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cbhl

6,791 karma · joined August 22, 2011

Software Developer.

Bachelor of Software Engineering (Class of 2014), University of Waterloo

michael-chang.ca

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/cbhl; my proof: https://keybase.io/cbhl/sigs/_XHym0M6L8ZTm0JX3TBmjbIVaXLmvk5ylffNAnmU20g ]

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cbhl··on California went a record 98 days with 10 hours of electricity from renewables
I drove a leased PHEV in California from 2021 to 2024. Driving on electricity was more expensive!

Typically charged at L2 chargers at a retail rate of $0.39/kWh (admittedly during dinner peak after work -- off-peak was lower). The 17 kWh battery gave 40 miles of highway driving, for 16.575 cents/mi.

Gas during the same period peaked at $6.749/gal, although I went out of my way to fill up at Costco Gas and saw prices as low as $3.999/gal - weighted average over that three year period was $4.896/gal. The 7 gallon tank gave another 300 miles of highway driving, getting 9.331 cents/mi to 15.748 cents/mi.

At the same gas prices, a comparable gas-only car getting 29.1 MPG would be 13.8-23.2 cents/mi in gas costs.

cbhl··on Mastercard DNS error went unnoticed for years
I'd expect big companies to use Markmonitor to handle this problem -- basically, they _also_ register all of the one-edit-distance away typos that they can.

According to Wikipedia, Akamai is one of Markmonitor's customers, so it is surprising that this wasn't already registered by them.

cbhl··on Parallel-hashmap: drop-in replacement for unordered_map, unordered_set
You may find the docs for Abseil's containers (upon which these appear to have been built) helpful: https://abseil.io/docs/cpp/guides/container#recommendation

In my experience, the main drawback is cognitive complexity: there are not one but four different implementations of map and set provided, each with slightly different memory and compatibility tradeoffs, and using the wrong one may break existing code that depends on (for example) stability of pointers to elements or iterators during set mutation.

cbhl··on Most people don't care about quality
A "normal person" is a Starbucks barista making $38k/year (roughly 2000 hours at $19/hour).

That person doesn't spend 3 days' wages for "mainline kernel drivers" -- either they buy the iPhone because it's a status symbol, or they use the Android OS that shipped with the device for three years until the screen is cracked and the battery stops charging. To them security patches are just an inconvenience.

I don't think "if only people had the right information they'd spend money on the right things" is the right thesis -- I think it's more "why is everyone so poor? how do we make it so that more people can afford our wares?"

My impression (citation needed) is that globally folks have been worse off the last few years and so the median Android device spec was actually going down.

cbhl··on "Rules" that terminal programs follow
> rule 3: REPLs should quit when you press Ctrl-D on an empty line

If memory serves, this behavior depends on the OS. On Windows I believe the norm there is to type "<Ctrl-Z><Enter>"

cbhl··on FCC opens entire 6 GHz band to low power device operations
Do folks know if this increases the number of channels available for Wi-Fi 6e over 6GHz in the US, or does that require additional process?
cbhl··on Devin is now generally available
This predates the o1 release, but the folks behind Devin did do some early evaluation of o1 vs 4o vs Devin back in September:

https://x.com/cognition_labs/status/1834292718174077014

I'd expect a very different experience with Devin vs the IDE-forks -- it provides status updates in Slack, runs CI, and when it's done it puts up a pull request in GitHub.

cbhl··on Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code
Hmm, is this the same incident which happened last year? Or is this a new incident?

From Sept 2023 (flightglobal.com):

- https://archive.is/uiDvy

- Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37430384

Also some more detailed analysis:

- https://jameshaydon.github.io/nats-fail/

- Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37461695

cbhl··on Please stop the coding challenges
This is a friendly reminder that you are welcome to withdraw a job application as soon as you are offered a coding challenge. If this is an exchange with a recruiter over email or linkedin messages, you can simply reply with something like this:

"Thank you for sending that along. I would like to withdraw my application for this position."

cbhl··on No GPS required: our app can now locate underground trains
> the app could also look for other Transit users nearby

That seems unlikely in an environment with no cellular / wifi signal. Theoretically possible, but expensive for battery and probably disallowed by the OS.

cbhl··on Intel reinstates free coffee for employees after mass layoffs
I'm pretty sure in the Bay Area most larger tech companies cargo-culted offering employees free fruit (and sometimes vegetables / crudite) -- the argument being that having employees eat these instead of bagged chips/candy would reduce your health care spend in the long run.
cbhl··on New OpenAI Feature: Predicted Outputs
If you use the Cursor IDE: the folks that wrote it talked about their use of speculative decoding to make "Apply" faster on the Lex Friedman podcast last month.

Here it is on YouTube, although you can also find it on Spotify and other podcast platforms:

https://youtu.be/oFfVt3S51T4?t=1206

cbhl··on New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
The more I stare at this the more I think that using official inflation numbers / using the official CPI is wrong -- these baskets combine recreation and technology being nearly -50% (TVs can be had today for $300, whereas they used to cost $500 in 1995 dollars), assume you only buy new cars (only up ~25% since 2000, but used cars are now almost as expensive as new whereas they used to be available for half the price or less), and underweight housing (basically doubled since 2000, worse if you need to move to a HCOL major urban center for employment).

