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pkd

1,580 karma · joined June 2, 2015

https://pawandubey.com
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pkd··on NIXI has killed the "Dot In" domain name (2025)
Sorry I forgot but can mods prefix (2025) to the title? Thanks!
pkd··on India launches DHRUV64, first 1.0 GHz 64-bit microprocessor designed in India
This didn't get traction but this is big news, mostly for reasons not mentioned in this article:

1. It's a RISC-V chip, which means freedom from licensing fees. 2. It is built on 28nm nodes, which is a far cry from the 180nm fabrication SCL was capable of till very recently.

Now, 28nm is not the state of the art, but it is not very far either. I'm excited about getting to sub-10nm nodes in not too distant future, which may make this viable for daily desktop and mobile experience. Although I'm hoping to see some more progress on the software-side with RISC-V in that period.

pkd··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)
Thanks for taking a look! You are correct that we are not competing with the cheapest offerings available there are two key things that are different with us compared to some low-cost providers (like Hetzner):

1. Our prices are in CAD and we bill in CAD, not USD. For Canadian residents this saves on exchange-rate uncertainty. Although sometimes people miss the C$ part and compare it with USD pricing - looking to make this more visible.

2. We don't have limits on transfers, but bandwidth. Hetzner, for example gives you limited amount of transfer for your money. They probably want to stop abuse but it limits legitimate users as well, even though it costs them no more money to transfer the extra bits.

(I use and like Hetzner, not trying to throw shade on them, just using as an example).

> Are there any legal or other reasons I, a resident of Canada, should host my services in Canada rather than in Europe or US?

Certain industries in Canada are regulated and need to be hosted locally. However, we are not trying to appeal to that. Instead, we want to focus on physically-local hosting because we believe that the world needs more small-scale ISPs, not centralization into big hyper-scalers. The collateral benefits are incidental: like being able to sue in Canada, and being subject to Canadian digital privacy laws (e.g. the DPA).

pkd··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)
Oh very cool! Is the lamp being made in Canada?
pkd··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)
https://colocataires.dev/

Trying to build a small-scale ISP/hosting provider domiciled in Canada. We really want to be able to rent real rack space to enthusiasts who would like to benefit from having stuff in the datacenter but don't want to take on the opportunity cost to get started. It came out of my own desire to have a machine in a DC rack.

This week we've been writing a bunch of "reviews" of self-hostable software since a lot of our friends are curious about this space but don't have a good understanding of how to get started. https://blog.colocataires.dev.

pkd··on I made a quieter air purifier
It didn't really come out of academia in that way. It was an innovation borne out of necessity during Covid. I don't think I've seen anybody using a box design for it. If you have a source, I'll be happy to be corrected.

Regardless technology is often named after people who made it popular, especially when original inventors are unknown or too diffuse.

pkd··on Framework Computer Now Sponsoring LVFS / Fwupd Development
Of course, but I know people who live in the UK who are not white. Some have lived there all their lives, even. Perhaps this drivel doesn't upset them but I can imagine how it might.

Unfortunately DHH is not going to be focused on the UK only. He'll lend his voice to the next rightwing ragebait without consideration of people who he works with on the daily. He had some very strong but entirely misinformed opinions about my hometown a few years ago and it was extremely annoying to read that from an ostensibly intelligent person while being in the middle of everything.

If he was some random guy, it wouldn't be such an issue but given he's the leader of a big open source project, everything he says gets a lot of publicity and frankly causes a lot of distraction for people just trying to do work on or with Rails.

pkd··on Framework Computer Now Sponsoring LVFS / Fwupd Development
I think framework made a misstep with this spornsorship deal. I still think they should be supported in their mission and you don't have to regret your purchase.
pkd··on Framework Computer Now Sponsoring LVFS / Fwupd Development
That article spends a lot of words in trying to paint DHH's "native Brits" in a positive light but never mentions the following sentence from the article:

> A statistic as evident as day when you walk the streets of London now.

How is DHH able to determine nativity as defined by "being born and brought up" simply walking the streets of London if it has nothing to do with what you look like?

Plus he even links to a Wikipedia page about white vs non-white British population in London and uses the non-white number. If he wanted to, he could've referred to the foreign-born vs local-born numbers too but he did not.

I don't think DHH is racist, but he's so infected by the anti-woke mind virus that he's happy to parrot racist talking points to "own the libs". Whether that's any better, I'm not sure.

