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kevlar1818

2,215 karma · joined September 3, 2015

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/kevlar1818; my proof: https://keybase.io/kevlar1818/sigs/UT289FEs31yiQeJODcOD-gQ-wUlGGTJpItPBA1nHYPE ]
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kevlar1818··on SnowFS – a fast, scalable version control file storage for graphic files
Very interesting. I'd like to learn more about how it works. How does this compare to DVC[1], for instance?

I'll throw in a shameless plug for my tool in this area, Dud[2]. Dud is to DVC what Flask is to Django.

Are the mentioned benchmarks published somewhere?

[1]: https://dvc.org [2]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

kevlar1818··on Food Order Has Significant Impact on Glucose and Insulin Levels (2015)
(HN mods: From 2015)
kevlar1818··on The Cabal: Valve’s Design Process for Creating Half-Life (1999)
TLDR: Small, cross-functional teams build better products.
kevlar1818··on Ask HN: What are you working on?
Thanks for the words of encouragement! I'm aiming to have basic benchmarks published in the next month.
kevlar1818··on Ask HN: What are you working on?
A tool for storing, versioning, and reproducing large files alongside source code. It's called Dud[1].

Dud : DVC :: Flask : Django

Open-sourced last October, targeting a more polished release in Q1.

[1]: https://kevin-hanselman.github.io/dud/getting_started/tour/

kevlar1818··on Ask HN: Show me your half baked project
Dud[1] is a tool for storing, versioning, and reproducing large files alongside source code. Planning a more "formal" release in Q1.

Dud : DVC :: Flask : Django

[1]: https://kevin-hanselman.github.io/dud/getting_started/tour/

kevlar1818··on Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2012)
I really like this method as opposed to using a bare Git repository. For one, it's conceptually simpler in my mind; you don't have to understand Git internals to get this working. Secondly, this lets you pick and choose which config files you want to "install" on a machine.

I feel obligated to share my Bash script, dotfiles.sh[1], that accomplishes what Stow does, but with a few tweaks that I found particularly useful:

dotfiles.sh targets the user's home directory by default (i.e. stow -t $HOME).

dotfiles.sh never symlinks directories, only files (i.e. stow --no-folding). (This was the straw that broke the camel's back and made me roll my own script in the first place.)

dotfiles.sh makes backups of local config files and can restore them if you remove your symlinked version.

My script is quite old now, and I use it so seldomly I'm not convinced there aren't bugs. YMMV.

[1]: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dotfiles

kevlar1818··on Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episode of 2020?
No Special Duty - Radiolab[1]

From the link below: "What are the police for? Producer B.A. Parker started wondering this back in June, as Black Lives Matter protests and calls to “defund the police” ramped up. The question led her to a wild story of a stabbing on a New York City subway train, and the realization that, according to the law, the police don’t always have to protect us. Producer Sarah Qari joins Parker to dig into the legal background, which takes her all the way up to the Supreme Court... and then all the way back down to on-duty officers themselves."

[1]: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/no-sp...

kevlar1818··on Hotwire: HTML over the Wire
As a non web developer, writing less JS appeals to me, and I've found HTMX[1] to be simple to use. I'll add that the HTMX website/docs are much more approachable than this site.

[1]: https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx

kevlar1818··on Geometrize: Turn Images into Geometric Primitives
Shoutout to Michael Fogleman's primitive[1] for likely inspiring this work.

[1]: https://github.com/fogleman/primitive

kevlar1818··on Go 1.16 Beta 1
I'm excited about io/fs[1]. As a newcomer to Go, one of my favorite things is the excellent I/O interfaces. I can write code to take io.Writer's or io.Reader's (etc.) and my program is suddenly both a CLI app, a Web app, and a Whatever app with minimal effort. (The effect is similar at lower levels too. For example, I can log to a file or to memory with a one-line change.) I sense a lot of potential in applying this interface-based design on filesystems themselves.

[1]: https://tip.golang.org/pkg/io/fs/

kevlar1818··on bspwm: tiling window manager that represents windows as leaves of a binary tree
Absolutely this. I'll highlight two sub-commands of bspc that are particularly helpful for "building your own window manager" as you mention: You can dump the entire state of bspwm to JSON using `bspc wm -d`, and you can subscribe to window manager events using `bspc subscribe`.

An example I've implemented for myself: When opening a single app in an empty workspace, by default bspwm stretches the window to fit the whole screen (as usual with tiling window managers). On big monitors, this can be pretty annoying (e.g. staring at the very upper left corner of your 32" monitor when using a terminal). Using bspc, I can listen to when new windows are added, inspect bspwm's state to see if the new window is in a workspace on its own, and then use bspc to adjust the margins on the workspace to make the window a more comfortable size in the center of the screen. Even in Python I can do this in ~100ms.

kevlar1818··on Launch HN: Replicate (YC W20) – Version control for machine learning
You may also be interested in a simple tool I'm building that works in concert with source control to store, version, and reproduce large data: https://github.com/kevin-hanselman/dud

My project is in its infancy (open-sourced less than a month ago), but I'm pleased with its UX thus far. There's lots to add in terms of documentation, but Dud currently uses Rclone[1] for remote syncing.

