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somethingAlex

268 karma · joined March 17, 2021

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somethingAlex··on Diet, not lack of exercise, drives obesity, a new study finds
Yeah it's odd we needed a whole article for this. "You can't out exercise a bad diet" has always been true outside of the most extreme cases (competitive athletes).
somethingAlex··on AWS Lambda Silent Crash – A Platform Failure, Not an Application Bug [pdf]
Fair enough, I guess this just seems like a bold assumption to make since an explicit handler function is a cornerstone of lambda, rather than being able to run module level code and having the end self detected.
somethingAlex··on AWS Lambda Silent Crash – A Platform Failure, Not an Application Bug [pdf]
It may just be such a basic tenant of the platform that no one thought to. You stop getting billed after lambda returns a response so why would you expect computation to continue? This guy expected free lunch.
somethingAlex··on Show HN: Auto-generate an OpenAPI spec by listening to localhost
For brochure / static content sites this is definitely the beginnings of a web crawler but it can be a lot trickier for web apps.

For example, clicking a link which loads some data, then clicking edit (which isn't even an anchor), typing in & clicking stuff, then clicking the save button (don't click the cancel button!) would not be an interaction that would get picked up with your suggestion. Detecting loops becomes much more ambiguous and backtracking to get all the permutations of interactions becomes a whole other problem to solve.

somethingAlex··on Show HN: Nano-web – a low latency one binary webserver designed for serving SPAs
If you are using Cludfront with an S3 origin you can turn on static website hosting and specify a 404 fallback page[0] - which would then just be your index file. It will render your client code and let you show a 404 if it is indeed one.

The problem is that essentially every time a user goes to the site it will be a 404 status code since they are probably not typing in example.com/index but this has pragmatically not been an issue for a wholly authenticated, private, B2B SaaS app. The marketing website is a separate subdomain.

For a public site this is probably worse than returning 200s that should be 404s occasionally, though.

[0]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/Custom...

somethingAlex··on Show HN: Skyvern – Browser automation using LLMs and computer vision
I don’t know what my use case for this would be. I don’t tend to do anything regularly through a browser that I’d want to automate.

Would be kind of handy to have a “pull all my relevant tax info documents from these sites and zip them up” automation but I only do that once a year.

I’m probably being unimaginative. Anybody have any interesting use cases?

Anyone have

somethingAlex··on It's true. Your devices are listening to you
On an iPhone, can they actually access mic input without the indicator being on?
somethingAlex··on Halfsies
95% 4 perfect
somethingAlex··on MiniOS – a lightweight Linux distribution designed for USB drive
It just seems odd in this context given they are willfully compiling these screenshots together, displaying them prominently, and saying they pay attention to details. What details are they trying to highlight here, if not the UI details?

In general the UI doesn't even look good. It's just a bunch of unflattering grey.

somethingAlex··on I'm a paid user of Threads[.com] – No trademark?
Am I the only one who gets an uncanny feeling visiting this site? If someone told me this was software satire I would believe them.

This cyberpunk-ish theme with juvenile sprite sprinkled over it (e.g. the little AI guy floating under the video and the figures under "What people are saying").

At the beginning of the video I get these '90s infomercial; "The world moves fast / information super highway" vibes. The background music seems ironic considering the visual content.

I guess it is just trying to be retro but the "I want to be post iOS 5 Apple" top bar throws me off. Sorry this is not constructive but I just must know if I'm the only one feeling this.

In any case, I don't mind Slack but I'd give this a try if they allowed more than 500 messages in the free tier. At least Slack gives you the 90 day history.

somethingAlex··on [dead]
"Learn to Code like a Developer" is a funny tag line to me. Isn't the point to become a developer? Or are you saying: "you're going to learn with modern tools, just like how a may use tools to facilitate coding?"

Maybe highlight the fact that you have an AI bot helping you through it. I would not have known it unless I read your HN comment.

somethingAlex··on JunoDB: PayPal’s Key-Value Store Goes Open-Source
A concrete example would be a users shopping cart, as they build it. You don’t need the niceties of a fully ACID compliant DB, you need write performance, and extremely high availability.

That was at least a chief use case spotlighted in the original Dynamo paper by Amazon that what the precursor to AWS’ DynamoDB paper.

Not to say that couldn’t be done with Postgres but of course they were dealing with insane scale on Amazon Day.

somethingAlex··on Java 20 / JDK 20: General Availability
C++ for when you need to be very close to the metal.

Java (and C#) are still legitimate options for server side code when you want speed and type safety but managed memory.

somethingAlex··on Launch HN: Second (YC W23) – AI bots that add features to web apps
I duplicated a repo to test this out on and signed up, only to find that all I could try out was Authentication. That's probably one of the features most dependent on which library or identity provider you are using and they only have one library for now.

Wish I could have actually tried this out.

somethingAlex··on W3C Beta Website
I think certain fads are a little dreadful in terms of unoriginality - those humaaans illustrations, for example. But I think most of the web really should look similar. I think of brochure websites like resumes: you're trying to depict key points without distractions and obstacles. Just like that one person's "unique" resume is actually the last one you want to read, so is that unnecessarily "original" website.
somethingAlex··on AWS Purity Test
Yeah I'm always surprised by the downright hate. I use the console for 95% of things and it's alright.

My gripe is that the thing just gives off this BLOATED impression. Safari routinely reloads it because it was "using significant energy." Every time I load a page I just wait until it renders, goes blank, re-renders, goes blank, places everything that was on the left over to the right, and then finally things settle down and I click a button. That all takes about 1.5s though, so not awful.

somethingAlex··on Analog Chess
I don't think the knight should be allowed to move in a full circle. It should be disjointed - four arches. Allowing a knight to move two squares orthogonally kind of makes it a completely different piece.
somethingAlex··on Why JWTs Suck as Session Tokens (2017)
>> “ A mission critical user check needs to run (eg: does this user have enough money in their account to complete the transaction?)”

