Hacker News Reader

jamwaffleson Big Tech Needs $2T in AI Revenue by 2030

I read that article when it came out and thought it was well written and had good evidence and sources. It's the opposite of unhinged IMO, and explains a lot as to why Google is as terrible as it is now.

jamwaffleson Spectral Labs releases SGS-1: the first generative model for structured CAD

"I was enjoying a beverage while travelling"

jamwaffleson Bezier-rs – algorithms for Bézier segments and shapes

There is indeed: Bezier::compute_lookup_table[1]. You'll want to use a `TValueType` of `Euclidean` to get equidistant points.

[1]: https://docs.rs/bezier-rs/latest/bezier_rs/struct.Bezier.htm...

jamwaffleson Longest road and rail tunnel is being built under the Baltic Sea

I suppose they're being pedantic in that the Channel Tunnel only carries rail traffic.

jamwaffleson Linux’s Sole Wireless/WiFi Driver Maintainer Is Stepping Down

Completely agree. I'd be tempted to put up some Rust code if the contribution pipeline wasn't such utter crap (yes yes it was good for it's time, but that was decades ago).

But I won't be putting up any code either way until the culture moves on from little kings calling things they don't like (and that don't really affect them) "cancer". I'm not holding my breath.

I've started wondering what's next after Linux because it doesn't feel sustainable long term any more. There's a small trickle of fresh blood but not enough to keep the kernel project healthy IMO.

jamwaffleson Reliably Benchmarking Small Changes – Ankush Menat

You can! I needed to run some realtime networking stuff on an isolated core and followed this [1]

I used Windows 11 and the two cores I isolated show no CPU usage in task manager until you run something that's pinned to those cores.

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise...

jamwaffleson Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2024)

  Location: Edinburgh, UK / Worldwide
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Rust, EtherCAT
  Résumé/CV: https://wapl.es/cv
  Email: james+hnhired@wapl.es

Need help with Rust in your EtherCAT deployment? I'm your guy! I'm available for contracting roles to help you implement or debug Rust EtherCAT applications using https://github.com/ethercrab-rs/ethercrab. I've helped various companies implement their first Rust control systems, as well as tune the base Linux installs for best realtime performance.

jamwaffleson Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2024)

  Location: UK/Edinburgh
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Rust (including no_std), EtherCAT
  Résumé/CV: https://wapl.es/cv
  Email: james@wapl.es

Hello! I'm James and I'm keen on working in robotics and automation. If you need help implementing industrial control systems in Rust, I'm your guy! I'm well versed in EtherCAT as author of EtherCrab[1] but can be of service for other protocols like Modbus, along with tuning Linux for realtime. Do get in touch!

[1]: https://github.com/ethercrab-rs/ethercrab

jamwaffleson Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2023)

  Location: Scotland, UK
  Remote: Yes, full remote
  Willing to relocate: No, sorry
  Technologies: Rust, EtherCAT, embedded Linux, microcontrollers
  Résumé/CV: https://wapl.es/cv
  Email: james+hn@wapl.es

Senior Rust programmer with 6+ years working in the language full time, ranging from web backends to embedded Linux IoT services. I'm looking for Rust work either in industrial automation with EtherCAT or `no_std` and microcontrollers.

I'm the creator of EtherCrab (https://crates.io/crates/ethercrab), a pure Rust EtherCAT controller, borne out of frustration from the field of C/C++ implementations out there. Do you have a Rust automation application that needs EtherCAT? Let me know!

If not, maybe you're interested in hiring a `no_std` embedded Rust developer. I'd love to discuss a full time role if you're willing to take on a fast learner with a good hobby background in writing software for microcontrollers.

jamwaffleson Sayonara, C++, and Hello to Rust

Built into `cargo`, I'd recommend `cargo tree`, `cargo tree -i` and/or `cargo tree --duplicates` to figure out where certain types of dependency tree bloat are.

jamwaffleson Debian Running on Rust Coreutils

We use it a bit for https://github.com/embedded-graphics/embedded-graphics and I have to say I love it. It's just the right balance between configuration variables/constants and "a folder full of bash scripts". I highly recommend giving Just a try.

jamwaffleson Reverse-engineering the classic MK4116 16-kilobit DRAM chip

I always get a bit excited when I see a righto.com post.

