by throwawaysafely ·
I’m reaching out here because I’ve hit a wall that feels insurmountable and I am looking for genuine perspective from people who might have navigated systemic barriers.
I have a Master’s in Computer Science from a European university and a research background with papers totaling over 500 citations. In my spare time, I’m a builder and I’ve developed web apps, games, and various side projects. On paper, I should have a solid career path, but my reality is the opposite.
I am currently back in my home country in the East due to circumstances I couldn't control. Despite my credentials, my degree feels useless here. I work at a decent-sized western company (fully remote), but the internal politics are volatile and I fear for my job security. More painfully, I feel a deep sense of prejudice; in daily professional conversations, I can hear the tone shift when people realize where I am based. It feels like I am watching others reap what I have sown, while my own investments in skills and projects feel futile.
The core of my problem is twofold:
Geographic and Legal: The jobs I am actually qualified for are almost exclusively in the West, but there is no current legal path for me to migrate or secure a living there.
The Trust Gap: Despite the citations and my portfolio, I lack the "signal" that makes international recruiters or local employers trust my expertise. It feels like I'm "cursed" by my place of birth.
For those who have been stuck in "low-trust" geographies or faced extreme systemic barriers despite having high-level skills:
How do you bridge the trust gap with Western companies when relocation isn't an option? Are there specific niches (Remote-first R&D, specialized consulting, etc.) where academic citations and a builder mindset actually carry weight?
I am looking for any genuine suggestions on how to leverage what I have to secure a life that doesn't feel impossible.
by dfajgljsldkjag ·
No public announcement. Just quietly added to killed by google. Step 2 just fails with an error: https://developers.google.com/tenor/guides/quickstart
Hello Tenor API customer,
We're writing to inform you about the deprecation of the Tenor API offering on June 30, 2026. We are making this change to focus our resources on enhancing the main Tenor experience.
The Tenor API has been a valuable tool for many developers. We sincerely appreciate your partnership and the innovative ways you have integrated Tenor into your applications. Your contributions have helped shape the Tenor ecosystem.
What you need to know Key Dates:
Starting January 13, 2026, New API key sign-ups and new integrations will no longer be allowed On June 30, 2026, any API or Ads Distribution Agreements you have with Tenor will be terminated The Tenor API will continue to work for existing integrations until June 30, 2026 Advised Action:
Plan and make any necessary changes before June 30, 2026 Potential Impact:
After June 30, 2026, failure to transition out of the API will return an error message when attempting API requests Thanks for choosing Tenor API.
– The Google Cloud Team
by neilfrndes ·
Yesterday my production app went down. The cause? DigitalOcean's managed PostgreSQL update broke private VPC connectivity to their managed Kubernetes.
Public endpoint worked. Private endpoint timed out. Root cause: a Cilium bug (#34503) where ARP entries go stale after infrastructure changes.
DO support responded relatively quickly (<12hrs). Their fix? Deploy a DaemonSet from a random GitHub user to ping stale ARP entries every 10 seconds. The upstream Cilium fix is merged but not yet deployed to DOKS. No ETA.
I chose managed services specifically to avoid ops emergencies. We're a tiny startup paying the premium so someone else handles this. Instead, I spent late night hours debugging VPC routing issues in a networking layer I don't control.
HN's usual advice is "just use managed services, focus on the business." Generally good advice. But managed doesn't mean worry-free, it means trading your failure modes for the vendor's failure modes. You're not choosing between problems and no problems. You're choosing between problems you control and (fewer?) problems you don't.
Still using DO. Still using managed services. Just with fewer illusions about what "managed" means.
by arapkuliev ·
I keep hearing that prototyping is “solved” now — just use Cursor, Claude, Lovable, etc.
But when I talk to people inside real organizations (healthcare, regulated industries, even large non-tech companies), I keep seeing the opposite:
There’s no shortage of ideas. There’s a constant backlog of things people want to test — new workflows, internal tools, patient-facing flows, decision support UIs.
The bottleneck isn’t creativity. It’s: – internal IT teams focused on maintenance – engineers already overloaded – AI tools that still require time, context, and ownership – agencies/freelancers that are too slow or heavyweight for “just a prototype”
My hot take: AI didn’t eliminate the prototyping problem — it shifted it to the people who have the least time to deal with it.
Curious how this matches your experience: – Do you actually prototype continuously, or is it mostly one-off? – Have AI tools fully replaced the need for external help for you? – If you could get realistic prototypes in days (not months), how often would you use that?
