Modyfi | Engineering + Design | REMOTE | Full Time | US, UK, Global
Modyfi is building the future of collaborative image editing and visual creative tools on the web.
We are primarily looking for mid to senior level graphics engineers to join our team building our high performance image processing engine in Rust, WASM and WebGPU (though Rustcurious C/C++ engineers will also be very welcome!).
If you are passionate about image processing, Ai image generation, GPU programming, color, realtime graphics or interactive creative tools then please get in touch!
Our team is 100% remote currently spread between Los Angeles and London timezones.
I'm not at all surprised about the response here. We are a community of people who love function over form (the perfect emblem being the purely functional design of our beloved HN). And in all honesty, my initial reaction was the same.
But we'd do well to bear in mind that:
- Most of us are not the intended audience.
- The purpose of the site is not what most of us expect. They are not trying to create leads from this page (hence the lack of useful information and call to action).
- And tangentially, the internet isn't only about function or utility.
I sympathise with the compulsive need to pull-apart a website with >300kb javascript, scrolling to get more information and unnecessary animation when it gets in the way of you using a site that you need. But surely this is not one of those times. Instead why not treat it like you are looking at an abstract piece of art. Sure a 3 year old could have made it but that's not really the point, is it?
I get that it's all form. Like an ad or a music video. But my experience of it is that it's like someone has shoved something up too close to my face. The feeling I get is that I want to retract from it. Is that what they wanted? As designers were they able to get past their minimalism one trick pony and evaluate the overall experience of what that pony generated?
I already found it frustratingly ambiguous that there could be more than one Manchester in the US, then I checked and it turns out there are more than 30
I don’t remember any examples off-hand, but we have a few town names in Indiana which aren’t even unique within the state, because one of the locations isn’t incorporated.
My only feedback is the gray text (#808080) on the dark gray background (#222222), has a contrast ratio of ~4:1 which some people may find difficult to read (and slightly below WCAG recommendation for regular text[1]). I think you can lighten the text slightly without disrupting the surrounding color hierarchy.
Contrast ratios that are mathematically derived are not always nice or correct. It's notoriously hard to determine perceived brightness from hex codes. That said, it might need some tweaking. I only spent a little time on it and I know it helps to revisit a color scheme a couple of times during different light circumstances.
I find it amusing that you use the example of Python 2 -> Python 3, a breaking change in a widely used language, that has famously been very difficult and long for organisations to deal with.
Compare that with javascript which has never had a breaking change. On top of that Typescript is a backwards compatible superset of javascript.
More to the point, Ryan has a humble explanation of what regrets he has about Node.js[1], why they exist and in some cases why there isn't an easy fix.
The point that I assume you're making, that sometimes it is better to spend significant energy to fix something, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, is a good one. However I'd suggest this is not one of those cases.
> I find it amusing that you use the example of Python 2 -> Python 3, a breaking change in a widely used language, that has famously been very difficult and long for organisations to deal with.
Why is that amusing? I specifically chose that example for that exact reason. I was highlighting the difference in the audience and use case.
> However I'd suggest this is not one of those cases.
I don't see the argument that supports that, either in the post or your reply.
The thing is, I can see Beepboo 1.0 being announced in 2025 to address the things that went wrong with deno. Because there will be design mistakes. And at what point do you say 'oh too many people rely on this software to fix this, I have to start over'?
Couple this with a very real trend-chasing and resume pushing in frontend dev and I'm starting to understand why people are so cynical about this stuff.
Typescript is something more palatable to me because it wasn't throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
> ... there's a tendency to start over when the development gets hard to maintain or support instead of just fixing the mistakes.
The thought that Node.js should have been 'fixed' instead of creating Deno is where I disagree. At a glance I can see a few reasons:
- Node.js maintainers + community may not even think there is something to be fixed (see various discussions in this thread about module resolutions)
- Politics, death by committee, inertia
- Effectively a dependency with npm registry (although not technically)
- Lack of backwards compatibility with changes (e.g. module resolution)
> The thing is, I can see Beepboo 1.0 being announced in 2025
Node.js was initially released in 2009 so it's probably fairer to suggest Beepboo 1.0 will be released in 2030. And yes, if it improved on Deno and solved inherent problems that couldn't be solved internally, I would wholeheartedly cheer it along.
I think it's also worth mentioning that Node.js is at a level of stability and maturity that people who plan to and have already built on it, aren't left abandoned.
