HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

craftkiller

2,796 karma · joined December 27, 2012

submissionscomments
craftkiller··on Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
> iOS Chrome is just Safari with a different interface

uhh wow. How did Microsoft face antitrust lawsuits for merely bundling IE when Apple is literally forcing their browser?

craftkiller··on Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
Chromecast from desktop chromium works, so there's no reason they couldn't make the universal turing machine in my pocket do the same.
craftkiller··on Unified Memory, Explained: Why Mini PCs Can Run 70B Models a Big GPU Can't
I was under the impression that when you're streaming the weights from disk because the full model won't fit in memory, that it is solely reading from the SSD, not writing, so it wouldn't be causing wear on your SSD.
craftkiller··on Show HN: Analog Watch
Yes, they're different units. Just like how 1 month is less than 99 days and 1 pound is less than 99 ounces. That isn't a digital vs analog thing.
craftkiller··on Show HN: Analog Watch
The technology I was thinking of was digital screens. Analog clocks made sense when the best you could do was attach some arrows to some gears on a rotating shaft. Now we can individually toggle lights in a grid containing millions of lights.

> Digital. 1 on microwave less than 99. Where else in world 1 < 99 makes sense? Digital time math crazy.

Everywhere? 1 is always less than 99 everywhere.

craftkiller··on US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers
Nah, I use rust so every mile implements OperatingExpense.
craftkiller··on US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers
Every mile of road is an operating expense. Looking at a report from NY state:

> Based on aggregate highway spending reported in 2009, the average statewide cost of maintaining a lane mile was $13,841.

source (pdf): https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/local-government/publications/p...

craftkiller··on Show HN: Analog Watch
> kids to learn how to read analog clocks [...] From what I understand that is becoming a lost skill.

I don't think kids need to learn to read analog clocks anymore, in the same way that we don't teach kids to use slide rules. Technology has advanced enough that analog clocks have joined polaroid cameras and vinyl records in the "obsolete technology that some people use for nostalgia or fashion" category.

(for the record, I grew up with analog clocks and I am fully fluent in using them.)

craftkiller··on Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip
So many plots in Seinfeld would have been trivially solved with cellphones. Get separated in the parking garage? Call each other. Need help carrying an armoire? Call each other. Trying to meet up at the movie theater? Call each other.
craftkiller··on Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
I self-host my own code forge (a gitea instance) and I've mirrored a couple of large repositories on it. The traffic from AI crawlers was bringing my entire server to its knees. As soon as I put the large repos behind a login, my server's CPU usage dropped to ~5%. I don't doubt for a second that github is under a torrential downpour of AI crawler traffic. Those locusts destroy everything they touch.
craftkiller··on Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
> Now I wonder who invented [...] sugar (used to make cake)?

If you're talking about the refined product, then India. If you're talking about the plant, then New Guinea and Taiwan.

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

craftkiller··on New Microsoft 365 pricing live, some products up by 42% due to AI
You worded that as if you speak for Microsoft, but your account is 2 days old and this is your first comment, which makes me suspect you are a karma-farming bot.
craftkiller··on Performance per dollar is getting faster and cheaper
> I have never seen a company use AMD

Meta is using AMD: https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-2-24-amd...

And OpenAI: https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-10-6-amd...

craftkiller··on Supersonic flight returning to US after half-century ban
I actually do, and I still notice it every time. Some asshole across the street rides a motorcycle and every day he revs his motorcycle which sets off the alarm of some other asshole's van.
craftkiller··on FreeBSD ate my RAM
I've noticed that the various tools report different amounts of free memory. I appreciate finally having an explanation for why.
craftkiller··on Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
Many of them, yes. It's up to the individual publisher whether they want to release their game DRM-free on steam. https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g...

If you want to guarantee that you can backup your PC games and run them without a client, then there is always https://www.gog.com/

craftkiller··on NixOS 26.05
> Another underappreciated feature about NixOS is, that you can create a VM out of a NixOS config to locally test a server update/deployment.

And similarly, you can generate a bootable ISO of your NixOS config. It's really nice for both testing things out and also as a recovery mechanism. Rather than booting some generic ISO, connecting to the internet, installing whatever recovery tools and filesystem drivers I need, and then doing the recovery, I can boot an ISO that is identical to my main system, with all my favorite recovery tools pre-installed.

craftkiller··on I can haz smoller NixOS ISOs?
One suggestion for improving the cache's posture: Give each dedicated builder machine a TPM. On each builder, generate a TPM-backed signing key. Only use those TPM-backed keys for signing packages that end up in the cache. That way we'd ensure that signed packages _must_ have been built on the dedicated build machines (due to the TPM) rather than potentially uploaded from a compromised developer machine using a compromised signing key.

It seems the current situation is there is a single signing key that has been in use since 2015 which implies that key is not tied to specific hardware and therefore could be leaked/exfiltrated/copied: https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/149/files#diff-ac4cc42774...

craftkiller··on Jobs and Software Is Fucked
> And then recruiter spam is COMPLETELY gone.

