Hacker News Reader

aaronbrethorston Ask HN: What are you reading?

I do vaguely remember seeing the 99PI book club at some point, but I didn't follow it. I'll check it out, though. Thanks for the tip!

For anyone else curious: https://99percentinvisible.org/pb/

I'm really looking forward to working through the LBJ series. I think I'm going to get it on Kindle and Audible so I can work my way through it bit by bit whenever I have free time and attention.

aaronbrethorston Ask HN: What are you reading?

I’ve been reading about bureaucracy, power, and civic engagement:

The Power Broker by Robert Caro.

Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka.

The Time Tax by Annie Lowrey.

aaronbrethorston GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price

Shots fired, half the price of Opus 5.5.

aaronbrethorston macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess

I've been running Golden Gate since the first beta was released in June. I've generally been very happy with it. I think it'll take a couple years to unwind the Alan Dye era, but Golden Gate is a significant improvement over macOS 26

aaronbrethorston California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops

https://www.kuow.org/governing/2026-03-23/between-ice-and-a-...

aaronbrethorston Gravity seems holographic. What does that mean for reality?

I think the point of the person you're responding to is what are the practical consequences for future scientific and technological leaps if this is accurate. Does that make FTL travel possible? Does it predict an outcome for the fate of the universe? etc.

aaronbrethorston ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026

Very Red Hot chili peppers of you

aaronbrethorston Show HN: I made a flight simulator, except you're just a passenger

UAL used to let you listen into the cockpit to ATC chatter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656352 — I understand this was really helpful for calming some passengers' nerves during flying.

aaronbrethorston Oracle’s 6am layoff emails hit staff amid new wave of cuts

He worked at Pacific Bell between 1986 and June 30, 1995, and the personalities he encountered there inspired many of his Dilbert characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams

aaronbrethorston Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)

Thank you so much! What city do you live in now?

aaronbrethorston Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)

I work on a suite of open source public transit software projects, collectively called OneBusAway (or OBA). The software is used by millions of transit riders every day around the world, including in New York City, the Seattle area, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.

Since last month, our four Google Summer of Code interns finished their projects.

University of California San Diego has deployed our Wayfinder and Waystation web apps for their 35,000+ students!

We launched a redesign of our Android app.

Our next-generation server software, Maglev, is almost at v1.0!

We are always looking for more developers, biz dev, ux designers, product managers, and more to help out!

Open volunteer positions: https://ossvolunteers.com/organizations/open-transit-softwar...

Our software: https://github.com/OneBusAway/

More about us: https://opentransitsoftwarefoundation.org

aaronbrethorston Will there be a 7G?

Interesting. Thanks for the detailed information and texture.

aaronbrethorston Will there be a 7G?

I get 5G mmWave in my home and around my neighborhood in Seattle. In fact sometimes at home I’ll turn off WiFi on my phone just because I’m sitting in a WiFi dead zone but the mmWave still works great.

This is on Mint Mobile, a budget MVNO now owned by T-Mobile. I pay $20/month for 15GB data.

aaronbrethorston Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

Funny enough, Cafe Lolo, the business that the example edit demonstrates, replaced my favorite restaurant in Seattle, Cookweaver. The chef-owner of Cookweaver is now doing private events and in-home meals for folks who miss his cooking: https://www.cookweaver.com/omakase-menu

aaronbrethorston Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?

I'm being vague to avoid spoilers, but I'll just say that it serves for a very interesting meditation on the concept of loss, and has stuck with me for the 5+ years since I read the trilogy.

aaronbrethorston Boot a Virtual iPhone via Apple's Virtualization.framework

I have never tried. I'm sure there are some reddit threads about this though.

aaronbrethorston Boot a Virtual iPhone via Apple's Virtualization.framework

Since 2024: https://www.macstories.net/news/altstore-is-now-available-in...

https://altstore.io

aaronbrethorston Htmx 4.0

HTMX is a layer on top of server-side rendered HTML that gives you near-SPA-levels of interactivity without having to build a standalone SPA.

aaronbrethorston Show HN: My Claude quota ran out in 10 minutes, so I made a tool to find out why

Darmok and Jalad, after their quota ran out.

aaronbrethorston Show HN: I built self-hosted deployment automation tool for Windows and IIS

Does Microsoft still maintain IIS? I thought it hadn't been meaningfully updated in about 8 years.

aaronbrethorston Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

whew, that's going to be a relief to the driver that hits an unexpected cloudburst while driving 80mph (130km) down the highway.

aaronbrethorston The Story of Mac: A Just-So Story

I'd posit that this is just as good as every programmer koan or story from esr's The New Hackers Dictionary

aaronbrethorston Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

This is the most direct way: https://opentransitsoftwarefoundation.org/onebusaway/contrib...

aaronbrethorston Auto mode is now the default in Claude Code

I've had a few occasions where Claude Code thought that it had caught and stopped a malicious command in Auto mode, but in all cases it turned out that it had in fact hallucinated them. I haven't seen this happen in a while.

aaronbrethorston Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager

You might be Generation Jones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones

aaronbrethorston Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

Hey Will - I'd love your help! You can either go through the OSSVolunteers link above or just review this document, which includes a direct link to join our Slack workspace: https://opentransitsoftwarefoundation.org/onebusaway/contrib...

aaronbrethorston Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

Through the non-profit that collectively owns OBA, I've been working on a managed services offering to help transit agencies adopt the software, which has historically been beloved by users, but a real pain to set up and maintain. The software, cleverly named OBA Cloud, turns what used to require a month-long engagement with a transit consulting firm into a 15 minute, wizard-driven process.

The best part is that since all of the software is free and open source, a transit agency that decides they love OBA but wants to be locked back into an expensive contract can always ask a consulting firm to run the software for them.

Since last month[1], we've added a number of great new features to OBA Cloud, like broadcasting critical alerts to all riders in the system via push notification, and support for Live Activities on iOS.

We're hosting four new public transit systems over last month, and are continuing to make terrific strides on our other marquee projects:

The iOS app update went live, and our riders are generally loving it: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onebusaway/id329380089

The new Android app maintainer is gearing up to release the biggest new version of the app in a decade: https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-android/

Our GSoC interns are continuing to do amazing work on their projects, including the next generation OBA API server, Maglev: https://github.com/onebusaway/maglev

We're always looking for more folks to contribute to the project, across a variety of disciplines (ie not just engineers!): https://ossvolunteers.com/organizations/open-transit-softwar...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48888489

aaronbrethorston [dead]

Some background on The Nordic Times: https://medium.com/@collegehill/max-tegmark-ai-conspiracy-th...

aaronbrethorston Kenji/Serious Eats – 30-Min Pressure Cooker Pho Ga

We've been making pho ga from this recipe for years. It's been on weekly rotation in the fall and winter because it is so ridiculously good. Pair it with bone broth made in your instant pot for best results.

Normally we start making bone broth around 9am, it finishes by about 5pm, and then dinner is ready by 7pm.

aaronbrethorston Should you wash your solar panels?

outlet wall plates

Also make sure your screws in your outlet wall plates are vertical. I've found it's a key tell between mediocre electricians & handymen, and the real pros, and it gives me confidence (perhaps unfounded) that the electrical systems are in good shape.