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kod

718 karma · joined June 28, 2007

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kod··on Architecting large software projects [video]
The "one module should be written by only one person" dogma is kind of interesting.

But I got to the "my wrapper around SDL supports multiple simultaneous mouse inputs, even though no operating system does" and noped out. YAGNI, even in a large project

kod··on Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 Incident on July 14, 2025
> Not sure how cloudflare keeps struggling with issues like these

Cloudflare has a reasonable culture around incident response, but it doesn't incentivize proactive prevention.

kod··on The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela
Facts aren't copyrightable. Expression is. LLMs reproduce expression from the works they were trained on. The way they are being trained involves making an unlicensed reproduction of works. Both of those are pretty straightforwardly infringement of an exclusive right.

Establishing an affirmative defense that it's transformative fair use would hopefully be an uphill battle, given that it's commercial, using the whole work, and has a detrimental effect on the market for the work.

kod··on How Nintendo bled Atari games to death
So toyota made more in net income last quarter alone than nintendo has in net cash, but they're less successful? Seems like a really weird metric.
kod··on How Nintendo bled Atari games to death
> Nintendo is Japans most successful company and Sony isn't even in the top 300

by what bizarro metric is Nintendo more successful than Toyota? debt to equity ratio is all you care about?

kod··on But what if I want a faster horse?
I get where you're coming from, but describing the fastest production FWD car as the "closest thing" is really funny
kod··on An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
harrison ford certainly does

edit - also, I wasn't making a binary claim, the person I was responding to was: "no law". There are more than zero laws relevant to this situation. I agree with you that how relevant is context dependent.

kod··on An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_protection_for_ficti...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#United_Stat...

kod··on You should know this before choosing Next.js
to be fair, "thunk" is decades old

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunk

kod··on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies
Besides flooding them with junk, what about outright sabotage in the form of serving zip bombs or other ways to waste computational resources?
kod··on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies
> So long as the resulting model does not contain copies, it is not infringement

That's not true.

The article specifically deals with training by scraping sites. That does necessarily involve producing a copy from the server to the machine(s) doing the scraping & training. If the TOS of the site incorporates robots.txt or otherwise denies a license for such activity, it is arguably infringement. Sourcehut's TOS for example specifically denies the use of automated tools to obtain information for profit.

kod··on Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam
> your game must be good looking to sell copies

Nah, vampire survivors and balatro look like crap by modern standards, yet are breakout hits.

kod··on Kafka at the low end: how bad can it get?
Kafka wrote a lot, and destroyed most of what he wrote.

Seems like a good name for a high-volume distributed log that deletes based on retention, not after consumption.

kod··on Kafka at the low end: how bad can it get?
If it's a fundamental probability thing with randomized partition selection, put the actual probability of what you're describing in the article.

.25^20 is not a "somewhat unlucky sequence of events"

kod··on The reality of long-term software maintenance from the maintainer's perspective
But always protecting the maintainers' best interests over those of users or new contributors ultimately leads to the death of the project.

There's a fairly good chance the reason someone wrote that 10k line PR is because they actually understand the problem users are having, and you don't as a maintainer.

kod··on Software development topics I've changed my mind on
> But there is no correlation whatsoever between writing on a typewriter or using a fountain pen (or the physical experience of writing generally) and the quality of the writing

I heard neal stephenson say that he writes using a pen rather than a wordprocessor specifically because it does affect the quality of the writing. Because he handwrites slower than he types, he does more thinking and editing in his head rather than after it's on paper.

kod··on Async Rust in Three Parts
> the type system cannot prevent logic bugs or design bugs

^ your words, that statement is false. the type system _can_ prevent logic bugs or design bugs, exhaustive pattern matching is an obvious example.

I bet you can find a way to express yourself which is true, e.g. "the type system cannot prevent _all_ logic bugs or design bugs"

kod··on Async Rust in Three Parts
> "No invisible magic" was a promise that Rust made to us.

Honest question, where did you get that promise from?

The 1.0 release didn't really emphasize that: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/05/15/Rust-1.0.html

The current rhetoric is more about empowering more people to have confidence in systems programming: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/foreword.html

Some of graydon's ideas starting almost a decade before 1.0 might have included that https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/blob/df8cc964772b...

but his recent posts on what he would have done differently if he was BDFL include a bunch of stuff that's arguably more magical, not less: https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html

kod··on Tesla conducting more layoffs, including entire Supercharger team
https://ecomodder.com/forum/em-fuel-log.php?vehicleid=3158

https://ecomodder.com/forum/em-fuel-log.php?vehicleid=7982

kod··on Racket Language
I was a student at the 2018 racket school mentioned in the link.

All of the instructors, including Felleisen and Butterick, were nothing but helpful and friendly inside and outside of the classroom.

Even taking that link completely at face value that Felleisen is a Torvalds-type asshole in certain personal interactions... his work including How To Design Programs had such a positive impact on my life and the lives of others that I wouldn't discourage people from taking advantage of it.

kod··on The rise and fall of D&D in Japan
more like D&D has so much cultural influence that Ultima wouldn't have existed without it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akalabeth:_World_of_Doom#Devel...

"the game continually evolved over two years under the working title DND with the help of his friends and regular Dungeons & Dragons partners who acted as play-testers"

kod··on Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?
> No one, and I mean no one, flys southwest because it's their choice.

Everyone in my family preferred to fly southwest (at least before this round of incidents). Among other things, this was based on a history of better customer service especially in extenuating circumstances. They've been at the top of e.g. JD power customer satisfaction rankings for years.

If you're trying to say no one flies economy because it's their choice... I could certainly afford not to, but I _choose_ otherwise.

kod··on Ask HN: Where do you find the interesting jobs?
That person is not delusional. I've successfully asked for and been shown code as part of interview processes with multiple companies.
kod··on Master at Arms Badge for Boy Scouts (1925) [pdf]
Sparring with quarterstaff is a bad idea, regardless of age. A 7' lever is no joke.

Anyone who thinks that's a hot take, infantilization of kids, politically motivated, or whatever else has been going on in this thread should probably watch e.g. https://youtu.be/3bmcpjBO4a0?t=270

kod··on Gaming the system: How GameStop stock surged
> When console games started selling for $59.99 (or more)

So last century? Big single player 16 bit games were $80usd (e.g. Phantasy Star II) and $59.99 was not unusual for run of the mill licensed or sports games.

https://i.redd.it/ikerxbqipf821.jpg

It's amazing that 59.99 survived as a standard price for games as long as it did.

kod··on Haskell for a New Decade [pdf]
"Favor Immutability" - Effective Java, circa 2001

Should not be controversial at this point.

kod··on Which cyclist hill descent position is superior? (2017)
You have any actual data to back up those claims? Recumbents own the unfaired bicycle speed records.
kod··on Tesla is close to becoming the most valuable car company
Sane.

"There's too much risk either direction, stay away from it" sounds pretty sane to me.

kod··on Pouring one out for the end of O’Reilly’s in-person conferences
Safari
kod··on Pouring one out for the end of O’Reilly’s in-person conferences
Get an ACM membership. It includes full access to oreilly books.
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