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Re:SOML โ€“ A Config Format for Humans on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @09:11AM (#50352217)
KDL has similar goals: https://kdl.dev/

I looked at SOML and I like both tbh. I just wish we could pick either one and be done with json/yaml/toml for human-edited configuration.

Re:Whirlpool Washer Transmission Repair (2007) on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @08:38AM (#49800255)
I had a very similar washer I think, from the 90s, and it eventually started exhibiting the exact same symptom (sometime in 2020 during the COVID crisis). I followed the same process and the blog author, but when I opened the transmission, the problem was immediately apparent: the large "spin gear" was plastic and was completely worn down, the teeth did not engage at all anymore with its driving gear.

Unfortunately, I found Maytag did not sell any separate parts for the transmission, only the whole transmission, for somewhere around 300$, which was more than the 25-ish years old washer was worth to me. People frequently bash manufacturers for using plastic parts like, as a mechanical engineer, I think there may be valid reasons for the design choice, but knowing the part is subject to wear, it should absolutely be made available as a spare.

I ended buying a new washer, from a very limited selection of models that were available in the summer of 2020 shortage of just about everything. I gave away the old one for free, the guy who picked it up needed the motor to repair another machine, I hope he was able to use the parts to keep it running for a long time.

Quebec, Canada mandates winter tires between December 1st and March 15th.

(But the winters are cold).

Re:Gpiozero Flow on Thursday July 30, 2026 @01:40PM (#49113183)
I get the feeling that labview was very big in the 00s but has been losing a lot of steam in the last 10 years or so, maybe because of failure to modernize. Labview today feels and looks like a 90s app, contrary to eg. modern Simulink.

FWIW I work in Simulink quite a bit, and "code blocks" (matlab function / matlab system) tend be used quite liberally in my models. Having the visual presentation of data flow is quite nice though for the kinds of things Simulink is used for, mostly physical modeling of electrical or mechanical systems.

Re:NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @12:02PM (#47767425)
There are ocasionally Nim talks at FOSDEM.
Re:PCB devboard the size of a USB-C plug on Monday March 09, 2026 @09:46AM (#47309018)
They had stopped for a while because they were transitioning away from using Paypal as a processor. A few weeks, maybe a month or so tops? I had to switch to JLC PCB for an order back in January, because they didn't support any viable payment method for me in Canada (tried to make a payoneer account, they don't do business in Canada).

But I just checked and it seems that they now accept CCs again.

Re:Poor Deming never stood a chance on Tuesday February 17, 2026 @10:18AM (#47048411)
In case anyone is interested, I enjoyed the book "Turn the Ship Around!" by L. David Marquet, about management lessons applied by the author who was a US Navy submarine captain. It does very much emphasize giving trust, responsibility and accountability to workers (or enlisted personnel, in this case).
Re:Prism on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @03:25PM (#46786017)
Agreed. Tex/Latex is very old tech. Error recovery and messages is very bad. Developing new macros in Tex is about as fun as you expect developing in a 70s-era language to be (ie probably similar to cobol and old fortran).

I haven't tried it yet but Typst seems like a promising replacement: https://typst.app/

Re:The C-Shaped Hole in Package Management on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @11:07AM (#46781836)
uv has mostly solved the python issue. IME it's dependency resolution is fast and just works. Packages are hard linked from a global cache, which also greatly reduces storage requirements when you work with multiple projects.
Re:"Anyone else out there vibe circuit-building?" on Monday January 19, 2026 @11:09AM (#46680583)
I mean, he absolutely knew it was going to burn up. But I have no trouble believing that such a circuit was designed by AI.
It's because aluminium has a higher coefficient of thermal expansion. It expands and shrinks more as it heats, and as those cycles add up it tends to loosen electrical connections. Loose connections have higher resistance, heat up and can cause fires.

That said, there is no reason we can't design better connectors that can withstand the expansion and shrinkage cycles, like spring loaded or spring cage connectors.

Re:Developing a high level language over Zig on Thursday January 08, 2026 @11:25AM (#46542896)
Just an idea but Nim seems to have the features you mentioned. Nim "transpiles" to C, and can even be compiled via `zig cc` (which is an interace to clang). If you really want to, maybe you could make a zig backend for Nim?
As long as you keep the module and pressure angle the same, the gears should be compatible.
This is great! Any chance you could add STEP export also? It would facilitate importing into CAD software to customize the gear, eg to add a custom hub.
Re:A Guide to Magnetizing N48 Magnets in Ansys Maxwell on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @07:36PM (#46440000)
Typically, company would pay for a week or so of training if you don't have previous experience with the software.

Once again, this isn't a huge expense compared to the license cost + the engineer's salary.

Then for ongoing support/questions you get the support I mentioned including the onsite support engineer.

Re:Go Away Python on Tuesday December 30, 2025 @08:30AM (#46433151)
uv uses a global cache but hardlinks the dependencies for your script into a temp venv that is only for your script, so its still pretty fast.
Re:A Guide to Magnetizing N48 Magnets in Ansys Maxwell on Monday December 22, 2025 @08:00AM (#46353805)
Ansys also costs 5 digits per seat per year.