An excellent read as usual.

jamwaffleson Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2020)

Location: Cambridge, UK Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Rust, Postgres, Typescript, React, Embedded (hobby, looking to move into embedded Rust fulltime) Résumé/CV: https://wapl.es/JamesWaplesCV.pdf Email: james@wapl.es

jamwaffleson Hardcaml: An OCaml library for designing hardware

If you’re a library/tool author, please put a small code demo in the readme, or at least link to some. I’d like to see what the syntax looks like at a glance. I think it helps adoption for all projects, including this one.

jamwaffleson Typography of Star Trek: The Motion Picture

I'm not affiliated in any way, but Dave Addey's book of the same name as the blog is fantastic. Highly recommended if you're into weirdly specific stuff like why there's specific text on the motion scanner Ripley uses in Alien. (spoilers: IIRC it's just Letraset gibberish)

jamwaffleson RTX3080 TensorFlow and NAMD Performance on Linux

As I understand it, the Quake RTX demo is fully ray traced but I could be wrong on that. The FPS isn’t super high but definitely playable.

jamwaffleson Actix Web 3.0

More "mechanical" stuff like typos in payload fields and deserialisation is MUCH safer (and more pleasant with the derives!) due to the benefits of Rust's type system, but broader stuff like authenticating requests and user roles is still up to the user to implement well for a web app to be safe. IMO the language helps a ton here too.

Performance wise, I don't think I need to repeat half the internet here, but I'll just say you'll be blown away by how little RAM a Rust app/container uses for the number of users hitting it. YMMV of course ;)

jamwaffleson What killed Haskell, could kill Rust, too

Just to throw some anecdata back at this overly broad statement, I use Rust full time at work and maintain some embedded crates with moderate download numbers. I suppose I mustn't exist then?

jamwaffleson As above, so below, part 2. Bare metal Rust generics

Still reasonably early days like the rest of the ecosystem, but there is good support for a lot of ATSAMD and ATSAME devices here (https://github.com/atsamd-rs/atsamd).

I'm not very familiar with the ATSAM* series so compatibility-wise this might be wrong, but you could likely add ATSAML support to that repo reasonably easily.

jamwaffleson AMD Claims World’s Fastest Per-Core Performance with New EPYC Rome 7Fx2 CPUs

It might not help judge performance for individual tasks, but PassMark's CPU listings (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php) should help with relative performance. The results have a multi- and single- core score which should help comparing different workloads.

jamwaffleson Svelte Is Unappealing

I’ve been looking to switch to it. What’s bad about it?

jamwaffleson Secure Rust Guidelines

`cargo-outdated` is mint. If you haven't already, consider installing `cargo-edit` too! It adds `cargo add`/`cargo rm` to add/remove crates, as well as `cargo upgrade` to bump semver versions.

https://github.com/killercup/cargo-edit

jamwaffleson You don't need libraries for internationalization of dates

I've used date-fns (https://date-fns.org/) with good success. The import structure allows for pretty good tree shaking. It's really good if you only want to format a date in like 2 places in a huge app - don't need to pull in the entire library for that.

jamwaffleson Making a Timelapse of your PCB design in KiCad

Perhaps not a timelapse in the traditional sense, but Gource (https://gource.io/) is a fun way to watch a Git repo evolve.

jamwaffleson Into the Personal-Website-Verse (2019)

https://wapl.es

Rust, embedded Rust and CNC!

Tried to make it as lean and fast as possible.

jamwaffleson Electric Cars Threaten the Heart of Germany’s Economy

Won’t be any economy left if the planet is made uninhabitable. It’s like the most sacred thing is profit, not anything about the people that create it. Very odd train of thought.

jamwaffleson ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar

I moved over to Fastmail from ProtonMail a few weeks ago. I think if you value the encryption and privacy and don’t mind the lack of basic stuff like threading in the mobile app or IMAP integration, ProtonMail is fully worth it. That said, for me I just want a well featured email/calendar service that can replace gmail once Gewgle fucked us over with Inbox. Fastmail does that for me and provides a lot less friction whilst doing so.

ProtonMail feels like a one-trick pony to me. They’re cruising on the allure of privacy features but they have a ways to go on other basics.

jamwaffleson Carbon – Create and share images of your source code

It's _really_ good for Twitter posts. Formatting is non-existent, so sharing an image is unfortunately the best way to do it in-feed. Links to Gists, etc are the best if you don't mind leaving Twitter for sure. That said, if images are a necessity, might as well make it look good with Carbon.

jamwaffleson Ask HN: Show Us Your Personal Website/Blog?

https://wapl.es

Uses Jekyll and Github Pages. I'm more interested in just writing words and sharing knowledge these days than playing with blog frameworks.

Just published a "redesign" this morning. It's... Minimalist...

jamwaffleson Search StackOverflow and paste code snippets without leaving Sublime Text 2

This is all well and good for seasoned programmers who know what the snippet that has just been inserted does, but this is going to reduce code quality (lots of copypasta) and I have huge issue with the fact that StackOverflow answers often provide an explanation of the code, which this plugin obviously strips away. Perhaps come up with a way to add the explanation from SO as a comment to the inserted code snippet?