Hacker News Reader

gardaanion Xiaomi's self-optimizing autonomous factory will make 10M+ phones a year

Playstation factory was also almost fully automated: "PlayStation 4 units come off the assembly line at a pace of about one every 30 seconds." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23748664

gardaanion Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful

WPF seems to be one of the preferred native UI platforms:

"Microsoft will refresh WPF with new Windows 11 theming and hyphen-based ligatures support for Microsoft .NET 9 and will continue to invest in WPF as one of the two preferred native user interface platforms on Windows."

The other preferred native UI platform seems to be WinUI 3: "WinUI 3 joins Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) as the two recommended native UI platforms for developers."

https://news.microsoft.com/build-2024-book-of-news/

I don't know about MAUI / Blazor.

gardaanion Microsoft removes documentation for switching to a local account in Windows 11

The Internet Wayback Machine has archived the instructions how to convert a Microsoft account into a local account: https://web.archive.org/web/20240612104753/https:/support.mi...

gardaanion An Ode to Deluxe Paint (2023)

There's a web-based version modeled after the original Deluxe Paint with source code available: https://www.stef.be/dpaint/

gardaanion Grace Version Control System

Diversion is already targeting users of Perforce and game developers storing large binary files. Diversion is currently closed source, but may open source their platform in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39088551

gardaanion Apple introduces M4 chip

I think they are over-engineering it. I have never liked gestures because it's difficult to discover something you can't see. A button would have been better than an invisible squeeze gesture.

gardaanion TSAC: Low Bitrate Audio Compression

An Nvidia GPU is necessary for fast operation.

Compression is getting so heavy that soon it isn't possible to perform it on normal hardware. AV1 already proved that, the future audio/video codecs will be even heavier.

Decompression is also getting heavier. Poor mobile devices.

I'm starting to appreciate well written algorithms which don't require massive computing power. JPEG XL is a good example. It has the same compression ratio as AVIF, but requires less processing power.

gardaanion The 6502 instruction set as a database

The last step should be: 4. Get a real 6502 CPU and verify that the data is correct.

gardaanion AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License

This reminds me of OpenBSD release songs! https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html

gardaanion Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

Here's Serif/Affinity announcements: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/canva-press-... https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/canva-statem...

And here's few Affinity forum threads about the topic:

- https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201405-que...

- https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201403-can...

gardaanion We just launched Sketch Logo AI

How did you train your AI? Did you use ethically acquired data sources?

gardaanion USB-C power for your Amiga 500, 600 and 1200

An interesting detail is that it has a physical switch to turn it off.

> Utilizing any 12V-capable USB-C power supply

Are different kind of USB-C power supplies, some not outputting 12V? Does it mean that normal phone chargers aren't good?

gardaanion Macs can now inform Apple if any liquids have been detected in the USB-C ports

Does the USB-C specification allow that? Can such devices get USB-C certification?

OTOH, I haven't seen any USB certifications on Apple USB cables or devices, so most likely Apple doesn't care.

gardaanion Maestro: A Linux-compatible kernel in Rust

There's also Kerla [1] (Monolithic kernel in Rust, aiming for Linux ABI compatibility), but that seems to have gone dormant for few years.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28986229

gardaanion 25 hours of Xcode Cloud now included with the Apple Developer Program

As a solo developer, I haven't found any use for Xcode Cloud. I just build my app on my laptop and submit to App Store. It just takes few minutes. How would Xcode Cloud make things easier?

Of course, it could automatically build and test my app after every commit to VCS, but I build and test the app on my laptop anyway to see how it works, so I don't see any benefit.

gardaanion GM delays $4B EV truck factory plan by another year

Tesla delays construction of their Mexico factory, because Elon Musk is concerned about high interest rates. https://ts2.space/en/tesla-delays-construction-of-giga-mexic...

gardaanion LocalPilot: Open-source GitHub Copilot on your MacBook

Be careful with Continue. It has opt-out telemetry and by default it seems to send all prompts to the developers. Have a look at ~/.continue/telemetry.log to see what is being sent. Don't enter any passwords, credentials or other sensitive data in prompts unless telemetry is disabled.

gardaanion Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

UK regulators were objecting the deal because they were concerned that the takeover would reduce competition in cloud gaming.

