Hacker News Reader

dagwon Fedora change aims for 99% package reproducibility

We can’t have any “your python 2 code doesn’t work on python 3” nonsense

This only happens because distros insit on shipping python and then everyone insisted on using that python to run their software.

In an alternate world everybody would just ship their own python with their own app and not have that problem. That's how windows basically solves this

dagwon Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte

But it’s still $5.1bn of taxpayer money being reigned in here

That's assuming that all those consultants were not providing any value and that they don't need to be replaced by hiring more staff.

dagwon Kids can't use computers and this is why it should worry you (2013)

As a new and naive parent I thought I would get my kid into hacking and computers by giving them a laptop with a basic Linux install as their first computer. I had visions of teaching them how to program and doing cool things with Arduino and kinds of awesome hacker projects.

All I achieved was to convince them that computers are hard and stupid and not fun, and that iPads and Playstation are superior in every way.

dagwon America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

Those are two different uses of 'cannot'. I know how to kill a cow, but 'cannot' bring my self to do it. I 'cannot' build a train because I don't know how to, but if I did I would be happy to do so.

dagwon How University Students Use Claude

My wife works at a European engineering university with students from all over the world and is often a thesis advisor for Masters students. She says that up until 2 years ago a lot of her time was spent on just proofreading and correcting the student's English. Now everybody writes 'perfect' English and all sound exactly the same in an obvious ChatGPT sort way. It is also obvious that they use AI when she asks them why they used a certain 'big' word or complicated sentence structure, and they just stare blankly and cannot answer.

To be clear the students almost certainly aren't using ChatGPT to write their thesis for them from scratch, but rather to edit and improve their bad first drafts.

dagwon EU member states agree first wave of retaliatory tariffs

explain the legal basis...

tl:dr Congress has for various historical reasons decided to cede more and more power over trade regulation to the executive branch over the years, starting all the way back in the 30s. This has resulted in the president having almost unilateral leeway to decide what constitutes "security concerns or unfair practices" when it comes to trade. And until congress passes a bill to reign in that power, it is probably legal for the president to decide that almost anything is 'unfair' and that basically any response is reasonable.

dagwon Show HN: I built a tool to find devs based on code, not LinkedIn titles

I'm finding profiles where the only reference to the thing I was searching for (PyTorch in this case) is in their profile text. None of their repos or commit history seem to use pytorch. I also refuse to believe that there is only one developer using pytorch in all of Stockholm.

I love the concept, but it seems to struggle with judging what code/text relevant and important

dagwon Tesla Stops Accepting Its Own Cars as Trade-Ins

The big question for Rivian is if they can break into the global market or if they will remain an essential North America only brand. Say what you want about Tesla, but they were really the first US car in forever that really broke through internationally.

dagwon Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

A lot of people look down on companies that solve 'boring' problems with 'boring' technologies. I guess it's an open question if having been writing in-house CRUD apps using a 10 year old tech stack for several years is a proxy for lack of competence.

dagwon Tesla Stops Accepting Its Own Cars as Trade-Ins

I think we can safely assume that Tesla, in it's current state, is done for.

I wouldn't bet on it. People have short memories, and Tesla still make pretty good cars. The new model Y launching now has gotten a lot of praise from all the reviews I've seen. If (big if) Musk can keep his head down and stop making non car/spaceship related headlines and perhaps take a less prominent role in Tesla, I suspect this will blow over.

dagwon Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

whether I would need to worry too much about looks at the office

'Uniforms' can go both ways. Would a person who only owns white Oxford shirts and monochrome dress pants have to go out and buy a new wardrobe he would feel very uncomfortable in if he wanted to work there? People who wear 20 year old band t-shirts can be every bit as judgemental about looks as people who wear tailored Italian suits.

dagwon Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

First impressions do count but I think the above poster has a point, a suit can actually harm your chances in an environment where no one wears suits.

There are many ways to wear a suit. If you walking in wearing a suit that doesn't fit, doesn't suite (no pun intended) you, and it obviously makes you feel uncomfortable then that could count against you. But you walk in wearing a suit that fits, makes you look good, and that you are comfortable wearing, then I have a hard time seeing how it will count against you.

dagwon Shopify CEO: "AI usage is now a baseline expectation"

Maybe I'm using it wrong, but it's way less cognitive overhead for me to just type for for x,y := range something {} than it is to try and prompt "Iterate over this list of values...etc."

I'd say that prompting "Iterate over this list of values...etc." is definitely using it very wrong (autocomplete should more or less handle that sort of thing anyway). Prompts should be more in line with "write a C++ function that can parse XML files that look like this (upload a few sample files) and return the data in this struct (copy and paste struct from your header file)" followed by "write a set of unit tests for this function". You then check that the unit tests look reasonable, add any other things you feel you should test for, make sure the generated code passes the unit tests, and then check it in.

dagwon Why Companies Don't Fix Bugs

This requires a lot of passion and motivation from individual developers within the company. Of all things they could be slacking off with during a pointless video call, they have to choose to spend than time doing thankless bug fixing.

dagwon EU offered 'zero-for-zero' deal to US weeks before tariff announcement

U.S. can barely afford to fight the Houthis at the moment

I'm as critical of the US as the next person, but that is just a ridiculous statement. What the US does and doesn't do militarily with regards to the Houthis has nothing to do with what they can and cannot afford. Any limits on their actions against the Houthis is purely down to political will and strategic interests, and obviously not financial limitations. Push comes to shove and we all know that the US military could count on being backed up by more financial muscle than any military force on the planet (with the possible exception of the Chinese).

dagwon Rsync replaced with openrsync on macOS Sequoia

>> When exactly did GNU ship a complete OS?