[1]: https://rclone.org/

kevlar1818··on Portland, Maine passes referendum banning facial surveillance
As a southern Mainer (not From Away :P) this is spot on.
kevlar1818··on How to turn off Android TV's homescreen ads, 'staff picks'
I've been wanting to replace my Android box with a Linux box for a while, and I think this signals my Android TV exit. The main reason I have an Android TV box is because of its easy to use UI. I haven't found a suitable desktop environment or web browser configuration that supports a TV-scale UI on Linux. Does anyone have a Linux HTPC setup they're happy with? I really don't want to need a mouse and keyboard to watch Netflix, etc.
kevlar1818··on The Next Step for Generics
Maybe it's because I'm a newcomer to Go, but I'm surprised by all of the shade being thrown in the comments here. I think the design doc presents a clean and simple way to implement generics in Go -- and therefore it's very much in keeping with the spirit Go. I especially like the constraints system. Constraining generic types via interfaces just feels "right" for the language. It leans on a familiar mechanism with just enough leverage.

I'm not without concerns, but I'm struck by conflicting thoughts: I share the worry that implementing generics will negatively affect Go program readability which Go developers (rightfully) covet; when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And yet, I also worry that the Go community is at risk of analysis paralysis on iterating the language in meaningful ways; the novel and innovative spirit that created Go must be harnessed to propel it into the future, lest it dies on the vine.

kevlar1818··on Ask HN: Is your company sticking to on-premise servers? Why?
We use on-prem GPU nodes for training deep learning models. Our group estimated the cost vs. cloud and it was significantly cheaper to go on-prem. I can't speak to security-wise and whatever-wise though :)
kevlar1818··on Amazon locks down internal employee communications amid organizing efforts
Thanks for pointing that out. I dislike this moderation strategy, but I'll respect it.
kevlar1818··on Amazon locks down internal employee communications amid organizing efforts
@dang + HN moderators: Why did you change my link? I originally linked to the ArsTechnica article. And why was it removed from the front page?
kevlar1818··on Coiled Computing
I generally share your criticism, but my overall experience has been positive. Dask indeed requires some fiddling, and it's API and documentation has some blind spots, but I've successfully used it to scale up some Pandas code to run on dataframes measuring in the tens of GB. Being able to transfer my knowledge of Pandas and NumPy so readily makes Dask's speed bumps worth it.
kevlar1818··on Maine's giant spinning ice disc looks like it's reforming
I work nearby and went to check it out some random weekday. There was at least one news crew camped out there. What a time to be alive.
kevlar1818··on Show HN: Hacker News Title Edit Tracker
It was over a year ago I think. I can do some digging, but not right now.
kevlar1818··on Show HN: Hacker News Title Edit Tracker
This is great! I have a feature request:

One thing that worries me about HN is that I've had a _link_ changed by a moderator in the past. And I don't mean removing query junk or changing between mobile/non-mobile sites -- I mean changing the link to an entirely different site. Even worse, by the time I noticed, I couldn't edit or delete my post (which I wanted to do because I disagreed with the new link). I was essentially forced to post content I didn't want to post! I think this is crosses the line from curation to impersonation.

kevlar1818··on Ask HN: A modern-looking UML diagram tool?
Honestly just change the default styling in PlantUML[1]. The default styling turns a lot of people off, which is a shame because it's a fantastic tool. Even the monochromatic skin is much easier on the eye. The real benefit to PlantUML is the ability to commit the source code for your diagrams alongside your actual source code.

[1]: http://plantuml.com/skinparam

kevlar1818··on Restic – Backups Done Right
I'm not suggesting anything specific. Personally, I think allowing permanent public access to your server backups sounds like a terrible idea, but it's your data and you choose your threat model.
kevlar1818··on Restic – Backups Done Right
Then you should look into IPFS :)

https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs

kevlar1818··on Restic – Backups Done Right
This might not be quite what you're looking for, but Syncthing[1] is a popular P2P file sharing solution. You could use Restic to make backups to a shared Syncthing folder.

[1]: https://syncthing.net/

kevlar1818··on Panopticlick
Anyone have recommendations for reducing the uniqueness of the screen size and fonts metrics?
kevlar1818··on BentoML: A platform for serving and deploying machine learning models
The project's documentation gives a better overview of its capabilities:

https://bentoml.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quickstart.html

kevlar1818··on Agile Lite: Agile without all the burnout
This project should be called Scrum Lite. Agile software development is a philosophy, not a process or prescription.
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