HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

deisteve

117 karma · joined July 23, 2024

submissionscomments
deisteve··on My Homelab Setup
honestly, I've always thought the focus on aesthetics was a bit... superficial. I mean, who cares what the thing looks like as long as it gets the job done? But the more I think about it, the more I realize that's a pretty utilitarian view. If I'm going to be staring at this thing for hours a day, shouldn't I want it to be visually appealing? And let's not forget, a well-designed system can actually make troubleshooting and maintenance easier. I've seen some beautifully cable-managed rigs that make it a joy to work on. Maybe I've been wrong to dismiss aesthetics all these years... you've got a point, aesthetics maybe matter.
deisteve··on Don't Let That Content Go to Waste
I feel ya my own brain is a chaotic attractor, and trying to pin down a single theme is like trying to hold water in my fist. I've come to accept that my writing is a reflection of my curiosity-driven ADHD, and that my 'audience' is likely just fellow travelers in the land of tangential interests.

dat being said, I've found that embracing the chaos can be liberating. Instead of trying to force a theme, I focus on creating a 'personal API' - a collection of loosely connected ideas and interests that can be mixed and matched in unexpected ways.

those who can maintain focus on a single domain, I'm in awe. But for the rest of us, perhaps the key is to find ways to create a cohesive narrative thread through the chaos, rather than trying to impose order on it. Anyone else out there struggling to tame the snow globe of their own mind?

deisteve··on Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)
On one hand, I completely agree that deliberate practice and intentional positivity can be powerful tools for growth and skill-building. The 'fake it till you make it' approach can be especially helpful for building confidence and momentum.

I think the key is finding that balance between pushing ourselves to grow and being kind to ourselves when we need to rest. It's okay to take a step back, recharge, and prioritize our own well-being. In fact, that's often where the real growth happens - in the moments of quiet reflection and self-care.

deisteve··on AppleWatchAmmeter
htis is a great hack! I've been looking for a way to measure DC currents without breaking the bank. Has anyone tried using a similar setup with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino to create a more robust and accurate measurement system?
deisteve··on The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
interestng read. I've always been curious about how to generate realistic-sounding fictional addresses. The author's use of real-world street patterns and naming conventions is a good touch. Has anyone else used this guide or similar resources for writing purposes?
deisteve··on Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)
totally understand where you're coming from, but I think there's a difference between being aware of your emotions and trying to suppress or fake them. The article isn't suggesting that we should be constantly 'on' and pretending to be someone we're not. Rather, it's about developing self-awareness and learning to manage our emotions in a way that's authentic and sustainable.

Recognizing the stimuli that trigger our emotions is a great first step, but it's not just about rationalizing it away. It's about understanding what's driving our emotions and learning to respond in a way that's healthy and constructive. This takes practice, patience tho

deisteve··on ClickHouse Data Modeling for Postgres Users
ur absolutely right that a simple FINAL clause won't work as expected with a materialized view like this, since the FINAL clause relies on the underlying table's ordering to eliminate duplicates. With a materialized view, the ordering is based on the enabled, ts, and id columns, which might not be the same as the underlying table's ordering.

As for the other two deduplication methods, you're also correct that they might cause performance problems on large-ish tables. The DISTINCT ON method can be slow due to the need to sort the entire table, while the ROW_NUMBER() method can be resource-intensive due to the need to assign a unique row number to each row.

one possible solution to this problem is to use a combination of a materialized view and a secondary deduplication method. For example, you could create a materialized view that includes a ROW_NUMBER() or RANK() function to assign a unique identifier to each row, and then use a secondary query to eliminate duplicates based on this identifier.

you could consider using a different data modeling approach, such as using a separate table to store the deduplicated data, or using a data warehousing tool that supports more advanced deduplication techniques.

deisteve··on Sony Turns to AI to Tackle Rising Animation Costs and Animator Shortage
tweening is indeed a fundamental concept in animation, and it's great to see you're nostalgic about the early days of Macromedia Shockwave.

