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wtracy

4,074 karma · joined August 31, 2010

http://www.wtracy.com/

I'm a software engineer based in the North Bay. I'm actively looking for remote work opportunities, whether short-term or long-term.

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wtracy··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)

  Location: Santa Rosa, CA (north of San Francisco)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: For the right salary
  Technologies: C/C++, Python, Django, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Linux, some JavaScript + React, and some mobile (Android, React Native, and Capacitor)
  Resume/CV: https://www.wtracy.com
  Email: william@techtracy.com
I'm currently open to an equity-only role as long as I can work from my current location. I'm close enough to The Bay to make occasional trips, but not close enough to commute.
wtracy··on Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses
In addition to the other comments:

Military aircraft are subject to failure from being shot at. Aircraft in combat will fail much, much more often than properly maintained civilian aircraft.

Civilian aircraft don't have election seats because situations where they would be useful are exceedingly rare.

wtracy··on Varda's drug-cooking Winnebago will be remembered as a space pioneer
It looks like improved yield, but also there's the possibility of producing a product that has different properties than that produced on earth.

If, for example, the larger ritonavir crystals they can produce in space produce a dramatically more effective treatment, somebody's going to be interested in paying a premium for that.

wtracy··on CSS for printing to paper
I feel like there's a story here.
wtracy··on The 'Atlanta Magnet Man' is saving our car tires, one bike ride at a time
The last time I had to replace four tires at once, the mechanic could no longer source the model of tire that my car had, and refused to mix tire models on my car.
wtracy··on Keeping an ice cream factory cool
I thought that was what the article would be about. All those freezers are pumping out heat 24/7. I could see climate control being a huge issue for these facilities.
wtracy··on Keeping an ice cream factory cool
To elaborate:

In the USA at least, to use the name "ice cream", there needs to be a certain density of cream. If the product isn't dense enough, you need to use another name, like "frozen dessert."

The products called frozen dessert are whipped up to contain lots of air. There's several advantages to this for the manufacturer: You can fill the same size container with less material, so you can cut costs. You can also list fewer calories for the same size serving.

wtracy··on Bought a Prison Laptop on eBay
In case anyone else was wondering why this would even exist, it's for education in rehabilitation programs: https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/insidecdcr/2022/08/18/secure-laptops...

"The laptops contain standard Microsoft Office applications, a link to the Division of Rehabilitative Programs (DRP) Learning Network, and pre-loaded approved bookmarks. This gives students access to Internet sites approved by academic instructors as appropriate for research."

wtracy··on The code worked differently when the moon was full (2021)
Now you have my curiosity piqued. Is the report from the inquiry available to read online?
wtracy··on Capturing Avian Perspectives: Pigeon photography
Stranger things have been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
wtracy··on "Stolen" radio tower missing for at least a year
Anyone care to summarize why it's more profitable to operate on FM, and why the FCC cares about incentivizing them to operate on AM?
wtracy··on Releasing my tools under the MIT License was probably a mistake (2023)
I thought the MIT license required attribution, but on rereading the requirement is pretty weak: You're only required to keep the original copyright notice.
wtracy··on So long, and thanks for all the bytes
I remember Chet making delightful blog posts all the way back when he was at Sun. I wish him well on his new career, but hope that he doesn't give up technical writing completely.
wtracy··on Internal tools often make bad startup ideas
I would say this post makes more sense to me as a call for self-awareness among potential founders than as an argument for avoiding this route entirely.

Sometimes internal tools exist because the incentives are there for a company to build rather than buy.

Sometimes internal tools exist because the right tool just isn't on the market. Yet.

wtracy··on What happened with the Web Monetization API?
That sounds like wonderful news!
wtracy··on Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'
Look at Tesla and Nvidia in recent years. Exciting innovations can cause stock prices to soar completely independently of the company's fundamentals.
wtracy··on Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'
I know a lot of investors are excited about Waymo, so I assume the executives are as well. I don't have any insight into what the experience is like on the actual engineering team, though.
wtracy··on What happened with the Web Monetization API?
I can't find it now, but several years ago a dev posted his experiences here dealing with VAT when selling software across the EU.

He had to comply with a completely different set of tax laws for each EU member state that he received a purchase from. The cost he paid to his accountant to be able to be in compliance was like twice what he paid in actual taxes.

A big party of the problem is that many of the tax laws were so inconsistent and vaguely worded that every transaction had to be gone over manually.

wtracy··on Demystifying GPU compute architectures
My understanding was that GPU instruction level parallelism is quite limited compared to CPUs (since multiple "threads" are running on each hardware core) and I wasn't aware that GPUs had any meaningful OOO execution.

If I'm wrong, I'd be happy to learn more.

wtracy··on The Ladybird browser project
Shopify is a sponsor! I wonder how that came about.
wtracy··on Making steel without emitting CO2
Current reactor designs cannot get that hot without melting. I bet we could design a molten salt reactor that could safely get there, especially if electricity production is not a design goal.
wtracy··on Memory leak proof every C program
I remember seeing a Java game engine that included a container that you were supposed to dump unused objects into to prevent GC from running in the middle of a level. At the end of the level, you could empty the container, and let the GC run during the loading screen or whatever.

It was a deliberate design choice that was surprisingly close to what the original article describes.

wtracy··on Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel
ReiserFS and BTRFS always seemed like the two big "performance over reliability" Linux file systems.
wtracy··on A tiny hand crafted CPU emulator, C compiler, and Operating System
Reminds me of one of my project ideas that will probably never happen: Build a mini bare-metal Minecraft clone and then build a CPU inside it capable of self-hosting the whole thing.
wtracy··on Adélie Linux
I could see some people being interested in building compute clusters where the individual nodes are cheap, low-memory devices. (Think Raspberry Pi clusters.)

That does sound like a pretty niche thing, though.

wtracy··on How Gyms Make Money (2015)
When I last lived in an apartment, I saw people bringing in their own trainers to the complex's gym. There's also services like Copilot that let you work with coaches through video chat.
wtracy··on Asian Arowana: The most expensive pet fish
There's kind of a technicality here.

There's several very specific and very rare traits that are present in some kohaku (they're not genetic, so we can't just breed for them) that are highly prized. Fish that meet those criteria and go for those prices are quite literally one in a million.

I can go buy a "pet quality" kohaku for under twenty bucks. Meanwhile, it's difficult to find any kind of Asian arrowana for under two thousand dollars.

wtracy··on Asian Arowana: The most expensive pet fish
Microchipped arrowana are actually common these days, so you're on the right track.

I don't know the full story, but the US has a blanket ban on any CITES-listed species.

wtracy··on Asian Arowana: The most expensive pet fish
I'm pretty sure I saw an Asian arrowana in a pet store in east San Jose about ten years ago. It had a back kink, so it wouldn't have been a very valuable animal, but I was still shocked to see it openly on display.

The South American and Australian species are legal to own, and I see them in the hobby all the time.

wtracy··on Asian Arowana: The most expensive pet fish
Axolotls are now illegal to trade in California, but that's only at the state level.

Axolotls have a much longer history of being bred in captivity than arowana. They're actually regularly used as lab animals.

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