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leblancfgon Main is usually a function. So then when is it not? (2015)

I was able to feed stdin to `gcc` instead of all that IO, which considerably sped it up and spread over 5 cores.

But ultimately I gave up after the third time my computer crashed. I was at length 4 by that point, next step would have been to throttle the CPU usage.

leblancfgon Main is usually a function. So then when is it not? (2015)

Welp that's a nerd snipe if I ever had one. Will report back once my bruteforce hack finishes crunching away.

leblancfgon A Really Big Computer

My comment is about how this man is seriously entertaining a 2B$ valuation for this napkin math, with no experience in the 4/5 different industries his plan entails – and sharing no definite plans of what to do with it except "be able to train GPT4 in a day". It is about prevailing market forces in VC that let him believe this plan might actually work.

It doesn't have anything to do with crypto, science, or Real World Problems.

leblancfgon A Really Big Computer

I will refer to this as the moment when LLM hype jumped the shark.

leblancfgon The combined power of F# and C#

Someone at Microsoft better get a trademark on “Powerchord”.

leblancfgon MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials

Raw concrete price in USA is closer to 150$/m3, often less.

One thing we don’t know is life expectancy vs Li-ion, whose 10-year charge is ~60%.

I haven’t read the paper; one thing that’ll also be interesting is operating temperatures. This could be a massive upside to concrete supercaps in certain parts of the globe.

leblancfgon The Fall of Stack Overflow

I’d say the peak of Github copilot adoption might have been during that month as well, IIRC the VS Code extension got released late March

leblancfgon Payment systems while working at a pizza place

I seriously thought you had to be joking. But no! Ok I figure, the carbon footprint of milk is massive[0], it must be taxed at a higher rate?

> In some European countries, plant-based milk is subjected to a significantly higher VAT than cow’s milk.

Still haven't understood this one yet though. Some kind of protectionist tax rate for the farmers?

[0](https://www.co2everything.com/co2e-of/milk)

leblancfgon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://leblancfg.com

TILs mostly about Python & vim

leblancfgon The 77% Threshold

That’s a lot of hand waving for such a short post. I don’t disagree with the overall idea being presented, but I feel like there was more potential here.

Why 77% exactly? Surely that number must depend on other factors?

How do you measure this number, are there resources online?

What industries are currently at 50, 60, 70 and 80%? so we may not only compare and contrast, but end up with an idea of what the future might look like.

leblancfgon Being a Good Unix Neighbour

TIL about the pipe/newline, thanks. Edited.

leblancfgon Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice

Whatever's cheap and slightly conical – most will do. Worst case you let it sit for ~1h so it melts a little.

From 10 seconds of Googling, something like this: https://browzefactory.com/products/tumbler-stainless-steel-2...

leblancfgon Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice

Not an issue. It's only partially filled, less than half-way. As it forms, the ice floats and glides up the sides until it's like, 1mm higher than where it started.

leblancfgon Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice

Or just passing the cloudy bit under hot water. Melts like a charm.

leblancfgon Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice

Doesn't really work – the real trick is to make sure your ice is crystallizing directionally. The impurities are the last to crystallize, so this pushes them out.

Then you take your ice out of the container when it's 90% done, and your ice chunk is clear.

leblancfgon Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice

Former bartender here. Having nice cocktail ice chunks at home isn't as complex as this might make it seem. No need for a clunky box in your freezer or costly gizmos.

I keep a travel-sized coffee thermos in my freezer with about 2-3 inches of water at the bottom. Takes 18-24 hours to create one chunk. If you time it right, 90% of the water freezes, and the water impurities pool at the bottom – pop out the frozen chunk and the result is clear ice. I store 4-5 of these in a zip-top bag until I have friends over and serve drinks.