Would you say linux is insecure because a user can download an arbitrary shell script and run it?
I know it's not an identical problem, but it does demonstrate that we probably agree that the onus is on the user to assess the risk of any arbitrary code they run on their machine, including the risk associated with the transport they use to obtain that code.
Funnily enough I actually agree with you that I would prefer to prevent http imports by default. However doing so won't make importing a library secure, and conversely allowing it doesn't mean it is insecure.
As an aside, I noticed you have posted the same one line message about the risk of a MITM attack with http imports 4 times in this thread. You might find it more helpful to contribute to the discussion by explaining why you think that.
Most people describe Linux as a much safer OS even though windows puts more restrictions on running code from the internet (to the extent of marking downloaded files as potentially dangerous and asking if you really want to execute them). I would totally understand if HTTP(not s) was used by default at any point, but by writing a URI starting with `http://` into the file, the programmer is actively telling the program to download that file and use HTTP for that. Secure by default doesn't mean preventing the programmer from doing insecure things.
browsers have been benefiting from decades of innovation to mitigate the security issues of execution of JavaScript.
CORS headers is the latest of theses innovations. Deno allow you to fetch code as a browser would without providing you with any of the safety browsers can have. Mostly because it would not make sense to have a runtime doing that.
Deno is not a browser but takes the risks of a browser. Running Deno install is as safe as browsing the internet using Windows CP without SP 2 and Internet explorer bellow 6.
Also, importing a module in https does not mean this module won't import anything using http. Should you review the code of all imported modules? This is virtually impossible.
Deno must disable http by defaulkt and provide a flag to re-enable it. This is factually a security issue in Deno.
> Should you review the code of all imported modules? This is virtually impossible.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was exactly the direction that Deno was trying to move towards. Fewer direct dependencies with some amount of transitive trust.
I.e. "[Deno] has a set of reviewed (audited) standard modules"
> Windows CP without SP 2 and Internet explorer bellow 6
I get the point you're trying to make with this hyperbole but browsers still let you view http pages (by default).
> Deno must disable http by defaulkt and provide a flag to re-enable it. This is factually a security issue in Deno.
Again I agree with your idea about disabling by default but there is another perspective (and I think Ryan deserves some empathy).
At this point, it is clear that Deno is lying for marketing reason by calling itself secure.
Of course Ryan deserves empathy, so does Bert. But in the meanwhile during their talks at major conferences, they have trolled a lot another project. The maintainer of that other project now get weekly/daily pings from deno supporters trolling them.
Deno's culture seems big around trolling atm, a CoC could have fixed it, the th (B)DFL has decided another way.
Yeah, I have basic culling implemented. Objects that are larger than, say, 3x their normal scale are not rendered. Likewise with those 1/100th their normal scale.
I was surprised the other day on a long-ish walk that skirted around the base of Ally Pally, just how green the built up areas of Harringey are. I often get the impression that Haringey (and Hackney) are making every effort to pull down old-growth trees to make way for new developments, but this view of the borough 'side on' allayed my fears.
Still, I'm always sad to see old trees chopped down (as is happening now in Woodberry Down and happened a few years back around Hornsey, all in the quest to pack more people in).
Yes I hate it when they pull down old-ish trees on the street, though to be fair they have conscientiously replanted lots near us.
As for the maps it seems to vary quite sharply from area to area, presumably just because bits haven't been filled in yet. They've got a lovely old oak at the end of our road on there, and long may it last...
Any possibility of a way to purchase outside of the AppStore? I appreciate this is extra effort for possibly little extra reach but I have managed to survive without signing into my icloud and hopefully won't ever.
Interesting to see the comments suggesting that we should expect the NHS to pay if there is a problem that needs solving. It seems the implication is that labour should never be done voluntarily (even in a crisis situation) in a free economy. I find it bleak that we expect our societies and markets to function, solely driven by "selfish" value-chasing individuals.
As someone who has grown up benefitting from the NHS, I will sign up to volunteer, and am glad to do so. I wouldn't be surprised to see ample response from the rest of the nation.
Interestingly, in the past I've also experienced private health-care in the US, and yet wouldn't consider volunteering in the same situation on that side of the pond (and, of course, they likely wouldn't ever ask).
> I find it bleak that we expect our societies and markets to function, solely driven by "selfish" value-chasing individuals.
the inherent problem of today's society is exactly because it rewards people who are "selfish" and value-chasing far more then having a far more communical mindset.
