Hacker News: mholt

New comment by mholt in "Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test"

mholt — Fri, 29 May 2026 04:18:37 +0000

Is it normal to load ALL the propellant when doing a static fire? (I presume that's the case, anyway, given the sheer magnitude of the kaboom.)

I know a WDR typically would, but I don't think they perform an ignition for those.

New comment by mholt in "Understanding Singleflight in Go"

mholt — Mon, 18 May 2026 22:47:17 +0000

First I've heard of this. Lazyweb, why would I use this over sync.Once?

New comment by mholt in "Googlebook"

mholt — Tue, 12 May 2026 18:22:04 +0000

This page crashes in my Google-based browser. I can't scroll down more than ~50 pixels.

New comment by mholt in "Yet Another GitHub Incident"

mholt — Tue, 05 May 2026 15:58:22 +0000

We get it.

We should probably take a break on these. It's probably more newsworthy now when GitHub is "up".

New comment by mholt in "Using the internet like it's 1999"

mholt — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:47:15 +0000

It was FUN though.

New comment by mholt in "NASA had to train Apollo 11's astronauts to not use profanity (2019)"

mholt — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:27:04 +0000

Using profanity indicates a weak vocabulary. A lack of discipline. A degree of unrefinement unbecoming of astronauts representing the "best" of humanity and their country.

Depending on the type of profanity it can divide societies by reinforcing social schisms/prejudices. Such words typically cluster around areas of cultural discomfort such as religion, sex, and hygiene, causing polarizing emotional reactions. It's biological as well as cultural.

Seems like the "best and bravest humanity has to offer" can probably represent a little better than that for one of the most significant feats of history.

New comment by mholt in "GitHub's Historic Uptime"

mholt — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:34:09 +0000

Even better IMO is this status page: https://mrshu.github.io/github-statuses/

"The Missing GitHub Status Page" with overall aggregate percentages. Currently at 90.84% over the last 90 days. It was at 90.00% a couple days ago.

New comment by mholt in "Starlink Mini as a failover"

mholt — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:51:41 +0000

Yeah but if you need Internet failover, cell phone towers are likely flooded. Starlink will be much more available (probably).

New comment by mholt in "Your phone is an entire computer"

mholt — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 19:51:15 +0000

And yet, try getting a full backup of your Google phone onto your own computer. (Without rooting/wiping the whole thing.) Heck, try getting just your text messages off (without a separate app)!

You can't. (Last time I checked.) The backup is encrypted in the cloud, and the only way to download it is to restore it to a phone.

Whereas I can just plug in my iPhone and get a full backup, complete with sqlite manifest, completely accessible. Text messages, photo library, everything.

New comment by mholt in "TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool"

mholt — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:42:52 +0000

tbf that's Apple's fault, not the choice of the free, unpaid open source developer.

New comment by mholt in "Google Safe Browsing missed 84% of confirmed phishing sites"

mholt — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:04:48 +0000

I never loved the idea of GSB or centralized blocklists in general due to the consequences of being wrong, or the implications for censorship.

So for my masters' thesis about 6-7 years ago now (sheesh) I proposed some alternative, privacy-preserving methods to help keep users safe with their web browsers: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/7403/

I think Chrome adopted one or two of the ideas. Nowadays the methods might need to be updated especially in a world of LLMs, but regardless, my hope was/is that the industry will refine some of these approaches and ship them.

New comment by mholt in "RFC 9849. TLS Encrypted Client Hello"

mholt — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:40:49 +0000

But does it automatically provision the DNS records and rotate the keys?

I'm actually kind of furious at nginx's marketing materials around ECH. They compare with other servers but completely ignore Caddy, saying that they're the only practical path to deploying ECH right now. Total lies: https://x.com/mholt6/status/2029219467482603717

New comment by mholt in "Caddy Server Release Process"

mholt — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:49:55 +0000

Thanks for sharing this, we like it a lot. Mohammed Al-Sahaf implemented this for us so that releases can be made by a quorum of maintainers rather than being blocked by me every time.

Here's the first release done with it: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/releases/tag/v2.11.0-be...

And you can see the PR flow where the action happens: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/pull/7383

New comment by mholt in "Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence"

mholt — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 04:35:11 +0000

That is one beautiful instrument. What does the front look like?

And I know we can't hear it in its "original glory" anymore, but is the sample only like 10 seconds long because it's proprietary, or is the cello too delicate to play a full number on, or...?

Edit: Found the museum piece with full pictures: https://emuseum.nmmusd.org/objects/6684/violoncello?ctx=7735...

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

mholt — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 03:33:55 +0000

If you look at the R1 pages, you'll see those pages, though scroll-heavy, at least contain more useful info. I'm hoping that after R2 is actually available to order, that they'll update the page with more information. It's still early.

New comment by mholt in "GitHub is down again"

mholt — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:53:16 +0000

We can of course host our code elsewhere, the problem is the community is kind of locked-in. It would be very "expensive" to move, and would have to be very worthwhile. So far the math doesn't support that kind of change.

Usually an outage is not a big deal, I can still work locally. Today I just happen to be in a very GH-centric workflow with the security reports and such.

I'm curious how other maintainers maintain productivity during GH outages.

New comment by mholt in "GitHub is down again"

mholt — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:17:16 +0000

Of course they're down while I'm trying to address a "High severity" security bug in Caddy but all I'm getting is a unicorn when loading the report.

(Actually there's 3 I'm currently working, but 2 are patched already, still closing the feedback loop though.)

I have a 2-hour window right now that is toddler free. I'm worried that the outage will delay the feedback loop with the reporter(s) into tomorrow and ultimately delay the patches.

I can't complain though -- GitHub sustains most of my livelihood so I can provide for my family through its Sponsors program, and I'm not a paying customer. (And yet, paying would not prevent the outage.) Overall I'm very grateful for GitHub.

New comment by mholt in "Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica"

mholt — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:55:51 +0000

The autonomous vehicle should know what it can't know, like children coming out from behind obstructions. Humans have this intuitive sense. Apparently autonomous systems do not, and do not drive carefully, or slower, or give more space, in those situations. Does it know that it's in a school zone? (Hopefully.) Does it know that school is starting or getting out? (Probably not.) Should it? (Absolutely yes.)

This is the fault of the software and company implementing it.

New comment by mholt in "Show HN: ChartGPU – WebGPU-powered charting library (1M points at 60fps)"

mholt — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:03:43 +0000

I'm getting the same error, but ://gpu shows that WebGPU is "Hardware accelerated"

New comment by mholt in "Show HN: ChartGPU – WebGPU-powered charting library (1M points at 60fps)"

mholt — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:03:07 +0000

Hmm, I'm getting "Failed to request WebGPU adapter. No compatible adapter found. This may occur if no GPU is available or WebGPU is disabled." but brave://flags reports that WebGPU is "Hardware accelerated." Any way for me to try this out?