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athrun

673 karma · joined February 13, 2013

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athrun··on An airport cooled by natural ventilation
Funny seeing an article about Reunion island on HN.

I’m very familiar with this airport, and from my perspective the engineers behind the project did a very good job designing a building that can take best advantage of its location. See, the airport is located alongside the coast, and the sea breeze there can be pretty powerful.

Note that this is a new building (dedicated to arrivals), and is adjacent to the original building, which is still in use for departures. The old building is also mostly passively cooled, and the difference in perceived temperature between the two is striking. The old terminal behaves more like a concrete bunker and can get very stuffy. In contrast, this new arrival hall feels a bit like you’re on the deck of a ship at sea.

I have plenty of other issues about other elements of the new building, but that part works pretty well!

athrun··on The road signs that teach travellers about France
In France, in absence of contrary indications (ie: absence of signs, traffic signals, or line markings), it's "Priority to the Right".

So if it's an actual roundabout (aka, "rond-point"), then normal traffic rules apply for intersections: Priority to the Right. Vehicles already on the roundabout must yield to cars entering it.

Often, you have what is referred as "Carrefours à sens giratoire", which can very much look like "rond-points", but priority is to the vehicles already on the roundabout. For this reason, there will be a yield sign at the entrance of the roundabout to make it clear there's a special rule that applies to it. Sometimes you have traffic lights as well.

athrun··on Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
the big issue with this setup is that most streaming platforms won’t give you multi-channel audio via the browser on Linux systems. Some might also limit the video quality.

On Windows, it used to be different, but lately I’ve observed the same—ex: Netflix seems to limit the streaming quality even with Edge.

athrun··on Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups
1. Even in regulated markets like Europe, you’ll note that it’s still a percentage of the transaction value, not a fixed cost.

2. In EU, while Interchange is regulated, Scheme fees, Acquirer fees, and Processor fees are not. These are usually also expressed as percentage of the transaction value.

3. Because of the more limited avenues to offset risk, access to credit in EU is more difficult than in more dynamic markets like the US (not saying it’s good or bad, just highlighting that there are downstream impacts).

athrun··on Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups
It's about provisioning for credit losses.

Roughly speaking, when a transaction needs to be unwound, if the merchant cannot cover the reversal (for example, because it has defaulted), then the payment processor needs to pony up instead. Note that this isn't an edge case, this is something that happens every day.

If the payment processor defaults (gasp!), then the processor's sponsor bank needs to cover it. This is why a sponsor bank will have a lot to say about what a processor can and cannot do.

If the sponsor bank is unable to meet its obligations (argh!), then it's the card Network itself that is on the hook. This is why card networks have a lot to say about what a sponsor bank can and cannot do ;)

The key to understanding payment processing is to realise that the risk is very asymmetrical. The processing party collects only a small fraction of the transaction amount as fees, but is effectively on the hook for the full amount if things go pear shaped.

That is why the cost is typically proportional to the value of the payment.

You'll see fixed/capped fees mostly on payment methods that don't allow reversals (ie: not very consumer friendly), or that take place between highly trusted parties where credit risk can be handled through other ways.

athrun··on The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong
I think you're injecting your personal views into the definition, which don't align with the common meaning of the word.

Here's the definition of the word taken from macOS's built-in dictionary (New Oxford American Dictionary):

> leftist, noun: a person who has left-wing political views or supports left-wing policies.

> left-wing, noun: the section of a political party or system that advocates for greater social and economic equality, and typically favors socially liberal ideas; the liberal or progressive group or section

Anti-capitalist thought represents a subset, but is certainly not the sole marker of left-wing political thought.

Now, my _personal_ take on this is that western left-wing thinking and liberalism (in the moral philosophical sense) are deeply intertwined (given the Enlightenment and its values), but anti-capitalist thought is deeply illiberal in nature. It is this fundamental contradiction that leads to permanent infighting within the left-wing spectrum.

athrun··on The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong
Aside from the fact that the few policies they made explicit in their platform would actually be counter-productive to getting more supply (such as National-level rent freezes), they also don't have a good track record at the local level when it comes to housing.

I've been very involved in council-level politics where repeatedly the Greens members were aligning themselves with the right-wing members ("ratepayers rights"-type groups) when it came to delaying/blocking development permits, enforcing parking requirements, preventing/delaying rezoning, etc. They fundamentally don't understand the issue at all. All talk, no substance.

And that's before we get to the CFMEU matter, which I think was the final blow for them during the last election.

athrun··on The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong
Sounds like you're just applying somewhat arbitrary purity rules to what falls into the "leftist" bucket or not.

I believe that for most people "leftists" means "on the left side of the political spectrum", and so, in the US, it would be a strict superset of democrats & Liberals. But for you, it sounds like it's only subset of these, based on some criteria you haven't made explicit.

Fair enough, but that's a somewhat non-standard definition.

athrun··on .NET 10 Preview 6 brings JIT improvements, one-shot tool execution
Not bringing the language closer to Scala is a feature, not a bug though.
athrun··on FFmpeg merges WebRTC support
I've also been trying (and mostly failing) to build such a setup over the last few weeks. What are you thinking in terms of the overall building blocks to get this to work?

I've been struggling to get a proper low-latency screen+audio recording going (on macos) and streaming that over WebRTC. Either the audio gets de-sync, or the streaming latency is too high.

athrun··on Coffee for people who don't like coffee
The Clever dripper and the Hario Switch are the two main ones I think, but then there's a lot of niche ones. The overall category is called "immersion dripper".

