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Hasz

2,284 karma · joined October 4, 2016

https://ethan.id ethan@ethanmyers.rs

My personal views, not that of my employer or any other affiliations.

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Hasz··on So you want to build a tunnel
> I'm not saying there isn't value in there, but this habit people have of acting like it's all relevant to safety and screeching about "written in blood" is exactly what creates room for unrelated stuff to exist in the code.

meh, I understand the point, but it is about your risk tolerance being different than whoever writes the code. I have a long list of complaints about the NEC, (including AFCI requirements), but IMO, these kinds of requirements do save some amount of lives -- the issues comes down to how much do you value your own life, and/or the lives of others. The tradeoff, as always, is cost -- inspections, permits, impact studies etc push up the cost of new and remodel jobs substantially.

Where I really take issue with different code is when we hammer down on a specific issue of small significance while neglecting a more significant problem. For example, I have never in my life seen an inspector check the torque of a main lugs, polaris connectors, etc. Might just be my inspectors, but I have seen way more failures due to loose or over tightened connections than anything else.

I am all for gradually raising the bar for safety, but it has to rise faster than the increased cost, along with a level raising of the bar across all facets.

Hasz··on So you want to build a tunnel
As they say, the rules are written in blood. I don't think we should be disqualifying projects because they are not Mponeng-scale or complexity.

I am not a civil engineer, but I did spend a bunch of time looking into building an underground range. Way more relaxed life safety reqs, smaller bore, etc. However, when you start reading, it is clear that much of the work is empirical, heavily localized and based on a great deal on the experience of the builder. I found very little in the way of solid theoretical modeling, but lots of measure, adjust, etc.

I think Grady does a reasonable job highlighting the dangers and risks.

Hasz··on Don't rent the cloud, own instead
This is hackernews, do the math for the love of god.

There are good business and technical reasons to choose a public cloud.

There are good business and technical reasons to choose a private cloud.

There are good business and technical reasons to do something in-between or hybrid.

The endless "public cloud is a ripoff" or "private clouds are impossible" is just a circular discussion past each other. Saying to only use one or another is textbook cargo-culting.

Hasz··on Amazon cuts 16k jobs
Just Walk Out was actually 1000 people in India. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actual...

This is a nicer way to say to say layoffs/outsourcing while being rewarded by the market for "adopting AI".

Hasz··on Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company
Ever seen a default ubuntu splash screen/wallpaper on a train, coffee machine, airport terminal kiosk, bus, or other big piece of slow moving, appliance-y thing?

That is why Ubuntu Core (and similar) exist. More secure, better update strategy, lower net cost. I don't agree with the licensing or pricing model, but there are perfectly good technical reasons to use it.

Hasz··on TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues
I have been arguing this point for several years now -- but wrt to the Democratic party's relationship with guns. The same justification used to limit the second amendment is the same justification that can be used to limit the 1st, 4th, etc.

Both parties seem to be on an authoritarian bent over the last 10-15 years, which sucks.

Hasz··on Why are we still so afraid of using the grumpy old period?
bah humbug. In the age of LLM edited text, having a distinct style (be it written or spoken) is a breath of fresh air. AI has already ruined the em dash, no need to let it ruin your unique voice, style and cadence.
Hasz··on House vote keeps federal "kill switch" vehicle mandate
The US has lost multiple wars to goat herders in pickup trucks with small arms.

As Ukraine has demonstrated, a shaped charge and consumer drone is highly effective against even heavy mechanized armor. ERA doesn't work well for multiple hits, and drones and HMX/RDX are cheap.

Hasz··on Bose has released API docs and opened the API for its EoL SoundTouch speakers
Hopefully, someone from Bose sees these comments. There is a serious segment of the pro and prosumer audio market that values open-source, interoperability, long service life, and is willing to pay a bit more for it.

I hope Bose continues to do this for future products and is rewarded financially for it.

Hasz··on 2.4M H-1B records show $50k gap: staffing vs product companies
I think the job titles (Tax #3) are particularly damming. As the post mentions, H1B Specialty Occupations require Theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge.

The jobs titles many WITCH firms are submitting for are just not specialized at all -- Developer, analyst, whatever. I personally fail to see how this could possibly qualify for a H1B visa when there are 10s of millions of employees in the US matching these vague descriptions.

Hasz··on Did that Colorado station sign say gas for only $1.69? Yes, it did
That Suncor refinery is in a bit of a fight with the state over environmental pollution. Cheap gas certainly helps improve the political situation for that particular refinery.

https://coloradosun.com/2025/09/26/colorado-suncor-water-dis...

Hasz··on RoboCrop: Teaching robots how to pick tomatoes
It is done for entire species.

There is plenty of fruits (Pawpaw, loquat, soursop come to mind) that are really not grown at-scale commercially in the US due to spoilage, easy to bruise, or other similar issues.

If you like interesting fruit, I highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/@WeirdExplorer/

for many fruits you will have never seen before.

Hasz··on How Much Wealth an AI Stock Market Crash Could Destroy
...and in 2008. sadly, it might actually work:

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/the-deficit-in-a-downtu...

https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/eco...

The hard part is reigning that spending in during non-crash years (see the uproar over removing the temporary COVID subsidies) in a way that is not political suicide. At the Federal level, there is zero incentive to not run a deficit.

Hasz··on Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products
this is just not true. Building great products with average talent is a sign of great management, and it's been done before in both business and sports. moneyball is about this idea at some level.

