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beala

721 karma · joined December 13, 2010

https://twitter.com/beala
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beala··on My Self-Hosting Setup
This applies to so many other things. Who in your house does the taxes? If it's you, would your SO be able to pick up the slack in the event of your death? Can they access all the accounts? Do they even know what all the accounts are? I keep telling myself I need to put together a "what to do if I'm dead" Google doc, but haven't gotten around to it.
beala··on My Self-Hosting Setup
I think a much more likely scenario is an unencrypted drive fails and then what? Do you send it to the landfill unencrypted? Or do you have some process to physically destroy it? Encryption means you can just toss it and feel reasonably confident the data isn't coming back to haunt you.
beala··on Ask HN: What Pocket alternatives did you move to?
I also self host a small app for syncing bookmarks and a miniflux instance. Having the bookmark service publish an RSS feed for miniflux to consume is brilliant. Thanks for sharing.
beala··on Ask HN: What Pocket alternatives did you move to?
I'd love to do that, but I'm split between different browsers on different platforms. I'd also love to consolidate browsers so this isn't an issue, but iOS hobbles anything that's not Safari. Idk part of me thinks maybe I should just save links to obsidian or email them to myself, but I'd really like saving a link to be a single click.
beala··on Ask HN: What Pocket alternatives did you move to?
I realized that all I needed was basically a way of syncing bookmarks across a bunch of different platforms (linux, mac, iOS, android) and browsers, and I didn't really need any of the fancier features like offline access. I had claude code one-shot a simple python web app that saves links to sqlite. I stuffed it in a docker container and hosted it on my home server. I set up a public portal using cloudflare tunnels to access it when I'm not on my LAN. I wrote a little bookmarklet that saves a page and is compatible with the various browsers I use.
beala··on Breaking Git with a carriage return and cloning RCE
2.50.1 is up on pacman this morning.
beala··on Breaking Git with a carriage return and cloning RCE
More information here (https://github.blog/open-source/git/git-security-vulnerabili...) on the new CVE:

> When reading a configuration value, Git will strip any trailing carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF) characters. When writing a configuration value, however, Git does not quote trailing CR characters, causing them to be lost when they are read later on. When initializing a submodule whose path contains a trailing CR character, the stripped path is used, causing the submodule to be checked out in the wrong place.

> If a symlink already exists between the stripped path and the submodule’s hooks directory, an attacker can execute arbitrary code through the submodule’s post-checkout hook.

Along with a bunch of other git CVEs that are worth a look.

beala··on Serving 200M requests per day with a CGI-bin
> You realise you can always still restore that backup onto someone else's server? When you need to restore from backup either way. I don't really see why one would pre-emptively pay for it

Huh? If a drive goes out in my home server, the entire thing is offline until amazon delivers a new one (don't tell me I now need to keep a stockpile of spares). If a drive goes out in S3, I never know about it because AWS takes care of it. You don't understand why someone would want to "preemptively" pay for that?

> It just all seems very opposed from the self-hosting spirit where you're self-reliant, which apparently you value since you were considering whether to self host?

My self hosting is not ideological at all. I couldn't care less about "self reliance." The reason I considered hosting locally was to save money, and I concluded I was actually getting a lot of value for the money I was spending on AWS.

beala··on Serving 200M requests per day with a CGI-bin
I've thought about hosting my side projects in my basement, but then I'd be susceptible to power outages and ISP downtime. If a drive fails while I'm traveling I'm SOL. If I accidentally lock myself out, there's no serial terminal to fall back on. I could go the route of those folks on r/homelab, but then it's no longer clear I'm saving money, especially if you factor in my time. My conclusion is that cloud providers are actually a great deal and benefit from huge economies of scale.
beala··on Apple typewriter memo (2020)
It's not uncommon for used typewriters on ebay to include the old ribbon, along with the last fifty thousand characters the previous owner typed...
beala··on Getting AI to write good SQL
You can do this with Cursor. If your docs are at example.com, simply type "@example.com" and it will go read that webpage.

I've even had luck simply dropping an entire OpenAPI spec into my repo and adding the file to the context window (also using the @ command).

beala··on I hacked my clock to control my focus
A sticky note stuck to your monitor?
beala··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2025)
Mechanize | Software Engineer | San Francisco (onsite preferred), REMOTE (US) | $300k-$600k | https://www.mechanize.work

We're creating high-fidelity virtual work environments, benchmarks, and datasets to enable AI agents to master real-world jobs—starting with full-stack software engineering. Our mission is to develop the infrastructure that will enable the full automation of the economy.

