HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

breput

1,759 karma · joined July 26, 2018

submissionscomments
breput··on Vision Now Available in Llama.cpp
Yes, but this is generalized so it was able to be added to the llama-server GUI as well.
breput··on Firefox tab groups are here
I am not a tab hoarder, but I have been using Tab Groups as a way to collect (and hide) YouTube videos for future viewing.

I had previously used the Pin Tab feature to collapse them, but Tab Groups allows you to have essentially unlimited videos that only take up a single favicon-sized space when collapsed.

breput··on The most famous carbon dioxide absorber
We shake our heads at round vs. square filter in the distant 1970 past, but flash forward 55 years and we have that a very similar situation in the active American space capsules - none of the spacesuits are compatible with any of the other ships.

The Boeing spacesuit isn't compatible with the SpaceX capsule, which was recently an issue with the Crew 9 mission. And neither are compatible with the NASA Orion capsule.

breput··on Career Advice in 2025
I didn't mean to nullify your experience.

You've undeniably right about how there have been spheres of influence where people and capital come together. Every area of the United States has some kind of forced name of "Silicon *" for a reason.

I just don't think this will be true in the future. Move where you want to, maybe have to work harder to break through, but that was also true in the Valley.

breput··on Career Advice in 2025
> Look for work in major U.S. tech hubs like the Bay Area. Pay is better and network effects are strong, so your next job will be easier to get.

Jobs and the network effects happen all across the country. As you get older and maybe don't want the grind, or have a family, or just want a better work/life balance, this will become apparent.

Basically, always have at least two people who will support you for your next job.

breput··on The legend of the 'Tesla killer' came true, and it's Elon Musk
Setting aside politics for the moment, Tesla really has lost its way. It has made many extremely customer-unfriendly UX and technology changes over the past few years, including:

* As mentioned in the article, removing the turn signal stalk. Other than the obvious mess that is, the stalk also provides other important functionality such as cleaning the windshield, forcing the wipers to swipe (which is critical since Tesla's automatic windshield wiper setting is famously terrible), and switching off the headlight high beams (also necessary due to the poor automatic mode).

And even when they recently re-added the left stalk, they still omitted the right stalk which controls the drivetrain (PRND) and the parking brake.

* You know where the horn button is on every vehicle? Of course you do, because it where it should be. On some Tesla, it was moved to a tiny button on the right side of the steering wheel - just where you'd never find it in an emergency. There was also the (mostly) unpopular yoke-style steering wheel, which was initially forced on Model S/X buyer, then the round steering wheel was available as a more expensive option, and finally it became the default.

* Removing ultrasonic sensors on the bumper and replacing them with camera-only obstacle detection. This was very buggy for some time and even now, almost all Teslas do not have a camera on the bumper, so there is an area in front of the car where the cameras can not see due to the hood. Ultrasonic sensors are cheap and work very well, and provide an alternative sensing technology to vision-only, but conflict with the mantra that since humans can drive with vision-only, cars should too. This mantra also prevents the use of radar (which was present in early Teslas and then disabled) or LiDAR - both of which could be important additional/supplimental safety technologies, which are explained away as being less reliable than vision.

There are probably some other examples, but these are just a few off the top of my head. Once you include politics and alienating the company's most loyal fans, the increasing quality of the competition, and the Tesla charging network advantage disappearing, I'm having a hard time seeing Tesla growing in the future.

breput··on The End of Weather Forecasting
Ooh, there's no bread, let them eat cake.
breput··on The End of Weather Forecasting
It literally was scripted already in the Project 2025[0]:

They said exactly what was going to happen, all pre-planned, and anyone is surprised that it is happening?

To be clear - FUCK Project 2025 and especially FUCK anyone messing with NOAA/NWS.

And if you think I'm exaggerating:

"Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations. Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather. Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS."

[0] https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA...

"Break Up NOAA"

breput··on Nearly half Dell's US workforce has rejected RTO. Rather WFH than get promoted (2024)
I am not an oracle, but I know people who work at similar companies, with similar decrees, and the Important People just ignore this and I assume the SVP's administrative assistant (who holds the REAL day-to-day power at most companies) just makes the problem go away.
breput··on Nearly half Dell's US workforce has rejected RTO. Rather WFH than get promoted (2024)
I wouldn't give all 2 hours to work, but you're not wrong.
breput··on Nearly half Dell's US workforce has rejected RTO. Rather WFH than get promoted (2024)
The truly essential people who want to WFH will just ignore the directive and their managers will cover for them. I assume they don't show up in this 50%.

