Hacker News: SamWhited

Petition, recognition of open-source work

SamWhited — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:32:28 +0000

Article URL: https://mixxx.org/news/2026-04-21-petition-ehrenamt/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847884

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by SamWhited in "curl > /dev/sda: How I made a Linux distro that runs wget | dd"

SamWhited — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:40:44 +0000

Reminds me of the first company I worked for out of school.

We had a big drive with the source of truth image used to boot all our machines on it, and we added rsync to the init image. When each machine booted init would rsync everything from the storage box to the local machine. We'd keep the storage machine up to date and when we wanted to update other machines in the fleet we'd just do a reboot and it would sync up the latest files (provisioning for whatever each machine was supposed to do happened later, can't remember how that was handled now). The storage machine was running ZFS so we also took a snapshot before doing any rolling reboots, so if anything did go wrong you could just revert to the previous snapshot and reboot again as long as you didn't break the init image.

Sounds jank saying it out loud, but I don't remember it ever causing us any problems.

New comment by SamWhited in "The Perils of ISBN"

SamWhited — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 22:34:29 +0000

They actually have a (very new, still alpha, probably not a ton of data yet) database for books:

https://bookbrainz.org/about

I haven't looked into what their schema is like, but if it's anything like Musicbrainz it will be pretty comprehensive and easy to pull the data you want out of!

Mixxx 2.5.4 Released

SamWhited — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 12:23:11 +0000

Article URL: https://mixxx.org/news/2025-12-14-mixxx-2_5_4-released/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46273563

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by SamWhited in "Microsoft won't let me pay a $24 bill, blocking thousands in Azure spending"

SamWhited — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 20:10:15 +0000

Doesn't help fix your problem, but I have a similar issue with Google Cloud Platform. Years ago I had a free workplace account that I had some small company emails and what not on, and apparently at some point over the years I setup a GCP project or two. Fast forward to the modern day and I haven't used the account in years so I decide to delete it. As the admin I hit the delete account button and it complains that I have services still active, so I go disable all the services which includes removing the workplace subsccription with all my billing info. I then hit delete again, at which point it complains that I have a project on GCP (not active, just created). So I go to delete it... which requires having a (paid) workspace account. So I can't delete the unused project without paying to re-activate the workspaces account I deleted, and I can't delete the whole account without deleting the GCP project. And of course Google has literally no support, so I just have a Google account hanging out there somewhere, probably with vaguely sensitive information from years ago on it, waiting for someone to guess the password or otherwise get into it.

Mixxx 2.5.3 Released

SamWhited — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 11:29:41 +0000

Article URL: https://mixxx.org/news/2025-09-03-mixxx-2_5_3-released/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45114505

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

How Does Timecode Vinyl Work? (Pt. 3)

SamWhited — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 14:09:18 +0000

Article URL: https://mixxx.org/news/2025-08-27-dvs-internals-pt3/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45039965

Points: 15

# Comments: 10

New comment by SamWhited in "The new shape of Mixxx 3.0 – Open Source DJing"

SamWhited — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 14:50:38 +0000

Also if there's a tiny network blip before buffering is complete everything goes to hell. I don't get streaming DJing in general, seems like something serious DJ software should avoid (unless they're targeting the casual party crowd, which is fine)

New comment by SamWhited in "The new shape of Mixxx 3.0 – Open Source DJing"

SamWhited — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 14:13:20 +0000

Every user who uses a screen reader has been asking for this. Also, though I can't speak to this personally, apparently the theming engine is much easier to maintain in QML which is a big time saver for the devs.

New comment by SamWhited in "The new shape of Mixxx 3.0 – Open Source DJing"

SamWhited — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 14:09:13 +0000

FYI this is not a new major release, this is work starting on a new major release. At least two more versions of 2.x are planned and 3.0 is not yet actually scheduled.

May not have been what you meant, but I wanted to clarify for others reading this comment: 3.0 is quite a ways off.

