Hacker News: jcarrano

New comment by jcarrano in "Tell HN: Litellm 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 on PyPI are compromised"

jcarrano — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:25:17 +0000

Thinking how a secure setup for uploading packages from a CI would look like: the package must be signed by the devs, and for that they must build it independently on their machines (this requires a reproducible build).

New comment by jcarrano in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"

jcarrano — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:00:50 +0000

100% of those cases would be favorable to cops. Defamation laws are quite restrictive in Europe, much more so when it involves public officials (take a look at the Strafgesetzbuch)

New comment by jcarrano in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"

jcarrano — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:57:22 +0000

Exactly what I meant. For example, in Germany one would have a hard time for much less.

New comment by jcarrano in "Honda is killing its EVs"

jcarrano — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:35:40 +0000

"Download more HP" is the new "download more RAM".

New comment by jcarrano in "Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability"

jcarrano — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:09:46 +0000

My colleague's Thinkpad had its fan fail. He ordered a replacement which arrived next day. He swapped it himself and kept on working.

New comment by jcarrano in "British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time"

jcarrano — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 09:23:36 +0000

100% agree. I used to watch the sun rise over the river from the train during my commute. It was worth having to wake up when it was still dark.

New comment by jcarrano in "Microwave Oven Failure: Spontaneously turned on by its LED display (2024)"

jcarrano — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:05:25 +0000

> This control board uses the same microcontroller GPIO pin to both drive segment A of the LED display and sense the door switch.

Is it necessary to be so skimpy with a safety feature?

New comment by jcarrano in "Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists"

jcarrano — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 12:54:26 +0000

"If you need subsidies in order to live off art, you don't live off art but live off the state".

As part time artist I see many problems with these schemes:

- Decoupled from people's actual appreciation of the art being done: I feel better when I know people voluntarily gave up their hard-earned money for what I do. - Monopoly-style "winner takes all". The people who benefit from this are the ones already in a position to ask for the benefit. - No one bites the hand that feeds then. That will form a body of "artists" subservient to the state.

The human problem is that no artist is willing to acknowledge that the public is not willing to spend money on their product.

New comment by jcarrano in "Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists"

jcarrano — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 12:47:16 +0000

> Society has not disintegrated.

Has art improved in any measure?

New comment by jcarrano in "Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support"

jcarrano — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:27:10 +0000

That is one of my problems with systemd: it has way to much "magic" built in. SysVinit/OpenRC and related are easy to understand and debug: they only do what's in the scripts.

New comment by jcarrano in "Vibe coding kills open source"

jcarrano — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 17:55:46 +0000

The 3d-printer of software: get a custom part quickly and cheaply, even if not suitable for mass production.

New comment by jcarrano in "Judge hints Vizio TV buyers may have rights to source code licensed under GPL"

jcarrano — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 14:03:57 +0000

They "conveyed" the software, according to GPL wording. They violation is towards the original software's authors.

New comment by jcarrano in "Basalt Woven Textile"

jcarrano — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 14:13:33 +0000

"Long asbestos fibers have been shown to interfere physically with the mitotic spindle and cause chromosomal damage"

[1] https://archive.cdc.gov/www_atsdr_cdc_gov/csem/asbestos/how_...

New comment by jcarrano in "Git 3.0 will use main as the default branch"

jcarrano — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 14:12:01 +0000

With master gone, it's time to get rid of the man-pages, which were invented to mansplain commands by bearded men in the 70s.

New comment by jcarrano in "Basalt Woven Textile"

jcarrano — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 09:53:27 +0000

The problem with asbestos is that, due to its structure, it keeps breaking in the longitudinal direction, making thinner and thinner until it is the size of chromosomes. Physical interference with DNA is how it causes cancer.

My understanding is that basalt fibers seem to be glassy, not crystalline, so the breaking does not happen.

New comment by jcarrano in "The inconceivable types of Rust: How to make self-borrows safe (2024)"

jcarrano — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 12:57:39 +0000

Having a separation between the "pure language" and the library is a requirement if you want to have a language that can be used for low-level components, like kernels or bare-bones software.

I don't think this is possible in a language that needs a runtime, like Go.

New comment by jcarrano in "Using street lamps as EV chargers"

jcarrano — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 13:19:18 +0000

That was the first product released >10 years ago at my previous job [1]. The idea did not quite catch on, though, and the product was repurposed (successfully) as an OEM charger. There is not a lot of power available on street lamps and charging at 3.6kW is kind of slow. Consider that with almost the same hardware (especially the same expensive parts) and three-phase current, 22kW are possible.

It might turn out differently in the US, but it is hardly a new idea.

[1] https://www.bender.de/ebee/berlin/

New comment by jcarrano in "DEC64: Decimal Floating Point (2020)"

jcarrano — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 13:32:51 +0000

No point whatsoever. If you have to deal with money you never use floating point. Either use arbitrary precision, or integers with a sufficiently small base like blockchains do (which can be also though of as fixed point). Also you would never be multiplying two money value (there are no "square dollars").

New comment by jcarrano in "Installing and using HP-UX 9"

jcarrano — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 13:04:21 +0000

I have the HP logic analyzer that runs HP-UX. To me it's crazy that I can connect to it with a 2025 Linux OS and run X11 apps remotely out of the box.

New comment by jcarrano in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)"

jcarrano — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 13:00:09 +0000

I canceled my Spotify subscription because it would not let me "reset" the algorithm to get fresh suggestions.

A "discovery algorithm" that I used (works great for jazz) consisted on looking up which musicians played on an album that I liked on discogs and searching for more albums from them.