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runjake

16,527 karma · joined December 3, 2009

Hi, I'm Rich, not Jake (long story). I am a programmer in the Chattanooga, TN area.
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runjake··on Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?
My own vibe-coded replacements for services that I formerly paid a subscription for, for services that need the best latency or uptimes. Also, I have a couple physical Linux boxes with other services running for stuff less latency sensitive or that require much more RAM and storage.

Caveat: almost all of them only listen on a Tailscale network interface, so they are not directly exposed to the Internet.

runjake··on Apple and a hacker's future
Thanks for that explanation, got it. Yes, they seem very Vista UAC-like in usability fail.
runjake··on Apple and a Hacker's Future
I'm missing a key point: why does the author say TCC is implicitly to blame for his Mac being hacked?
runjake··on Ask HN: Is anybody producing good code with coding agents?
I try to have a good overall idea of what I want to build from the start. Sometimes I don't know and that involves long walks and iterative conversations with the agents. It's okay to stub out functionality or modules and the agent will be comfortable with this. As the agent builds, I have it update an architecture document.

It's always good to have another agent (sans existing context) review the project for slop and hacks, best practices, security flaws, etc. I usually have Codex do one, and Claude do the other. Hope this makes sense.

runjake··on Pixel 11 doesn't yet meet the GrapheneOS security standards and may be skipped
Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2011/04/how-microsoft-learned...
runjake··on Ask HN: Is anybody producing good code with coding agents?
Yes. The whole time. But, you still need to write good specs if you want well-designed software. Agents are not magic.

- Write good specs into files, usually Markdown.

- Go through the spec files with the agents, have it point out holes and problems, and then update the specs. Go through a few iterations of this and then start your agents on development.

Garbage in, garbage out.

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
I think the future is unmanned aircraft, remotely piloted by humans with autonomous assist. And eventually (10-15 years) autonomous unmanned aircraft.

USAF stuck to the "we must use manned aircraft!" mantra for far too long, but even they have conceded now.

For the reply guys: I know there are small caveats to the above.

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
perceived nostalgia, because a lot of that supposed nostalgia can't be defined or isn't actually true.

I would appreciate a solid explanation of which periods and aspects "Make America Great Again" refers to. I can think of a couple ones off the top of my head regarding technical progress, but I'm unsure whether MAGA helps or hinders that progress.

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
I respect the J58's place in history, but it has no place in modern aviation. The ideas behind it still remain relevant, but the implementation is long, long outdated. I think it could be redesigned and reimplemented for cheaper that it would cost to resurrect and maintain the original J58.
runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
> Despite them being complex, high-bypass turbofan engines ARE exotic technology.

Sure, I'll concede here. I think of "exotic" as "few people/nations understand it well enough" but including the manufacture and tooling seems like a no brainer inclusion.

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
You might be interested in the GE RTA :-)

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20050196667

The spirit of what you say about the J-58 is true -- it does work like that but it is still "just" an afterburning turbojet.

I personally think the path forward is a turbine -> ramjet -> scramjet architecture for an aircraft that goes zero to hypersonic.

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
It is worth noting that MIL-STD-1553 can and has been retrofitted into multiple aircraft that were manufactured decades before it existed.
runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
Turbofans are not exotic technologies. They are well understood, and their limitations are well understood.

Presumably, an SR-71 successor would use a mix of turbofans and ramjet/scramjet to meet their performance (speed/altitude) goals, depending on whether it would be self-sufficient or use takeoff assist from another aircraft.

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
Because Trump has a history of it.

See this comment for a quick set of links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49910639

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
There's standards for signaling like this. One being MIL-STD-1553. Another being ARINC. And you're now seeing a lot more Ethernet and such.

Normally, the engine itself uses proprietary signaling for its systems internally, but will present a standardized interface to the avionics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-1553

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
You'd probably be using some mix of better turbofan/turbojet engines along with ramjets/scramjets and 50-60 years of materials sciences advances. So, yes.
runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
I never saw extraterrestrial technology or any indication of extraterrestrials existing, other than gag stuff in hangars.

All the aerospace technology I've ever worked with or heard of has a pretty clear (human) engineering lineage. None of the planes you've seen or heard of, or parts thereof, are based on extraterrestrial technology.

runjake··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
Look, I'm certified as the world's biggest SR-71 fan. As a kid, I saw it fly a number of times, got to see it up close, and had a family member who worked as an engineer on the program. I believe it may have even been this Blackbird, 844. It impacted me so much that I later went on to work on my own black and other military aircraft.