New comment by SamWhited in "The new shape of Mixxx 3.0 – Open Source DJing"

SamWhited — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 14:06:33 +0000

FWIW I've found mixxx to be much more stable than serato or traktor (commercial stuff). I can't say whether they focus on bugs or features like your criticism suggests.

The new shape of Mixxx 3.0 – Open Source DJing

SamWhited — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 21:29:30 +0000

Article URL: https://mixxx.org/news/2025-08-06-qml-project/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44818077

Points: 104

# Comments: 35

Mixxx 2.5.2 Released

SamWhited — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:26:08 +0000

Article URL: https://mixxx.org/news/2025-06-13-mixxx-2_5_2-released/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44330496

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Cutting the Cord: Addressing the movement's dependence on Big Tech [pdf]

SamWhited — Thu, 15 May 2025 22:45:32 +0000

Article URL: https://mayfirst.coop/files/cutting-the-cord.en.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44000120

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by SamWhited in "A community-led fork of Organic Maps"

SamWhited — Mon, 12 May 2025 12:51:46 +0000

Organic Maps is a way to distribute OSM data, but it also has a lot more than just the OSM maps it uses (code to curate and collect those maps into downloadable packs, code to display them, code to do routing, design assets and resources for the app, documentation, etc.)

You're correct that the maps are OSM though, you can always contribute to OSM and that will also help Organic Maps (or whatever new community based map project comes out!)

Mixxx 2.5.1 Released

SamWhited — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 11:19:01 +0000

Article URL: https://mixxx.org/news/2025-04-27-mixxx-2_5_1-released/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43819967

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Learn bicycle physics with interactive diagrams

SamWhited — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 12:23:58 +0000

Article URL: https://ciechanow.ski/bicycle/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43035181

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by SamWhited in "Mixxx: GPL DJ Software"

SamWhited — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 17:30:13 +0000

Even if there's not a mapping Mixxx has a "MIDI Learning Wizard" (I forget what they call it) where, assuming it speaks MIDI, you can plug it up, choose an action, and then move the control for that action and it will figure out how to wire it up. For simple configurations that don't require scripting (ie. no setting LEDs on the controller or what not) you can get a fully functional setup for a controller Mixxx has no knowledge of without writing any JavaScript or XML at all!

New comment by SamWhited in "Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?"

SamWhited — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 12:28:40 +0000

Find definition of Foo():

  grep -IR "func Foo("

Show uses of Foo():

  grep -IR "Foo("

Hmm, what were the methods in that field again? Open a split pane in Vim and scroll down in the second pane to where the field is defined. Also I pretty much just have the standard libraries of my most commonly used programming languages more or less memorized and keep the docs open in a separate window alongside as well for when I don't. And of course in a sensible language that actually gives you feedback (I'm aware some languages are more or less strict about this and it's not an option for everyone): when I try to build it, it will fail, indicating that I've done something wrong. This is okay, use the build loop and embrace the build errors.

*EDIT:* updating to address "CoPilot" specifically, as I don't think it's the same as the other things on your list. I have reviewed a lot of submissions that were written with various AIs and all of them without fail, this is not hyperboly, all of them were just bad (I'm sure someone will say that if you just use it for a 1 line error tweak it will be fine and what could go wrong there? And sure, probably, but if that's the case you're not getting any benefit from them so that's not what I'm interested in). The code was worse than a human would have written it, there were subtle bugs that no one had noticed because they were trusting the AI, etc. just don't use them. They're not ready, they may be speeding you up, but they're slowing down whomever is reviewing your code. It's a serious disservice.

New comment by SamWhited in ""Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers""

SamWhited — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 15:56:35 +0000

I had actually forgotten about this, I had a friend who had the exact same thing happen (dropped because "you have to use real names" or whatever, but they did use their real name, and it wasn't even anything suspicious or weird [not that that should matter], they just have a vaguely common for Eastern Europe sounding name :S)