News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

praash

Re:Ask HN: What do you believe or not believe about AI? on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @05:29PM (#50281167)
I believe the present level of datacenter spending will never be justified by actual demand and will crash the global economy.
Re:Ask HN: Which model do you use for work? on Saturday September 26, 2026 @06:03AM (#49854990)
Qwen 3.8 27b-mlx running locally on Apple M4 48 GB. I only use local LLMs, mostly for getting technical suggestions and code snippet samples. Qwen 3.8 has been the first local model I've tried that has consistently given usable and impressive results.
Re:Can guitar frets perform multiplication? on Saturday September 05, 2026 @10:19AM (#49576758)
This also results in a per-string just intonation ;)
Re:Tracking down a Zsh history data loss bug on Sunday August 16, 2026 @03:29AM (#49317711)
Running bash inside zsh continuously destroyed my history for the last 3 years until I figured that HISTFILE was exported and inherited by bash.
Re:The Color of White Light on Saturday August 15, 2026 @09:26AM (#49310356)
> Would a intensity over frequency curve do it?

That should work as a brute-force method. You could simulate lighting conditions by measuring the reflected spectrum of different materials and multiplying with the spectrum of a light source.

Check out the CIE XYZ color space and its color matching functions. It's the standard for defining/converting color spaces and calibrating displays for accurate color matching. It only models human perception, and contains colors that are physically impossible to reproduce.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space

My local grocery store goes a bit further, selling € 280-350 laptops with 4 GB RAM and Win11 preinstalled. Absolutely bonkers.
At a glance the repo feels like a meticulous forensic investigation, but I couldn't find any photographs or other information about the alleged drone capture and where all this information is actually sourced from.
Re:Ask HN: Does it still make sense to write code by hand? on Wednesday July 15, 2026 @12:56PM (#48923783)
I really like your analogy as-is, but LLMs aren't reliable power tools. Asking for external help requires good communication and can be overkill for small tasks.

Hiring a team of subcontractors carries risks unless you babysit the whole project.

Re:Markdy: Like Mermaid Diagrams, but for Motion on Friday June 26, 2026 @03:10AM (#48683345)
Dan, your HN comments are a collection of beautiful essays that is becoming a reference library for healthy discourse. I think it deserves a dedicated website.
Re:Markdy: Like Mermaid Diagrams, but for Motion on Thursday June 25, 2026 @05:27AM (#48671049)
> zero-content

Changing the default demo is a reasonable and actionable suggestion.

"Heavy-duty" calls for exaggerated impact and prestige.

"Tony pioneered the famous red-and-green squiggles of Microsoft Word, empowering millions of users with a spell-checking revolution."

The conclusion conflicts oddly with the author's arguments and interests. Attributing LLM usage would actually help the author avoid articles even touched by LLMs, but they indirectly admit being haphazardly dismissive.

Their arguments are mostly addressed by proper, clear attribution. "My sister helped with my homework essay" deserves distrust withour further clarification.

Comparing LLM usage to lying is a fun perspective, but most of the lying happens in attribution. Their moral against lying also seems silly.

Re:Apple WWDC 2026 Livestream on Monday June 08, 2026 @03:48PM (#48450766)
I really like this idea of rapidly extensible software, a browser is a nice sandbox for it! Models also seem to be much better at generating programs than "manually" executing a described task.
Re:Apple WWDC 2026 Livestream on Monday June 08, 2026 @02:50PM (#48449711)
Lightweight browser extensions generated on demand, now there's a good use case for what they seem to be actually building.

Extending applications without having to launch a full agentic IDE. Macos is already very well equipped with GUI automation tools.

Re:Apple WWDC 2026 Livestream on Monday June 08, 2026 @02:10PM (#48448953)
I laughed on the groundbreaking emphasis that you can move and resize the chat window because it's a Mac.

You're up to something, maybe they really have a broken pseudo-window with basic UI interaction hacked on top.

Re:Apple WWDC 2026 Livestream on Monday June 08, 2026 @01:33PM (#48448385)
My impression was that they're doubling down on that horrid Liquid glass.

Apparently there's a new fancy slider for making it more (but not completely) opaque? Did I miss an option for turning it off?

Re:Domain expertise has always been the real moat on Sunday May 31, 2026 @01:16PM (#48347484)
It's funny how well this reflects the contrast in internet advice between Windows and Linux issues. All users deserve advice beginning with thorough sanity-checks and potential quick-fixes before having to dig deeper.

Searching about common Windows issues results in misleading blogspam. Suggested "solutions" resemble blindly applied folk remedies.

I'm no stranger to breaking my desktop Linux after an hour of misdirected troubleshooting and desperately messing with core libraries. I'm still glad I can quickly find my way to ArchWiki.

I'm scared that the influence of the largest companies exceeds governments of most nations.
Allegation of severe HN censorship. Further speculation on the political motives inside Y Combinator.
Re:Advice to Young People, the Lies I Tell Myself (2024) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @11:18AM (#47650316)
You are controlling your emotions with that technique, accepting and waiting emotions out is just not the only option.

Getting indoors from a cold rain is an obvious choice. I can't really decide to stop shivering, but changing my clothes and grabbing a hot chocolate helps. It still takes a while to warm back up, meanwhile I can actively choose not to open windows or go right back in the rain.

Re:Justice.gov JEE files contains bash manual on Thursday February 05, 2026 @05:56AM (#46898305)
Probably flagged by containing suspicious words, such as "children", "stripped", "strings" and "kill"
Re:Put SSH keys in .git to make repos USB-portable on Wednesday December 17, 2025 @03:04PM (#46304788)
I stopped worrying after I began protecting all keys with a passphrase.
Re:The f*** off contact page on Monday December 08, 2025 @05:09AM (#46190545)
I hate generic name-text-submit-forms as the only method of contact. Somehow the article makes them the definition of not a "f** off contact page" - why?

I think such forms are a direct downgrade from providing an email address.

- Responding to the submissions likely requires email anyway

- Impersonation/spam is even less difficult

- Sender isn't guaranteed to get a record of sending the message

- A faceless form with unknown machinery feels like sending messages in a bottle

Even worse, dry heaping spoonfuls easily get 2-4x the volume of liquids fitting the same spoon.

We can't just guess the recipe's teaspoon standard and blindly convert everything to mL.

I don't think data leak extortioners have any incentive to even pretend they won't keep asking further payment.

Why not just offer a monthly subscription "service"?

Re:Pasta Cooking Time on Tuesday September 30, 2025 @08:57AM (#45424856)
Measuring pasta with calipers is prime HN material, thank you for posting this!
Re:PuTTY has a new website on Saturday August 16, 2025 @12:11AM (#44920094)
Re:Ask HN: Would you use a chat-based money tracker? on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @04:49AM (#44886076)
For tracking to be at all effective, this requires the user to log all of their transactions thoroughly and accurately. Personally I'd never remember to update the logs immediately after a purchase during the day.

Logging transactions on the go demands the interface to be rapidly accessible. Touch screen typing is error-prone and slow. I'd prefer a dedicated interface where I could just tap one of the available categories and enter the sum with a large number pad.

It'd make sense to primarily synchronize data from their online bank account and then ask the user to clarify/categorize unknown events. Obviously an online sync is hard to implement for all banks, so a TSV import would be a bare necessity. My bank has integrated financial tracking nicely in their mobile application.

Re:Qalculate – The Ultimate Desktop Calculator on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @04:18AM (#44885848)
3rd-party browser implementation: https://qalculator.xyz/

Qalculate handles physical units seamlessly, which makes everyday calculations an absolute breeze. It definitely has an overkill amount of features, but they're not a distraction.

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