That info wouldn’t be in the session db row either.

>> “ A database write needs to occur to persist information (if this information is related to the user, it’s likely that the full user object must also be retrieved from the database”

This type of info doesn’t get updated frequently. Email, phone, name, etc, are pretty static. If they are just talking about a join using a userId, well that’s not gonna be any different whether you know the ID from a JWT or normal cookie.

>> “ The full user object must be pulled out of the cache / database so that the website can properly generate its dynamic page content”

But that’s an upside of keeping more than a cookie with an ID. You can just stash the stuff that doesn’t change much client side (keeping in mind the XSS risks). We certainly don’t pull the user’s email and name every page load even though it’s displayed on every page.

>> “ Almost every web framework loads the user on every incoming request. This includes frameworks like Django, Rails, Express.js”

That’s a framework issue and should be customizable. Not really a JWT vs cookie w/ ID topic

There’s plenty of reasons to choose an ID cookie vs a JWT but the many that the author gives are not among them.

somethingAlex··on Show HN: I made a local development, debugging and hotreload tool for AWS Lambda
I find the debugging and testing process pretty slow with AWS SAM so I may have to try this out when you have a Node runtime.
somethingAlex··on Fresh is a new full stack web framework for Deno
From what I gather, it seems like this would be a good choice if a portion of clients are on low end devices and it is more of a MPA/SPA hybrid - not a full blown web app. A lot of E-commerce and informational sites do fall into the MPA/SPA hybrid bucket.

If you really are making a web app (think dropbox, cloud based enterprise software) I think you'd reach a point where there is so much interactivity that you are essentially shipping Preact, custom component JS, and just a little bit of static HTML. The latter bucket is the only one which saves the user network and parsing time (and I doubt much of it.) I'd still go with a properly chunked SPA for true web apps.

somethingAlex··on Tell HN: I'm Afraid We're Shutting Down
Going to third the "need more information on this."

Are they job hopping, in which case wouldn't that also be a revenue stream for 70MR? Did they find that it was such a sellers' market that they didn't need 70MR's services to get good jobs anymore?

I never really understood this "shortage of workers / great resignation" phenomenon to begin with, so perhaps this specific situation would be a good one to use as a concrete example.

somethingAlex··on Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard
Fundamentally, if you want to support multiple, unlinked accounts per person you'll still need some sort of "account designator."

If you don't then the biometric marker can just replace both password and username. The reason why the username exists for the password is because it's problematic to guarantee uniqueness of passwords across your users. One is unique and public and the other is not and private.

somethingAlex··on Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard
That's pretty much what happened here. Obviously it's going to look a bit different afterwards because you have to mathematically tangle the time, key, and domain together. You can't really do that with the six digits of a traditional OTP code.

And like the other reply stated, if you can't mathematically tie them together, you have to rely on the user validating the domain (which you can't).

somethingAlex··on Heuristics that almost always work
I'm surprised how many people are just nitpicking the examples like they are supposed to be rigorous analogies.

The point that I walked away with is that oftentimes experts use these same heuristics even when people assume they are not. People think that experts don't have to use them because they have better tools and skills at their disposal. However, for reasons involving human factors, they oftentimes do use them. Finally, these opinions then get thrown into the body of evidence as if they are ground truth values.

somethingAlex··on Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations
Yeah I feel the same way. I want wordle to be about guessing words, not constructing some max entropy string within the constraints.
somethingAlex··on Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations
Replying so I can find this later. Thanks!
somethingAlex··on Nerdle = Like Wordle but with Equations
What do you mean by incorrect? The equation has to be valid, according to the rules. At some point I ended up with 2 + <x> + 8 = 1<y> where x = y because of math. I had 5 guesses left and 8 possibilities. That's just gambling without the money at that point.
somethingAlex··on Ask HN: Strategies for Cannabis Withdrawal?
Having been in the same situation, as well a similar one invoking cigarettes, I suggest to you winter green life savers. (Bare with me.)

They certainly don’t help with any physical issues but they help with the mental side.

I’m not sure what it is but the fact that you can move them around in your mouth and gnaw on them while still lasting a while makes it feel like you’re “doing something.”

Every time I’d want to partake i would eat a life saver. They are also innocuous so there’s no guilt or anything.

And I’m sure you can replace them with whatever gives you the sensation described above. I know it’s silly but they were my secret weapon.

somethingAlex··on Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
People seem to invoke the word capitalism whenever things aren't a utopia for everyone involved. Still, even without capitalism, you'll have to contend with the issue of how to cover operational expenses. Say some, more centralized, agent decides YouTube is worthwhile - how would it get paid for? A state sponsorship made possible by a tax of some sort? Perhaps it would transition to be completely pay-to-play?

The employees and servers are expending real energy keeping YouTube operational. Meaning, whether it's through ads, a more centralized body stepping in, or some other less pervasive, opt-in business model - the thing needs to cover its own costs. I don't think a lack of private property would solve much there.

somethingAlex··on Ask HN: What do you consider as “bad” code?
If I had to pick, Single responsibility principle is #1 for me.

If each class does one thing, anyone will eventually figure out how it’s doing it. If it’s doing multiple things, all bets are off. It’s also the exact type of code that will break something unrelated when changed.

Mind you, we don’t need classes like DictionaryConstructor and StringParameterParser, but you should - in about one sentence - be able to say what each class’ purview is.

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