Hacker News: cornstalks

New comment by cornstalks in "New Apple TV 4K"

cornstalks — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 15:37:56 +0000

Is this the first Apple device to list VP9 in its tech specs? https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/specs/

New comment by cornstalks in "Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%"

cornstalks — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:27:42 +0000

TFA implies the issue is land owners won’t allow it:

> But beavers can only thrive if landowners allow them to.

New comment by cornstalks in "Go 1.27"

cornstalks — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 02:15:29 +0000

I’d love to see how that compares to zmij: https://github.com/dtolnay/dtoa-benchmark

New comment by cornstalks in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

cornstalks — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 04:47:02 +0000

As far as I know HTTP 1.0 doesn't have a standards-track RFC (HTTP 1.1 and later do). JSON and HTTPS do indeed have standards-track RFCs, but I stand by my original wording that their first informational RFCs were "extremely important."

New comment by cornstalks in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

cornstalks — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 03:13:45 +0000

> which notably is not seeking recommendation status!

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but some extremely important RFCs are only on the “informational” track. RFCs 1945 (HTTP 1.0), 4627 (JSON), 2818 (HTTPS), etc.

New comment by cornstalks in "Atomic Force Microscope [video]"

cornstalks — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 14:40:23 +0000

This is an advertisement, but it's one of the few I actually enjoy watching, and it suggests a track is "2500 times smaller than a human hair" which puts an upper bound on the size of a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXs_9OXRnQo

This doesn't answer your question but your question made me think of this and I thought I'd share for anyone else.

New comment by cornstalks in "Zig: All Package Management Functionality Moved from Compiler to Build System"

cornstalks — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 21:50:19 +0000

How would you do it, then? Sandboxing a project's build.zig via Wasm (and the various dependencies's build.zig files) seems like a great improvement to me and is how I would personally try to sandbox the build process.

New comment by cornstalks in "Show HN: Oak – Git alternative designed for agents"

cornstalks — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:32:10 +0000

A PhD is a Doctor of Philosophy, so unless that PhD has been invalidated he is in fact a doctor. I don't know his personal preferences so perhaps he doesn't like to be referred to as a doctor (based solely on what you're saying). But there was nothing factually incorrect about the poster saying "Dr. Hipp."

New comment by cornstalks in "Show HN: Oak – Git alternative designed for agents"

cornstalks — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:29:01 +0000

He earned a PhD…

New comment by cornstalks in "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs"

cornstalks — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:27:44 +0000

x265 is an encoder, not a decoder. Also, being open source doesn't matter here: an open source library, even with a patent grant, doesn't give you a license to someone else's patents.

New comment by cornstalks in "Ask HN: Will programmers write more efficient code during the memory shortage?"

cornstalks — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 23:16:47 +0000

Some programmers will write more efficient code. At my $dayjob (one of the big tech companies) we're already planning a major goal next year of optimizing server code to reduce RAM requirements, and this is directly in response to the crunch.

In practice I expect most optimizations will come from "stop doing stupid stuff" and not "use fancy advanced algorithms." But that's a cynical perspective so don't be cynical like me.

New comment by cornstalks in "Midjourney Medical"

cornstalks — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 04:20:59 +0000

> Reducing radiation from CT scans is a noble cause on its own

Is it? Linear No Threshold has largely been rejected at this point. https://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/early/2024/06/21/jnumed....

New comment by cornstalks in "Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time"

cornstalks — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:22:07 +0000

> like landmines

Boy do I have news for you about the use of landmines in the Ukraine war…

New comment by cornstalks in "Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026"

cornstalks — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 23:55:28 +0000

The most difficult part is acquiring the necessary domain specific knowledge, including what your AHJ changed from the national codes. But yes, once you know everything it’s all pretty straightforward stuff.

New comment by cornstalks in "Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026"

cornstalks — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:37:42 +0000

No, you also need to calculate the voltage drop over your distance to show to minimum wire sizing, and the voltage and power levels at the ASHRAE minimum temperature, the current level at 156.25% over the wiring at the ASHRAE max temperature to compute the temperature adjusted resistance and show that your wiring meets minimum spec, etc.

It’s not too hard to actually do the computations. But there is a ton to learn. I installed my own 14.85 kW system last year, with batteries, and I spent hundreds of hours just researching everything. I know I went overkill, but the hardest part of the project was just getting up to speed on all the requirements to meet code.

Someday I’ll write up my entire experience and share my site plan I used for permitting in the hopes it will help someone else. But doing solar right is a nontrivial investment for a newbie (like me).

New comment by cornstalks in "Zig: Build System Reworked"

cornstalks — Sat, 30 May 2026 15:11:48 +0000

No, I’m saying that it’s how I like to tinker. Others have their own ways of tinkering that are just as valid!

I personally think the optimization challenge is fun. I like digging in to low level stuff, reviewing the assembly dumps and processor pipeline architectures. I fail or give up most of the time, but I enjoy learning in the process.

I’m just trying to show how Zig fits my tinkering well, since you said you can’t see how Zig would ever be a good fit for tinkering. I’m not saying it’s a good fit for all forms of tinkering.

New comment by cornstalks in "Zig: Build System Reworked"

cornstalks — Sat, 30 May 2026 13:53:53 +0000

When I want to tinker it’s usually because I want to make something faster than anyone else has done. Does that help illustrate why some might prefer to tinker in Zig, and why your definition of tinker seems a little narrow?

New comment by cornstalks in "Bijou64: A variable-length integer encoding"

cornstalks — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:10:05 +0000

It allows you to fill in padding in a buffer. For example, all data in a buffer will be interpreted by a downstream system, and someone pre-calculated the size of that buffer. Rather than encode everything twice (once to figure out the exact size needed, and a second time to actually populate the buffer) the buffer size was calculated using foreknowledge of how many values would be written to that buffer and then just pessimistically assuming all of them are max-size so writing will never fail. Another situation is when you're rewriting part of an already-encoded file. If you want to change a bit of payload then using padding bytes gives you more flexibility so you can do that without having to do any memcpy into a new buffer.

It's uncommon but I've definitely seen it done (with media containers like Matroska, not actually LEB128) in extremely high-throughput systems that can't spare any cycles.

New comment by cornstalks in "Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained"

cornstalks — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:16:10 +0000

SQLite is arguably the most widely deployed database in the world. It also has its roots in government/defense contracting so it was built with navigating that kind of red tape in mind.

Most OSS projects simply don’t have that kind of weight or discipline to follow SQLite’s footsteps.

New comment by cornstalks in "Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained"

cornstalks — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:51:41 +0000

PGBackRest was sponsored by some specific organizations, but not owned by them, and PGBackRest was not their product.

SQLite is in a whole different league when it comes to funding, corporate support, etc. There are commercial contracts directly tied to its ongoing support and development. As far as I understand SQLite is Hwaci’s bread and butter.