I want to say around 2006 or 2007 was the first time a 'normal' *nix hacker could install and boot[0] a complete GNU OS[1] and get something resembling work done (ie edit and compile C code in vi or emacs). (yes I know the question was rhetorical)

[0] without having to to a bunch of bootstrapping steps and other hackery

[1] Technically 'shipped' by Debian rather than GNU/FSF

dagwon How the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg Got Added to the White House Signal Chat

You do not seriously believe that he got hired based solely or even primarily on that, let's face it, quite mediocre military service resume.

dagwon Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

And make sure your bosses boss knows who you are and how good you are, so that they'll want to keep you when your boss ends with said potato.

dagwon Knowing where your engineer salary comes from

Could it be because those companies are full of people who somehow occupy important positions without understanding the basics of the engineering work.

Every company I've ever worked at has more work that they would like to do than they have engineers to do it. The problem often isn't that they don't understand why fixing technical debt is important, it's to decide if fixing that particular technical debt right now is the best use of these resources right now. Also they might also know things that I might not know, like long term plans for and the relative profitability of different projects, which will affect how they make decisions. No point in spending effort fixing technical debt if that project/department is already slated for closure.

Also maybe it's a US vs EU thing, but at every engineering and IT company I've ever worked in Europe, the person two steps above me was basically always an engineer or at least has a science or technical background.

dagwon Why Lotus Domino? (2024)

Writing Notes/Dominos apps was my first 'programming' job (if you ignore cutting and pasting random javascript into HTML files...) back in 97. We created a whole suite of in house apps that basically ran the business, including making most of them available as web apps for people who didn't have the Notes Client. It was so fast and simple do to that even a 'dumb' kid with only a high school education and who barely knew how to program could be instantly productive, I honestly can't think of anything that can really match it even today.

I've always been slightly confused why they insisted on selling it as a mediocre email client rather than a quite fantastic RAD tool.

dagwon Peter Navarro Invented an Expert for His Books, Based on Himself (2019)

externals could have been anyone my advisor approved of

Don't they at least need to have a at least somewhat relevant PhD? Where I live that is definitely the case.

dagwon Why Lotus Domino? (2024)

History mainly. Lotus Notes/Domino in the 90s was way ahead of its time and pioneered many technologies that would become mainstream only a decade plus later.

dagwon Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

That's kind of my point. We don't know from the data if the problem is that Tesla has worse FSD than the non-accident brands, or if all brands are equally good/bad and Tesla owners are more likely to use the feature. Tesla could very well have the best FSD software on the market and still lead the accident stats simply because how their users are (ab)using the feature (which I suspect is closest to the truth)

dagwon Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other

Without knowing how many FSD miles Teslas have done compared to other brands, it's hard to judge. It could just be that Tesla owners are far more likely to trust and use their cars FSD capabilities, and thus end up in more FSD accidents. Other brands might have so bad FSD that people simply not trust it and basically never use it, and thus never get into an FSD accident.

dagwon How the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg Got Added to the White House Signal Chat

You can build the most secure app and install it on the most secure hardware, but if people simply instead use their private phone to chat with other people on their private phone using a random app from the App Store, then it just doesn't matter.

You can then write as many rules as you like about how you're not allowed to that, but if you don't follow up and enforce those rules then people will keep doing it. Bottom line, no one cares about security enough to compromise convenience, and unless you start to literally throw people in jail they never will.

dagwon The death of the middle-class restaurant

You know that there's actual, indepently owned, restaurants that are way better than these

Sure, sometimes. But honestly I find that this is rarely the case. The same economic pressures exist for the small independent restaurants as well, and they need to use the same 'tricks' to keep costs down. My 'favorite' reasonably price local place in my neighbourhood is a lovely place to go, nice vibe, often has live music and is run by nice people, but I'd be lying if I said the food was fantastic.

dagwon Where Are All the Shakespeares?

Shakespeare wasn't really 'Shakespeare' in his lifetime. He was 'just' a very popular playwright with both fans and detractors. He didn't really become 'Shakespeare' until a century or so later. My point is that we won't know who the transcendent artists who can speak across generations are until at least a couple of generations have passed.

dagwon The death of the middle-class restaurant

hit up a good food truck, or go somewhere fancy.

I agree it seems the whole middle part of the of restaurant market is terrible. I can think of several places where I'm happy to pay $15-20 for a meal and several places where I'm happy to pay $100+, but hardly anywhere in the $30-40 range where I feel I'm getting value for money.

dagwon The death of the middle-class restaurant

In Europe, apart from TGI Fridays, they were never a thing. And they were seen as just simply fast food.

I remember when the first TGI Fridays opened in my country (early 90s) and it was definitely seen as a pretty fancy 'foreign' restaurant, the sort of place you could definitely fo for special occasions or to celebrate something.

dagwon The death of the middle-class restaurant

Decline in quality of food

I honestly think this is a big one. I love restaurants and love going out to eat, but the number of restaurants I feel I want to go to just keeps declining. Places I used to love and go to weekly, I don't visit any more because the food just isn't good. I'm honestly having a hard time remembering the last time a new place blew me away. Combine that with rapidly rising food prices, and it's just not fun any more. Going out dropping $50+ and leaving slightly disappointed, is just depressing.