I'm assuming that, if this rumor is true, somebody in the Trump campaign forced somebody at NASA to do this out of some misguided nostalgia. My hope is that if they're going to resurrect the Blackbird, they'll at least retrofit modern engines into the thing.

But there are much more modern, cost-effective ways to build very-high-altitude, very-fast aircraft. I'm doubtful that going manned is the right approach. It takes a lot of weight and space to carry a person and the required life support systems. That capacity could be better utilized for more fuel and sensors.

There's better technology that's far cheaper to maintain and operate. And you could potentially get hypersonic, or at least near-hypersonic, performance.

runjake··on macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess
The Mac User Guide on the site was updated to Golden Gate on launch day. There were lingering server-side cache issues that would occasionally display the Tahoe version to some users.

These should have been fixed as of a couple weeks now.

Anyone still seeing Tahoe? If so, please reply with the URL you are visiting.

runjake··on macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess
It is.

Citation: I was a NeXTSTEP developer.

runjake··on The problem is not AI code, but not knowing about system architecture or intent
And, to be clear, I don't really place any judgments on this.

Unarguably, the world's technical capabilities have increased by this shift (while decreasing the required technical understanding required of the people managing it). Albeit, with some security implications.

runjake··on Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?
The ugly secret is that vast amounts of teachers are leaving the field, but there's also an inexplicably vast fresh supply of new teachers coming out of universities, so it sort of perpetuates the conditions.

I don't anticipate change until this fresh supply dries up and people start asking why.

runjake··on The problem is not AI code, but not knowing about system architecture or intent
This problem has existed long before AI became useful. As technology becomes more accessible, less knowledge is required to operate it. As that knowledge becomes less necessary, fewer people acquire it. Eventually the abstraction becomes so effective that entire layers of knowledge disappears from common practice.

As a person who's a solid generalist with over 30 years in various roles, I am completely and utterly shocked at how little foundational knowledge people in "senior" roles possess across a wide variety of technical fields. I'm often treated like some wizard or oracle for knowing things that everybody in the field used to know, I just haven't retired yet.

AI didn't create this phenomenon, it's just the latest (and probably the fastest) iteration of it. I recall another particularly large iteration happened when Windows NT 4.0 Server saw mass adoption. Suddenly, people who were effectively IT technicians were now sysadmins.

Edit: grammar

runjake··on Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?
> but school districts seem to be so cowardly in the face of bad lawsuits

It's not so much that they're cowardly, it's that they don't have budget for the lawyers to deal even with the bad lawsuits.

That, and the court of public opinion is a thing, and it's not reasonable, and it's powerful. It takes down boards of education, gets leadership wrongly fired, and so on.

runjake··on Ask HN: Indie hackers on X (Twitter) feels like a mega bubble these days
Assuming you mean people like levelsio and marclou, I see them hyping small players all the time. Aside from that I agree with you.
runjake··on Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave
It makes a lot of sense when you see their severance package. I’m going with the hypothesis this was the whole point.
runjake··on Samsung accidentally freezes its smart fridges with a software update
I think it may depend on the LG appliance. Their washers and dryers are generally rated pretty well and last a long time (personal experience). They are generally pretty self-repairable and parts aren't obscene (again, personal experience).

That said, next go around, I'm buying a top loader Speed Queen Commercial washer and dryer. The ones with analog knobs.

But yeah, I'd never buy a Samsung appliance and that seems to be universal advice among the clued.

runjake··on I said no and Apple said yes
I believe these new settings are to turn off specific undesired functionalities.

Clicking "Turn off Siri" should still act as the overall switch.

Seems to behave this way on my 27.2 Beta 2 test Mac anyway.

runjake··on 16-bit Intel 8088 chip (c. 1985)
I used to read a lot of Bukowski. I still have a very large number of his books, rare and out of print, stored in boxes.

At first, I thought this was a well-written parody. I never had one inkling about this poem or his technical knowledge. I understand what he was talking about because I was around back then and understand and suffered from these gotchas.

runjake··on I said no and Apple said yes
Your first sentence of this reply doesn't make any sense to me.

And I don't see how your second sentence relates to the first.

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