Unlike traditional AI approaches, we're focused on creating simulated environments that capture the full scope of what humans do at work: using computers, completing long-horizon tasks, coordinating with others, and adapting to obstacles and interruptions.

As our second full-stack engineer, you'll:

- Build our core simulation platform (containerized environments for AI agents)

- Design realistic evaluation scenarios for software engineering tasks

- Develop consumer web apps for our environment

- Establish engineering standards, and directly shape technical direction at an early-stage startup

You might be a fit if you:

- Have 5+ years building full-stack products

- Write fluent TypeScript (React) and Python

- Are comfortable with Docker and Kubernetes-based environments

- Enjoy close user collaboration and rapid iteration

Bonus: Container orchestration, developer tools, or ML/RL experience.

Learn more:

- Official job listing: https://www.mechanize.work/hiring

- Company website: https://www.mechanize.work

- Hear from two of our founders: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ege-tamay

Email CV/GitHub to hiring@mechanize.work (Subject: Full-Stack – Your Name)

$20K referral bonus available (https://www.mechanize.work/referral). Applications reviewed on a rolling basis.

beala··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2025)
Epoch AI | REMOTE | Chief Technology Officer | Full-time | $200K-$300K

Epoch AI is a research institute investigating artificial intelligence's trajectory and societal impact. We develop a comprehensive, publicly accessible knowledge base on AI that informs policymakers, industry leaders, and society. For examples of our work, see our recently released compute-centric model of AI automation and its economic effects (https://epoch.ai/blog/announcing-gate), the FrontierMath benchmark (https://epoch.ai/frontiermath/the-benchmark), our AI Benchmarking Hub (https://epoch.ai/data/ai-benchmarking-dashboard), and our weekly newsletter (https://epochai.substack.com/).

We're seeking a CTO to lead our engineering team (3-5 engineers) and align our tech stack with organizational goals. You'll oversee website development, databases, data collection systems, and AI evaluation infrastructure while working closely with leadership to translate goals into technical roadmaps.

Requirements:

- 4+ years management/leadership experience in technical roles

- Exceptional software engineering expertise

- Strong background in system architecture, cloud infrastructure, data engineering

- Ownership mindset

- Deep interest in AI's future and impact

We offer:

- $200K-$300K USD salary (can pay in local currencies)

- Fully remote with flexible hours (overlap with UTC and UTC-8 required)

- Comprehensive benefits (health insurance, life insurance, pension)

- 30+ days PTO, unlimited personal/sick leave, parental leave

- Visa sponsorship available (US/UK)

- Quarterly retreats and conference travel

Apply at: https://careers.epoch.ai/en/postings/f5f583f5-3b93-4de2-bf59...

Questions: careers@epoch.ai

beala··on 4o Image Generation
This doesn't explain the whiteboard example at the link. The handwritten text on the whiteboard does not look like a font at all.
beala··on Ask HN: Best Windows/Linux developer laptop in 2025
I've been using my MacBook mostly as a thin client. I use VSCode's ssh feature to remote in to a much beefier Linux machine. First, VSCode's ssh feature is well designed, and it's pretty seamless. Second, it lets me optimize my laptop for portability and backend box for performance. Finally, I prefer coding in a Linux environment because it better matches production. If you want a portable gaming rig, this ain't it, but it's great setup for coding.
beala··on Why do we have both CSRF protection and CORS?
If I may attempt to summarize:

CORS is a mechanism for servers to explicitly tell browsers which cross-origin requests can read responses. By default, browsers block cross-origin scripts from reading responses. Unless explicitly permitted, the response cannot be read by the requesting domain.

For example, a script on evil.com might send a request to bank.com/transactions to try and read the victim's transaction history. The browser allows the request to reach bank.com, but blocks evil.com from reading the response.

CSRF protection prevents malicious cross-origin requests from performing unauthorized actions on behalf of an authenticated user. If a script on evil.com sends a request to perform actions on bank.com (e.g., transferring money by requesting bank.com/transfer?from=victim&to=hacker), the server-side CSRF protection at bank.com rejects it (likely because the request because it doesn’t contains a secret CSRF token).