Plenty of SV is building below average products with exceptional talent.

Hasz··on Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
DEI used to make them money, and now it loses them money. It is not surprising they would jettison it.
Hasz··on Last Week on My Mac: Losing confidence
Apple hardware is absurdly good. Airpods, amazing, redefined what wireless headphones are. M-series macbooks, amazing, new benchmark in performance per core and battery life. Plenty of older products too that either created the category or completely dominate it.

Apple software, on the other hand, feels like a totally different company. Stuff like Siri is miles behind the ball, things like Airplay (IME) are flaky with little recourse when they don't work, Liquid glass is slower feeling and a noticeable battery hog. Apple music still has more hiccups and random play stoppage than Spotify.

I really, really like the hardware, but apple software needs some competition. Half of the features in the last 2-3 iOS releases were in Cydia over a decade ago.

Hasz··on Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
Steam and Ubuntu has worked really well for me, big picture mode + hdmi switch has made for a very-close-to-console experience

I am playing mostly single player campaign type games (Assassins creed, RDR2, etc) which certainly improves the picture.

If steam really wanted to put a knife in games on windows, it would develop an anticheat and give it away for free. That is AFAICT the only thing keeping people on windows for modern, multiplayer games.

Hasz··on Addiction Markets
Wasn't around to personally witness it, but I do not believe the first part is true:

https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9015/901507.PDF, specifically page 94.

Also, IMO there is a big difference between an open market that allows for price discovery and free trading versus placing bets against the same casino at predetermined prices.

Hasz··on Addiction Markets
Great video. The convergence between traditional stock market finance and casino gambling is going to seriously scar a generation.
Hasz··on Introducing architecture variants
Getting a 1% across the board general purpose improvement might sound small, but is quite significant. Happy to see Canonical invest more heavily in performance and correctness.

Would love to see which packages benefited the most in terms of percentile gain and install base. You could probably back out a kWh/tons of CO2 saved metric from it.

Hasz··on Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade
This is it. Later versions of python .11/.12/.13 have significant improvements and differences. Being able to seamlessly test/switch between them is a big QOL improvement.

I don't love that UV is basically tied to a for profit company, Astral. I think such core tooling should be tied to the PSF, but that's a minor point. It's partially the issue I have with Conda too.

Hasz··on A liver transplant from start to finish
Excellent article. However, I do feel it is missing a more macabre side of the organ donation market in the US, especially around premature death categorization, in the below case, using "donation after circulatory death" instead of brain dead.

https://archive.is/Qq3Qw

Hasz··on Migrating from AWS to Hetzner
Different requirements, different skillsets, different costs, different challenges. AWS is only topically the same product as Hetzner, coming from someone who has used both quite a bit.
Hasz··on How bad can a $2.97 ADC be?
I have done this a bunch of different times, mostly to resolve sourcing disputes. Dissolving in boiling sulphuric acid/nitric acid will make quick work of most epoxy packaging

IMO, I have mostly seen mislabeling, rebinning, and passing off obvious QC rejects.

example from many years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6DfBuPwAAA

Hasz··on Why did containers happen?
some steps, e.g ap-get, are not deterministic and practically, it would be painful to make them so (usually controlling updates with an external mirror, ignoring phased upgrades, bunch of other misc stuff).

You then start looking at immutable OSes, then get to something like NixOS.

Hasz··on Huntington's disease treated for first time
I strongly disagree with this. While I am generally pro-immigration, injecting a political view into an article ostensibly about a new scientific discovery is how science loses credibility and objectivity. See the "trust the science" phrase weaponized during COVID in the US.

Let people draw all the inferences they want about the origins of the scientists involved, but a hamfisted paragraph about a.b scientist being an immigrant from y country does not have a place here.

Hasz··on x402 — An open protocol for internet-native payments
I looked at this space about 3 years ago, what I want seems to still not exist

I am looking to sell physical goods for low total amounts (<$10 usd) via a website. The most basic e-commerce you can imagine.

In particular, what I want:

- fast-ish payments (settlement in <2hr)

- low/zero per-payment cost, low % fee

- your average HN user could figure out how to use it to pay

What I don't need:

- subscriptions

- payment-level fraud protection

- payment-level kyc

- customer financing (a la Klarna)

- rev rec

It seems like Fednow or lightning would meet some (most?) of these requirements, but I have not yet seen it in the wild.

Hasz··on Building the most accurate DIY CNC lathe in the world [video]
Also of interest if you enjoy precision engineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFrVdoOhu1Q&pp=ygUdZGFuIGdlb...
Hasz··on Sig Sauer citing national security to keep documents from public
Sig's response to this clusterfuck will be studied in PR classes for years to come. They started with a wildly overagressive social media campaign and have generally refused to admit there is a problem, and are banning, suing and generally trying to cover the whole thing up.

Independent testing at the local, state and federal level acknowledge you can fire a P320 without pulling the trigger. Making sure the gun only fires when the trigger is pulled is requirement #1, #2 and #3 for any gun.

Hasz··on UK's New Age Verification Requirement Thwarted in the Simplest Way Imaginable
Meh, perhaps now, but there is an easy pipeline of work (mostly menial, Turk type tasks) for crypto that runs right past KYC. Cash for crypto is also surprisingly easy to find, again bypassing most KYC.

I am not sure what will be easier.

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