Hacker News: mherkender

New comment by mherkender in "Silicon Valley engineers were indicted for allegedly sending secrets to Iran"

mherkender — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 13:47:46 +0000

> Company 2, which develops system-on-chip (SoC) platforms such as the Snapdragon series

Only a lawyer could write this with a straight face

New comment by mherkender in "Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids"

mherkender — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 21:43:08 +0000

I find the type of show makes a big difference, finding something thoughtful is important (and hard). We also like to set a time limit, usually 1-2 episodes to make the transition easy. Also, no tablets, just commercial-free TV so we can watch with them.

They re-enact fun/positive stuff from shows and don't get locked in or desperate for TV. Seems to work for us.

New comment by mherkender in "We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3""

mherkender — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 11:37:09 +0000

I run a Unifi Protect setup, local only.

They don't provide a display, so I put a Raspberry Pi, a display, and an audio hat in an enclosure. It plays an rtsp stream from the camera at startup and works pretty well.

New comment by mherkender in "Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? – The Old New Thing"

mherkender — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 11:22:19 +0000

Don't let old software break, don't use VMs/containers, don't use versioning: Pick two

Microsoft is the only company to pick all three. That's not strategy, that's indifference.

New comment by mherkender in "Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? – The Old New Thing"

mherkender — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 19:17:21 +0000

Better to have a strategy for software compatibility and evolution vs Microsoft's strategy of doing nothing.

Pretty much every game console ever made still works with every game for that console, but when it's Windows you never know.

New comment by mherkender in "Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? – The Old New Thing"

mherkender — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 17:05:50 +0000

Open-source Linux is great at updating old software.

Most other OSes (Android, MacOS, iOS, game consoles) rely on versioning, which makes it easier to provide compatibility layers or at least know when a piece of software just isn't supported anymore.

Personally I think Windows should have specialized VMs for old software, so they can be compatible forever even if they have bugs.

New comment by mherkender in "Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? – The Old New Thing"

mherkender — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 16:49:43 +0000

Windows is roughly 25% of the gaming market and I don't know why you're bringing up Linux. I haven't ever had a console unable to play a game built for it, just Windows.

New comment by mherkender in "Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? – The Old New Thing"

mherkender — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 14:42:39 +0000

'No Way To Prevent This', says only OS where this regularly happens.

New comment by mherkender in "US High school students' scores fall in reading and math"

mherkender — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 01:43:16 +0000

I guess your teachers failed you, since that's a hasty generalization (your experience isn't universal) and a non sequitur (defunding public schools wouldn't address the problem of poor schooling).

New comment by mherkender in "More and more people are tuning the news out: 'Now I don't have that anxiety"

mherkender — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 14:35:18 +0000

Somewhere in the 2010s, social media turned news into spam. I guess it was a long time coming, I remember news commercials in the 90s fear-baiting constantly, demanding you tune in at 11pm to find out more.

I recommend Wikipedia frontpage, maybe Wikinews. It has to come from a nonprofit at this point.

New comment by mherkender in "Where's Firefox going next?"

mherkender — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:30:51 +0000

I don't see how WebUSB makes that risk worse. At least I avoid making it easy and running somebody's firmware updater on my computer.

New comment by mherkender in "Where's Firefox going next?"

mherkender — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:26:56 +0000

I get that you're trying to win the argument, but you're being opaque.

Any ESP device I have isn't even connected to the Internet so I do control when it updates.

New comment by mherkender in "Where's Firefox going next?"

mherkender — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 10:30:47 +0000

When did I do that? WebUSB gives a website access to a specific USB device, not my entire computer.

New comment by mherkender in "Where's Firefox going next?"

mherkender — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 10:29:30 +0000

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. My point is that it's sandboxed in the browser.

New comment by mherkender in "Where's Firefox going next?"

mherkender — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 19:16:40 +0000

I use Linux so I do have a great deal of control over the version of Chrome I occasionally use.

New comment by mherkender in "Where's Firefox going next?"

mherkender — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 14:01:48 +0000

It's nice to be able to flash something without having to give some random software access to your computer, or having to build three different versions of a device flasher for each major OS. It's boosted adoption of ESPHome devices.

New comment by mherkender in "The Ingredients of a Productive Monorepo"

mherkender — Wed, 28 May 2025 14:08:14 +0000

Large software projects cycle back and forth between fragmentation and defragmentation. There is no right answer, only what's right for each project at the time.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2044/

New comment by mherkender in "I can't pay rent because devs just don't care"

mherkender — Fri, 02 May 2025 14:39:34 +0000

It's not that extreme -- I had to get a new phone recently and it has 12 GB.

There is such a thing as reasonable upgrades and necessary replacements. But long-term FAANG software projects are built like sedimentary rock -- layers upon layers. This bloat has a real cost in performance but hardware upgrades help defer the problem and users pay for it.

New comment by mherkender in "I can't pay rent because devs just don't care"

mherkender — Thu, 01 May 2025 02:02:55 +0000

Encryption doesn't require 16 GB of RAM. Phone upgrades are like subsidies to mediocre software projects.

New comment by mherkender in "I can't pay rent because devs just don't care"

mherkender — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 20:35:41 +0000

There is almost nothing my current phone can do that a phone from 2012 couldn't do, it's just the one from 2012 can't run today's bloated software.