Hacker News: ebruchez

New comment by ebruchez in "Charcuterie – Visual similarity Unicode explorer"

ebruchez — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:04:29 +0000

Oh no they weren't!

New comment by ebruchez in "Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV"

ebruchez — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 03:14:49 +0000

Marques Brownlee seems to like the wheels in his latest video review, FWIW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfReqcUJfBU

New comment by ebruchez in "New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers"

ebruchez — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 18:12:45 +0000

Not criticizing your decision, but I went the opposite way, deciding that I was ok spending a certain extra amount initially in order to encourage a non-Chinese manufacturer. But I understand not everyone has this luxury.

I bought the Core One kit to understand better how the machine works, which reduced the price delta somewhat.

It remains to be seen over the long term which way is actually better financially, as Prusas have historically had long lives, while there is only limited data on the Bambu Lab side yet.

So far, I am quite happy with my decision. But competition is on. I am excited about the upcoming INDX system for the Core One: if it delivers on its promise, it will be fantastic!

New comment by ebruchez in "Computer History Museum Launches Digital Portal to Its Collection"

ebruchez — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 22:01:43 +0000

I suppose that means the museum is doing its job then: educate people totally ignorant of the history of computing. Next time that younger person sees a floppy disk they will know what it is.

New comment by ebruchez in "Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout"

ebruchez — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 18:08:19 +0000

Yes - so far.

New comment by ebruchez in "Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout"

ebruchez — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 15:28:42 +0000

> There's just no way to deny this.

Of course there is "way".

All the above above in itself sounds like propaganda. You forget other political (authoritarian system making massive mistakes), demographic (1.0, probably less in reality, birth per woman), psychological (disillusioned young population), and geographic (food and other imports) aspects, among other things.

New comment by ebruchez in "A 1961 Relay Computer Running in the Browser"

ebruchez — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 16:33:15 +0000

In particular, the IBM 1401 (two of them actually) that you can see demonstrated at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View are transistor-based and were very successful computers.

https://computerhistory.org/exhibits/ibm1401/

New comment by ebruchez in "The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia"

ebruchez — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 06:09:21 +0000

> The US and Switzerland are the only two countries that use the same colors for all of their various bills.

Factually absolutely incorrect for Switzerland, and easy to verify. Swiss bank notes are and have been some of the most colorful (and pretty, I should say) around, and all have different sizes.

New comment by ebruchez in "Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer"

ebruchez — Fri, 02 May 2025 21:20:07 +0000

That's right. There are still S-100 enthusiasts who are maintaining and developing S-100 cards, see http://www.s100computers.com/ (does not seem to respond correctly to HTTPS right now).

New comment by ebruchez in "Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer"

ebruchez — Fri, 02 May 2025 15:32:40 +0000

One of the interesting aspects of the Altair was that it was based on a bus called the S-100 bus. You would have a CPU card and a memory card at least, but everything else was optional. The serial board was separate, and strictly not absolutely necessary to play with the computer, since you could enter simple programs directly from the front panel.

New comment by ebruchez in "Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week"

ebruchez — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 14:30:08 +0000

True or not, be aware that "The Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, commenting on international issues from a Chinese nationalistic perspective." (Wikipedia)

New comment by ebruchez in "How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?"

ebruchez — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 22:47:07 +0000

Future might tell. But while it's tempting, I wouldn't bet against democracy and freedom just yet.

New comment by ebruchez in "How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?"

ebruchez — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 19:28:58 +0000

I don't need to be convinced that China has lots of bright, hard-working individuals. I just want to point out that China faces immense challenges and that we should see beyond, and push back against, the propaganda. There is a massive asymmetry between China and democratic nations in this regards.

New comment by ebruchez in "How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?"

ebruchez — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 18:07:07 +0000

Yes, but this will likely hurt China as well. You can't assume only the US will be hurt by this.

New comment by ebruchez in "How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?"

ebruchez — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 17:27:36 +0000

This sounds like official Chinese propaganda. This was truer at some point, but things have started turning bad for China with the advent of Xi Jinping. 20-25 years ago, the country was hopeful, developing fast, opening up. Foreigners started moving there, seeing it as a new land of opportunity. Much of that is gone. The economy is in bad shape, youth unemployment is massive, the country is a dictatorship, nobody wants to move there (and China doesn't want you to anyway). I'll quote the Economist: "When Mr Xi took over in 2012, China was changing fast. The middle class was growing, private firms were booming and citizens were connecting on social media. A different leader might have seen these as opportunities. Mr Xi saw only threats."

New comment by ebruchez in "How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?"

ebruchez — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 17:19:11 +0000

> China will surpass USA from a GDP Point of view in 2035.

Don't be so sure, this has become much less clear. For example, in this article: "The Centre for Economics and Business Research, which in 2020 predicted that China would overtake the U.S. by 2028, revised the crossover point two years later, to 2036. This month, the British consultancy said it will not happen in the next 15 years."

https://www.newsweek.com/2025/01/31/china-us-compete-biggest...

New comment by ebruchez in "Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust"

ebruchez — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 23:42:00 +0000

Fair enough. By the way, the original CSS from 1996 featured only:

- the "descendant" combinator (whitespace) - the "class" selector (".foo")

The 1998 CSS2 introduced "child", "following sibling", and attribute selectors. This state of things then remained unchanged forever (I see that Selectors Level 3 became a recommendation only in 2018?).

On the other hand, in 1999, XPath already specified all those basic ways to navigate the DOM, and CSS still doesn't have them all as of 2025.

New comment by ebruchez in "Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust"

ebruchez — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 18:45:40 +0000

There have been proposals a long time ago, including by Tim Bray, for an XML 2.0 that would remove some warts. But there was no appetite in the industry to move forward.

New comment by ebruchez in "Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust"

ebruchez — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 18:44:16 +0000

CSS selectors have spent the last few decades reinventing XPath. XPath introduced right from the beginning the notion of axes, which allow you to navigate down, up, preceding, following, etc. as makes sense. XPath also always had predicates, even in version 1.0. CSS just recently started supporting :has() and :is(), in particular. Eventually, CSS selectors will match XPath's query abilities, although with worse syntax.

New comment by ebruchez in "Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust"

ebruchez — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 18:42:26 +0000

XSLT will perform the transformations that you instruct it to do. It does not wipe out whitespace just on its own. Do you mean that you'd like facilities to nicely reindent the output?