News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

placatedmayhem

Re:We halved DNS build delay and cut memory use by 85% on Monday November 02, 2026 @11:40AM (#50339491)
Coincidentally, I just got angry this weekend about my Mac with 64GB of RAM going OOM because of poorly optimized applications. Use of web tech, especially Electron, was common among basically all of the offending applications. Whether Electron itself or just poor coding, I'm not sure, but there's a pattern.
Re:OpenPrinter: Open Source Printer on Tuesday September 22, 2026 @11:19AM (#49802785)
What do you mean by "open source" in this case? The OSI's definition? "Open source" as a stand in for free/libre as the FSF defines it? Something else? I'm wondering what the material difference is between your definition and the project's.
Re:Topological Naming Problem on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @12:08PM (#47154319)
Normally, I select a face and add a datum plane. It's button is in the toolbar with a the datum point and datum line buttons in light blue iirc.

That said, since v1.0, I've had far fewer instances of being affected, and have started doing some direct-on-face features (usually sketches) again.

Wasn't there a storage device some Years ago (decade plus) that was RAM strapped to a PCI-E card with the electronics to present the RAM as a storage device?
Micro mobility is amazing if you live in an area that is at all accommodating. I started using an electric scooter to go get lunch when weather isn't intolerable. It's harder with small children or if everything is car-only distances away (like rural areas), but not impossible. So much less hassle than a car IMO.
There are numerous documented examples of where chat LLMs have either subtly agreed with a user's suicidal thoughts or outright encouraged suicide. Here is just one:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-law...

In some cases, the LLM may start from a skepticism or discouragement, but they go along with what the user prompts. That's in comparison to services like 988, where the goal is to keep the person talking and work them through a moment of crisis, regardless of how insistent they are. LLMs are not a replacement for these services, but it's pretty clear they need to be forced into providing this sort of assistance because users are using them this way.

Re:Google is discontinuing dark web reports on Monday December 15, 2025 @08:47PM (#46283722)
Or, use a service that lets you generate an address for each business you deal with or use case you have so you can treat them as disposable. After chasing down spammers and companies selling my info, including my email, I found this was easier to keep up with and is more effective. Spam me once or sell it to another company, and I burn that address, replacing it with the original company if I really need them to keep in contact.
Re:US Tech Force on Monday December 15, 2025 @12:48PM (#46277827)
For me as someone that would potentially be interested in and qualified for one of these roles, the DOGE actions earlier this year and ongoing firing of nonpartisan & non-appointed that don't tow the current ruling party line ruined the stability benefit. I think it also casts doubt on the pension aspect, but I know less about what's required to get pension in US fed positions.
In my head, it'll be like the high pressure timeshare sales pitches or the dreaded car sales transactions, where they pull out all the tricks to convince you to buy something you don't actually want or need, regardless of whether you can afford it.
Re:Imgur Geo-Blocked the UK, So I Geo-Unblocked My Network on Friday November 28, 2025 @04:07PM (#46082771)
Just a heads up that PC Engines is winding down. The chip they use in the APU2 is EOL, and they've decided to shut down altogether.

https://pcengines.ch/eol.htm

Re:Alan.app – Add a Border to macOS Active Window on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @08:52PM (#46064595)
Does the Reduce Transparency option in Accessibility remove the drop shadow? If it does, I'd expect it to be all windows, but might satisfy your desire here.
Re:Oracle is underwater on its 'astonishing' $300B OpenAI deal on Tuesday November 18, 2025 @05:11PM (#45972932)
I usually do the same, but not always. And I believe clicking through is a behavior of a minority of people and interactions, judging by the click through rate drops sites have seen recently. (On mobile at the moment, so apologies for not grabbing a source for the rate drops sites.)
> Again, every generation thinks that.

> This time might be different. But it's probably not.

And this is an appeal to tradition.

This article[1] from 2024 discusses this the studies on this topic. It seems to me the results are mixed, but conclusions range between social media being neutral to harmful. There is a lot in that article, so it's worth a read.

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/728739

Re:Apple M5 chip on Wednesday October 15, 2025 @11:02AM (#45593707)
The check script I've been recommending is here:

https://github.com/tkafka/detect-electron-apps-on-mac

About half of the apps I use regularly have been fixed. Some might never be fixed, though...

Re:Farewell to Meshnet on Thursday September 04, 2025 @07:26PM (#45133394)
In advance, sort of. The devices can be swapped around at basically any time. There's a little lag for a device to get the config update enabling Mullvad on it IME, usually 30 seconds or so.
Re:Nginx Introduces Native Support for Acme Protocol on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @03:31PM (#44892752)
They don't need to share a single cert. Multiple certificates can be, and possibly should, issued for the same address (or set of addresses). This means that one front door server that gets popped doesn't expose all connections to the larger service.

Downside is obviously certificate maintenance increases, but ACME automated the vast majority of that work away.

The narrative climax to the human story around climate change has yet to happen. Assuming we continue on the current trajectory, expect riots and wars over food and clean water, possibly more.
I've nearly given up on using containers on macOS for development at work, because I frequently need to test amd64-only containers. One deviation from our production (Linux on x86_64) is bad enough, but two surfaces issues, or even annoyances, frequently enough that I'm likely to take a plain Linux box for my next refresh.

Removal of the parts that Docker Desktop or colima use to provide x86_64 hosting might just seal that for me.