Best to use a thermos with a slight conical interior so it's easy to pop out the ice. Makes a nice plug-shaped, clear ice chunk. Then refill and restart the process.

leblancfgon This blog is hosted on my Android phone

FWIW here's what I got (GPT4):

1. *Budget hosted VPS website, heavy caching, and dynamic DNS with outside cache* - Software: Nginx, Varnish, PHP-FPM, MySQL - Hardware: Entry-level VPS, 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM

2. *Shared hosting with CDN and dynamic DNS* - Software: Apache, PHP, MySQL, Cloudflare CDN - Hardware: Shared hosting plan, 1 GB RAM

3. *Raspberry Pi with LAMP stack and dynamic DNS* - Software: Apache, PHP, MySQL, ddclient (for dynamic DNS) - Hardware: Raspberry Pi 4, 2 GB RAM

4. *Self-hosted containerized web stack with dynamic DNS* - Software: Docker, Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL, Traefik (for dynamic DNS) - Hardware: Home server, 2 cores, 4 GB RAM

5. *Home server with reverse proxy, caching, and dynamic DNS* - Software: Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL, Varnish, ddclient (for dynamic DNS) - Hardware: Home server, 4 cores, 8 GB RAM

6. *Self-hosted web stack on a NAS with dynamic DNS* - Software: Apache, PHP, MySQL, Synology DDNS (for dynamic DNS) - Hardware: Synology NAS, 2 GB RAM

7. *Old laptop as a web server with dynamic DNS* - Software: Apache, PHP, MySQL, No-IP (for dynamic DNS) - Hardware: Old laptop, 2 cores, 4 GB RAM

8. *Self-hosted web stack on a mini PC with dynamic DNS* - Software: Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL, DuckDNS (for dynamic DNS) - Hardware: Intel NUC, 2 cores, 4 GB RAM

9. *Web server on a single-board computer with dynamic DNS* - Software: Lighttpd, PHP, SQLite, Afraid.org (for dynamic DNS) - Hardware: BeagleBone Black, 512 MB RAM

10. *Android phone at home on standard connection using third party dynamic DNS and basic web server* - Software: KSWEB (web server), No-IP (for dynamic DNS) - Hardware: Android phone, 2 GB RAM

leblancfgon Ask HN: How to minimize career risk from an attempted startup

Have you considered somewhat of a smoother transition? Keep your current job and work extra to get to a point where leaving the FAANG job is a natural next step.

leblancfgon Toyota: Car location data and videos of 2M customers exposed for ten years

s/have/keep/g

leblancfgon Office Cubicle Manufacturing (1954) [video]

We had cubicles like that at the Canadian Space Agency (back in 2017). Man were they ever nice. Some of the best concentration I ever achieved at work back then – no doubt about that. Coming from someone who is easily distracted, that was especially important.

leblancfgon First clean water, now clean air

I wish the author had spent more time to unfold the public vs private debate here:

>if a country installed all the measures I mentioned

As opposed to the wastewater infrastructure in the first section that can be mandated and put in motion by a government, it's up to individuals and institutions to install the measures.

This makes implementation significantly more challenging, as it relies on the collective efforts and cooperation of numerous parties, each with their own priorities and resources. Government-led initiatives, on the other hand, can be more easily streamlined and enforced, ensuring a higher degree of compliance and effectiveness.

leblancfgon Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

My wife has a goal to run 1000km this year, and uses an Apple Watch to track them. But getting to the YTD total is a pain in the fitness app.

So I made the worlds most basic iPhone app with React Native, that grabs the data from HealthKit and shows it across a percentage of the year.

Simple but effective.

leblancfgon Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

Definitely a marketable idea right there, ChicagoBoy11

leblancfgon A WWII spy who hid codes in her knitting

I read somewhere some Qwghlmian duchess was doing that centuries ago.

leblancfgon Automate your Python project with Makefile (2021)

The GP comment was referring to the `tools.poetry.scripts` namespace in pyproject.toml.

leblancfgon Automate your Python project with Makefile (2021)

That's specifically for the Poetry package manager, not Python in general.

leblancfgon IBM Research's Vela Is an AI Supercomputer in the Cloud

Came here to say this. Could be legit for all I know, but I’m not wasting my time clicking through.

leblancfgon Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

Correct. Source: I used the shit out of that command. Thanks Burke

leblancfgon Barriers to Business – How cities can pave a path to entrepreneurship

There used to be one called Intuit. I don’t particularly like that they’re essentially lobbying to keep tax laws and processes complicated.

The root cause is at the political level — at all three levels.

leblancfgon Barriers to Business – How cities can pave a path to entrepreneurship

For sure, I guess I’m jaded enough that I felt it was so obvious as to not point out out.

I still have some faith in possible change at the municipal level, at least in smaller ones.