The rest are literally calling Dell's bluff that any potential promotion would be less valuable (monetary or well-being). Good on them!

breput··on Programming the C64 with Visual Studio Code
I credit the BASIC and machine language byte code type-in programs for reinforcing my attention to detail and being able to track down software problems.

Kids these days[0] will never know the "pleasure" of spending hours typing in some cheesy BASIC game only to have to track down any number of syntax errors!

[0] Get off my lawn!

breput··on Soft matter mechanics of baseball's Rubbing Mud
The location of the source of the mud is a closely held family secret, but I bet the OSI geolocating people could find it quickly based on this video[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYXWL1lt_7Y

breput··on Low Cost CO2 Sensors Comparison: Photo-Acoustic vs. NDIR
That is good confirmation. I bought a MH-Z19 as a pandemic project so I might be approaching that timeframe.
breput··on Low Cost CO2 Sensors Comparison: Photo-Acoustic vs. NDIR
Let's be honest - the AirGradiant people/person are submitting these.

Which is fine - they seem like a good company with a strong open source commitment, but they do go a little overboard on HN submissions.

breput··on Low Cost CO2 Sensors Comparison: Photo-Acoustic vs. NDIR
I've used both the SenseAir S8 and Sensirion SCD41 sensors, and the SenseAir is clearly my favorite.

The SCD41 seems to require a lot more manual calibration while the S8 is very stable - maybe once every 3 months or so, I'll see it reporting ~380 ppm in fresh air (which is actually within spec).

The venerable MH-Z19 is probably my second favorite sensor, ahead of the SCD40-series.

breput··on Show HN: A simple and powerful RSS reader for the web
A couple of quick suggestions:

* Provide some example feeds in the left side bar when the list is empty, so people new to RSS aren't just looking at an empty, black page. Maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/rss ?

* Provide an OPML import option so experienced RSS-using users can quickly populate their list of feeds and compare your project with whatever they are currently using.

breput··on The biggest loser in the Google search ruling could be Mozilla and its Firefox
Redistribute the (potential) DOJ judgement to Firefox with no preconditions.
breput··on "We ran out of columns"
I was working at a game development company in the mid 90s that used Visual Source Safe and to avoid file corruption due to concurrent commits, we had a shiny silver baseball cap which you had to find and physically possess to commit.

After we had off-site devs, the physical cap wouldn't work. So the project had a "silvercap.txt" file and you had to exclusively check out . And of course people forgot to release that and work ground to a halt.

breput··on BASIC – The Most Consequential Programming Language in the History of Computing
He's not wrong.

Despite Edsger Dijkstra's infamous quote[0], it is a fact that most late Boomer/Gen X's first programming experience was probably with BASIC.

For some people, it ended at GOTO 10, but for others it was a springboard into 6502 machine language, and then degenerating into C or Pascal, and devolved from there. Everyone has to start somewhere and BASIC is fine by me.

[0] https://www.cs.scranton.edu/~mccloske/dijkstra_quotes.html

breput··on Roku update turns on hated motion-smoothing feature, with no off switch
I wonder if this is only enabled for certain content?

I also have a TCL TV and would definitely notice this effect, and I typically use Movie picture mode so you'd expect it would be triggered, but doesn't seem to be present on YouTube or other streaming sources.

breput··on Allan McDonald refused to approve Challenger launch, exposed cover-up (2021)
It's also worth noting how the o-ring story was made public. There is the famous testimony by Richard Feynman[0], but the secret was that astronaut/commissioner Sally Ride leaked the story to another commissioner, who then suggested it to Feynman over dinner[1].

Neither Ride nor Kutyna could risk exposing the information themselves, but no would could question or impeach Feynman.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raMmRKGkGD4

[1] https://lithub.com/how-legendary-physicist-richard-feynman-h...

breput··on Steve Albini has died
He actually came around later in life on being the harshest critic and also addressed the "producer role" in this[0] article:

"As he kept working, making hundreds of records across many more sessions, Albini became more comfortable stepping aside. Experiences like the Plant and Page record reminded him he was just a cog, there to enable someone else’s expression. These days, once Albini has agreed to record an artist, he begins by asking them to state their expectations, what bands they’re into, how they’d like to sound, how they’ve been disappointed in previous sessions. (The process is not unlike starting with a new therapist.)"

