects… 4. I made this game on my trusty 2013 MacBook Pro, which has been almost completely sufficient (ahem Docker ಠ_ಠ). I’ll probably get an M2 Air soon, but I’m reluctant to say goodbye to the best computer I’ve ever owned. 5. I’m very grateful for the people who build and maintain open source projects. It’s also delightful how many paid services offer generous free tiers to let developers play around: Figma, GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, and Pipedream, just to name a few that I’m currently using actively. If you work on FOSS and/or these excellent platforms, thank you. Anyway, hope you like it. Happy to answer any questions.
387 by sumul | 107 comments on
Hello, HN! Figure is a little side project I’ve been working on. Someone described it as Bejeweled meets Wordle. I built the puzzle interface and website in Next.js and React, which was a first for me and overall a great learning experience. The daily puzzle data is queued up in a PostgreSQL table. Another table stores anonymous solve stats. Once a day, a cron job hits a serverless API that promotes the next puzzle as “live” and prompts Next.js to update the prebaked static site with the new data. The game state is managed with Redux and your stats are persisted to localStorage. Framer Motion for animations. Styling is mostly Tailwind CSS. I use Figma for design and Logic Pro to make the sounds. I get a lot of questions about how the puzzles are generated. It’s not super sexy. I generate random grids of tiles and then run them through a brute force solver (sounds rough but the puzzles don’t feel anything). Every few days, I play through puzzles that look promising based on the solution space and pick some good ones to go into the queue. The rest are sent back to the void (again, painless). I’ve spent a little bit of time tinkering with a procedural generator, but so far the random ones are better. The downsides of the random approach are (1) the curation effort required, and (2) the high variability in puzzle difficulty. I have a feeling there’s a whole body of math and CS knowledge where Figure is an example of something that I don’t know the name for (imposter syndrome intensifies). As for the future of Figure, I feel strongly about keeping it free of ads, login walls, in-app purchases, or anything else that infringes on enjoyment or privacy. I’d also like to make sure Figure is accessible to everyone. English isn’t exactly required to play, but translations for the UI and website would be nice. I’ve tried to build Figure to be friendly to people who have color vision deficiency and people who rely on screen readers and keyboard navigation, but I have no idea if it’s actually any fun in these cases. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts… 1. It’s been surprisingly satisfying to build a web game with a modern frontend stack. I’ve noticed a lot of grumbling on HN over the years from OG web developers who yearn for the days of semantic HTML, a sprinkling of CSS, and vanilla JS. I was in that boat too and have grumbled plenty about the breakneck pace of frontend evolution. One of my goals with this project was to pick some popular frameworks and give them an honest try. I’m now a believer, but there’s still no way I can keep up with all the progress. 2. I found Tailwind awkward at first, but after a while I realized I was using Figma a lot less and just designing in code with utility classes, which is great for focus and flow. Having lived through the Web 2.0 standards revolution, it was hard to let go of some deeply rooted opinions about semantic purity, but overall I’m sold. 3. I really love side projects. At most jobs, you’re pushed toward specialization. Side projects allow you to build out a generalist skillset, which makes you better at your core job function and better at collaborating with others. It’s also liberating to explore and pivot around without time pressure. Figure started out as a 3D fidget toy in Unity where you fling projectiles at floating objects… 4. I made this game on my trusty 2013 MacBook Pro, which has been almost completely sufficient (ahem Docker ಠ_ಠ). I’ll probably get an M2 Air soon, but I’m reluctant to say goodbye to the best computer I’ve ever owned. 5. I’m very grateful for the people who build and maintain open source projects. It’s also delightful how many paid services offer generous free tiers to let developers play around: Figma, GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, and Pipedream, just to name a few that I’m currently using actively. If you work on FOSS and/or these excellent platforms, thank you. Anyway, hope you like it. Happy to answer any questions.
New best story on News: Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game
Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game
387 by sumul | 107 comments .
