HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

lambdaba

1,528 karma · joined November 27, 2019

email username at protonmail dot com
submissionscomments
lambdaba··on MacBook Air with M5
go for it, I installed NixOS on Asahi on a whim a few months ago and I only rebooted to MacOS to resize the partition
lambdaba··on Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)
It's not mainly about speed (although the ceiling is much higher), but about ergonomics, and, plainly, enjoyability. The other benefit of making your own environment is mastery and control; only you can decide when and how the environment changes.
lambdaba··on Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues
it's funny I first noticed this visiting a random blog, then went on X and got the same error... is Cloudflare the Internet now?
lambdaba··on Scientists are discovering a powerful new way to prevent cancer
> The discovery that chronic inflammation can provide the impetus for cancers to develop is forcing clinicians to rethink their approach to the disease’s prevention.

Alternative health has been saying this for decades. Ketogenic diets + medicinal plants/mushrooms can do a lot, even after the fact.

lambdaba··on Formatting code should be unnecessary
I agree, I'm very much against any line length constraint, it's arbitrary and word wrapping exists.
lambdaba··on Digg.com is back
It's del.ici.us after del.icio.us
lambdaba··on Programmers aren’t so humble anymore, maybe because nobody codes in Perl
"Ruby is the love child of Lisp and Smalltalk, raised by Perl the eccentric nanny" - Josh Susser
lambdaba··on Claude Code now supports hooks
No one can tell what the exact multipliers are, but history has shown us that what happens is everyone gets richer.
lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
I don't use Determinate Nix but I've heard it recommended. As I've said I've had 1 or 2 issues with my Nix install on Mac over several years.

Re: ffmpeg, it's just something do to with default codecs or something I don't remember, I'm not even sure I really needed it but I saw it on my packages list and since I use nix-darwin it doesn't matter that much where the package comes from. I have hundreds of packages from nixpkgs, many shared with Linux, and quite a few Mac specific ones.

Again, I'm not part of a Nix cult, I just genuinely have had an overall great experience with Nix and I find the criticism overblown. I guess since a subset of users are very enthusiastic and vocal about it it attracts this.

lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
This is just from my experience, I'm not part of any kind of Nix cult or anything, not that I'm aware of.

I don't know what you're talking about re: third party wrappers, this is just an option for a slightly easier and perhaps more robust install. And homebrew isn't free of issues at all.

lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
I'm curious of what the packages are because I only have ~10 packages that I use from homebrew, either very Mac-specific or that have better packaging (ffmpeg, mpv)
lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
An easy option nowadays is Determinate Nix https://docs.determinate.systems/determinate-nix/
lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
I'm interested in how you use that homebrew-to-nix converter, if you have links to configs or can describe it briefly!

I agree that nix-darwin is a bit overkill, I mainly use it for the homebrew integration, but I think so is home-manager, I don't keep user app configs in Nix since they are never exhaustive and more effort than it's worth.

lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
Oh yeah, I knew about devbox but hadn't seen (perhaps it's new) that it can handle global packages: https://www.jetify.com/docs/devbox/devbox_global/
lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
Yeah, I'm just addressing you specifically, you could switch easily and Nix has a much larger package selection (outside of GUI apps on macOS). And it immediately can do more via nix-shell -p, which can be also be used as shebang.

But yeah, Nix is much more than a homebrew replacement and that has its downsides.

lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
I think Nix has a marketing issue as it goes so deep. But if you're going to consider it only as an alternative to homebrew, you don't have to know anything aside from different CLI invocations: `nix-shell -iA <package>` to install, and maybe a step up with `nix-shell -p <package> --run <cmd>` to run without installing. You don't have to use nix-darwin or managing configs and the Nix language at all.
lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
I sort of get what you're saying and I've had a few sporadic issues myself, once or twice I had to reinstall (although might have been my mishandling), but overall I can't see a better solution than this. Plus I can share the configs with Linux.
lambdaba··on Kelp – simple replacement for homebrew on macOS
Nix (and nix-darwin for persistent config) already does the job for non-GUI apps better than anything else could (its catalog is unmatched), and homebrew (also available in nix-darwin) handles GUI apps.
lambdaba··on First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV
His full name is Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III, I think it fits.
lambdaba··on The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)
You don't strictly need it, it just makes it a tiny bit more convenient since you can set it up to override DNS on any connected device, and Tailscale sets up a private VPN mesh between your devices I've come to get take for granted - a tangential feature that goes well with centrally managed DNS.
lambdaba··on The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)
There's a lot more to Tailscale but for a basic setup you just install the client on all your devices, and set DNS to the NextDNS endpoint. Any device on your network will automatically pick it up.
lambdaba··on The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)
Tailscale with NextDNS is a simpler alternative to this and is easy to set up on all your devices.
lambdaba··on Show HN: A Chrome extension that will auto-reject non-essential cookies
I tried it briefly but I think it's semi-abandoned? Maybe I should give it another shot. Only non negociables for me are Stylish and Violentmonkey.
lambdaba··on Show HN: A Chrome extension that will auto-reject non-essential cookies
I was back on Firefox for a few months, and it's noticeably slower and drains battery (on M2 Air).
lambdaba··on Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists
People will develop an eye for how AI-generated looks and that will make human creativity stand out even more. I'm expecting more creativity and less cookie-cutter content, I think AI generated content is actually the end of it.
lambdaba··on Americans Are Obsessed with Protein and It's Driving Nutrition Experts Nuts
Protein plays a major role in satiety. They're even claiming that "excess" protein causes heart disease. What a load of nonsense, not a surprise from "nutrition experts".
lambdaba··on The Tesla protests are getting bigger – and rowdier
vandalism
lambdaba··on Why I'm writing a Scheme implementation in 2025: Async Rust
This is an observation you only see with people who don't use Lisps. It's a total non-issue. Editing is also easier than with syntax-heavy langs.
lambdaba··on Show HN: Live-updating version of the 'What a week, huh?' meme
Cute, but I find it funny to reach for Astro, a framework with over 400 dependencies, just for this. I'm sure it's super convenient, so maybe it's more of a principled take.
lambdaba··on Perplexity Deep Research
> It does seem like Google is quick to respond to feedback.

I'm puzzled as to how that would work, when people talk about quick changes in model behavior. What exactly is being adjusted? The model has already been trained. I would think it's just randomness.

Page 1 of 30Next →