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vhodges

524 karma · joined February 16, 2009

Founder of Pennyminder, an online personal finance tool that helps small groups manage shared finances.
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vhodges··on United Airlines Boeing 737 Loses Panel Mid-Flight
I am flying (back) on United next month... maybe I should change my flight :-/. This is something like the fourth incident in a very short time.
vhodges··on Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
yes, thanks!
vhodges··on Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
I am no expert, but yes, it's flakes for my projects. It keeps the build time tooling separate (eg Go compiler, node version,etc) from the main system (so I could for example have different versions for different projects). It also makes it easier for others that might (one day) contribute to my projects to start developing (assuming they're using nix) with the same tooling and versions that I am using.

aiui, nix shell was the non-flake way of doing things and nix develop is for flakes (this is probably a gross over simplification!)

vhodges··on Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
I think you're referring to direnv as opposed to devenv.sh which does compete in the same space. Numentide was working on one too.

I am using devenv.sh at work, at home I just nix develop (but this doesn't do services, but there was a flake util just announced that adds support for that I need to check out).

vhodges··on Tell HN: Pivotal Tracker removes non-enterprise price tiers
I agree, it's complicated workflows, it's too many options/features (that we never use), it's clunky and slow and some people are even using spreadsheets for some things ;)

We were on Rally before which was okay. I've used things like Bugzilla and trac in the distant pass (for mostly solo things). Basecamp and trello a few times and even gitbug (again for a solo project).

I currently like Linear's ui/ux/approach (but I have not used it really). Shortcut and Plane.so look very similar.

vhodges··on Tell HN: Pivotal Tracker removes non-enterprise price tiers
As others have said, Linear looks nice (no real experience). https://plane.so/ is an open source option that I have also not played with.

I am always on the lookout for options since we're on Jira at $DAYJOB (and yeah it sucks), not that we'll ever change.

vhodges··on Daft Social: Anti-social social network for minimalists
There's a store selling swag (A hat and a floppy with the source to the site - coming soon!?)
vhodges··on Ask HN: What's the Next Vagrant?
Vagrant is primarily for two things:

1) Isolated dev environments (cross platform/stack) (and/or easier onboarding) 2) A way to run services apps depend on (databases, job runners, cache etc).

I am going to suggest one of the Nix based tools that do those things:

  - https://devenv.sh/ (I use this at work)
  - https://www.jetpack.io/devbox
There are one or two more as well.
vhodges··on Heat pumps, more than you wanted to know (2023)
Now that it's warming back up a bit, here's that update:

It was mostly okay. It kept working even with the -20c windchill and was always putting out heat.

It's kind of subjective but I feel it struggled a bit eg the 'room' temperature shows a degree or two below the set temp. It never felt cold in the house (but a bit cooler?)

The sensor is probably in the control unit which IS in the hallway over the garage (and that side of the house always seems a bit cooler) so take that info with a grain of salt.

vhodges··on Heat pumps, more than you wanted to know (2023)
Sigh, I need this a few week ago ;)...I just replaced my failed gas fired furnace with a Fujitsu XLTH 3 ton ducted mini split in the Fraser Valley (Mission BC).

I only got 2 quotes (and spoke with a third, but not quoted beyond ballpark). I ended up going with the local installer (which was the lowest, but I also worked with them on the furnace and liked them anyways).

It ended up being 20k CAD installed. If we're approved for all of our rebates (likely) we'll get 11k CAD back for a net of 9k which isn't too bad.

Our unit is supposed to be rated for 110% of heating capacity at -15c. We'll see , it's supposed to drop to -8c or so later this week :) We're looking forward to having cooling this summer (which we've never had)

vhodges··on Terminal Trove – A collection of CLIs, TUIs and all things in the terminal
Also see: https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/
vhodges··on Online PDP-8 Home Page, Run a PDP-8
for those that aren't aware: https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-8
vhodges··on Ask HN: Best Developer Laptop?
To each their own I guess.

A year and a bit on mine. Cable is still fine but like I said though it's plugged in all the time and don't really travel with it. I generally leave the cam and mic switch off so no experience there either. Performance was a step up for me and in a year or two I'll get what ever is current for AMD so it'll be another bump.