In terms of value extraction from society, those who play selfish win, and they win at the expense of others.
I would even like to add that they might even be rewarded for this behaviour at large in our current economic system. Because the system is very bad at including costs of external factors. These external factors right now are being paid for by society at large. A prime example of this would be enviromental costs and bailouts with too little strings attached.
I would put it this way: If you want to ask people to volunteer their time to help essential government services, then don't also be the government that continually cuts corporation tax, income tax, and public services.
It's like the companies asking for a bailout -fine if you were running a good business and got impacted by a once in a lifetime event, maybe we should look at it. But if the reasons you've got no cash reserves to weather the storm is because you spent it all on share buybacks then maybe the risk lies with the shareholders since they reaped the rewards.
It's just another step in the cycle - cut services, cut taxes and then act shocked when the services aren't good enough to cope, and then point in every direction you can except for actually providinig the services that the government is responsible for.
>It seems the implication is that labour should never be done voluntarily (even in a crisis situation) in a free economy.
Because when those volunteers go to get something they want, such as buying a home or paying rent, it won't be given to them free. It might be possible for some sense of social capital to exist to feel the gap, but that seems to be mostly gone these days as it has be optimized and hacked until it is no longer recognizable.
One counterpoint: there are now a bunch of unemployed people. The govt is planning to give them much aid.
This implies that paid labour is basically free for governments at the moment. They can either pay people jobless claims, or hire people for the new work that needs doing.
Volunteers are also a great idea! But I want to emphasize that governments shouldn't shy away from projects now if the labour costs money. Because they're currently about to pay people to not labour. So any outlay in salary is a savings on unemployment claims.
We can't buy groceries, nor pay rent nor utilities with volunteer hours. So long as we're subjected to Capitalist demands, we'll be forced to demand Capitalist compensation, or perish.
I also can't buy groceries from holding the door open for people and yet I do. People are sometimes just nice to each other, helping each other out, especially in need, or in this case, a pandemic.
There is that little thing that some people who frequent HN might forget about: some people are not paid a lot (for tons of them this is a mistake of the society, and they should be paid more to begin with, but this is another issue than the immediate one) and actually need some money each month to pay rent, etc.
It is too easy to say the a mass of people should just work for free to cope for the mistakes of their government. Now of course some people will do it and I admire them, some of them will even do it while in personal financial trouble and I admire them even more.
But they absolutely should be paid in the end. Because the value they will provide to the society is just enormous, and "us" (for those who do not help with the crisis) not paying them would not really be the fairest situation...
That’s really important to remember, but I don’t see why it should affect discussion here.
Presumably we aren’t talking about volunteering the time of other people, but ourselves. If we can all afford to do it, isn’t it something to be encouraged, especially since it will charitably benefit those who cannot afford to do it?
Maybe it's not wise for people to volunteer during work hours when they live paycheck to paycheck, but there are also a lot of people that can easily take one or two days off per week to help out. I'm not suggesting that someone who needs it foregoes their salary.
Holding the door open comes at a much lower opportunity cost than the hours of volunteering which could be spent nourishing oneself in a callous world. Outside of full Communism, these selfless acts of Volunteerism are not survivable for most of the working class.
Remember, many people are one month away from the Sheriff showing up at our door, and evicting us at gunpoint.
> I find it bleak that we expect our societies and markets to function, solely driven by "selfish" value-chasing individuals.
Perhaps it's bleak, but it is an expectation that generally works even without massive brainwashing. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
> Interestingly, in the past I've also experienced private health-care in the US, and yet wouldn't consider volunteering...
So your willingness to help is premised on upholding some collectivist institution, not on helping save lives in times of a crisis. Interesting indeed.
Modyfi is building the future of collaborative image editing and visual creative tools on the web.
We are primarily looking for mid to senior level graphics engineers to join our team building our high performance image processing engine in Rust, WASM and WebGPU (though Rustcurious C/C++ engineers will also be very welcome!).
If you are passionate about image processing, Ai image generation, GPU programming, color, realtime graphics or interactive creative tools then please get in touch!
Our team is 100% remote currently spread between Los Angeles and London timezones.
Also hiring for front end / full stack roles.
Tech stack:
- Typescript
- React
- Rust / C++
- WebGPU / WebGL2
--> See all our job postings here: https://angel.co/company/modyfi