Hacker News: auxym

New comment by auxym in "Whirlpool Washer Transmission Repair (2007)"

auxym — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 12:38:16 +0000

I had a very similar washer I think, from the 90s, and it eventually started exhibiting the exact same symptom (sometime in 2020 during the COVID crisis). I followed the same process and the blog author, but when I opened the transmission, the problem was immediately apparent: the large "spin gear" was plastic and was completely worn down, the teeth did not engage at all anymore with its driving gear.

Unfortunately, I found Maytag did not sell any separate parts for the transmission, only the whole transmission, for somewhere around 300$, which was more than the 25-ish years old washer was worth to me. People frequently bash manufacturers for using plastic parts like, as a mechanical engineer, I think there may be valid reasons for the design choice, but knowing the part is subject to wear, it should absolutely be made available as a spare.

I ended buying a new washer, from a very limited selection of models that were available in the summer of 2020 shortage of just about everything. I gave away the old one for free, the guy who picked it up needed the motor to repair another machine, I hope he was able to use the parts to keep it running for a long time.

New comment by auxym in "Bad benchmarks and evals: Senior SWE-Bench, napkin math, and winter tires"

auxym — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:51:38 +0000

Quebec, Canada mandates winter tires between December 1st and March 15th.

(But the winters are cold).

New comment by auxym in "Gpiozero Flow"

auxym — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:40:05 +0000

I get the feeling that labview was very big in the 00s but has been losing a lot of steam in the last 10 years or so, maybe because of failure to modernize. Labview today feels and looks like a 90s app, contrary to eg. modern Simulink.

FWIW I work in Simulink quite a bit, and "code blocks" (matlab function / matlab system) tend be used quite liberally in my models. Having the visual presentation of data flow is quite nice though for the kinds of things Simulink is used for, mostly physical modeling of electrical or mechanical systems.

New comment by auxym in "NimConf 2026: Dates Announced, Registrations Open"

auxym — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:02:52 +0000

There are ocasionally Nim talks at FOSDEM.

New comment by auxym in "PCB devboard the size of a USB-C plug"

auxym — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 13:46:42 +0000

They had stopped for a while because they were transitioning away from using Paypal as a processor. A few weeks, maybe a month or so tops? I had to switch to JLC PCB for an order back in January, because they didn't support any viable payment method for me in Canada (tried to make a payoneer account, they don't do business in Canada).

But I just checked and it seems that they now accept CCs again.

New comment by auxym in "Poor Deming never stood a chance"

auxym — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 15:18:58 +0000

In case anyone is interested, I enjoyed the book "Turn the Ship Around!" by L. David Marquet, about management lessons applied by the author who was a US Navy submarine captain. It does very much emphasize giving trust, responsibility and accountability to workers (or enlisted personnel, in this case).

New comment by auxym in "Prism"

auxym — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:25:21 +0000

Agreed. Tex/Latex is very old tech. Error recovery and messages is very bad. Developing new macros in Tex is about as fun as you expect developing in a 70s-era language to be (ie probably similar to cobol and old fortran).

I haven't tried it yet but Typst seems like a promising replacement: https://typst.app/

New comment by auxym in "The C-Shaped Hole in Package Management"

auxym — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:07:55 +0000

uv has mostly solved the python issue. IME it's dependency resolution is fast and just works. Packages are hard linked from a global cache, which also greatly reduces storage requirements when you work with multiple projects.

New comment by auxym in ""Anyone else out there vibe circuit-building?""

auxym — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 16:09:47 +0000

I mean, he absolutely knew it was going to burn up. But I have no trouble believing that such a circuit was designed by AI.

New comment by auxym in "The 500k-ton typo: Why data center copper math doesn't add up"

auxym — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 14:16:15 +0000

It's because aluminium has a higher coefficient of thermal expansion. It expands and shrinks more as it heats, and as those cycles add up it tends to loosen electrical connections. Loose connections have higher resistance, heat up and can cause fires.

That said, there is no reason we can't design better connectors that can withstand the expansion and shrinkage cycles, like spring loaded or spring cage connectors.

New comment by auxym in "Developing a high level language over Zig"

auxym — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 16:25:00 +0000

Just an idea but Nim seems to have the features you mentioned. Nim "transpiles" to C, and can even be compiled via `zig cc` (which is an interace to clang). If you really want to, maybe you could make a zig backend for Nim?

New comment by auxym in "Show HN: Free and local browser tool for designing gear models for 3D printing"

auxym — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 19:51:42 +0000

As long as you keep the module and pressure angle the same, the gears should be compatible.

New comment by auxym in "Show HN: Free and local browser tool for designing gear models for 3D printing"

auxym — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 19:50:37 +0000

This is great! Any chance you could add STEP export also? It would facilitate importing into CAD software to customize the gear, eg to add a custom hub.

New comment by auxym in "A Guide to Magnetizing N48 Magnets in Ansys Maxwell"

auxym — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:36:21 +0000

Typically, company would pay for a week or so of training if you don't have previous experience with the software.

Once again, this isn't a huge expense compared to the license cost + the engineer's salary.

Then for ongoing support/questions you get the support I mentioned including the onsite support engineer.

New comment by auxym in "Go away Python"

auxym — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 13:30:08 +0000

uv uses a global cache but hardlinks the dependencies for your script into a temp venv that is only for your script, so its still pretty fast.

The Death of the Draftsman

auxym — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:44:26 +0000

Article URL: https://tecnetinc.com/The%20Death%20of%20the%20Draftsman.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46398001

Points: 14

# Comments: 1

New comment by auxym in "A Guide to Magnetizing N48 Magnets in Ansys Maxwell"

auxym — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 13:00:15 +0000

Ansys also costs 5 digits per seat per year.

My experience working at large size company that paid those sort of sums for a different FEA software is that we got an "application engineer" assigned to us to answer any questions we had and provide needed documentation if anything was needed. He actually sat and worked from our own offices one day per week.

New comment by auxym in "Put a ring on it: a lock-free MPMC ring buffer"

auxym — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 14:33:08 +0000

Also this Nim library: https://github.com/nim-works/loony

Which is based on: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9490347

New comment by auxym in "Why we built Lightpanda in Zig"

auxym — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 16:24:25 +0000

Also wasn't the D compiler proprietary and a paid product for a long time after its initial release?

No judgement against trying to monetize valuable work, but in this day and nearly everyone expects free and OSS compilers/interpreters and core tooling.

New comment by auxym in "Thoughts on Go vs. Rust vs. Zig"

auxym — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 01:53:44 +0000

> it is like C in that you can fit the whole language in your head.

Sure, you can fit all of C in your head, including all the obscure footguns that can lead to UB: https://gist.github.com/Earnestly/7c903f481ff9d29a3dd1

And other fun things like aliasing rules and type punning.