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461 karma · joined February 15, 2011

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emp_··on GPT-6 Astra
Builders just cheap out on everything these days
emp_··on New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra
I have exactly this setup and use a Macbook Air with Tailscale to just connect via High Performance Screen Sharing both at home and on the go (when not sitting at my desk, I move around a lot around the house after 3pm or so while I keep my workflow identical)

HPSS works well via 5G, and Tailscale is incredible for the setup as much as the hardware.

Edit: I ended up getting a 15" M5 Air but honestly trying it on a 13" M4 Air was actually superior because when all you care is mobility (since the Studio does the heavy work) its nice just going around with almost no weight / bulk.

emp_··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
Great to hear! The absolute best Air Form Factor, I've debated a lot buying a used one because I dislike the square form of M2+ Air compared.
emp_··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)
Just promoting a small utility for others that may need it.

For us MacOS users that use Spaces and want to CMD+Tab only inside that Space, the only alternative was AltTab (that I could find) but it has so many more features and goals, plus I had performance issues with it remotely over HPSS which I use heavily so I've generated the simplest utility that only shrinks the CMD+Tab list per Space and nothing else.

https://github.com/emp/SpaceTab

emp_··on SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
I was (until this announcement/today) an annual subscriber just for the early days of Autocomplete goodness that I do not use anymore but would stick around and check from time to time their progress and always hoped we would eventually have a good UI for LLMs outside the terminal.

an IDE to look at one file at a time is not interface for LLMs - it was made for people, and while I guess you can sit in the Agents mode all day, to me thats a completely different byproduct and just "Terminal is yuck" kinda users, maybe someday we'll have a proper dedicated LLM UI but we are not there yet.

emp_··on MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
I bought two Touch-ID models as gifts and while doing the setup I must say the lack of keyboard backlight is the only thing that bothered me A LOT. Great machines otherwise.
emp_··on MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
100% but I suggest doing the 1-handed pick up test with the lid open, a 900g laptop feels weightless against the 13 air at 1200g
emp_··on MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
> I suspect Apple is going to cannibalize some MBA sales with the Neo ...

Hopefully it allows for the macbook air to return to being a ultra light machine, I held an Asus X14 ARM at 900 grams and it felt so much better.

There's also a huge market for the M1 MacBook Air because of the old form factor of being ultra thin even if faking it with bending the shell, the boxed layouts dont fit with MBA to me. Too bad there is no 15 2021 M1.

emp_··on They're made out of meat (1991)
> It was incredible man. Mold on a rock that got to think. Ha, it was amazing while it lasted
emp_··on Apple M3 Ultra
eGPU has a ton of issues on MacOS - I've used it for years, but now on Silicon its prob much worse - but let me give a shout out to the amazing (somewhat new) High Performance screen sharing mode added in Sonoma.

When I connect to my Mac Studio via Macbook I can select that mode, then change the Displays setting to Dynamic Resolution and then my 'thin client':

- Is fullscreen using the entire 16:10 Macbook screen

- Gets 60 fps low latency performance (including on actual games)

- Transfers audio, I can attend meetings in this mode

- Blanks the host Mac Studio screen

All things that were impossible via VNC - RDP is much better but this new High Performance Screen Share is even more powerful.

The thin lightweight laptop that remotes into a loaded machine has always been my idea of high mobility instead of suffering a laptop running everything locally. This works via LTE as well with some firewall setup.

emp_··on M4 Mac mini's efficiency
The Studio being the GPU-centric model, I can't wait for all these M4 Mini performance improvements to make to the Studio line.
emp_··on Stop Acting Like You're Famous
> daydream about how you can make money off of it.

I do this but mostly from trauma of having to kill things due to hosting costs (happened before), as long as its cheap/self sufficient enough the fun part dominates.

emp_··on Titanosaurs were the biggest land animals Earth's ever seen
I remember one day many years ago just snapping wondering what had been the the biggest animal to ever exist on earth, and after a few searches it seems like the consensus was *NOT* a dinosaur but the Blue Whale which still exists today, still think about it from time to time. The article only discusses land animals but I wonder if the blue whale still reigns after more modern discoveries.
emp_··on F-Zero courses from a dead Nintendo satellite service restored using VHS and AI
Every time I hit back on an Ars article Linus is giving me the middle finger
emp_··on Show HN: Visit the front page of Hacker News on a random day
Spotty memory but the two posts that made me check HN daily were:

- How do you store data to last more than 50 years (diamonds and titanium were mentioned)

- The announcement that bitcoin reached 1 USD, a great party story (TL;DR I tried buying 100, had issues w/ payment, got pissed, bought 200 instead, lost wallet a few months later, would have sold it super early tho)

emp_··on Lessons learned from bringing promotional sweets to a conference
Had a very similar experience hosting e-sports events and buying probably the cheapest sponsor slot ever: the badge lanyards, every single interview had our logo right there around the neck of every single person at the venue, while the TV crews were trying to frame the giant master sponsor logos in the background
emp_··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2023)
SEEKING WORK | Canada | Remote Only

Frontend Architect / Full Stack Dev, passionate about GraphQL / React / NextJS, accompanying tooling and similar platforms, been helping companies implement MACH architecture and extend their capabilities with BFFs and modernizing frontend codebases.