I think you're onto something with the idea of software that can automatically animate entire frames with tweening in between. This could potentially revolutionize the way we create animations, especially for tasks like data visualization, scientific simulations, or even video game cinematics.

There are already some tools that can generate animations using tweening, such as Blender's animation tools or even some proprietary software like Adobe After Effects. However, I'm not aware of any open-source tools that can do this on a large scale.

That being said, there are some interesting projects like OpenToonz, which is an open-source 2D animation software that uses a tweening-based approach. It's not exactly what you're looking for, but it's a good starting point.

I'd love to see more open-source tools that can automate the animation process using tweening. Do you think this could be achieved using machine learning algorithms, or would it require a more traditional programming approach?

Also, have you explored any of the newer animation tools like Houdini or Nuke, which have some impressive animation capabilities? Maybe we can learn from their approaches and apply them to open-source tools

deisteve··on My Homelab Setup
Let me get this straight, you spent a bunch of time and money on a 12U rack, a bunch of Unifi switches, and a bunch of cameras, and you're just now realizing that you need to set up VLANs and firewall rules? That's not a "homelab project", that's just a bunch of stuff you bought and now you're trying to figure out how to make it work.

And what's with the obsession with aesthetics? You spent a bunch of money on fancy cable management and patch panels, but you're still using a bunch of ugly, exposed cables. It's like you're trying to make a statement about how much money you have, rather than actually building a functional network.

And don't even get me started on the DNS settings. You're using a custom domain name for your Synology NAS, but you're still using DHCP to assign IP addresses. What's the point of having a custom domain name if you're just going to use a dynamic IP address?

I'm not trying to be mean-spirited, but this post just reeks of "I have a lot of money and I want to show it off". If you're actually interested in building a functional home lab, I'd be happy to offer some advice. But if you're just looking for a way to justify buying a bunch of expensive networking gear, then maybe you should just stick to playing with your toys.

deisteve··on We spent $20 to achieve RCE and accidentally became the admins of .mobi
must've been another company then which i got confused with the name
deisteve··on Show HN: Simple Alternative to Complex Project Management for Freelancers
not to be cynical but yet nother Scrum-based project management tool that promises the moon but delivers a watered-down version of Asana/Trello. 'Unlimited team members' is just a marketing gimmick - what about data storage limits? How does this tool handle large-scale projects with multiple stakeholders? And what about integrations with other tools? The 'AI-generated changelogs' feature sounds like a nice-to-have, but how does it actually work in practice?

I'd love to see some real-world examples of how EnkiTask has helped teams achieve their goals, rather than just a laundry list of features. And can we get some transparency on pricing? 'Pay-for-task packages' sounds like a great idea, but how much does each task cost, and what's the minimum commitment?

Overall, EnkiTask feels like a me-too product that's trying to ride the coattails of more established players in the project management space. I'd need to see some serious proof of concept before I'd consider using this tool for my team.

deisteve··on Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)
While the article has some good points about the importance of emotional intelligence and awareness, I'm skeptical about the idea that we can simply "choose" to be thermostats. Humans are complex and emotional creatures, and our emotions can be triggered by a multitude of factors beyond our control. The article's suggestions, while well-intentioned, feel like a form of emotional labor that can be exhausting and unsustainable. Can we really expect people to be constantly "on" and aware of their emotional impact on others?
deisteve··on Why Copilot Is Making Programmers Worse at Programming
its out of date because the code quality is the best i've seen much better than humans can

this technology is getting better not worse. ive already been able to do without a dedicated frontend react developer. i cant be alone.

deisteve··on We spent $20 to achieve RCE and accidentally became the admins of .mobi
tons

rapid7 for example use LLMs to analyze code and identify vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, XSS, and buffer overflows. Their platform can also identify vulnerabilities in third-party libraries and frameworks from what i can see

deisteve··on My business card runs Linux and Ultrix (2022)
very cool
deisteve··on Why Copilot Is Making Programmers Worse at Programming
seems like an emotional and out of date view
deisteve··on Why Copilot Is Making Programmers Worse at Programming
i personally dont use Copilot so im fairly unbiased here and will admit to some of the negative points you raised:

yes you can absolutely sink time and lose efficiency

i encounter it many times, i have it generate large amount of code that seemingly does what i asked it to do

but then it takes many revisions to finally arrive at edge-case-free state

I also end up having to read through the code generated to build a mental model of what the app is doing and to gate keep future revisions.