My main concern is the plastic, so I've got one from a smaller brand entirely made of ceramics. (it's much more expensive though).

athrun··on Coffee for people who don't like coffee
I hear you on diners coffee and the fact that it feels like it a different beverage altogether. I also crave it from time to time.

—do you have tips on how to actually brew it in a home setting? Or this is something can only be achieved by brewing large batches of the stuff, keeping it warm somehow, and letting it go stale for a few hours?

athrun··on Show HN: Driverless print server for legacy printers, profit goes to open-source
Not OP but I think you're confused: GPL doesn't require source to be made publicly available to all.

You are only required to provide source to the users of your software.

athrun··on Spotify's Beta Used 'Pirate' MP3 Files, Some from Pirate Bay
Apple still does (CD is not required), it's called iTunes Match. It used to be standalone, but nowadays it's part of Apple Music.
athrun··on Project Scripts
I feel this is where uv's PEP 723 support of inline dependencies in a single-file Python script shines.

Just use something like this as a shebang, and you can have your cake and eat it too!

#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run

previous HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43097006

athrun··on A year of uv: pros, cons, and should you migrate
Pinning deps is a good thing, but it won't necessarily solve the issue of transitive dependencies (ie: the dependencies of requests itself for example), which will not be pinned themselves, given you don't have a lock file.

To be clear, a lock file is strictly the better option—but for single file scripts it's a bit overkill.

athrun··on A year of uv: pros, cons, and should you migrate
Gosh, thanks for sharing! This is the remaining piece I felt I was missing.
athrun··on Patterns for Building Realtime Features
Thanks for sharing your experience, and what you have found to work.

Sometimes I feel we (fellow HN readers) get caught into overly complex rabbit holes, so it's good to balance it out with some down-to-earth, practical perspectives.

athrun··on Uv's killer feature is making ad-hoc environments easy
> sudo apt-get install python3.10 python3.11 python3.12

This assumes the Python version you need is available from your package manager's repo. This won't work if you want a Python version either newer or older than what is available.

> You are incorrect about needing to use an additional tool to install a "global" tool like `ruff`; `pip` does this by default when you're not using a virtual environment.

True, but it's not best practice to do that because while the tool gets installed globally, it is not necessarily linked to a specific python version, and so it's extremely brittle.

And it gets even more complex if you need different tools that have different Python version requirements.

athrun··on Bluesky is on the verge of overtaking Threads in all the ways that matter
The real world is a complicated place. You want simple answers when reality is complicated and nuanced.

The fact is that there are—and have always been—people for which these things are not the same. You might want to wish it away, but that doesn't change reality.

athrun··on Reverse Engineering iOS 18 Inactivity Reboot
I have the same setup and what works for me is putting the phone into Supervised mode using the Apple Configurator.

From there, you can enable single app mode to lock it into the app you're using for the webcam (I use Camo).

athrun··on NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective
Has it really though?

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/cable-news...

athrun··on Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch
I was thinking of doing the same but IR control only allows for unidirectional communication with the unit.

Since there's no feedback mechanism, how do you solve for when the state of the unit(s) gets out of sync with HomeAssistant's?

athrun··on Introducing passkey support to Fastmail
The announcement post from Fastmail does a good job at listing the advantages of Passkeys over passwords: replay resistant, database-leak resistant and fishing proof.
athrun··on Hundred Rabbits is a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech
I'm not sure I agree relentless cynicism is productive. Skepticism yes, that's very healthy.

But unchecked cynicism tends to result in a general lack of trust that is not very conducive to progress.

athrun··on Aeon: OpenSUSE for Lazy Developers
the firewall question is interesting. I guess I understand their perspective: If nothing is listening/running then what’s the point of the firewall? The system is immutable so the security posture is a known quantity and cannot change at runtime. You could argue that running an additional firewall service would actually be increasing the attack surface, in the sense that more code is worse than the absence of code.

Not sure I agree with their stance, but good on them for having the courage to revisit some our default assumptions. Some decisions will work out and others they’ll have to finetune.

athrun··on "My Bike Is Everything to Me"
Maybe you should take a step back, and reconsider whether arguing that people who ride bikes "are not real, or do not have real world needs" makes any sense.

Nothing that you have written is original. These are the usual arguments against micro-mobility. They don't stand scrutiny, and they are actively being disproven across a growing number of locations around the world, small and large.

athrun··on Jim Ward has died
From his Wikipedia page:

> In 2010, Ward was diagnosed with a serious neurological disorder that required treatment at the Mayo Clinic. His friend Tim Kask helped to establish a fund to help Ward offset some of the medical bills.

I mean, good on his friend, it was a very kind thing to do. But also, wow, what a messed up place the US is...

athrun··on Japan brings negative interest rates era to an end with first hike in 17 years
> IMO it'd be sensible to let the markets set the interest rate

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The interest rate policy is linked to the money creation/destruction process, which is ultimately a centralised state function. Banks create/destroy the money, but the pace at which they can do so is governed by interest rates.

I don't understand how the market would be able to set that rate. You'd need multiple entities acting as "central banks", and somehow competing?

What do you have in mind?

athrun··on Genetically engineering koji mold to create a meat alternative
Reunion island.

The food there is a very interesting mix of French, Chinese, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Indian and Malagasy cuisine. Pretty unique.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Réunion

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