It seems like the author has infinite rope to extend to DHH. That's not being nice, that's being oblivious.

pkd··on C100 Developer Terminal
Fair. Just wanted to provide my stroke and warn people about a low quality, overhyped project. Doesn't mean it shouldn't exist or people can't use it.
pkd··on C100 Developer Terminal
No need for a boatload of shell scripts that's omarchy. Just install any distro and get going.
pkd··on The history of Indian science fiction
This is an interesting article but unfortunately there's some brigading of this thread by new accounts that's leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
pkd··on I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
There is an open proposal to implement it without some of Bluesky's downsides.

https://github.com/mastodon/featured_collections

pkd··on Becoming a compiler engineer
I'm almost more interested in how a 20-something with no apparent prior pedigree lands a Simon and Schuster debut novel contract!
pkd··on The pivot
There is a lot of incoherence in this reply but I'll just address the second last: that less well-off people were more likely to vote for Brexit. Not only is this narrative just a thin veneer over the "sons of the soil", anti-immigrant narrative, the peddlers of Brexit were handing out, there is actual data showing that in fact the opposite was true.

From a Bank of England study:

> People living in left-behind areas were more likely to support Brexit than those living in prosperous areas. The gains of Brexit were perceived to be greater in areas of the country that had experienced economic decline. But within those areas, given people's preferences, we show that wealthier individuals were more likely to vote for Brexit, and poorer individuals were more likely to vote for Remain.

ref. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/study-finds-wealthy-more-likely-t...

> One thing we can be reasonably confident of is that small UK firms appear to be more adversely affected than larger ones. > > They have been less able to cope with the new post-Brexit cross-border bureaucracy. That's supported by surveys of small firms.

ref. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrynjz1glpo

All this is not hard to reason yourself out of. The wealthy can afford to go to Europe regardless of whether UK remains integrated with the EU. They are the least affected by decision either way. The less well-to-do have significant costs imposed now that the integration is over - both monetary and bureaucratic whenever they want to deal with the EU. This is despite the free trade deal.

pkd··on Testing “Exotic” P2P VPN
It seems abandoned.
pkd··on DHH – As I Remember London
I see you created the account to just post this so you're highly likely to not be worth the response but "native brit" is vague not because British people don't exist - there is a legal definition for that - but because Britain has been invaded and seen migration for millenia. Are Normans less native than Anglo-Saxons? Are the Celts the most native? Why do the Vikings and Franks get to assimilate into nativity but not the non-white? The answer to that is very clear - however people tend to hide it behind terms like "native".
pkd··on A beginner's guide to extending Emacs
You can treat DoomEmacs or Spacemacs similarly. They provide an opinionated and streamlined way to interacting with Emacs. Doom is closer to "vanilla" than Spacemacs but I have used Spacemacs for over 10 years now.
pkd··on Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing
If you look at his LinkedIn he lists his thesis title, and googling that will bring you to it, hosted on his site.
pkd··on The Barbican
Yes, and I respect that. It has allowed it to retain its original purpose of being a living space first and an architectural curiosity second.
pkd··on The Barbican
Like OJFord mentions, it is a bit far from amenities despite the straight line distance to them not being great because it's built on an island in the river and you have to cross the bridge to get to the downtown area.

But more importantly for me, my usual life is not in Montreal. I love Montreal but moving there would require quite a few sacrifices in personal relationships that I don't feel like making. And government services in Quebec are also worse than in Ontario (where I am now).

pkd··on The Barbican
This was great and the photos were good too!

I have a similar sort of fascination with a structure closer to me: Habitat 67 in Montreal. I have at various points considered buying a unit there but practicality prevents me from doing so each time. I don't know how long I'll resist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67

pkd··on India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir
This is a weird line of reasoning. By this logic the aggressors will always win because the other side should always concede territory for peace.

Even if Kashmir is ceded to Pakistan, there is no reason why they'd be done aggressing for more territory.

pkd··on Best Pens for 2025
They haven't published one for this year yet but they do a separate article for pencils.

From last year: https://www.jetpens.com/blog/The-27-Best-Pencils-for-2024-Wo...

pkd··on My Favorite Book on AI
I basically don't read much pop sci anymore because they are almost always bad, and the science from the good ones is better read unfiltered through papers and the journals do a good job of making authors declare conflicts of interest.

It is the worst when these books are not written by people with scientific training because they are more likely to make logical errors or use motivated reasoning to push a narrative.

pkd··on Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM
As somebody who lived in Ottawa at the time, this was not good coverage. Neither was DHH's. It was incredibly rage-inducing to read in real time as it was happening too. My takeaway from this is that one should minimize the confidence in one's opinion of foreign events.
pkd··on Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM
Were you in the location at that time? Because you are speculating based on a perfunctory knowledge of the map. I live in this "non-residential" area along with tens of thousands of others. The truckers were not just occupying Wellington, they were on all streets till Somerset between Elgin and Bronson. And hundreds of vehicles blaring horns together reaches very far.
pkd··on Advent of Code 2024
Thanks, I like this.
pkd··on Engineers do not get to make startup mistakes when they build ledgers
SQL or not doesn't really matter. Double entry provides redundancy, and redundancy allows for auditing. It's like checksumming to detect errors.
pkd··on In Memory of Stiver
I know somebody who relocated his entire family after 20+ years in the U.S and is loving it. People are not as monolithic as we are likely to believe sometimes.
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