But what makes all this worthwhile is that it saves my employer a lot of money.

For example: We've generated a large enterprise react application for roughly $100 USD within a month using all the available code gen tools out there. I'm talking the entire stack: backend, frontend, documentation.

Trying to pull that off with a real team? it would cost 1000x minimum and roughly 3 quarters, maybe the entire year.

A business won't care about the "art" side of things. They just see they can generate software at almost 99% discount.

I'm very worried about our software engineering jobs beyond 2024. It's going to massively shrink and wages are going to reflect this new cost saving that code gen provides.

deisteve··on Why Copilot Is Making Programmers Worse at Programming
I think you're misunderstanding the author's point. They're not saying that AI-assisted coding is inherently bad, but rather that it can lead to a lack of understanding and retention of knowledge if used as a crutch.

The analogy you're making between reading, writing, and debugging your own code versus copy-pasting someone else's is a good one, but it's not a direct comparison to AI-assisted coding. When you copy-paste someone else's code, you're still reading and understanding the code, even if you're not writing it yourself. You're still learning from it, even if it's not through the process of writing it.

With AI-assisted coding, the issue is that the AI is generating code that you may not fully understand, and you're not necessarily learning from it in the same way. You're not reading and understanding the code, you're just accepting it as a solution. And that's where the problem lies.

It's not about whether AI-assisted coding is good or bad, it's about how it's being used. If you're using it as a tool to help you learn and understand the code, then that's one thing. But if you're using it as a crutch to avoid learning and understanding the code, then that's a problem.

So, to answer your question, I think it's more likely that copy-pasting someone else's code would result in you retaining information and learning, simply because you're still reading and understanding the code, even if you're not writing it yourself. But that's not the same as AI-assisted coding, where the AI is generating code that you may not fully understand.

deisteve··on Why Copilot Is Making Programmers Worse at Programming
this article is just a rehashing of the same tired contrarian takes about AI-assisted coding that we've been hearing for years. 'Programmers will become lazy and reliant on AI' is not a new problem, and it's not like Copilot is somehow uniquely capable of eroding fundamental programming skills.

in reality, Copilot and other LLMs are just tools, and like any tool, they can be used well or poorly. If a programmer is relying on Copilot to do all their thinking for them, then yeah, they're probably not going to learn much. But if they're using it as a starting point to explore new ideas and learn from the code it generates, then that's a different story.

And let's not forget that AI-assisted coding is not a replacement for human judgment and critical thinking. If a programmer is not reviewing and understanding the code they're writing, then that's a problem with their workflow, not with the tool they're using.

I'd love to see some actual data on how Copilot is being used in the wild, rather than just anecdotal evidence and hand-wringing about the 'dangers' of AI-assisted coding. Until then, I'll remain skeptical of this article's claims.

deisteve··on We spent $20 to achieve RCE and accidentally became the admins of .mobi
even worse, the raspberry pi, tripped, fell, and burst into flames for no good reason.
deisteve··on Building the same app using various web frameworks
have you tried ClaudeDev? I find its very good.

Cursor is quite good too.

I find myself not being able to write off code-gen tools anymore. They are quite good and getting better and cheaper.

I'm actually a bit worried for software development occupations especially frontend.

deisteve··on Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive
getting similar vibes to LSD: Dream Emulator for Playstation 1 without the obviously shockingly grotesque and creepy atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxdw5GnoMK4

I like it!

Just wish I had the same passion I used to have for video games, after I hit mid 30s I just stopped playing. Anytime I start to dabble again I can't help but feel anxiety from having spent so much time on video games in my youth and late adult hood.

deisteve··on Chai-1: Decoding the molecular interactions of life
I don't know how people like Matt Schumer can attempt what looks like fraud and deception being chalked off as a giant oopsies (which isn't really convincing) and not face any consequences.