Hello, HN! Figure is a little side project I’ve been working on. Someone described it as Bejeweled meets Wordle. I built the puzzle interface and website in Next.js and React, which was a first for me and overall a great learning experience. The daily puzzle data is queued up in a PostgreSQL table. Another table stores anonymous solve stats. Once a day, a cron job hits a serverless API that promotes the next puzzle as “live” and prompts Next.js to update the prebaked static site with the new data. The game state is managed with Redux and your stats are persisted to localStorage. Framer Motion for animations. Styling is mostly Tailwind CSS. I use Figma for design and Logic Pro to make the sounds. I get a lot of questions about how the puzzles are generated. It’s not super sexy. I generate random grids of tiles and then run them through a brute force solver (sounds rough but the puzzles don’t feel anything). Every few days, I play through puzzles that look promising based on the solution space and pick some good ones to go into the queue. The rest are sent back to the void (again, painless). I’ve spent a little bit of time tinkering with a procedural generator, but so far the random ones are better. The downsides of the random approach are (1) the curation effort required, and (2) the high variability in puzzle difficulty. I have a feeling there’s a whole body of math and CS knowledge where Figure is an example of something that I don’t know the name for (imposter syndrome intensifies). As for the future of Figure, I feel strongly about keeping it free of ads, login walls, in-app purchases, or anything else that infringes on enjoyment or privacy. I’d also like to make sure Figure is accessible to everyone. English isn’t exactly required to play, but translations for the UI and website would be nice. I’ve tried to build Figure to be friendly to people who have color vision deficiency and people who rely on screen readers and keyboard navigation, but I have no idea if it’s actually any fun in these cases. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts… 1. It’s been surprisingly satisfying to build a web game with a modern frontend stack. I’ve noticed a lot of grumbling on HN over the years from OG web developers who yearn for the days of semantic HTML, a sprinkling of CSS, and vanilla JS. I was in that boat too and have grumbled plenty about the breakneck pace of frontend evolution. One of my goals with this project was to pick some popular frameworks and give them an honest try. I’m now a believer, but there’s still no way I can keep up with all the progress. 2. I found Tailwind awkward at first, but after a while I realized I was using Figma a lot less and just designing in code with utility classes, which is great for focus and flow. Having lived through the Web 2.0 standards revolution, it was hard to let go of some deeply rooted opinions about semantic purity, but overall I’m sold. 3. I really love side projects. At most jobs, you’re pushed toward specialization. Side projects allow you to build out a generalist skillset, which makes you better at your core job function and better at collaborating with others. It’s also liberating to explore and pivot around without time pressure. Figure started out as a 3D fidget toy in Unity where you fling projectiles at floating objects… 4. I made this game on my trusty 2013 MacBook Pro, which has been almost completely sufficient (ahem Docker ಠ_ಠ). I’ll probably get an M2 Air soon, but I’m reluctant to say goodbye to the best computer I’ve ever owned. 5. I’m very grateful for the people who build and maintain open source projects. It’s also delightful how many paid services offer generous free tiers to let developers play around: Figma, GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, and Pipedream, just to name a few that I’m currently using actively. If you work on FOSS and/or these excellent platforms, thank you. Anyway, hope you like it. Happy to answer any questions.
387 by sumul | 107 comments .
Hello, HN! Figure is a little side project I’ve been working on. Someone described it as Bejeweled meets Wordle. I built the puzzle interface and website in Next.js and React, which was a first for me and overall a great learning experience. The daily puzzle data is queued up in a PostgreSQL table. Another table stores anonymous solve stats. Once a day, a cron job hits a serverless API that promotes the next puzzle as “live” and prompts Next.js to update the prebaked static site with the new data. The game state is managed with Redux and your stats are persisted to localStorage. Framer Motion for animations. Styling is mostly Tailwind CSS. I use Figma for design and Logic Pro to make the sounds. I get a lot of questions about how the puzzles are generated. It’s not super sexy. I generate random grids of tiles and then run them through a brute force solver (sounds rough but the puzzles don’t feel anything). Every few days, I play through puzzles that look promising based on the solution space and pick some good ones to go into the queue. The rest are sent back to the void (again, painless). I’ve spent a little bit of time tinkering with a procedural generator, but so far the random ones are better. The downsides of the random approach are (1) the curation effort required, and (2) the high variability in puzzle difficulty. I have a feeling there’s a whole body of math and CS knowledge where Figure is an example of something that I don’t know the name for (imposter syndrome intensifies). As for the future of Figure, I feel strongly about keeping it free of ads, login walls, in-app purchases, or anything else that infringes on enjoyment or privacy. I’d also like to make sure Figure is accessible to everyone. English isn’t exactly required to play, but translations for the UI and website would be nice. I’ve tried to build Figure to be friendly to people who have color vision deficiency and people who rely on screen readers and keyboard navigation, but I have no idea if it’s actually any fun in these cases. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts… 1. It’s been surprisingly satisfying to build a web game with a modern frontend stack. I’ve noticed a lot of grumbling on HN over the years from OG web developers who yearn for the days of semantic HTML, a sprinkling of CSS, and vanilla JS. I was in that boat too and have grumbled plenty about the breakneck pace of frontend evolution. One of my goals with this project was to pick some popular frameworks and give them an honest try. I’m now a believer, but there’s still no way I can keep up with all the progress. 2. I found Tailwind awkward at first, but after a while I realized I was using Figma a lot less and just designing in code with utility classes, which is great for focus and flow. Having lived through the Web 2.0 standards revolution, it was hard to let go of some deeply rooted opinions about semantic purity, but overall I’m sold. 3. I really love side projects. At most jobs, you’re pushed toward specialization. Side projects allow you to build out a generalist skillset, which makes you better at your core job function and better at collaborating with others. It’s also liberating to explore and pivot around without time pressure. Figure started out as a 3D fidget toy in Unity where you fling projectiles at floating objects… 4. I made this game on my trusty 2013 MacBook Pro, which has been almost completely sufficient (ahem Docker ಠ_ಠ). I’ll probably get an M2 Air soon, but I’m reluctant to say goodbye to the best computer I’ve ever owned. 5. I’m very grateful for the people who build and maintain open source projects. It’s also delightful how many paid services offer generous free tiers to let developers play around: Figma, GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, and Pipedream, just to name a few that I’m currently using actively. If you work on FOSS and/or these excellent platforms, thank you. Anyway, hope you like it. Happy to answer any questions.