A Mac would have been at least an extra $1000 (CAD) and isn't upgradable so I need to pay the Apply premium on RAM and storage up front to future proof.

vhodges··on Case for making Standard Time permanent
I am in the Lower Mainland (BC) and it's still dark(ish) at 8am. I've resigned myself to just getting up at 2am-3am in the winter - but it means crashing at 7-8pm. Note it probably is the shorter days that cause this as I have no problem staying up late in the summer (dusk is at 9:30pm or so for me on the solstice)
vhodges··on Ask HN: Best Developer Laptop?
Going to add my vote for Frame.work:

It's repairable, upgradable (MB swap for processors (3 generations of Intel and one AMD so far), ram and storage are socketed), linux support is fairly good with most things just working (running NixOS personally on my 12th Gen Intel 13").

Performance is average (but the i5 I got was a improvement over my 2012 Retina MB Pro) and battery life is average to poor (but I am plugged in most of the time), size and weight are okay (for me!).

vhodges··on Case for making Standard Time permanent
I am on Summer time all time. Winter is the worst for me since it means I get up an hour 'earlier' on the clock. The dark makes me want to crash and an hour earlier for that too.

Also... 'standard' time means it's dark at 4:30pm where I live on the solstice (and I am not that far north) which kind of sucks, so it makes sense for me to champion for permanent daylight savings (which what the Governments for BC, WA, OR and CA all want anyways).

vhodges··on The Cloud Computer
The last time (one of them) Oxide hit HN there were some ballpark estimates based on the CPUs in use, switches etc. Someone else said 500K and up.

I wish there was a 4U version (10-25K but I don't think that they could come close to that price point - regardless even that is out of reach for me to ever get to play on one :-/ )

vhodges··on The Cloud Computer
Not the same in any meaningful way but https://turingpi.com/product/turing-pi-2/ might interest you.

Also https://artemis.sh/2022/03/14/propolis-oxide-at-home-pt1.htm...

Does illumos run on ARM?

vhodges··on Tarsnap has given 2^18 dollars to open source
Huh... I've always thought of it as power. It probably comes from my ancient past ;).. Note bc -l it's power of.
vhodges··on Tarsnap has given 2^18 dollars to open source
power: https://www.google.com/search?q=2%5E18
vhodges··on Ask HN: What Is GNU?
https://www.gnu.org/home.en.html

It dates back to the earliest days of the FSF ('84 ish) It was meant to have it's own Kernel (Hurd microkernel) but largely means Linux User Space these days imo.

vhodges··on Jumperless: Breadboard Without Jumper
https://www.tindie.com/products/architeuthisflux/jumperless/
vhodges··on 2000Ad announces retirement of John M. Burns
Borag Thungg!

I still have my annual from 1978. It's brought me Vinglop Hudsok over the years.

vhodges··on Flexoki, an inky color scheme for prose and code
I've been using https://earl-grey.halt.wtf/ which I quite like (if you find it doesn't have enough contrast, try increasing the font weight a bit).
vhodges··on Forty years of programming
I've been coding for 42 years (since the age of 13), about 33 years as a professional developer. I do tend to downplay the stuff I did on my own for the first 9-10 years because a lot of my peers started then too, but the stuff since late '89/early '90 counts.

More relevant to the post, I have had some pain in the past, mostly neck/shoulder from the monitor not being high enough, but some finger pain too (tendinitis - even before mice use was prevalent), switching to a vertical mouse has helped to reduce it quite a bit. The mouse I use currently

https://www.logitech.com/en-ca/products/mice/lift-vertical-e...

vhodges··on Philips allegedly hid 3700 complaints about sleep apnea machines from U.S.
When I did my study they said it as >90 times an hour when sleeping on one side and something like >60 on the other. I did a pulse ox test first and the results recommended a sleep study (which was not all that conducive to a good sleep they way it's performed)

Note, you don't actually regain consciousness that often (but if you wake up every 90-120 minutes to pee, and/or snore a lot, your body is telling you something) but it does keep you from getting a deeper sleep. I hadn't dreamed in years because I'd never drop into REM state.

I used to sleep 4-6 hours a night (but rarely felt tired) now I sleep 5.5 - 7 and am much better rested.

vhodges··on Ask HN: What's the closest city to San Francisco outside of the US?
Vancouver, BC?
vhodges··on Draw Some Music
Very nice... Try drawing circles
vhodges··on Captain Zilog Crushed: The Story of the Z8000
Some friends of mine worked at a startup in the early 80's working on a z8000 based multi-user business system (Proteus for anyone around Vancouver then).
vhodges··on Pijul: Version-Control Post-Git [video]
On the theory of patches I found this set of posts helpful: https://jneem.github.io/merging/

TIL from the first 10 minutes (I didn't have time to watch the whole thing): I've been mis-pronouncing the name of pijul :)

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