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/15/the-evolution-...

breput··on Steve Albini has died
"I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it's worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half. If we assume three million sales, that works out to 400,000 dollars or so. There's no fucking way I would ever take that much money. I wouldn't be able to sleep."

[0] https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvana

breput··on Ask HN: Longest Breadstick
No, but it is creative!

A few problems I see:

* Demand - how many/much breadsticks do people really want? Olive Garden is (in)famous for unlimited breadsticks but it is really just a gimmick to get people in the door to spend money on drinks and entrees.

* Quality - fresh warm buttery breadsticks are great but do you want to be near the end of the line getting lukewarm soggy breadsticks?

* Technology - is it even possible to bake bread in a continuous process. No commercial bakeries I know of do, so you'd likely have to develop and maintain that type of oven and baking techniques from whole cloth. There are probably some food safety and insurance issues around letting customers touch and cut your breadsticks.

* Margins - restaurants are notoriously low margin businesses. You'll need to invent and create the equipment that makes the endless breadstick possible and pay for rent and employees in a high enough traffic area that makes this even practical.

It's a fun idea, but I think something like a conveyor belt of plates[0] is a better, more practical idea. Nothing special on the food side of things, but go crazy on the technology side. Gamify the food selection options, add some games like pub trivia so only the winners can unlock the plates as they go by. Add alcohol items to the belt.

[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/culture-co-nashville

breput··on Roku's Ultimatum: Surrender Jury Trial Rights or Lose Access to Your TVs
I got this non-dismissable dialog today on a TV which has the Roku software installed, but isn't a Roku product. So not only was the Roku functionality blocked until I agreed, but also the ability to use the TV as a monitor was disabled until the agreement was accepted.

Two interesting notes:

* In order to opt-out of the binding arbitration, you have to identify yourself and your devices, and possibly provide a proof of purchase, to Roku via snail mail. This is information that they would not necessarily have for a device like a 3rd party TV that just happens to use the Roku software.

* There is a clause in the agreement[0] that if more than 25 arbitration requests are received within a period of time, Roku is allowed to group the requests to avoid having to pay the abritration fees for each[1].

K. Mass Arbitrations. If 25 or more Claimant Notices are received by a party within 180 days of the first Claimant Notice that the party received, and all such Claimant Notices raise similar Claims and have the same or coordinated counsel, then these Claims will be considered “Mass Arbitrations.” You or Roku may advise the other if you or Roku believe that the Claims at issue are Mass Arbitrations, and disputes over whether a Claim meets the definition of “Mass Arbitrations” will be decided by the arbitration provider as an administrative matter. To the extent either party is asserting the same Claim as other persons and are represented by common or coordinated counsel, that party waives any objection that the joinder of all such persons is impracticable.

[0] https://docs.roku.com/published/disputeresolution/en/us

[1] https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/news-insights/another-court-r...

breput··on Counties are blocking wind and solar across the US
I can't make this up:

"Members of the public in Woodland, North Carolina, expressed their fear and mistrust at the proposal to allow Strata Solar Company to build a solar farm off Highway 258.

During the Woodland Town Council meeting, one local man, Bobby Mann, said solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not go to Woodland, the Roanoke-Chowan News Herald reported.

Jane Mann, a retired science teacher, said she was concerned the panels would prevent plants in the area from photosynthesizing, stopping them from growing.

Ms Mann said she had seen areas near solar panels where plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight.

She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her solar panels didn't cause cancer."

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-town-re...

breput··on SEC X Account Hacker Hijacked Staffer Phone Number, Agency Says
This whole thing is fishy (phishy?). The cryptocurrency ETF announcement was accurate, merely announced a day early.

The "staffer" (a.k.a. intern) was apparently compromised via the SIM swap, but multi-factor authentication was not enabled and they just happened to know THE email address to reset the password? So someone was able to reset the password and post an innocuous announcement, which was basically what was posted for real the following day, and yet the SEC was able to recover control of the account within minutes to post a rebuttal?

Let's just state the obvious - the intern (or possibly an automated system created by the intern) accidentally posted the legitimate announcement a day early which was embarrassing to the SEC. They are doubling down on the "hack" theory for CYA reasons.

breput··on NASA loses contact with Ingenuity Mars helicopter
Contact has been re-established[0] although the state of Ingenuity isn't known yet. Still, very encouraging news.

[0] https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1748883252604236281

breput··on Exposed RSS
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/drop-feeds/ is probably the most feature-rich RSS extension for Firefox (desktop)
← PreviousPage 2 of 10Next →