(Remote dev is another option, but I haven't found that particularly ergonomic yet.)

Re:Redis is open source again on Thursday May 01, 2025 @12:09PM (#43859643)
I'm curious whether the community will trust Redis-the-company again after this, or if they'll choose to stick with Valkey. The other concern is at least some big company legal departments are wary of AGPL software, which makes Valkey, still BSD, more attractive to them.

Edit: Regardless, thank you and the rest of the folks inside Redis for pushing to bring this back to OSS!

Re:Doge Is Replacing Fired Workers with a Chatbot on Sunday March 09, 2025 @05:02PM (#43313779)
From what I gather, anything they've saved is going to tax cuts for wealthier Americans and increased military spending.

The 90% of folks at the lower end are getting tax increases, too, as of the latest plan I've seen.

How much DOGE is saving is very questionable, too. Less than 1% of the annual budget fwiu. And whether those savings are actually permanent, or whether they cost us when consequences of cuts come calling after some time.

Re:EU asks for views on plan to force Apple to open up iOS on Thursday December 19, 2024 @12:15PM (#42463535)
One thing I have been considering for my immediate family, and possibly my parents, is setting up a small MDM. This seems more in line with allowing power users to do powerful things while keeping the less savy users from totally blowing up their devices with malware. I've never run an MDM though, only on the receiving end for work devices, so I'm not too sure about the complexity involved.
Re:The secret life of DNS packets (2019) on Friday December 13, 2024 @02:10PM (#42411371)
Yes. Also, nscd is irrelevant in at least a few ecosystems. Java and (I think) Go try to do their own resolving instead of using libc. Java's resolver, in particular, is braindead in the default configuration: infinite record caching, ignoring TTLs.

systemd-resolved solves this, as does running unbound or similar as a local cache.

Re:Amdahl's Law on Saturday November 23, 2024 @09:35AM (#42221093)
Amdahl's Law is one of my favorite things from college. It's general principle, optimize the largest parts of a project for the biggest impact, is applicable across more than just programming. I've used it to help prioritize tasks within projects, both professional and personal, that have little-to-nothing to do with programming, and decide where to optimize project costs.
Re:GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers on Wednesday September 18, 2024 @02:58PM (#41584034)
While I have no information here, I'd bet/conspiracy theorize that Tesla is looking to maintain exclusivity/low-ish congestion of its Supercharger sites for as long as possible, and using its position as a supplier of NACS adapters to do that. Demand for and purchasing of Tesla cars has gone down considerably[1], and I'd assert that Superchargers, which have historically been a positive for Tesla, catching a reputation for being "busy" would hurt Tesla even more. There are already regularly lines for charging at some of the busier Supercharger sites.

[1] https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q1-2024-ev-sales/

Re:Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic' on Tuesday June 25, 2024 @12:24AM (#40784468)
Single-use scenarios would be my first thought, especially food containers and utensils from food vendors.

I would think places where wood is, or could reasonably be, employed might also work. Table top game tokens, for example. Uses where environment factors (rain, contact with the ground, etc.) typically aren't relevant.

Re:Starlark Language on Sunday June 16, 2024 @10:28PM (#40701842)
I agree with the difficulty of Starlark. I worked with Starlark a couple years ago to build some non-trivial things, which included writing custom Starlark providers. It was a gigantic pain. Documentation always felt very incomplete and finding existing examples were hard to come by (that has improved somewhat since I worked on that project, I believe).
Re:Ask HN: Anyone left their job because of RTO? on Friday May 31, 2024 @09:27PM (#40542077)
I recently (within the last year) left Apple. 3 days in the office is mandatory for everyone except those with explicit work from home designations registered within the HR system. Anyone with a desk assigned in an office is required to badge at that office on their org's chosen 3 days per week. Most orgs chose T-W-Th.

The difficulty is that folks that had agreements with their management prior to Covid about flexible working arrangements were nullified with Apple's RTO. So, if M and F was your arrangement prior to Covid and your org chose T-W-Th, too bad. Badge-swipes are being tracked and upper management is applying pressure to managers to get their people in the office, regardless of individuals' needs.

So, yeah, it's technically hybrid, but extremely rigid.

Going full time remote is also significantly harder now, as it must be approved by an SVP on an individual basis.

Any of this may have changed in the months since I left, but I've not heard of anything changing from my colleagues that are still there.

On the other hand, Tesla has some notably, egregious incidents, including the reportedly-regular sharing of videos on internal messaging until at least 2022.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

Mozilla report has more:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/tesla/

It's troubling that basically every major auto maker has some flavor of privacy invasive tech that can't be turned off.

Re:Don't Just Say "Hello" in Chat on Tuesday April 30, 2024 @10:21AM (#40211226)
If we stop treating asynchronous communications mechanisms (chat, email, etc.) as synchronous (voice/video calls, face-to-face), the urgency issue goes away for everyone.

Async comms should regularly (and, perhaps, by default) be muted to enhance focus. Let them collect and allow the person to manage their own time. "No hello" allows them to have the question ready for them to address when they process their incoming queues.

Synchronous comms should be used to get immediate attention on an urgent issue that needs to be addressed immediately, or be used for tight, rapid iteration in a discussion (e.g. rapid design discussions). Because it necessarily takes attention away from another task, the activation energy should be higher.

Older »