If you are a healthy person living frugally then I think the inflation in your personal basket of goods is actually higher than the fed numbers would dictate (esp for rent and housing).

cbhl··on An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers
The purpose of these links is to be shared, see the FAQ: https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks

The LWN paywall is unique in that all the content becomes freely available after a week. The subscriber links are there to encourage you to subscribe if you are in a position to do so.

cbhl··on BYD quarterly sales beat Tesla for first time
BYD is already one of the top manufacturers for EV Buses globally. IIRC most (all?) of the electric GBuses in the Bay Area were by BYD, although they don't quite have the range to do the longer routes.
cbhl··on Apple Intelligence is available today on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
Today's release only supports English (US) and you appear to be in the UK. English (UK) support is slated for the end of this year.
cbhl··on Will the China cycle come for Airbus and Boeing?
IMO Bombardier probably eventually could have gotten there too if Boeing hadn't lobbied the US government into making sure nobody bought the C Series. In the end they sold off the entire line to Airbus and it became the A220.
cbhl··on Character amnesia in China
Apparently Gen Z didn't learn to write in cursive at all, since it had been removed from the curriculum. Some US states have since started adding it back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32884213 (2022)

cbhl··on Computer use, a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku
"generate a voronoi diagram using p5js. use a vector algorithm to generate the diagram instead of a raster" seems to work for me?
cbhl··on Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?
Frankly if they shipped it with `enabledApiProposals` I'd even go further and assume that they actually _intend_ to release public APIs once they've baked.

Like, why go through the extra work of gating it under `enabledApiProposals` and using the public manifest flag when you could put code in VSCode itself that is like "oh if this extension is installed let me just run some secret code here in the binary".

cbhl··on The Low Stability of High Income
> how much could you conservatively make in a replacement job? If you set your current spending based on that level of income

I didn't love the numbers in the article -- they assume $500k total comp, but the levels.fyi heatmap from a few days ago shows SFBA median total comp is $263k, with 64% being base so $169k. Federal taxes are 64k, state taxes are 21k. That leaves you with maybe ~$80k in liquid salary.

A market-rate studio apartment is $2700-$3000/mo which is about $36k in annual expense. That's about half of your income. Add food and transportation and there's not much left to save for retirement or emergency fund.

If for some reason you are in the lurch and have to start driving ubers or working at starbucks, you're not going to be able to afford the same kind of apartment that you need to do hybrid work and join meetings at a FAANG job.

cbhl··on FreeBSD/EC2 boot performance over time
My impression is that cperciva has been working on FreeBSD/EC2 boot times for the last six years, not just specifically some changes in 14.

The most accessible summary of his work is probably on his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/cperciva/posts. If you go digging there are also some anecdotes on his Twitter too; most recent I can find is https://x.com/cperciva/status/1833735559614988526

cbhl··on AlphaCodium outperforms direct prompting of OpenAI's o1 on coding problems
I found it tricky to set up and use, personally.

My current ranking would be Cursor > Continue > Codium (haven't yet tried Copilot).

Codium seems to specialize in enterprise right now (where someone might be told to not use Cursor).

cbhl··on GM electric vehicles can now access Tesla Superchargers
This goes both ways -- historically the other charging networks were J1772 or CCS (with a few CHAdeMO to support Nissan Leafs), but now Electrify America, EVgo, etc. have been retrofitting or newly installing a mix of CCS and NACS cables onto their L3 chargers. This increases the available charger footprint for Teslas as well.
cbhl··on Show HN: I've spent nearly 5y on a web app that creates 3D apartments
I'm curious if you've seen Matterport yet? IIRC they had a 3d virtual tour embed that works by capturing apartments using real camera images (vs from floor plan). They seemed pretty common in SF Bay Area.
cbhl··on Show HN: BudgetFlow – Budget planning using interactive Sankey diagrams
I've been using YNAB for the last ten years or so and I've found the best way of dealing with these sorts of cases is to exclude that money from "the budget" altogether (off-budget bank account, simply not linking them, or putting them in a separate "budget").
cbhl··on NHS soup and shake diet can beat type 2 diabetes
My impression is that the default recommendation from the literature is "Mediterranean diet with counseling from a certified nutritionist" and evidence of any other diet that works would help expand options for folks with pre-diabetes.
cbhl··on Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle
I think the paper gets sandwiched between the hammer on one side and the drum on the other side.

This would be not too dissimilar to how a typewriter would have worked, I think?

cbhl··on Waymo has completed 2M paid rider-only trips
You wouldn't expect Waymo to hockey stick though. It's not software.

Waymo's scale is constrained by many factors: (1) physical cars (requires capital), (2) hi-def mapping, (3) operations (depots to charge, clean and maintain cars, "fleet response" - https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/), and (4) regulatory environment (permits on a city/county/state basis).

cbhl··on Siblings miss crucial life-extending treatment because of CrowdStrike outage
If I recall correctly, part of the context for this was that Microsoft had shipped its own implementation of Java separate from Sun's, but it only implemented a subset of the language.

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

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