Hacker News Reader

sagitariusrexon Cypress: Fast, easy, and reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser

I think anyone who ever had to set up a cypress-like pipeline in a CI environment by hand really appreciates cypress.

sagitariusrexon Go Type Parameters – Draft Design

Revolutionary technology right here lads. This is what happens when you ignore the entire history of programming languages and all the lessons learned along the way. You end up with a proposal to add type parameters, 8 or so years after its release.

sagitariusrexon Let's Stop the 5G Hysteria: Understanding Hoaxes and Disinformation Campaigns

As a side note: My biggest disappointment regarding the 5G discussion with respect to potential health implications is the widespread lack of acknowledgement about the fact that we have not yet conducted any meaningful scientific experiments (let alone ones whose methodology is robust) to even hold a meaningful debate.

It's derailed into a political debate between those who "know for a fact" there are zero health implications and those who "know for a fact" that you'll certainly die within a week from a 5g antenna being placed next to your apartment.

sagitariusrexon Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics

>Even without superconductivity, ordinary computers and other electronics could get a huge boost in performance versus cost from twistronics, due to the fact that entire complex electronic circuits could in theory be built into a few sheets of pure carbon, without needing a dozen or more complexly etched layers of challenging materials common to today’s chips.

sagitariusrexon We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview

Still relevant: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring

sagitariusrexon Redesigning Trust: Blockchain for Supply Chains

I don't remember who first said it but blockchain has exactly one killer feature, Bitcoin. If you try to adapt it anywhere else you're probably abusing the tech.

sagitariusrexon Apple Face-Recognition Blamed by New York Teen for False Arrest

It's disappointing to see that the 1 billion figure is what really grinds people's gears in here. That's the thing you should be the least concerned about.

edit: typo

sagitariusrexon Developer Survey Results 2019

We asked respondents to evaluate their own competence, for the specific work they do and years of experience they have, and almost 70% of respondents say they are above average while less than 10% think they are below average. This is statistically unlikely with a sample of over 70,000 developers who answered this question, to put it mildly.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#developer-pro...

sagitariusrexon DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

I don't believe that putting a price tag on a piece of software legitimizes it for a given use case.

I get this same feeling from posts that say "Product X written in language Y". While I agree that there exists a right programming language for a given task, it is not in itself a reason to use product X.

sagitariusrexon What was the nicest codebase you've inherited without the original author(s)?

I once "inherited" an Adobe ColdFusion codebase that hadn't been touched in about 15 years. I guess the reason it hadn't been touched in so long was because it simply worked. It was a well structured project and easy to get in to. Implementing some minor new features was straight forward and thanks to an existing test suite easy to test.

Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised by that.

sagitariusrexon Ask HN: What’s your laptop?

Dell XPS 15 9570, best notebook I've ever had. Only major issue is that the default fancurve was probably chosen randomly because they just couldn't be bothered.

It can be fixed thou with https://github.com/TomFreudenberg/dell-bios-fan-control

sagitariusrexon Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

The thing I've come to realize over the past couple years is that the dream of performant open hardware is still beyond reach for at least a decade or two.

But this is probably the next best thing to have. A company that at least tries to be sensitive in terms of privacy and security building their own hardware, albeit not open. I respect Apple for that.

sagitariusrexon Ask HN: I would pay X for Y

I'd pay 20k for an open-hardware Notebook with a formally verified open source OS

sagitariusrexon The Equifax Breach Exposes America's Identity Crisis

For everybody who isn't acquainted with how Social Security Cards work in the US and how they came to be I highly recommend watching "Social Security Cards Explained" by CGP Grey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus

He also explains why US citizens don't have an Identity Card as opposed to many European countries.

sagitariusrexon The Cryptocurrency Singularity

Whenever I read articles like this I'm reminded of this quote by Richard Buckminster Fuller

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

IMHO this is what Bitcoin is all about. Not a get-rich-quick scheme or whatever insults some people throw at it, but a sound, arguably better alternative to fiat currencies.

Aside: If you haven't yet gotten into the fancy dancy, drama sprinkled ICO, Scamcoin, and Altcoin world I cannot recommend it enough. It's hilarious, like the cambrian explosion of cryptomoney.

sagitariusrexon A Guide to Crypto Currencies

For a quick video intro I recommend this video from 3Blue1Brown ("youtube mathematician") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4

IMHO the best intro to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.

sagitariusrexon What's Functional Programming All About?

Also a great read: "Why Functional Programming Matters" https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/whyfp90.p...

John Hughes is kind of a functional programming god.