Hacker News: WillDaSilva

The secrets of the Shinkansen

WillDaSilva — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 06:41:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-secret-behind-japans-railways

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762060

Points: 159

# Comments: 156

Social Media Without Socializing

WillDaSilva — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 19:36:35 +0000

Article URL: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/19/billionaire-solipsism/#sirius-cybernetics

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46683450

Points: 10

# Comments: 1

New comment by WillDaSilva in "Go ahead, self-host Postgres"

WillDaSilva — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 16:06:06 +0000

It's pretty easy these days to spin up a local Postgres container. Might as well use it for prototyping too, and save yourself the hassle of switching later.

Pre-PEP: Rust for CPython

WillDaSilva — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 19:46:14 +0000

Article URL: https://discuss.python.org/t/pre-pep-rust-for-cpython/104906

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46196712

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by WillDaSilva in "GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst"

WillDaSilva — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 13:33:43 +0000

There's a repository setting you can enable to prevent actions from running unless they have their version pinned to a SHA digest. This setting applies transitively, so while you can't force your dependencies to use SHA pinning for their dependencies, you can block any workflow from running if it doesn't.

The Right-wing schism over property taxes

WillDaSilva — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 22:22:15 +0000

Article URL: https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/the-right-wing-schism-over-property

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45998652

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by WillDaSilva in "Nix Derivation Madness"

WillDaSilva — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 05:23:21 +0000

Pulumi may be what you're looking for. Same concept as Terraform, and many of its provider libraries are just wrappers around Terraform provider libraries, but you can use a variety of common programming languages to declare your desired state, rather than HCL.

Tech PACS Are Closing in on the Almonds

WillDaSilva — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 15:20:37 +0000

Article URL: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/tech-pacs-are-closing-in-on-the-almonds

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45682875

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Canadian Army launches bold modernization and restructuring initiative

WillDaSilva — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 13:17:53 +0000

Article URL: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/maple-leaf/defence/2025/10/canadian-army-launches-bold-modernization-and-restructuring-initiative.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45548914

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by WillDaSilva in "Recreating the US/* time zone situation"

WillDaSilva — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 12:14:25 +0000

Timezones are not static, and actually change somewhat frequently. A program that converts any given future time to UTC risks becoming incorrect about when that time is due to political changes that affect the timezone the given future time was in.

New comment by WillDaSilva in "Not paying with cash"

WillDaSilva — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 02:21:44 +0000

I was able to get a Pasmo card as an alternative to Suica, and it was rechargable with cash. I also did the same with an Icoca card. I didn't need a Japanese address in either case. I just bought the cards from machines at a couple of the larger metro stations. They could be reloaded with cash at any metro station.

New comment by WillDaSilva in "Replacing a cache service with a database"

WillDaSilva — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 23:50:43 +0000

I fully agree. The rate limits are how you control the behaviour of the clients. My suggestion of leaving caching to the clients, which they may want to do in order to avoid hitting the rate limit.

New comment by WillDaSilva in "Replacing a cache service with a database"

WillDaSilva — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 21:42:56 +0000

There are times when a cache is appropriate, but I often find that it's more appropriate for the cache to be on the side of whoever is making all the requests. This isn't applicable when that is e.g. millions of different clients all making their own requests, but rather when we're talking about one internal service putting heavy load on another one.

The team with the demanding service can add a cache that's appropriate for their needs, and will be motivated to do so in order to avoid hitting the rate limit (or reduce costs, which should be attributed to them).

New comment by WillDaSilva in "Eliminating JavaScript cold starts on AWS Lambda"

WillDaSilva — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 12:31:09 +0000

This is exciting to see. I run some latency sensitive code on Lambda with the Node runtime, so cold starts are troublesome. I hope I'll be able to use this one it's in beta or fully released.

Civil Service: A Victim or a Villain?

WillDaSilva — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 11:47:33 +0000

Article URL: https://www.250bpm.com/p/civil-service-a-victim-or-a-villain

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44823257

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by WillDaSilva in "The future is not self-hosted"

WillDaSilva — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 12:48:18 +0000

Distributing your backup over the spare storage of many other NAS servers is the main idea behind Storj, which provides a remarkably cheap price per TB per month.

The State of Zero Trust Report 2025 – Tailscale

WillDaSilva — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 23:04:35 +0000

Article URL: https://tailscale.com/resources/report/zero-trust-report-2025

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44664967

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by WillDaSilva in "The $25k car is going extinct?"

WillDaSilva — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 04:29:30 +0000

It is done, albeit rarely due to how expensive and complex an operation it is. My friend's mother moved her house a few kilometers across some farmland. It was a rather large 2 story tall house, with a basement. It had to be moved to a plot that had a similar foundation and basement prepared for it.

$300 Ukrainian drones vs. $100M Russian bombers

WillDaSilva — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 21:31:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.gzeromedia.com/300-ukrainian-drones-vs-100-million-russian-bombers

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44195991

Points: 17

# Comments: 1

New comment by WillDaSilva in "How Georgists Valued land in the 1900's"

WillDaSilva — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 13:24:48 +0000

If they sell their land, then presumably they'd receive a substantial windfall with which they could buy a new cheaper place, or rent. If they don't receive a substantial windfall, then the amount they were paying for the LVT must've been low.