Oddly enough, in the past year recruiter spam has ticked up significantly for me. It was completely gone for a while, but it's back in full force.

craftkiller··on Mexican government unveils a prototype for a new homegrown, ultra-affordable EV
NYC taxis drive an average of 180 miles per shift[0] so they'd need to triple the range or have some sort of system where they can swap their depleted taxi for a freshly-charged one mid-shift.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxis_of_New_York_City

craftkiller··on Steam Machine
Oh absolutely, I'm with you there. LED strips are so unnecessary. I'd much rather the money go towards something functional.
craftkiller··on Steam Machine launches today
I did some math, supposedly the complete install of the latest Call of Duty game is a 200GB download[0]. At 1gbps we're talking 26 minutes of downloading. At 2.5gbps we're talking 10 minutes of downloading. I'm honestly surprised game downloads have become so massive but are those 16 extra minutes really going to change anything?

Personally, I'm rarely "surprised" by a need to play a specific game that I don't already have downloaded/installed so I can just tell Steam to download the game in advance. But if I were to be in such a surprise scenario, we're talking the difference between popping on one youtube video while I wait or popping on two youtube videos while I wait. In both scenarios, I am waiting for a small but not insignificant amount of time... now if we could get 10gbps that'd be a game changer. I wouldn't even context switch for a 2.6 minute wait.

[0] https://gameboost.com/blog/call-of-duty-bo7-download-size

craftkiller··on Rent collections are down in New York
Nope, I hadn't heard of that. Neat. I see two problems though:

1. I can see this being effective against larger landlord that will have many units available every year, ensuring that adequate testing can be performed. But on smaller landlords with only a few units, it seems like it'd be hard to test. (for example, you get rejected from an apartment. The landlord rents it out to someone else. You file a FHIP complaint, but the landlord no longer has any units available so they cannot test.)

2. It seems like this is largely driven by complaints? If I was rejected from an apartment, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to glean whether or not it was based on race.

craftkiller··on Rent collections are down in New York
Are we sure that law is working as intended? Or are employers simply not admitting to factoring race into the decision? It is next to impossible to prove a candidate was rejected on the basis of race, especially when you can legally reject someone for not being a "culture fit" on the team.

I'd also argue the stakes are higher when leasing, so landlords will be less likely to take a chance on a race they don't like. Most jobs in the US are at-will employment so you can be fired at any time for almost any reason, but evicting a tenant can be a long process.

craftkiller··on Rent collections are down in New York
What alternative solution to housing-related racism would you suggest?
craftkiller··on Rent collections are down in New York
> You should be able to select freely who you want to have live in your house

We already tried that. It turns out that people are racist, so now we need laws to protect against that. It sucks for all the decent non-racist folks but the alternative of not having those protections was far worse.

craftkiller··on Rent collections are down in New York
> Sf’s rent control also means tenants can’t leave

They have exactly as much freedom to leave as they would without rent control. They _choose_ to stay because rent control has made it advantageous to stay. The way you phrased it implies you're suggesting this is a bad thing for renters but that is strictly a positive. Without rent control they'd have zero affordable options, with rent control they have 1 affordable option. Woe to the inhabitants of rent controlled apartments with their golden handcuffs.

craftkiller··on I can haz smoller NixOS ISOs?
I was already building the vast majority of it from source because I enable CPU optimizations for the specific microarchitecture in the machine (nixpkgs.hostPlatform.gcc.arch and nixpkgs.hostPlatform.gcc.tune), so once I learned about the risk of supply chain attack on the nix cache, disabling it entirely was a pretty small change.

So far, I'd say the biggest negative (aside from the build times that I was already experiencing due to the optimizations) is that GNU savannah will temporarily IP ban you when you download too much from them. For example, building the grub that is used for the ISOs downloads like 70+ patches from GNU Savannah which frequently triggers the IP ban.

craftkiller··on Ask HN: Are people optimistic about the future?
Resignation. As you've already pointed out, we're past the point where we could have stopped it. While I continue to try to keep my environmental footprint small, I recognize that the battle is lost.

The event that sealed it for me, was after decades of hearing about how we need to reduce our energy consumption to save our species, someone made an infinite energy pit that financially rewards people for throwing as much energy into the pit as possible. Bitcoin could not have come at a worse time. The modern LLM craze is not helping either but at least that isn't a literal infinite energy pit.

To quote the philosopher Robert Burnham:

  > You say the ocean's rising like I give a shit
  > You say the whole world's ending, honey, it already did
  > You're not gonna slow it, Heaven knows you tried
  > Got it? Good, now get inside
craftkiller··on I can haz smoller NixOS ISOs?
That's how I manage all of my virtual machines: building an ISO from a NixOS config and booting it as a virtual machine. I'm going to take some time to see what bits of this I can copy to slim down my ISOs.

One additional benefit: I build all my software from source (by disabling the nix cache) so stripping out these extra programs will not only slim down my ISOs but it will also reduce the build time.

← PreviousPage 4 of 32Next →