Hacker News: chubs

New comment by chubs in "For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides"

chubs — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:22:55 +0000

Layman, so bear with me. I'm wondering where they got the amino acids and proteins from? I was under the impressino that cells needed them to be "homochiral" to function, and the artificial 'built from scratch' amino acids are 50:50 of each chirality. In my reading of the NYTimes simplification of this story they mention that the genes were "borrowed from a virus and the ubiquitous microbe Escherichia coli". Mainly just curious how far they managed to get to the 'from scratch' goal. Or is what they've done a bit more of an assembly of bits and pieces? Cheers all.

New comment by chubs in "India's surprise baby bust"

chubs — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 07:50:19 +0000

I go to church. Everyone has 3 kids. Thanks for bringing it up!

New comment by chubs in "India's surprise baby bust"

chubs — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 07:49:11 +0000

I remember reading that in certain areas/communities in the USA, it's pretty close to 50:50.

New comment by chubs in "Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra"

chubs — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:34:03 +0000

What if computers simply rendered 300dpi PNG files and sent that to the printer?

New comment by chubs in "Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit"

chubs — Thu, 14 May 2026 23:54:42 +0000

Oh good point, I didn't think of transitive dependencies. A lot of languages i've worked with unfortunately have a 'do not check in the lockfile' culture, and a common 'blow away the lockfile when the package manager gets stuck' workflow, so that does concern me. Perhaps Cargo is better than average though, and the lockfile never needs nuking, providing this safety. This sounds like a good reason to check in the lockfile! Thanks for the response.

New comment by chubs in "Docker images are hundreds of MB; a full game engine compiles to 35MB WASM"

chubs — Tue, 12 May 2026 12:52:11 +0000

I recently ported an old brickout clone I made to Sokol (a C header-based game library). The whole executable is 500kb (macos), surely could be smaller with eg symbols stripped, and it has a whole 3d engine (not that i'm using much more than one custom shader to blit the screen, but it is using 3d engine infrastructure nonetheless). I was impressed that in this day and age such efficiency is still fashionable in some corners. The whole game is about 2mb zipped. Are shameless plugs allowed? If you're curious have a peek! github.com/chrishulbert/brickwarrior

New comment by chubs in "Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit"

chubs — Fri, 08 May 2026 04:54:19 +0000

To mitigate supply chain attacks like this, I've taken to specifying exact versions in my Rust cargo.toml, and when importing new crates, select the previous-to-latest version. Is this a reasonable mitigation? It bugs me that Swift deprecates the concept of specifying exact versions, it actively pushes you towards semver which leaves the door open to this.

New comment by chubs in "A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)"

chubs — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 02:18:16 +0000

"All I could think about was how bored I would eventually get" I used to wonder this. I read the religious answer to this relies on the concept of infinitude: what if an infinite god can invent an infinite number of exciting new... things to do?

New comment by chubs in "A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)"

chubs — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 02:09:28 +0000

The traditional concept of an 'embodied' resurrection (as opposed to ghosts playing harps) makes me lean towards: yes (eg the gut is part of the body). Who knows though, it's a fun question!

New comment by chubs in "A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)"

chubs — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 02:07:09 +0000

I believe you resolve it by the concept of spirit/body dualism, where your body/soul degenerates but the spirit is still fine.

New comment by chubs in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

chubs — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 09:19:05 +0000

Holy moly, that guy in the reddit post needs to see a dermatologist asap and figure out why their skin is emitting acid.

New comment by chubs in "US private credit defaults hit record 9.2% in 2025, Fitch says"

chubs — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 04:57:37 +0000

I don't understand: Who's lending the $2B in situations like this? Wouldn't they be worried that the above situation (company gutted, then going down the drain) is going to play out and they won't get their $2B back? Or is that the root problem with this whole YC submission: banks are being hit by defaults because of this exact problem?

New comment by chubs in "BMW's Newest "Innovation" Is a Logo-Shaped Middle Finger to Right to Repair"

chubs — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:40:38 +0000

BMW resale values make it very clear: these cars are actively hostile (in many many ways) to their owners the second they go out of warranty. Pity, their interiors are lovely. In the long term, is this strategy going to work out for them? I won't buy another one. I know... anecdata :)

New comment by chubs in "Hyundai Paywalls Brake Pads replacement on Ioniq 5 N"

chubs — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 10:44:47 +0000

I believe this is already what happens with Volkswagen - recently I had my brakes replaced by an independent mechanic, and they had to charge me $50ish for some software lock as part of the process.

New comment by chubs in "Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'"

chubs — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 03:48:48 +0000

Is it worth mentioning that there are almost countless Chinese EV brands nowadays? I wonder if Apple was really trying. I’m sure it’s difficult, of course, but it seems like every week there’s a new car manufacturer. To quote Clarkson ‘how hard could it be’ ;)

New comment by chubs in "Show HN: A CSS-Only Terrain Generator"

chubs — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 21:04:33 +0000

Also reminded me a lot of simcity 2000. Congrats, it's very neat!

New comment by chubs in "Kirigami-inspired parachute falls on target"

chubs — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 01:35:40 +0000

I wonder if this would be suitable for drone delivery of small groceries, to keep the drone high enough that people don’t have to hear the noise.

New comment by chubs in "$2 WeAct Display FS adds a 0.96-inch USB information display to your computer"

chubs — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 05:13:14 +0000

Anyone know if this or similar devices can display information sent from some code I write in, say, rust without drivers or libraries (eg should not be too complicated to write to) on macOS? Could be a lot of fun to be had!

New comment by chubs in "I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers"

chubs — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 06:04:39 +0000

I largely agree with you. I used to work at Cochlear (hearing aid implants) - their "headphone" equivalents actually had neatly replaceable batteries 10 years ago, it's doable! Larger than airpods, to be sure, however i'm sure Apple could shrink them nicely. But... would anyone want the ability to replace batteries? I wouldn't know. I suspect most people misplace them before the batteries go bad.

New comment by chubs in "Why do we keep gravitating toward complexity?"

chubs — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 23:24:41 +0000

I have a bee in my bonnet about this software complexity issue. Perhaps it takes large amounts of humility to accept that your job is fairly mundane, and only needs simple code to get the job done? I mean: who wants to turn spanners on a Toyota when you can imagine you're working for NASA, and introduce fascinating new paradigms to your work, that ultimately add complexity. I suspect that's why i've joined so many teams that have tied themselves up in knots of un-grok-able indirection. Another theory I have is that people encounter bad code, and misdiagnose it, identifying the (wrong) solution as needing a big complex architecture.