Hacker News Reader

wuming2on Apple’s Darwin OS and XNU Kernel Deep Dive

Where is Scott Forstall mark in all of this evolution I wonder. He was responsible for adapting macOS, hence XNU, to iPhone. The most successful Apple product of all times. And where is he now?

wuming2on Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

They discovered sipping espresso with friends and neighbors. Weird. But Substack gained some clicks I guess.

wuming2on Intel: A Bug and a Pro

Care to expand?

Also I often wonder what the aggregate statistics of `top` load average and standard deviation looks like over billions of consumer devices over time.

wuming2on Claude can now search the web

Sorry to intrude with something unrelated. But YC closed the earlier discussion. Saw your comment about Kannel WAP of few months back and wanted to ask if do you know of any WAP Push full service provider still in operation.

wuming2on Liberapay

Also in the EU SEPA CT is an option. Lowering fees from 3%-5% to about 1% or less depending on the bank. Thanks to ECB infrastructure.

wuming2on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

Agreed. Here I invoke the wisdom of groff old timers and of younger CSS developers: where the latter stops being useful when a professional looking pdf must be generated?

I can prepare a decent looking document, or spreadsheet, with LibreOffice styles (CSS) without particular effort. With Docs should not be much different.

Have seen official government Word documents with formatting in need of assistance. Teams at very large firms share Word documents, via email, forth and back debating about revisions of text and numbers. Publishing was only the necessary last step.

In most cases authors use the bare minimum of functions to get the job done. Professional looking is something else instead. I don’t know where Docs stands here.

wuming2on Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

The reality is nowadays few documents need desktop publishing features. Because seldom if ever become paper documents.

Also the average back office author knows a tiny fraction of Microsoft Word or Excel features.

Give them means to type in text, add pictures and collaborate. Templates for beautification. That’s all what is needed.

This has been known for ages. Alas Microsoft has a grip on governments and large orgs we know little about. CERN is an example.

wuming2on Apple Debuts iPhone 16e

Still happy with my iPhone 7. Replaced display and battery, at an Apple Store, last year. Gaming, AI and photography are curiosities I look at from afar. For the rest it drives me around on vacation via CarPlay and Apple Maps. Handles my home banking, pre paid card and Apple Pay without a hitch. Chatting and calling on too many apps. Manages my digital IDs, medical records, emails, notes and calendar. Translates my conversations and runs Automations. It will soon help me charge an electric car. What more can I expect from it.

wuming2on Jeju Air Jet Crashes in South Korea With Over 170 Dead or Missing

Given that The Guardian reported they attempted landing and then took off again before the fatal landing happened, meaning they had control and power, and that the airport sits on a peninsula I wonder why not to attempt landing on water. Perhaps sea was rough.

wuming2on Kowloon Walled City: Heterotopia in a Space of Disappearance (2013)

https://thehkhub.com/historic-kowloon-walled-city-recreated-...

Was very neat.

wuming2on Pat Gelsinger was wrong for Intel

With products just leaving behind the old Apple days and Foundry, in fact, not a 1st tier supplier anymore what is there to salvage do you think? For the latter money was not enough even in, much, better days.

wuming2on D-Link says it won't patch 60k older modems

Wasteful choice enabled by not being entirely responsible for pollution, energy consumption and trash. If they had to pay for environmental full restoration, energy at full cost and careful disposal of unsuitable hardware decision would have been different.

wuming2on Angela Merkel defends ties with Russia and blocking Ukraine from NATO

And I was wrong. By EU’s own statistics trade in goods with the US is in the black (1).

In particular figure 7 (2) shows imports of energy goods jump from roughly 30 Bn Euro to around 100 Bn of from 2021 to 2022. Falling to around 80 Bn in 2023. Compensated by other exports.

Figure 8 (3) shows natural gas imports falling by almost half in 2023.

Those are the facts. Stats are most certainly nuanced, as example haven’t checked which goods are excluded, but I have to adjust my layman level understanding of it.

1. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

2. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

3. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

wuming2on Angela Merkel defends ties with Russia and blocking Ukraine from NATO

Disclosure: I haven’t read the article. Just checked title match.

I remember someone quoting Germany’s former Chancellor telling “the US just want to sell their dirty gas” obtained via fracking. After she left, R invasion triggered the US receiving substantial orders for LNG. And of military equipment. I am still awaiting for someone to calculate how much it tilted trade balance. And how farther it pushed the possibility for a sustainable development.

Realpolitik is a german word.

wuming2on Misguided Apple Intelligence ads

Apple Learning would have been not only aligned with reality but also averaged expectations and marketing materials. Learning may have led to some Intelligence. In due time.

wuming2on IronCalc – Open-Source Spreadsheet Engine

The government of Bavaria, one of the wealthiest countries of the German federation and thus of the world, tried to replace Microsoft with Linux and generally FOSS solutions. Twice.

CERN tried to replace Office with NextCloud. It is now struggling to cope with a policy reversal under Microsoft fanboys.

Both cases were also discussed here.

wuming2on IronCalc – Open-Source Spreadsheet Engine

It’s a great ambition to replace Excel and many went down this path before. Congratulations to even attempting to achieve it and going this far to do it.

Excel compatibility, when fully realized, will remove the major obstacle to adoption. Given the current stronghold Excel has on the market.

