Hacker News: dthul

New comment by dthul in "The Layoff"

dthul — Sun, 18 Feb 2024 19:12:45 +0000

Telling someone they got fired for performance reasons when that's not actually true is outright evil. (Of course we don't know for certain whether that's what happened here, but it sure does look like it)

New comment by dthul in "Power over fiber"

dthul — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 13:37:27 +0000

I was thinking that the "power extraction" might attenuate the signal too much, and it would probably lower the power output since you need to modulate the light to transmit data, instead of having it on full brightness all the time. But maybe it would work for certain applications!

New comment by dthul in "Power over fiber"

dthul — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 11:56:01 +0000

I wonder if you could send power at one wavelength, and data at another wavelength, over the same fibre.

New comment by dthul in "Krita AI Diffusion"

dthul — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:21:49 +0000

That's trying to put words in my mouth. We were talking about creative expression being taken away by AI, and I argued that artists can still retain creative expression, and that these AI tools make it possible for more people to express themselves creatively. I never said that artists should have no reason to feel unhappy about that. That's criticising a position I didn't argue.

New comment by dthul in "Krita AI Diffusion"

dthul — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:29:58 +0000

> which you would know if you ever tried to draw anything

I know exactly how hard it is to draw anything because I tried a bunch of times, and failed. I for one am happy that I can now express my creative ideas, which I couldn't do before due to missing talent / practice.

New comment by dthul in "Krita AI Diffusion"

dthul — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 11:43:55 +0000

That sounds like a very Luddite view. Why wouldn't artists be able to use AI selectively to automate "boring" tasks (such as filling the sky of an image with clouds) while still retaining overall artistic control?

New comment by dthul in "Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API"

dthul — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 15:14:18 +0000

I suppose the vendor could sell a home server device, which runs some kind of Tailscale-like technology to make it available from the internet, and the app talks to that locally hosted server.

New comment by dthul in "Out-braking the ABS myth [video]"

dthul — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 22:32:46 +0000

My teacher made me do a full force brake during my training. It was more intense than I had anticipated, and my teacher forgot that he still had his sunglasses on his head, which promptly smashed into the windshield :D

New comment by dthul in "The Binder Linux driver is being rewritten in Rust"

dthul — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 12:26:43 +0000

Defining "normal" code as "not having UB" is quite disingenuous though, isn't it? Iterating over a vector while adding elements for example looks normal, but isn't generally safe, unless you know to pre-allocate enough memory.

New comment by dthul in "C++23: Removing garbage collection support"

dthul — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 14:12:55 +0000

I work with both, having started with C++ about 17 years ago, and agree that Rust feels like a relatively simple language compared to C++. Rust might feel harder to learn initially because the borrow checker won't let you compile certain programs, but once you are over this initial hump, the rest is quite straightforward.

New comment by dthul in "The Cloud Computer"

dthul — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 16:56:20 +0000

I know one company who offers that (there might be more): https://www.grando.ai/en/container

New comment by dthul in "Rusty revenant Servo returns to render once more"

dthul — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 15:33:27 +0000

Quite a few parts of Servo were actually integrated into Firefox/Gecko (such as Stylo).

New comment by dthul in "Error Handling in Zig"

dthul — Sun, 06 Aug 2023 19:28:36 +0000

Ever since I learned of sum types, they have ruined my enjoyment of programming languages which don't have them. I sorely miss them in C++ for example (and std::variant is not a worthy alternative). I don't understand why any new language wouldn't have them.

New comment by dthul in "Gopher Wrangling: Effective error handling in Go"

dthul — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 07:57:32 +0000

That depends on the type you use to represent errors. A more "fancy" error type will allow you to add context / backtraces / whatever you want, while a simpler error type, for example just an error code, does not. (The error type is the E in Result).

New comment by dthul in "Trip report: Summer ISO C++ standards meeting in Varna, Bulgaria"

dthul — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 07:01:17 +0000

There is an interesting approach to this in Rust: if a potentially breaking change (e.g. a soundness fix) is being proposed, they usually test it against all publicly available Rust code.

New comment by dthul in "CLI tricks every developer should know"

dthul — Mon, 01 May 2023 08:41:18 +0000

Works fine for me (shows up as normal quotes, not fancy quotes).

New comment by dthul in "Allegations of Scientific Misconduct Mount as Physicist Makes His Biggest Claim"

dthul — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 21:40:47 +0000

I was instantly reminded of the same. I can recommend the documentary, it's the first time I saw an actual example of scientific fraud at this scale.

New comment by dthul in "Philips Plans 6000 Job Cuts; Sees Growth in FY25, Beyond"

dthul — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 16:58:30 +0000

Are they better than the IKEA version?

New comment by dthul in "Hydrochloric acid is more complicated than you think"

dthul — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 21:08:04 +0000

Nice bit of insight! For anyone confused like me: I believe it should read "about 10^-7 mols of hydronium ions per liter", which is about 6*10^16 ions per liter.

New comment by dthul in "Company ‘Hijacks’ Blender’s CC By-Licensed Film, YouTube Strikes User"

dthul — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 10:30:59 +0000

I get that mistakes can happen, but companies filing frivolous DMCA notices should be barred from this avenue in the future. Further, YouTube's appeals process is fundamentally broken if it can't get such obvious cases right.