New best story on News: Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game
Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game
387 by sumul | 107 comments on News.
Hello, HN! Figure is a little side project I’ve been working on. Someone described it as Bejeweled meets Wordle. I built the puzzle interface and website in Next.js and React, which was a first for me and overall a great learning experience. The daily puzzle data is queued up in a PostgreSQL table. Another table stores anonymous solve stats. Once a day, a cron job hits a serverless API that promotes the next puzzle as “live” and prompts Next.js to update the prebaked static site with the new data. The game state is managed with Redux and your stats are persisted to localStorage. Framer Motion for animations. Styling is mostly Tailwind CSS. I use Figma for design and Logic Pro to make the sounds. I get a lot of questions about how the puzzles are generated. It’s not super sexy. I generate random grids of tiles and then run them through a brute force solver (sounds rough but the puzzles don’t feel anything). Every few days, I play through puzzles that look promising based on the solution space and pick some good ones to go into the queue. The rest are sent back to the void (again, painless). I’ve spent a little bit of time tinkering with a procedural generator, but so far the random ones are better. The downsides of the random approach are (1) the curation effort required, and (2) the high variability in puzzle difficulty. I have a feeling there’s a whole body of math and CS knowledge where Figure is an example of something that I don’t know the name for (imposter syndrome intensifies). As for the future of Figure, I feel strongly about keeping it free of ads, login walls, in-app purchases, or anything else that infringes on enjoyment or privacy. I’d also like to make sure Figure is accessible to everyone. English isn’t exactly required to play, but translations for the UI and website would be nice. I’ve tried to build Figure to be friendly to people who have color vision deficiency and people who rely on screen readers and keyboard navigation, but I have no idea if it’s actually any fun in these cases. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts… 1. It’s been surprisingly satisfying to build a web game with a modern frontend stack. I’ve noticed a lot of grumbling on HN over the years from OG web developers who yearn for the days of semantic HTML, a sprinkling of CSS, and vanilla JS. I was in that boat too and have grumbled plenty about the breakneck pace of frontend evolution. One of my goals with this project was to pick some popular frameworks and give them an honest try. I’m now a believer, but there’s still no way I can keep up with all the progress. 2. I found Tailwind awkward at first, but after a while I realized I was using Figma a lot less and just designing in code with utility classes, which is great for focus and flow. Having lived through the Web 2.0 standards revolution, it was hard to let go of some deeply rooted opinions about semantic purity, but overall I’m sold. 3. I really love side projects. At most jobs, you’re pushed toward specialization. Side projects allow you to build out a generalist skillset, which makes you better at your core job function and better at collaborating with others. It’s also liberating to explore and pivot around without time pressure. Figure started out as a 3D fidget toy in Unity where you fling projectiles at floating objects… 4. I made this game on my trusty 2013 MacBook Pro, which has been almost completely sufficient (ahem Docker ಠ_ಠ). I’ll probably get an M2 Air soon, but I’m reluctant to say goodbye to the best computer I’ve ever owned. 5. I’m very grateful for the people who build and maintain open source projects. It’s also delightful how many paid services offer generous free tiers to let developers play around: Figma, GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, and Pipedream, just to name a few that I’m currently using actively. If you work on FOSS and/or these excellent platforms, thank you. Anyway, hope you like it. Happy to answer any questions.
387 by sumul | 107 comments on News.