Microsoft gave game streaming rights to Ubisoft, which made the Activision deal possible: https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/13/why-microsoft-had-to-relin...

"For Ubisoft, this deal means it has full and exclusive cloud-streaming rights to all current commercially available Activision games, as well as those released in the next 15 years." !!!

Ubisoft is the real winner here.

gardaanion PostScript’s sudden death in Sonoma

Apple should be more open about their removals. It isn't clear how this affects their CUPS implementation or PostScript printers https://github.com/apple/cups

gardaanion Chrome: Heap buffer overflow in WebP

This is a vulnerability in the WebP library, so this isn't only about Chrome. Which software is affected by this?

- Android apps?

- Cross-platform Flutter apps?

- Electron apps?

- Microsoft Edge and Brave (and all other Chromium based web browsers)?

- Signal and Telegram displaying WebP stickers?

- Which image editors are affected? Affinity tools, Gimp and Inkscape seem to use libwebp.

- LibreOffice displaying WebP images?

- server software such as WordPress (does it decode images to re-encode them?)?

Apple devices were also affected, but they already got a fix.

Anything else?

gardaanion Apple VisionOS Simulator streaming wirelessly to Meta Quest headset

Apple Vision Pro hardware dev kits will be available later this year: https://developer.apple.com/visionos/work-with-apple/

gardaanion Threads has 10M sign ups in seven hours

Have a look at the App Privacy for the Threads app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threads-an-instagram-app/id644...

"The following data may be collected and linked to your identity: Health & Fitness, Purchases, Financial Info, Location, Contact Info, Contacts, User Content, Search History, Browsing History, Identifiers, Usage Data, Sensitive Info, Diagnostics, Other Data"

You agreed to give all that data to Meta when you downloaded the app from the App Store.

gardaanion Can Dell’s 6K monitor beat their 8K monitor?

Some Macbooks don't match 218 ppi. MacBook Pro 14" and 16" have 254 ppi. I don't know why Apple decided to have such a high ppi for them.

gardaanion Why a browser and mail combination is worth it

Zawinski's Law: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

"Apps that you "live in" all day have pressure to become everything and do everything. An app for editing text becomes an IDE, then an OS. An app for displaying hypertext documents becomes a mail reader, then an OS."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski's_Law

gardaanion Vivaldi on Android bypasses restrictions to let users access Bing Chat

It seems that Bing Chat will be available for all browsers soon: https://www.seroundtable.com/bing-chat-to-work-on-all-browse...

gardaanion The Rust I wanted had no future

Rust borrow checker and lifetimes are sometimes so frustrating. I hope that the Jakt language will evolve to the language I'd like to see: Swift without ties to Apple and Objective-C.

gardaanion OpenWRT 22.03.4

Sadly, GL.iNet Wi-fi 6 routers seem to have no official openwrt support. None of their devices are listed here: https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi

There seems to be some experimental openwrt build for GL.iNet Flint (GL-AX1800), but it still has some issues with fans: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/gl-inet-ax1800-new-router-openwr...

gardaanion DPaint.js: A web-based image editor modeled after Deluxe Paint

The Computer History Museum has made available, for non-commercial use, the source code of DeluxePaint (v1): https://computerhistory.org/blog/electronic-arts-deluxepaint...

gardaanion Meta Releases New AI-Based Photo Segmentation Tool to Everybody

Photoshop already has the Object Selection tool: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/tool-techniques/obje...

I tried Meta's photo segmentation tool and I didn't see anything magical in it.

gardaanion Chrome ships WebGPU

JavaScript is the programming language for the Web. WGSL syntax should have been based on JavaScript syntax. It would have made writing shaders easier for millions of existing Web developers. Now they have to learn a new syntax.