Hacker News: Decabytes

New comment by Decabytes in "USD Purchasing Power in Real Time Since 2000"

Decabytes — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:42:18 +0000

I like this visualization, but I think there is a harder to quantify layer under this. While someone making 50k a year in 2000, would need to make 100k in 2026 for the same economic power, it is actually much worse.

In the year 2000, there were just less products and services then there are now. And the products that did exist were generally more durable and repairable than today. And in many cases, products that exist now but didn’t back then have reasonable substitutes (like renting or buying movies, since you don’t have Netflix).

I would even take it one step further and say that the ways you had to interact with those substitutes were healthier and more social than what we have now.

New comment by Decabytes in "XML is a cheap DSL"

Decabytes — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 13:14:59 +0000

S-expressions are a cheap dsl too. I use it in my desktop browser runtime that is powered by wasm that I’m developing As the “HTML”^1 and CSS^2 in fact it works so well I use it also reused it to do the styling for html exports in my markup language designed to fight documentation drift^3.

1. https://gitlab.com/canvasui/canvasui-engine/-/blame/main/exa...

2. https://gitlab.com/canvasui/canvasui-engine/-/blob/main/exam...

3. https://gitlab.com/sablelang/libcuidoc

New comment by Decabytes in "Can I run AI locally?"

Decabytes — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 03:19:13 +0000

Does anyone use the super tiny models for anything ? Like in the 2billion or lower parameter level?

New comment by Decabytes in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"

Decabytes — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:23:53 +0000

I’m working on an R7R7-small scheme called Sable. The focus is on having good Windows support, vscode support, Lsp and Debug adapter protocol support. It is closer to SBCL and is image based, and builds with just the platforms native c compiler

New comment by Decabytes in "Notes on writing Rust-based Wasm"

Decabytes — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:47:25 +0000

Yes wasm is basically a rust thing at this point unfortunately. And if you want to write a wasi preview 0.2 component, you need a bunch of rust tooling to do it properly

Markiplier discovering the value of On Premise Servers [video]

Decabytes — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 14:14:41 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EM8NWE7_xFQ

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47287827

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by Decabytes in "AI and the Ship of Theseus"

Decabytes — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 04:44:30 +0000

The existence of permissive licenses like BSD or MIT does not show that copyleft was unimportant.Those licenses allowed code to remain open, but they also allowed it to be absorbed into proprietary products.

The GPL’s significance was that it changed the default outcome. At a time when software was overwhelmingly proprietary, it created a mechanism that required improvements to remain available to users and developers downstream.

Gcc was a massive deal for the reasons why compilers are free now today for example

New comment by Decabytes in "MacBook Neo"

Decabytes — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:12:27 +0000

This would be a great Asahi Linux target, but I know that group has a lot on their plate with the MacBooks pros already

New comment by Decabytes in "Gemini 3.1 Pro"

Decabytes — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:53:17 +0000

Any tips for working with Gemini through its chat interface? I’ve worked with ChatGPT and Claude and I’ve generally found them pleasant to work with, but everytime I use Gemini the output is straight dookie

New comment by Decabytes in "Gemini 3 Deep Think"

Decabytes — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 20:56:29 +0000

Gemini has always felt like someone who was book smart to me. It knows a lot of things. But if you ask it do anything that is offscript it completely falls apart

New comment by Decabytes in "I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed"

Decabytes — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:24:09 +0000

I too have felt these feelings (though I'm much younger than the author). I think as I've grown older I have to remind myself

1. I shouldn't be so tied to what other people think of me (craftsman, programmer, low level developer)

2. I shouldn't measure my satisfaction by comparing my work to others'. Quality still matters especially in shared systems, but my responsibility is to the standards I choose to hold, not to whether others meet them. Plus there are still community of people that still care about this (handmade network, openbsd devs, languages like Odin) that I can be part of it I want to

3. If my values are not being met either in my work or personal life I need to take ownership of that myself. The magic is still there, I just have to go looking for it

New comment by Decabytes in "UEFI Bindings for JavaScript"

Decabytes — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:06:33 +0000

I’m always amazed and slightly envious of what programming languages with large developer bases can do. I mean if a language is Turing complete it can do anything, but JavaScript takes this to the extreme.

Mind you I never said anything about quality or performance, obviously doing everything in JavaScript comes with it’s own issues but if you were to say that someone got JavaScript running in the Linux kernel as a POC I wouldn’t even be surprised

New comment by Decabytes in "Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly"

Decabytes — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 04:01:27 +0000

I wish Guile had better windows support

New comment by Decabytes in "We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler"

Decabytes — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 09:38:25 +0000

For me the real test will be building a c++ compiler

AI is just the latest Monoculture

Decabytes — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:59:16 +0000

Article URL: https://www.deusinmachina.net/p/ai-is-just-the-latest-monoculture

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901078

Points: 23

# Comments: 0

New comment by Decabytes in "PlayStation 2 Recompilation Project Is Absolutely Incredible"

Decabytes — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 04:51:40 +0000

I hope the steam machine 2.0 can be a good target for developers for years to come like the ps2 was

New comment by Decabytes in "Still using Firefox – but not because of its vision"

Decabytes — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 12:28:30 +0000

I’m using Zen which is based on Firefox and I have been enjoying the experience

New comment by Decabytes in "Python is not a great language for data science"

Decabytes — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 17:27:15 +0000

Python pays the bills. If it was up to me I'd use a different language, but there is no denying that its got a strong story in just about every field now. As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that programming languages are vehicles for solving computer based problems, and I've learned to find joy in solving those problems in whatever language my company/project is using.

But in my personal projects, my favorite language to use it Dart.

New comment by Decabytes in "Java 25 officially released"

Decabytes — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 19:44:52 +0000

My biggest Issue with Java, is that it isn't streamlined. There are multiple implementations of the jdk that could be used, Many different build systems, etc. The C# ecosystem is smaller for sure, but it is much more streamlined

Ask HN: What Architectural Decisions Make You Prefer Windows Dev over Linux?

Decabytes — Thu, 22 May 2025 18:21:28 +0000

What specific architectural decisions or features in Windows do you find more appealing or advantageous compared to Linux? Whether it's about system performance, compatibility, user interface design, or any other technical aspect?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44065051

Points: 4

# Comments: 5