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btreecat

1,101 karma · joined June 16, 2014

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/btreecat; my proof: https://keybase.io/btreecat/sigs/QMUY3OBTVUR7brApD2esJdMGVkoU1sAtH8NwNAo-WHQ ]
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btreecat··on Launch HN: Vespper (YC F24) – SOTA Docx MCP
Obviously, I'm not storing my personal docs in office lol
btreecat··on Launch HN: Vespper (YC F24) – SOTA Docx MCP
Agreed, id sooner burn tokens to make my own than pay for something else to have access to my docs
btreecat··on Plan mode is dead
I have, and it always does something unexpected and undesirable.

Plan mode ensures I'm spending fewer tokens on the code-test loop, and more on the arch/design, and allows me to keep appraised of what's going on, while planning for future changes better.

Maybe folks who don't need planning, don't have as much concern for the details, and are happy enough with just evaluation of if it works or not.

btreecat··on Function Arguments Are Not Function Colors
I think that's an interesting take, I have been chewing on the "so what" of function coloring myself, but haven't reached any conclusions.

Would be interested to hear why you don't find it a useful framework either.

btreecat··on 120 days until Google restricts side-loading, declaring war on Android freedom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideloading

I don't remember calling it side loading when I had some of those earlier mp3 players but my experience wasn't universal.

btreecat··on Nitter has more working instances than before the takedowns
It can't suck all that much if you're not willing to give it up.
btreecat··on Show HN: We built the smallest dual-band aircraft tracker
Yeah I had looked into dump978 in the past, but it was broken. I see it had updates back in 2023, maybe it compiles again.

Thanks!

btreecat··on Show HN: We built the smallest dual-band aircraft tracker
Finally UAT support!

How's the software side though?

Last time I looked dump1090 worked well, but there was no way to decode UAT packets.

Something on my to-do list, that's now become more plausible with Claude assisting the research.

btreecat··on Show HN: Flostep – Diagrams people can actually walk through
With the increased instability of global infrastructure, being able to edit locally is critical IMO.

Others may feel different.

btreecat··on How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer
That sounds kinda like the path of maturity of a start-up.

If a company is bootstrapped by a few engineers, where would the business acumen come from exactly?

I've been part of tiny startups, medium size, and large ones. I've been at state agencies and ancient private organizations.

The more people, the more corporate the culture. The more cooperate, the more the business needs & wants drive choices.

btreecat··on Show HN: Flostep – Diagrams people can actually walk through
Online only diagrams is a hard no for me. I'd rather commit the mermaid and render a png and share that then have another issue with seats/license for critical documentation.
btreecat··on Show HN: Scala Tutorials – interactive Scala 3 lessons in the browser
I agree, being bummed is part of life, so is growing past it. Only so much time for what could have been.

I don't think it would require a "perfect meritocracy" for languages that are found "beautiful" and "enjoyable" to succeed if they are also "practical" and have accessable tooling.

What makes languages popular is clearly multidimensional, where astehctics are certainty one dimension (even ugly languages get updates over time if there's enough energy behind the project) but so is timing, tooling, investment, community, etc.

I think it's reasonable to conclude that whatever beautiful nature is/was there wasn't enough. In terms of weight of importance, or degree of agreement.

btreecat··on Grok 4.6 scores 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
"don't believe you lying eyes" you say?
btreecat··on Grok 4.6 scores 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Why would Israeli settlers commit ethnic cleansing despite their country existing as a response to ethnic cleansing?

Idk I'm not a Zionist, but it's clearly what's happening.

btreecat··on Grok 4.6 scores 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Link it
btreecat··on Grok 4.6 scores 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
When you cut regulatory corners, it does get easier to move quickly
btreecat··on Grok 4.6 scores 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Sounds like you have your final solution
btreecat··on Grok 4.6 scores 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
[flagged]
btreecat··on Switching to electric stoves can dramatically cut indoor air pollution (2025)
Most hoods in apartments (and many houses) are not vented to the outdoors. They just move the air inside around.

You're not helping the air quality if all you do is move it around inside.

btreecat··on Switching to electric stoves can dramatically cut indoor air pollution (2025)
It's not just how much water can you boil and how fast, it's the excess heat and significant hit to indoor air quality, and CO2 concentration
btreecat··on Switching to electric stoves can dramatically cut indoor air pollution (2025)
And you'd lose that wager multiple times over
btreecat··on Show HN: Scala Tutorials – interactive Scala 3 lessons in the browser
The goal isn't to replace, it's to understand so you can grow past it.

If you start from the fact that people haven't adopted it, maybe it's not as beautiful or enjoyable to most developers.

btreecat··on Show HN: Scala Tutorials – interactive Scala 3 lessons in the browser
Instead of being sad, have you considered evaluating why that is?
btreecat··on Quickly rewrite Git repository history
I don't think all writing process produces the same kinda of output, the editing of code itself is metadata I find more valuable and an artificially straight line.
btreecat··on Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot
Your writing Scala, let's be real your ide resources are not your primary concern. The way it actually understands your interface is.
btreecat··on Quickly rewrite Git repository history
I support anti-dox/and security practices by cleaning up repo history and rotating where you can, as long as your safe with the assumption that anyone with a copy of the history could push it back to central at any point.

But I really don't like the trend of some folks "need a clean history" and then disabled merge commits.

It's like they are saying "cool snap shot system you got there, id hate for it to be use to take a bunch of incremental snap shots with specific notes attached to each one. Why don't you let me bundle those all together real purdy like and no one has to know it took you 20 commits to fix that decade old bug."

I have literally never heard a reasonable claim that needing a "clean main branch" is more useful in a retro or bisect.

Maybe other folks know of a concrete example?

btreecat··on KDE Plasma 6.7 Released
All KDE before 5 is buggy, slow, unstable, ugly, and generally unpleasant to use.

I remember running KDE3 and it consumed too much ram for too little stability. Much worse desktop experience than today.

btreecat··on Stop Using JWTs
We have a single harbor instance at work, backed by PG. The folks ran into some sort of performance issue during their testing (not documented) and their solution was to use cloud native pg, run two postgres, and add additional second layer of connection pooling.

We eventually hit a bug in a combination of certain images, docker desktop (not even supported by us), and permissions. The error looked related to the connections, so I suggested the pooler be bypassed as a test. They ignored the suggestion for two weeks until it was the last thing to test.

Sure enough bypassing the pooler helped stabilize the connection from harbor during image uploads.

Now I need to talk to them about properly vertical scaling PG before we try and run two with replication, in the same kube cluster, in the same physical data center.

btreecat··on An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight
I'd wish they'd focus on the problems leading to folks feeling that copper theft is a better source of income than other more legitimate routes.

Speaks volumes to the local economy and support networks.

btreecat··on Mini Micro Fantasy Computer
I get why people blame indentation like this. I don't think it's right or wrong to ignore the tooling that directly addresses minor issues with indentation or matching braces honestly.

That said, my preference is to use the tools built into my editor and available on the CLI or web to assist and fix formatting and syntax. You get instant feedback on incorrect formatting, and I generally find that synthetic scope mistakes (regardless of method) are eliminated.

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