Hello, HN! Figure is a little side project I’ve been working on. Someone described it as Bejeweled meets Wordle. I built the puzzle interface and website in Next.js and React, which was a first for me and overall a great learning experience. The daily puzzle data is queued up in a PostgreSQL table. Another table stores anonymous solve stats. Once a day, a cron job hits a serverless API that promotes the next puzzle as “live” and prompts Next.js to update the prebaked static site with the new data. The game state is managed with Redux and your stats are persisted to localStorage. Framer Motion for animations. Styling is mostly Tailwind CSS. I use Figma for design and Logic Pro to make the sounds. I get a lot of questions about how the puzzles are generated. It’s not super sexy. I generate random grids of tiles and then run them through a brute force solver (sounds rough but the puzzles don’t feel anything). Every few days, I play through puzzles that look promising based on the solution space and pick some good ones to go into the queue. The rest are sent back to the void (again, painless). I’ve spent a little bit of time tinkering with a procedural generator, but so far the random ones are better. The downsides of the random approach are (1) the curation effort required, and (2) the high variability in puzzle difficulty. I have a feeling there’s a whole body of math and CS knowledge where Figure is an example of something that I don’t know the name for (imposter syndrome intensifies). As for the future of Figure, I feel strongly about keeping it free of ads, login walls, in-app purchases, or anything else that infringes on enjoyment or privacy. I’d also like to make sure Figure is accessible to everyone. English isn’t exactly required to play, but translations for the UI and website would be nice. I’ve tried to build Figure to be friendly to people who have color vision deficiency and people who rely on screen readers and keyboard navigation, but I have no idea if it’s actually any fun in these cases. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts… 1. It’s been surprisingly satisfying to build a web game with a modern frontend stack. I’ve noticed a lot of grumbling on HN over the years from OG web developers who yearn for the days of semantic HTML, a sprinkling of CSS, and vanilla JS. I was in that boat too and have grumbled plenty about the breakneck pace of frontend evolution. One of my goals with this project was to pick some popular frameworks and give them an honest try. I’m now a believer, but there’s still no way I can keep up with all the progress. 2. I found Tailwind awkward at first, but after a while I realized I was using Figma a lot less and just designing in code with utility classes, which is great for focus and flow. Having lived through the Web 2.0 standards revolution, it was hard to let go of some deeply rooted opinions about semantic purity, but overall I’m sold. 3. I really love side projects. At most jobs, you’re pushed toward specialization. Side projects allow you to build out a generalist skillset, which makes you better at your core job function and better at collaborating with others. It’s also liberating to explore and pivot around without time pressure. Figure started out as a 3D fidget toy in Unity where you fling projectiles at floating objects… 4. I made this game on my trusty 2013 MacBook Pro, which has been almost completely sufficient (ahem Docker ಠ_ಠ). I’ll probably get an M2 Air soon, but I’m reluctant to say goodbye to the best computer I’ve ever owned. 5. I’m very grateful for the people who build and maintain open source projects. It’s also delightful how many paid services offer generous free tiers to let developers play around: Figma, GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, and Pipedream, just to name a few that I’m currently using actively. If you work on FOSS and/or these excellent platforms, thank you. Anyway, hope you like it. Happy to answer any questions.
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Inflation spikes to 39-year high as prices soar
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Inflation spikes to 39-year high as prices soar
12/10/21 5:38 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
UK court ruling opens door to Wikileaks' Assange being extradited to US
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UK court ruling opens door to Wikileaks' Assange being extradited to US
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New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: I interviewed my dad before he died
Tell HN: I interviewed my dad before he died
411 by loveudad | 110 comments on
My dad got really sick a few months ago. I was shocked but also panicked about the idea of him dying without me knowing him well. He was a great dad but didn't talk much. Fortunately, he got better for a short time. I seized the opportunity to ask him as much as he could answer and film him. Of course, his memory wasn't perfect but I got the big picture. Now that he passed away, I'm both devastated and glad that I got to know him more and kept a record so I can see his face and listen to his voice for more than the usual family video. I wish I had done it sooner though. I've heard multiple people tell me they don't know their parents' or grandparents' life, or they've heard it but they've eventually forgotten so I thought I'd share. I hope this will help some of you. Thank you blood donors Thank you dad
411 by loveudad | 110 comments on
My dad got really sick a few months ago. I was shocked but also panicked about the idea of him dying without me knowing him well. He was a great dad but didn't talk much. Fortunately, he got better for a short time. I seized the opportunity to ask him as much as he could answer and film him. Of course, his memory wasn't perfect but I got the big picture. Now that he passed away, I'm both devastated and glad that I got to know him more and kept a record so I can see his face and listen to his voice for more than the usual family video. I wish I had done it sooner though. I've heard multiple people tell me they don't know their parents' or grandparents' life, or they've heard it but they've eventually forgotten so I thought I'd share. I hope this will help some of you. Thank you blood donors Thank you dad
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back
12/11/21 7:13 AM
Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back
12/11/21 7:13 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns
12/11/21 2:58 AM
Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns
12/11/21 2:58 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Inflation spikes to 39-year high as prices soar
12/10/21 5:38 AM
Inflation spikes to 39-year high as prices soar
12/10/21 5:38 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back
12/11/21 7:13 AM
Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back
12/11/21 7:13 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns
12/11/21 2:58 AM
Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns
12/11/21 2:58 AM
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