Hacker News: emddudley

New comment by emddudley in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"

emddudley — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:28:42 +0000

For others like me that didn't know the term Sherlock:

It means "To obsolete a unique feature in third-party software by introducing a similar or identical feature to the OS or a first-party program/app." The term stems from Apple's 2002 release of Sherlock 3, which made a popular third-party app named "Watson" irrelevant.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sherlock#Verb

New comment by emddudley in "Astral to Join OpenAI"

emddudley — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:10:02 +0000

Well shit, I feel betrayed. This is exactly the opposite of what I thought Charlie's goals were. I thought he was focused on making the Python ecosystem better.

New comment by emddudley in "Bucketsquatting is finally dead"

emddudley — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 21:00:08 +0000

Why is x-amz-bucket-namespace header needed when creating a new bucket in the account regional namespace? Is an account blocked from creating a bucket in its own namespace if it doesn't specify that header?

New comment by emddudley in "PalmOS on FisherPrice Pixter Toy"

emddudley — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 06:10:07 +0000

I was an intern at Fisher Price when they introduced the Pixter Color. I did QA on some of the games, the Dora one comes to mind. You can imagine the torture playing a level over and over.

The games were developed overseas (India I think?). I would send them bug reports in Mantis and overnight they would send a new build. Sometimes they would even fix the bugs. I would burn the builds on to EEPROMs and verify them the next day. The EEPROMS had a little round window so they could be erased in a UV box before programming.

Fisher Price used a video codec from Actimagine to fit video clips onto the game cartridges. That's how I learned about Virtualdub. I remember editing clips from a show called Winx.

The big competition was the Leapster LeapPad and they were trouncing us.

One fun thing the engineers did periodically was a toy teardown to see how competitors saved on cost. Cost was critical. They told me how Walmart basically dictates toy cost because they controlled the shelf space.

New comment by emddudley in "How to Attend Meetings"

emddudley — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:44:28 +0000

Looks like it has been deleted. Does anyone have a copy?

GitHub introduces Agent HQ, a unified workflow for orchestrating any agent

emddudley — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 13:53:54 +0000

Article URL: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/welcome-home-agents/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45746855

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by emddudley in "Pyrefly: Python type checker and language server in Rust"

emddudley — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 13:14:26 +0000

Pyrefly vs. ty: Comparing Python’s Two New Rust-Based Type Checkers (2025-05-27) https://blog.edward-li.com/tech/comparing-pyrefly-vs-ty/

HN discussion of above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44107655

How Well Do New Python Type Checkers Conform? A Deep Dive into Ty, Pyrefly, and Zuban (2025-08-29) https://sinon.github.io/future-python-type-checkers/

New comment by emddudley in "Binary Formats Gallery"

emddudley — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 01:54:30 +0000

There's an old XML one called Data Format Description Language (DFDL).

New comment by emddudley in "U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China"

emddudley — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 01:10:34 +0000

Short form video is tailored for the fast, instinctive, emotional brain. Not the slower, deliberative, logical brain.

New comment by emddudley in "EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections"

emddudley — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 15:19:21 +0000

Ironically, PFAS levels have been found to be higher in wealthy people. People with money own more furniture and clothing with stain resistant treatments, for example.

New comment by emddudley in "Understanding the PURL Specification (Package URL)"

emddudley — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:35:25 +0000

Not related to PURLs (Persistent URLs) administered by the Internet Archive.

https://purl.archive.org/

New comment by emddudley in "You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work (2019)"

emddudley — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 14:05:25 +0000

Similar to the cited "Do you Need Blockchain" there is NISTIR 8202: Blockchain Technology Overview, page 42.

1. Do you need a shared, consistent data store?

2. Does more than one entity need to contribute data?

3. Data records, once written, are never updated or deleted?

4. Sensitive identifiers WILL NOT be written to the data store?

5. Are the entities with write access having a hard time deciding who should be in control of the data store?

6. Do you want a tamperproof log of all writes to the data store?

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf

New comment by emddudley in "Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service"

emddudley — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 16:55:54 +0000

PURL (https://purl.archive.org/) is a similar permanent URL service but you choose the URL.

It used to be hosted at purl.org and run by the OCLC but in 2016 it was transferred to the Internet Archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161002094639/https://www.oclc....

New comment by emddudley in "The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE"

emddudley — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 04:33:11 +0000

You've been fooled.

New comment by emddudley in "Stimulation Clicker"

emddudley — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 19:34:45 +0000

I'm embarrassed to admit it but I found out this game has an ending.

New comment by emddudley in "The death of Glitch, the birth of Slack"

emddudley — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 01:35:42 +0000

Yahoo (Verizon) did eventually sell Flickr to SmugMug in 2018 for an undisclosed sum.

New comment by emddudley in "Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid"

emddudley — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 12:41:11 +0000

If we're talking about health and cookware, you're not going to want nonstick cookware.

New comment by emddudley in "Let your mower sing Happy Birthday for your loved ones"

emddudley — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 14:18:16 +0000

Between my smart mower, smart fridge, smart thermostat, smart doorbell, and smart TV, I won't feel lonely on my birthday ever again!

New comment by emddudley in "PyCon US 2024 Recap"

emddudley — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 17:15:30 +0000

I attended and I would say there was 98% compliance. The policy was that masks off was OK outside, while presenting, while eating, and briefly when posing for photos.

New comment by emddudley in "PyCon US 2024 Recap"

emddudley — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 12:56:48 +0000

I'm amazed at how many people she met. It was my first PyCon and I was happy with trying to chat with like 5 people. The conference was huge and very physically and socially exhausting.