Hacker News: ncann

New comment by ncann in "Google is 'gradually rolling out' option to change your gmail.com address"

ncann — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 07:23:33 +0000

I had email address X (gmail) that I hadn't logged into for a long time. One day I tried to log in to it. Correct password, but Google, for some reason, simply decided there's something suspicious about my login and blocked it. X had Y as the "recovery email", and I had access to Y, and I indeed received an email from Google sent to Y that it blocked a suspicious login to X. However, THERE WAS NO WAY TO USE Y TO GAIN ACCESS TO X. Google simply did not offer that option for X, and I had no idea why.

New comment by ncann in "Git-Annex"

ncann — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 13:00:18 +0000

I am looking into using Git for my photos/videos backup external HDDs and the reasoning is simple. It's not about keeping track of changes within the files themselves since like you said, they (almost) never change. Rather, it's about keeping track of changes in _folders_. That is, I want to keep track of when I last copied images from my phones, cameras, etc. to my HDDs, which folders did I touch, if I reorganized existing files into a different folder structure then what are the changes, etc. Also it acts as a rollback mechanism if I ever fat finger and delete something accidentally. I wonder if there's a better tool for this though

New comment by ncann in "Debounce"

ncann — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 12:48:53 +0000

I needed an implementation of debounce in Java recently and was surprised to find out that there's no existing decent solution - there's none from the standard library, nor popular utilities libraries like Guava or Apache Commons. There are some implementations floating around like on Stackoverflow but I found them lacking, either there's no thread safety or there's no flexibility in supporting the execution of the task at the leading edge or trailing edge or both. Anyone has a good recommendation on a good implementation?

New comment by ncann in "DJI couldn't confirm or deny it disguised this drone to evade a US ban"

ncann — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 03:26:35 +0000

DJI drones are nowhere near "bad", they're the best and nothing else comes close. It's a shame how they're sanctioned given there's no viable alternative. I always wonder why there's no Western company that has the same product offerings.

New comment by ncann in "USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)"

ncann — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 03:38:25 +0000

I guess this is only partially true, as I have a A-to-C charger cable from Huawei that works with everything except my Pixel 4A phone. And my Pixel 4A phone works with everything except that specific cable.

New comment by ncann in "USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)"

ncann — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 03:11:40 +0000

You can test them to a certain extent using a USB tester device like RYKEN RK-X3

New comment by ncann in "Async Queue – One of my favorite programming interview questions"

ncann — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 21:13:23 +0000

> Here's a naive, faulty implementation

For this first implementation, I don't see anything ever added to the queue. Am I missing something? New task is added to the queue if the queue is not empty only, but when the queue is empty the task is executed and the queue remains empty so in the end the queue is always empty?

New comment by ncann in "$70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money"

ncann — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 06:46:17 +0000

> So I would like some data about whether similar options were bought on other days in similar volumes.

The volumes are there for all to see and the answer is no.

New comment by ncann in "Diagnosing bugs preventing sleep on Windows"

ncann — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 17:33:23 +0000

Hibernate is great, except for the part where it wears down your SSD much faster, especially if you have a machine with big amount of RAM.

New comment by ncann in "Diagnosing bugs preventing sleep on Windows"

ncann — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 07:32:29 +0000

The non-buggy sleep (S3) isn't even supported in the BIOS in many new laptops now (in the Dell I'm using for example). So MS probably decided to kill that option off for everyone. To be honest it's a very confusing situation since there are so many hardware configurations under Windows and if you search online I think some people are still able to disable S0 on their new laptop/latest Windows, but some (myself) definitely cannot.

New comment by ncann in "Diagnosing bugs preventing sleep on Windows"

ncann — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 01:21:18 +0000

Troubleshooting sleep is an exercise wrapped in pain.

Figuring out which program prevents sleeping is the easy part - there are tools that show that, and you can also usually just brute force it by killing programs one by one.

Then comes figuring out why a system claims to be sleeping but isn't (e.g. the fan is still spinning). Usually this is because of the Modern Standby/S0 crap and in many cases there isn't a solution because the BIOS removed support for S3.

The other class of issue is after sleeping the system won't wake up, or wake up randomly, or wake up with random glitchy graphics/sounds/etc.

Sleep is easily Windows's most bug-ridden area.

New comment by ncann in "Hyperspace"

ncann — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 03:52:32 +0000

Somewhat unrelated but I believe the dupe issue with node_modules is the main reason to use pnpn instead of npm - pnpm just uses a single global package repo on your machine and creates links inside node_modules as needed.

New comment by ncann in "I helped fix sleep-wake hangs on Linux with AMD GPUs"

ncann — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 21:34:55 +0000

With how much trouble I had with trying (and failing) to make my brand new Dell laptop sleep properly and not the "Modern Standby" crap, plus my desktop randomly breaking GPU hardware acceleration in browser after waking up, I would say it's around O(n4) now. Or maybe even O(n!).

New comment by ncann in "YouTube's New Hue"

ncann — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 01:18:54 +0000

> Robyn: To give YouTube a sense of motion, we created a dynamic red-to-magenta gradient. For the second color, orange and yellow were strong contenders, but magenta felt like the most natural pairing with our new red. Interestingly, magenta doesn't often appear in the natural world, so it symbolizes the imagination and evolution that YouTube embodies. We also placed the gradient at a 45-degree angle with magenta on the right, signifying forward movement.

Kinda reminds me of this quote

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

> There will be rich debates about the socioeconomic implications of Helvetica Light, and at some point, you will have to decide whether serifs are daring statements of modernity, or tools of hegemonic oppression that implicitly support feudalism and illiteracy.

New comment by ncann in "DeepSeek not as disruptive as claimed, firm has 50k GPUs and spent $1.6B"

ncann — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 18:46:58 +0000

So I checked out the original report:

https://semianalysis.com/2025/01/31/deepseek-debates/

They cite themselves as the source, and throughout the article are just a bunch of "We believe...".

Am I missing something?

New comment by ncann in "AMD 'Strix Halo' Ryzen AI Max+ Debuts with RDNA 3.5 Graphics and Zen 5 CPU Cores"

ncann — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:37:00 +0000

They managed to put Max, plus, and Pro into the name, which is kinda impressive in a way. Now we just need Ultra to complete the set.

New comment by ncann in "AMD 'Strix Halo' Ryzen AI Max+ Debuts with RDNA 3.5 Graphics and Zen 5 CPU Cores"

ncann — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:16:54 +0000

> AMD 'Strix Halo' Ryzen AI Max+ 395 PRO

Gosh that name is a mouthful

New comment by ncann in "What TDD is good for"

ncann — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 05:01:30 +0000

Doctor hygiene and seatbelt and the like are mandatory because they save lives, and can be very easily proven using basic tests and statistics.

On the other hand, there is no way to measure the "effectiveness" of TDD as compared to not using it.

I'm sorry that you feel that strongly about it but that certainly seems like zealotry to me.

New comment by ncann in "What TDD is good for"

ncann — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 04:26:23 +0000

The only thing that should be said about TDD is that it's incredibly polarizing, one of the most polarizing things in software development in fact. It's incredibly personal, some swear by it, some loathe it. Thus, every TDD introduction should have a big disclaimer up front that hey, maybe this isn't for you and that's totally fine. Just don't be a zealot about it.

New comment by ncann in "React 19"

ncann — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 07:13:00 +0000

What is considered "modern state management" these days?