Available 32 hours/week

Contact: thewelk[at]gmail.com

emp_··on Your Organization should run its own Mastodon server
You see it meme'd relentlessly about the concept of having "fuck you money" and the crazy things one could do.

Well, it finally happened in a undisputable, greatest possible example kinda way, and now everyone is scrambling to adjust.

emp_··on Quordle: Four Wordles in One
16 :) http://www.sedecordle.com/?mode=daily
emp_··on TransferWise changes name to Wise
Going to try Xoom next, looking at conversion rates plus the big name behind (Paypal) which is not short of horror stories themselves.
emp_··on TransferWise changes name to Wise
Great Timing! USERS BEWARE, my story

I used the service for two years and just had the most surreal disastrous experience since the year flipped. I religiously send a the same (about 5k USD) to my home country every month so I can pay my mortgage and other bills I left when moved to NA.

2021 arrives, I start a transfer on January 27, days pass, nothing. I contact support 10 days later (of something that in the past 24 months took 3 days), they say I need to prove I’m the recipient so I ask them to cancel the transfer so I can start it from my personal account instead so both accounts match and no documentation is needed, another 10 days go by, still nothing.

I contact support again and found out that they withheld my deposit because they needed me to give, bear with me, POWER OF ATTORNEY among tons of other more resonable documentation to the destination country bank, so instead of signing my life away I cancel the transfer again: 26 days an counting TransferWise held my money which I will NEVER deal with again and tell this tale whenever I get a chance.

emp_··on I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers
Around 2015/6 I went full laptop (Razer Blade 15) with an eGPU and multiple monitors after trying the same with a MacBook Pro (poor nvidia integration) and after years of crashes, overheating laptop shells and weird Wi-Fi issues when returning from sleep with the eGPU, I just gave up.

A couple months ago I got full ATX case with the 16 core AMD CPU, the best GPU out there and it runs cool, quiet and I just RPD to it when needed (prob less than twice a year)

emp_··on Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead
I just pasted a few conversations from whatsapp in portuguese and at least for that language google translate was 10x more accurate on the meaning of the very colloquial words used, mixed with English etc.

Edit: thanks for the link though, I'm saving it and trying from time to time, we use translation a ton in my household (everyone is learning English after moving abroad)

emp_··on Relearn CSS layout
Agree with this smaller pain point in the vast peace of mind that CSS Modules bring.

I try to simplify as much as possible to a single word and repeat them a lot since there’s no collision, so you can usually expect a .container, .items, .item in most components, all top level but SASS helping with other annoyances like pseudo selectors, parents and nesting where it makes sense.

emp_··on CSS Grid Level 2 – subgrid is coming to Firefox
Your comment made me remember that every cell had a blank gif so the dimensions would be exact! Even found a wiki about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacer_GIF
emp_··on CSS Grid Level 2 – subgrid is coming to Firefox
Used to draw round corners [the biggest design trend request circa 2002] using tables with cells of one pixel, painting every cell mimicking a perfect anti-aliased curve in a photoshop rectangle, a mere 32 cell table per corner, lol.
emp_··on Netflix Saves Kids from Up to 400 Hours of Commercials a Year
Those are allowed but have limited dimensions, doesn't matter the size of your storefront you can only have a logo of a certain size, lots of loopholes like the McDonald's M or putting huge logos inside a glass wall but in general it is followed.
emp_··on Chromium-based Edge preview builds
I'm not logged in anything google on vanilla Edge at all, this is not coming from the Edge history.
emp_··on Chromium-based Edge preview builds
To the surprise of no one, its basically chrome. Even my google account came in logged in automatically, same recent sites etc. I wonder if the roadmap will include things like dark mode, I never used the annotations feature so can't vouch much for it. I'm yet to try to make a MS Teams call but looking good so far.

The single engine world domination plan takes one step further today.

emp_··on Chromium-based Microsoft Edge preview builds now available
To the surprise of no one, its basically chrome. Even my google account came in logged in automatically, same recent sites etc. I wonder if the roadmap will include things like dark mode, I never used the annotations feature so can't vouch much for it. I'm yet to try to make a MS Teams call but looking good so far.

The single engine world domination plan takes one step further today.

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