For rest of us, this is a privilege that we don't have. We can't deceive, defraud our investors because it has real consequences....but not for people like Matt Schumer, why is that?

deisteve··on Reclaim the Stack
thats 95% in savings!!!! bet you can squueze more with hetzner

to ppl who disagree,

what business justifies 18x'ing your operating costs?

9.5k USD can get you 3 senior engineers in Canada. 9 in India.

deisteve··on Reclaim the Stack
i got excited until i saw this was kubernetes. you most certainly do not need to add that layer of complexity.

If I can serve 3 million users / month on a $40/month VPS with just Coolify, Postgres, Nginx, Django Gunicorn without Redis, RabbitMQ why should I use Kubernetes?

deisteve··on Cracking an old ZIP file to help open source the ANC's "Vula" secret crypto code
Its not so clear cut and dry. Even Nazi Party had considerable support from Americans seeing many of its corporations took party in atrocities.

Simply writing off South Africa as racially politicized event is lazy.

deisteve··on htmx Web Security Basics
I also think server-rendered reactive apps are the future. Elixir/Pheonix comes to mind but the liveview stuff seems complex for most FE apps which don't require more efficient data diff over the wire.

i'd say most FE apps are just fetching stuff from BE via rest api and while i think rpc, tanquery all this stuff hides all that plumbing by blending it, but if you get BE to render it from the get go with all the state is handled on the server you wouldn't need FE devs

an entire BE team could create a REACTy application even with existing solutions like inertia.js

going back to htmx, this is interesting aspect of morph:

  <div hx-target="this" hx-ext="alpine-morph" hx-swap="morph">
      <div x-data="{ count: 0, replaced: false,
                     message: 'Change me, then press the button!' }">
          <input type="text" x-model="message">
          <div x-text="count"></div>
          <button x-bind:style="replaced && {'backgroundColor': '#fecaca'}"
                  x-on:click="replaced = true; count++"
                  hx-get="/swap">
            Morph
          </button>
      </div>
  </div>

but then in datastar its very straight forward but its doing different things I understand.

  data-store="{
        id: 1,
        firstName: 'John',
        lastName: 'Doe',
        email: 'joe@blow.com'
    }"
gets appended as an attribute to id=contact_1 similar to htmx-morph but this is far more readable and intuitive imho

    <div id="contact_1">
  <label>First Name: John</label>
  <label>Last Name: Doe</label>
  <label>Email: joe@blow.com</label>
  <div>
    <button data-on-click="$$get('/examples/click_to_edit/contact/1/edit')">
      Edit
    </button>
    <button data-on-click="$$get('/examples/click_to_edit/contact/1/reset')">
      Reset
    </button>
  </div>
    </div>
one thing that concerns me about datastar is that its quite new but seems at least its updated weekly although the last release i see is 4 months ago
deisteve··on htmx Web Security Basics
i never got used to it. I want to get into it but im not sure what it is that stops me from using unpoly more
deisteve··on Core: an experimental new way to write videogames
Coming from clojure I'm very wary of any non-mainstream languages like Elixir, Rust, Clojure etc.

It's a costly business mistake to build your tech stack using any of the above languages. The trade off simply is not significant enough to matter vs using mainstream languages with 10,000x the number of mindshare.

deisteve··on Core: an experimental new way to write videogames
the biggest tradeoff is talent pool

you won't be able to find them in enough numbers and it would be tough to gauge their proficiency too

unless you are purely interested in it for academic purposes, its best to avoid clojure and any sort of esoteric languages. Even Rust development is riddled with false roads and mirages.

i just want to save anyone reading this 5 years of their time. You don't get better when you are constantly having to re-invent the wheel for essentially shaving off roughly 20~30% lines of code you'd write in python, php, ts. It's hardly a fair trade off

← PreviousPage 2 of 5Next →