In other words, CSRF protection is about write protection, preventing unauthorized cross-origin actions, while CORS is about read protection, controlling who can read cross-origin responses.

beala··on Raspberry Pi Pico audio player
To be clear, this isn't a problem with the breakout board. The issue is inside the microcontroller itself, which, iiuc, is why there is such a long lead time on fixing it.
beala··on Raspberry Pi Pico audio player
I wanted to create an mp3 player (not just wav) using a pico and found this repository very instructive: https://github.com/ikjordan/picosounds

To handle decoding and the overhead of moving bits around, it uses a dual-buffer DMA approach. It reads data from an SD card, running the decoding routine on the main CPU. The decoded samples are written into one of two buffers. While one buffer is being written to, the other is read via DMA and sent to the PWM buffer (more on PWM audio here: https://x.com/beala/status/1826147833168408738). Because DMA is used, data transfer can occur in parallel with decoding, without involving the main processor. When the bits have all been written to the PWM buffer, an interrupt triggers a buffer swap, and the process repeats.

I'm leaving out many details. Tuning the pwm speed to achieve correct playback speed was quite an adventure. And when I needed to increase the clock speed to play higher sample rates, this caused I/O errors with the SD card that I never managed to solve. Although I learned a lot from this process, I ultimately opted to use an MP3 module in my final build: https://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/dfplayer-a-mini-mp3-pl...

This is probably routine for an experienced embedded engineer, but it was quite a learning experience for me!

beala··on I found a backdoor into my bed
Good point. That does sound plausible then. Here's my napkin math after some quick googling:

- A human produces about 40 watts of heat while sleeping.

- Thermoelectric coolers have a coefficient of performance (CoP) between 0.3-0.6. So for every watt consumed, they can move 0.3-0.6 watts of heat.

- The wattage consumed and moved all needs to be dissipated.

This random chiller [0] on amazon consumes 100 watts, so perhaps this could move 60 watts max. CoP drops as the temperature difference increases. And it's unclear if the unit can dissipate 160 watts steady state.

But it could plausibly keep you from heating up on a warm night. It doesn't seem like there's much margin for actually cooling you down tho. If someone wanted to experiment with this, I'd definitely read that post.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/MOQNISE-Aquarium-Circulation-Function...

beala··on Removing Jeff Bezos from my bed
I'd love to be wrong about this, but I'm very skeptical that the aquarium chiller pictured in the post can move enough heat to cool a human. As mentioned in the article, it uses thermoelectric coolers which are extremely inefficient.

I see at least one aquarium chiller on amazon that uses a compressor, but then you have to wonder if it's quiet enough to sleep next to.

beala··on Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help
I learned cursive in school (born in the 80s), and the first sample was indecipherable.
beala··on VS Code Pets
eSheep was my favorite. Apparently someone is keeping the dream alive: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mx2v0tqt6rm?hl=en-US&gl=U...
beala··on Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]
Fits in my pocket: https://imgur.com/a/9tT0r7N
beala··on How corn syrup took over America
The title says "corn syrup" but the article is entirely about high fructose corn syrup, which is different.

Corn syrup is mostly glucose. HFCS is when you use enzymes to convert a lot of that glucose into fructose.

beala··on De-smarting the Marshall Uxbridge
I think the biggest cost is labor. Dumpster diving for speakers and then spending dozens of hours in high skilled labor to replace the insides is actually hilarious. I wonder how much he'd charge a client for a project this size? Probably many thousands of dollars.

But I can't knock a man for having a hobby. Clearly they're optimizing for fun and nerd cred, not cost.

beala··on Disappointed with the TVs at CES 2025
Here's an AI feature I actually want: I want a language model to watch the show with me, and when I inevitably get distracted and miss something, I want to be able to ask the TV to explain what is going on. Since the TV is watching with me, it can answer my questions without spoilers.
beala··on Disappointed with the TVs at CES 2025
I don't get the hate for smart TVs. I don't have strong feelings either way. I activate my Apple TV and my Sony TV automatically turns on, switched to the correct input. Same for my Nintendo Switch. The only time I ever interact with the TV's UI is when I accidentally sit on the remote and mash the buttons. The TV isn't even connected to my WiFi, so I don't worry about it spying on me or getting hacked.
beala··on Magic/tragic email links: don't make them the only option
On iPhone, you can quickly do this by holding down the lock button and either volume button until the shutdown screen appears. Once it appears, your phone is now locked and it will only accept the PIN (you don't need to actually shut down).
beala··on Exploring Alternatives to UUIDv4; Enter ULIDs
The original snowflake id developed at twitter contains a sequence number so they should never collide unless you manage to overflow the sequence number in a single millisecond.
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