Hacker News: john_the_writer

New comment by john_the_writer in "Why is everything so scalable?"

john_the_writer — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 10:31:04 +0000

The only bit that I didn't agree with was the downsides. You can scale individual modules. You can set your load balancer to make all calls to specific endpoints go to specific servers. These can scale independently.

If you have background workers (ActiveJobs/Oban for example), these can be on different queues, that you can scale. It's actually really easy to build out a mono-repo system allow for scale.

If you organise your workers into folders based on their purpose (reporting, exporting, ... ), and you're careful about feature flags, you can drastically reduce git-conflicts and CICD issues.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Why Is SQLite Coded In C"

john_the_writer — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:04:39 +0000

Yeah.. I always remind myself of the netscape browser. A lesson in "if it's working to mess with it" My question is always the reverse. Why try it in Y new language. Is there some feature that Y provides that was missing in X? How often do those features come up.

Company I worked for decided to build out a new microservice in language Y. The whole company was writing in W and X, but they decided to write the new service in Y. When something goes wrong, or a bug needs fixing, 3 people in the company of over 100 devs know Y. Guess what management is doing.. Re-writing it in X.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Why Is SQLite Coded In C"

john_the_writer — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 07:57:07 +0000

Agreed. I rather dislike the idea of "safe" coding languages. Fighting with a memory leak in an elixir app, for the past week. I never viewed c or c++ as unsafe. Writing code is hard, always has been, always will be. It is never safe.

New comment by john_the_writer in "China's New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten US Defense Supply Chains"

john_the_writer — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 08:19:10 +0000

Yes.. that.. If you are against oil and plastics, walk your talk. If you are against rare earth, walk your talk. If you have a degree in chem-eng, and you're building low plastic solutions, and you're critical, then you're being honest. Saying "no no no" but doing it on a new cell phone you know was built on rare earth is like a vegan giving a talk while sitting on their new leather couch.

New comment by john_the_writer in "China's New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten US Defense Supply Chains"

john_the_writer — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 08:13:19 +0000

reminds me of the just stop oil protest that stopped the cooking oil truck. People who don't know enough, trying to stop what they don't understand.

New comment by john_the_writer in "China's New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten US Defense Supply Chains"

john_the_writer — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 08:05:21 +0000

If it's one thing the US gov has down, it's how to move super slow. No way it gets done in a 10 years.

New comment by john_the_writer in "The App Store was always authoritarian"

john_the_writer — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 07:49:29 +0000

Sounds like a right to repair argument. It will lose. Try putting linux on a windows-10 laptop. That BIOS is nailed down hard. It can be done but its a right PITA

New comment by john_the_writer in "Scammed out of $130K via fake Google call, spoofed Google email and auth sync"

john_the_writer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:41:47 +0000

They might not.. But you'd very likely have their number saved on your phone. Might even have them as an un-mutable contact. My wife/kids and their school are all on the "never mute" list.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Scammed out of $130K via fake Google call, spoofed Google email and auth sync"

john_the_writer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:26:42 +0000

This is awesome. Great job your bank..

New comment by john_the_writer in "Scammed out of $130K via fake Google call, spoofed Google email and auth sync"

john_the_writer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:22:19 +0000

I mean. I have a little book on my desk with password hints. "2nd grade best friends phone number", "birthday of first dog". It also has a grid of random numbers/letters on the front page, so I can write "first_crush_b4*5". You'd have to have physical access to the book, and know what the hint leads to. It's un-hackable. I mean aside from social, or physically breaking into my house.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Scammed out of $130K via fake Google call, spoofed Google email and auth sync"

john_the_writer — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 10:53:39 +0000

My local medical clinic sent me an sms with a link, asking me to change my medical info. I called them to point out how they were training their patients to fall for sms scamms.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Scammed out of $130K via fake Google call, spoofed Google email and auth sync"

john_the_writer — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 10:45:46 +0000

I've had a few calls where they are from legit places (I confirmed later) and they ask me verify my identify. I counter, that they need to verify who they are. They were confused and we couldn't go forward, because I wouldn't answer their questions until they answered my question.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Safe C++ proposal is not being continued"

john_the_writer — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 09:54:41 +0000

Love this quote. An love the intent.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Safe C++ proposal is not being continued"

john_the_writer — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 09:53:26 +0000

I don't know that they don't care about safety. They just don't agree with the definition others have picked. I remember when managed code became a thing. I being an old c++ dev noted that memory was always managed. It was managed by me.

New comment by john_the_writer in "A love letter to the CSV format (2024)"

john_the_writer — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 11:17:52 +0000

Literally did this all day today. Took a csv file, parsed it in elixir, processed it and created a new csv file, then opened that in excel, to confirm the changes. At least 100 times today.

New comment by john_the_writer in "A love letter to the CSV format (2024)"

john_the_writer — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 11:14:12 +0000

Well I mean unless you're inspecting it with a hex editor, you're not looking at the csv file itself. Even then, I suppose you could say that's not even the file itself. An electron microscope perhaps? But then you've got the whole Heisenberg issue, so there's that.

New comment by john_the_writer in "A love letter to the CSV format (2024)"

john_the_writer — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 11:10:10 +0000

100%.. xml also worked here too..

YAML is a pain because it has every so slightly different versions, that sometimes don't play nice.

csv or TSV's are almost always portable.

New comment by john_the_writer in "A love letter to the CSV format (2024)"

john_the_writer — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 10:53:41 +0000

What are you talking about? Excel opens csv with zero issue. In windows, and mac. Mac you right click and "open with". Or you open excel, and click file/open and find the csv. I do the first one a dozen times a day.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward"

john_the_writer — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 11:14:29 +0000

Got to figure out how to block the url in the router.

New comment by john_the_writer in "Linux is 34 years old today"

john_the_writer — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 11:35:02 +0000

Just a few more years and it's time will be up :D