Once that is achieved do you plan to offer a transition to more modern forms of calculations as vectors and arrays formula panels together with frozen sheets of raw data and output? Thus separating logic and model.

Also when your solution adoption will have grown much larger you should learn from the experiences Bavaria and CERN went through. Microsoft stronghold more often than not has nothing to do with technical prowess.

wuming2on 'Open banking' rules will put your financial data back where it belongs

>>Enabling secure transfer or sharing of financial data will incentivize financial companies to compete for customers by providing better interest rates and customer service.

I found curious that payment processors strive to avoid or remove the cheapest options as SEPA Core DD and Instant. Banks themselves try to avoid opening payment APIs to consumers. Perhaps understandably so: every removed layer means a missed opportunity to charge for service fees.

wuming2on Remote Work and Fertility

My wife switched to remote during covid times and never went back. I recently calculated she freed around 800 hours a year. Some of it went back into working longer though. And removed the need for dry laundry, and for buying new clothing and accessories on a regular basis. Meals cooked at home and time for regular exercise are also a healthy bonus. All of her colleagues and meetings are remote so doesn’t affect performance. We still don’t plan to have children though.

wuming2on FTC's rule banning fake online reviews goes into effect

So The Shed at Dulwich could not exist on TripAdvisor US and Botto Bistro could not be punished by Yelp?

wuming2on How CERN serves 1EB of data via FUSE [video]

“newly created CERN Venture Connect programme (CVC), launched in 2023 […] In establishing CVC, CERN’s Entrepreneurship team entered discussions with Microsoft, with the aim to better leverage the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub“ [1].

Under the purview of Christopher Hartley, Director of Industry, Procurement & Knowledge Transfer (IPT) [2], Microsoft is gaining more footholds at CERN. Won’t be too far fetched to consider Mr Hartley and Ms Porcari as working together to achieve some sort of common good.

1. https://home.cern/news/news/knowledge-sharing/journey-cern-e...

2. https://german-dac.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/2022.01%2...

wuming2on How CERN serves 1EB of data via FUSE [video]

Joachim Mnich, Director for Research and Computing and her boss [4], holds the position also since January 2021 [1]. Mike Lamont, Director for Accelerators and Technology, also got the job at the same time [2]. Finally Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General, in 2019 extended her tenure for a second term “to start on 1st January 2021” [3].

So in 2019 the initiative to remove Microsoft began. With renewal and promotions taking in to effect it stopped. Interesting. Feeling a strong Microsoft US vs Munich DE vibe. With a twitch of IT.

1. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/jo...

2. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/mi...

3. https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people/biographies/fa...

4. https://german-dac.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/2022.01%2...

wuming2on How CERN serves 1EB of data via FUSE [video]

Don’t see any previous experience at Microsoft [2]. Just a self taught fan then?

Edit: “Partnership is the art of understanding shared value. In WFP we have a number of partnerships, not many, but the ones that we have are deep, are sustained, are long-term. And definitely UNICC is one of them. Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer and Director Technology Division at the WFP” [1]

United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC) is a Microsoft shop. Legit to assume, if OP statement holds true, she got the business sponsorship going while CIO at the World Food Program (WFP).

This kind of attempted executive takeover is always the strategy of a team. Who sponsored and voted for her at CERN is the real person of interest.

1. https://www.unicc.org/our-values/what-makes-us-unique/

2. https://cgnet.com/blog/former-cgnet-employee-enrica-porcari-...

wuming2on How CERN serves 1EB of data via FUSE [video]

> Unfortunately, most of that went to shit quite recently when they replaced the previous head of IT by a Microsoft fanboy(girl?) coming from outside of the scientific environment.

Painful to read so I did a short check. From a news post I don’t want to link here, but easily found searching “CERN, the famous scientific lab where the web was born, tells us why it's ditching Microsoft and helping others do the same”, direction taken in 2019 seemed quite the opposite. I am not sure how current head of IT at CERN, Enrica Porcari, fits in to the story. Insider info will be appreciated.

wuming2on Caught on camera: Satellite tracker photographs secret spacecraft

I remembered European Southern Observatory employing optical interferometry on the ground. And indeed it does: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1905/

wuming2on Plain Text Accounting (PTA)

The wheel is there already. Call librec from Lua and speed up your plain text accounting with LuaJIT.

wuming2on One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Excel (2016)

Claris FileMaker was that tool. Easy to understand and provided clear separation between data and the rest. Bundled with Mac OS so everyone used it. It is now an expensive enclave.

wuming2on Plain Text Accounting (PTA)

GNU recutils should become the standard backend. Plain text db which has a powerful albeit simple records format, proper ids, enforces constraints, removes need of silly type conventions better defined in fields with %type, built in encryption. Foreign keys. Auto generated fields. Regex.

No one in their right of mind will want to manually edit the data store holding critical accounting data. 99% of the times should be ETL with the odd visual check for inspiration.

wuming2on Techniques I use to create a great user experience for shell scripts

~1k lines of bash with recutils for data persistency and dc for simple math. Was not quick to solve for me, custom invoices .fodt to .pdf to email, but I got it done. Shell is the only other scripting language I am familiar with other than Ruby. And I am worse at Ruby.

Sometimes options are limited to what you know already.

wuming2on Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

> Complexity is the enemy of progress.

You are confounding the environment we are part of and the so called “free market”. Also interests of titans of the industry, the “free market”, and general interest of the population. Mixups like these are common in developing countries.