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snthpy

973 karma · joined November 29, 2011

snthpy.at.hn

Chief Excel Officer, MAD* Scientist, Pythonista, Rustacian, PRQL Core Contributor (: ML, AI, Data)

* twitter: [@T0bias_Brandt](https://x.com/T0bias_Brandt) * github: [@snth](https://github.com/snth/) * [PRQL](https://prql-lang.org/)

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snthpy··on Show HN: Jmail – Google Suite for Epstein files
Some of these are wild. This one reads like him journaling on an acid trip:

24. questions = AI to the minus 1

If this was from 2025, I'd put his RADICAL BREAKTHROUGH down to spending too much time on ChatGPT.

https://www.jmail.world/thread/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019871?view=i...

snthpy··on Why we built Lightpanda in Zig
So what do you use instead now?
snthpy··on What's the deal with Euler's identity?
Which one of those is preferable? It seems to me that they are both historically based. 10 x 10 is also 100 in base-12 (it's only in base-10 that it looks like 144).

IMHO, in a modern setting base-16 would be the most convenient. Then I maybe wouldn't struggle to remember that the CIDR range C0.A8.0.0/18 (192.168.0.0/24) consists of 10 (16) blocks of size 10 (16).

snthpy··on Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s
Yes, not everyone is allowed to use cloud services. There's also the cost. I haven't spent a cent on infrastructure in 5 years (other than my time). Using cloud services comes with extra costs and meetings to justify those costs. Plus, not everyone is in the USA or 1st world country where those costs are negligible. Necessity is the mother of invention.
snthpy··on Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s
For an SME with nonetheless critical workloads, 10000 containers is not small. To me that's massive in fact. I run less than 10 but I need those to be HA. uncloud sounds great for my use case.
snthpy··on Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s
I still run docker swarm on 3 servers. Haven't needed to update it much over the past 5 years.
snthpy··on Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s
That's really interesting and cool. In that case calling it imperative rather than declarative is underselling it imho. I haven't worked that much with Terraform but in my usage from the cli, that is how it works too and I consider that declarative.

I get that putting the declarative spec in the control plane and having the service autoreconcile continuously is another layer but this is great as a start.

In fact could you not just cron the cli deployment command on the nodes and get an effective poor man's declarative layer to guard against node failures if your ok with a 1 min or 1 sec recovery objective?

snthpy··on Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s
I looked into this yesterday for making Caddy HA on my Proxmox cluster and stumbled upon keepalivd. It will provide you with a virtual IP and failover but not load balancing so you'd need to still point that at something like HAProxy for that.

Could be something interesting to integrate though.

snthpy··on Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s
Wow, this sounds very cool.

I share the same concern as top comments on security but going to check out out in more detail.

I wonder if you integrated some decentralized identity layer with DIDs, if this could be turned into some distributed compute platform?

Also, what is your thinking on high availability and fail failovers?

snthpy··on What's the deal with Euler's identity?
This!

I've been posting the manifesto to friends and colleagues every tau day for the past ten years. Let's keep chipping away at it and eventually we won't obfuscate radians for our kids anymore.

Friends don't let friends use pi!

snthpy··on MinIO is now in maintenance-mode
Thanks. I hadn't heard of RustFS. I've been meaning to migrate off my MinIO deployment.

I recently learned that Ceph also has an object store and have been playing around with microceph. Ceph also is more flexible than garage in terms of aggregating differently sized disks. Since it's also already integrated in Proxmox and has over a decade of enterprise deployments, that's my top contender at the moment. I'm just not sure about the level of S3 API compatibility.

Any opinions on Ceph vs RustFS?

snthpy··on Candy Desk
That's cool.
snthpy··on What Killed Perl?
I watched both of these at the time. FWIR Python took some learnings from the Perl experience and it was still close.
snthpy··on Larry Summers resigns from OpenAI board
Thank you for that tldr. Wow
snthpy··on Three Hapsburgs and a Reporter Walk into a Canadian Vault
How can the New Iork Tymes just choose how they spell things? That's messed up.
snthpy··on Why do voice transcription apps charge monthly when Whisper runs locally?
I get what you're saying but I don't think that's the right analogy here.

Part of the cost is the amortization of the development cost of building and training the model. Perhaps that's why there is a monthly subscription component. That would make economic sense, although I suspect it's more psychological in that you want people to use your product and a subscription makes that easier. If you think about the cost of each generation then you're not going to have a good time using it.

My point was more though that you pay for the convenience and the inference cost. I can also make my own bread, but my local bakery or supermarket can make it much more efficiently at scale and cheaper.

snthpy··on Why do voice transcription apps charge monthly when Whisper runs locally?
Why do shops charge for strawberries when they grow for free in my garden?
snthpy··on Bitcoin's big secret: How cryptocurrency became law enforcement's secret weapon
They're still a decade ahead of most people. It seems only now that people are becoming aware of privacy coins. I go to a lot of crypto meetups and every time I bring up that bitcoins aren't fungible (because they carry full provenance and you might not be able to cash out tainted coins) I just get blank stares. FATF Travel Rule is turning up the heat on this.

I haven't kept up with developments though. What are best privacy coins these days. ZCash seems to be the institutional favourite while Monero hasn't moved much.

snthpy··on Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper
I also use it a lot but the app has always been terrible. I forget exactly what the problems are but I think the text input becomes unresponsive and it becomes unusable.
snthpy··on Show HN: Gametje – A casual online gaming platform
Afrikaans also users the -tje ending for diminutives.
snthpy··on Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window
Fair enough. I'm just sick of the reflexive anti-Chinese hysteria. I wouldn't want to live there personally and condemn the human rights abuses as much as the next guy. However in international politics it's clear who the two largest terrorist regimes have been over the last fifty years and yet they're still somehow held up as the good guys.
snthpy··on Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window
Ok, good points. Thanks
snthpy··on Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window
I wouldn't go quite as far but overall i agree
snthpy··on Ticker: Don't die of heart disease
I'm a big statin sceptic so just putting that up front.

I think things haven't changed because most people underestimate how slow institutional scale change is. There is a reason why HR departments and consultants have Change Management experts. The inertia is huge. Young people don't appreciate this because they thrive on new ideas. Old folks don't and will subconsciously push back, like a form of institutional homeostasis.

Also, while I believe your heart attack stats are correct, I'm more interested in all cause mortality. I believe there statins are a net negative.

snthpy··on Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window
Why is that? Does Chinese company really equal Chinese government?
snthpy··on Grok 4 Fast now has 2M context window
Yeah, same for OpenAI because of Sama. I'm proud to say I haven't touched either for over a year. There are enough good alternatives out there.
snthpy··on I want a good parallel language [video]
Very cool. I have seen Futhark mentioned before but I don't know anything about it.

The example you showed is very much how I think about PRQL pipelines. Syntax is slightly different but semantics are very similar.

At first I thought that PRQL doesn't have scan but actually loop fulfills the same function. I'm going to look more into comparing those.

snthpy··on Foods that make you smell more attractive
"Carb-heavy diets produced the least sexy of scents."
snthpy··on Why is Python's OrderedDict ordered?
Thanks, makes sense.
snthpy··on Waist-to-height ratio outperforms BMI in predicting heart disease risk
Idk. At one point I was at 11% body fat and still had BMI over 25. (83kg and 1.82m) I don't think I've ever been BMI < 25.
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