Genuinely trying to understand whether I’m seeing a real pattern — or just a biased slice of the world.
by nicomeemes ·
I'm reaching out to the HN community because I've just lost something that can't be recreated: my entire GitHub history since I was 14 years old.
What happened?
My account was permanently banned without warning. After fighting through support tickets, the suspected culprit is a chargeback related to GitHub Copilot that occurred during a fraud dispute on my credit card.
When fraudulent charges were reversed, GitHub Copilot charges apparently went with them – and GitHub's automated system interpreted this as intentional fraud.
I started in infosec at 14 – hacking, building tools, contributing to open source on GitHub. As a teenager, I contributed work that was featured at DEFCON. I'm still early in my career, and I've been banking on something crucial: that real, tangible contributions to open-source projects would speak louder than any resume ever could. Those contributions were my resume. They were proof of work – thousands of commits, security tools, pull requests, issues, and collaborations that showed what I could actually build and how I work with others. All of that is now gone (unless you count the BigQuery archives...) Not suspended. Just... inaccessible.
The broader issue: For young developers and security researchers like me, GitHub contributions are our professional credibility. We don't have decades of corporate experience or impressive job titles. We have public code, meaningful contributions, security research, and a history of shipping. When that disappears overnight due to a banking mishap during a fraud dispute, it's devestating.
A fraudulent charge triggered a card cancellation In the dispute process, legitimate charges (including GitHub Copilot) were reversed GitHub's system flagged this as abuse and permanently banned the account No warning. No appeal process. No way to distinguish fraud victims from bad actors.
If anyone has connections at GitHub who can review this with human judgment, please reach out. I am desperate for a 2nd chance. If you've successfully navigated a similar situation, let me know.
I understand platforms need to combat fraud, but there has to be room for nuance. A mistaken reversal during a legitimate fraud dispute shouldn't permanently erase years of work. I'm ready to immediately settle any disputed charges and provide whatever documentation is needed – but I can't even get to a human who can evaluate the situation.
How You Can Help
If anyone has connections at GitHub who can review this with human judgment, please reach out. I am desperate for a 2nd chance. If you've successfully navigated a similar situation, let me know.
I understand platforms need to combat fraud, but there has to be room for nuance. A mistaken reversal during a legitimate fraud dispute shouldn't permanently erase years of work. I'm ready to immediately settle any disputed charges and provide whatever documentation is needed – but I can't even get to a human who can evaluate the situation.
---
Contact Info
Email: nico@omg.lol
GitHub (banned acct): nicoandmee
StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/users/6934588/nico-mee
Keybase: https://keybase.io/nicomee
Personal Website: https://nicomee.com/
by david927 ·
What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?
by us321 ·
by theanonymousone ·
The page loads but with an empty feed and server error. Is it ephemeral?
by pyeri ·
Tailwind is the hot topic these days, and 9 out of 10 developers will probably suggest (or even force!) you to use Tailwind over Bootstrap. However, here are some logical and rational reasons why Bootstrap is actually the better framework:
1. Easier learning curve. Bootstrap 5 doesn't assume deep expertise in frontend design. The fact that backend developers can implement it easily without learning arcane concepts like state management or virtual DOM is highly underestimated.
2. Highly Utilitarian. While tailwind markets itself as a "utility first" framework, Bootstrap offers real utility without all the extra fuss. Navbars, modal popups, utility classes for colors and accents like `bg-primary`, `bg-secondary`, etc.— are all built-in and ready to use. How much more utilitarian could you get?
3. Creativity within Uniformity. This point is more about psychology than technology. One of the biggest criticisms of Bootstrap is that "most Bootstrap-built sites look similar". But this is a subjective opinion and ignores the fact that creativity doesn't always equate to reinventing the entire wheel. You can still be creative with configuring a wheel's spokes, tyre colors, tube pressure, etc. on an assembly line - In fact, such creativity is ideal when it helps increase productivity while delivering a standardized, user-friendly experience.
PS: Which one feels simpler and more utilitarian to you?
- Tailwind: `<button class="bg-sky-500 hover:bg-sky-600 active:bg-sky-700 text-white px-4 py-2 rounded-lg">Click me</button>` - Bootstrap: `<button class="btn-primary">Click me</button>`
by swiper_lux ·
In the 70's you had the likes of Bob Dylan, 80's with U2, 90's with maybe Public Enemy. But lately there does not seem to be any artists out with popular protest music. Is what I am seeing real? If so, what has happened?