My experience working at large size company that paid those sort of sums for a different FEA software is that we got an "application engineer" assigned to us to answer any questions we had and provide needed documentation if anything was needed. He actually sat and worked from our own offices one day per week.

Re:Put a ring on it: a lock-free MPMC ring buffer on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @09:33AM (#46288971)
Re:Why we built Lightpanda in Zig on Saturday December 06, 2025 @11:24AM (#46174508)
Also wasn't the D compiler proprietary and a paid product for a long time after its initial release?

No judgement against trying to monetize valuable work, but in this day and nearly everyone expects free and OSS compilers/interpreters and core tooling.

Re:Thoughts on Go vs. Rust vs. Zig on Thursday December 04, 2025 @08:53PM (#46155976)
> it is like C in that you can fit the whole language in your head.

Sure, you can fit all of C in your head, including all the obscure footguns that can lead to UB: https://gist.github.com/Earnestly/7c903f481ff9d29a3dd1

And other fun things like aliasing rules and type punning.

Re:Ask HN: What open source projects are you grateful for? on Sunday November 30, 2025 @05:05PM (#46100901)
Scoop (https://scoop.sh/), a package manager for windows that is essential to make Windows usable for me.

Sourcegit is my new favorite git client. Git in general, of course.

Linux and also the people behind RT_PREEMPT, I am excited to see it merged into mainline this year.

KDE has been my favorite DE for years and I use many of their apps too, such as Kate. Thanks to everyone contributing to the KDE project.

The entire python "data science" stack, numpy/scipy/matplotlib/pandas/plotly/polars/pyarrow/jupyter, which is essential to my work. Tiny projects too, like nptdms.

The raspberry pi foundation, in particular for the pico, rp2040 and rp2350. Joy to work with, great documentation, super cheap and available, perfect for one-off projects, prototypes and hobby stuff, which is pretty much always neglected by the big silicon vendors.

I set up my own NAS this year, running many self-hosted apps. I am grateful for Truenas, Jellyfin and pihole.

So many cli apps that I use daily:

- starship prompt - fd - ripgrep - fzf - lazygit - yazi

Firefox gets sometimes deserved criticism, but I have been using it continuously since Firebird 0.7 and I believe it contributes to keeping the web open.

Re:What's Hiding Inside Haribo's Power Bank and Headphones? on Sunday November 30, 2025 @02:40PM (#46099694)
Unless things have changed, Amazon is the official and only reseller for Anker products in Canada and probably many other countries.
Re:Advent of Code 2025 on Sunday November 30, 2025 @12:28PM (#46098602)
I've had a lot of fun using Nim for AOC for many years. Once you're familiar with the language and std lib, its almost as fast to write as python, but much faster (Nim compiles to C, which then gets compiled to your executable). This means that sometimes, if your solution isn't perfect in terms of algorithmic complexity, waiting a few minutes can still save you (waiting 5 mins for your slow Nim code is OK, waiting 5 hours for your slow Python isn't really, for me). Of course all problems have a solution that can run in seconds even in Python, but sometimes it's not the one I figure out first try.

Downsides: The debugging situation is pretty bad (hope you like printf debugging), smaller community means smaller package ecosystem and fewer reference solutions to look up if you're stuck or looking for interesting alternative ideas after solving a problem on your own, but there's still quality stuff out there.

Though personally I'm thinking of trying Go this year, just for fun and learning something new.

Edit: also a static type system can save you from a few stupid bugs that you then spend 15 minutes tracking down because you added a "15" to your list without converting it to an int first or something like that.

Just as a fun fact, some of the largest tractors made these days actually rival F1 cars in horsepower output. John Deere 9RX goes up to 913 HP for example.
Re:Nim 2.2.6 on Saturday November 01, 2025 @09:24AM (#45781459)
FWIW, I agree that Araq is an abrasive character and probably not a great community leader for an open source project.

But I disagree with your take on the moderation team. I don't know if you have specific names to call out, but PMunch, miran and the rest of the team have been nothing but welcoming, in my experience.

Re:Nim 2.2.6 on Friday October 31, 2025 @03:35PM (#45775835)
@[] is syntax for a "seq", which is similar to a C++ vector, ArrayList in Java/C#, or a python list. It's a heap-allocated array that automatically resizes.

In contrast with [], which is mostly identical to a C array: fixed size and lives on the stack.

Re:Bach Cello Suites on Friday September 26, 2025 @10:04PM (#45392756)
The Netherlands Bach Society has actually started a huge project to produce high quality video recordings to all of Bach's catalogue. You can find the videos on their YT channel (https://www.youtube.com/bach) or www.allofbach.com.

I'm pretty sure I learned about this project from HN many, many years ago.

Rechargeable headlamp is another one.
Re:Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience on Tuesday July 22, 2025 @06:53PM (#44653940)
Do you mean Hyundai Sonata, or another Kia model?

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