Hacker News: parabyl

New comment by parabyl in "XAI's Grok suddenly can't stop bringing up "white genocide" in South Africa"

parabyl — Thu, 15 May 2025 15:58:20 +0000

I was looking at South Africa's biggest annual developer survey today, and lo and behold some are using it for coding work.

I would assume it's people who pay for Twitter pro or whatever it's called getting Grok as part of the bundle and not wanting to sign up for another subscription.

New comment by parabyl in "Middle-aged man trading cards go viral in rural Japan town"

parabyl — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:26:06 +0000

Although I think "pure" is alright to use in this context, I would probably have gone with "beautifully simple".

Show HN: A Simple XML and Feed Parser Written in TypeScript

parabyl — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 23:19:39 +0000

I had some fun a while back writing this XML parser in Typescript, after taking interest in tokenisation and compilers.

You can try it out in your own Javascript projects with a simple `npm install xml-trap` and you're good to go! The tokenizer used internally is also exposed (with `createTree`) for anyone to explore and have fun with.

Contributions are welcome!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40007852

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Staying ahead of threat actors in the age of AI

parabyl — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 19:18:17 +0000

Article URL: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2024/02/14/staying-ahead-of-threat-actors-in-the-age-of-ai/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39373926

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by parabyl in "IBM pauses advertising on X after ads show up next to antisemitic content"

parabyl — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 19:13:55 +0000

I'm from SA and I knew about IBM and the Holocaust, but not Apartheid. Thanks for putting me onto that.

New comment by parabyl in "Morocco earthquake kills more than 1,000"

parabyl — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 20:07:42 +0000

I heard a very small one somewhere that really isn't meant to get them, through a TV show in earbuds. Perhaps the volume has something to do with what's happening beneath the surface vs magnitude? In our case, as far as I know, the epicentre was a ~5h drive away (and out at sea), but it sounded about the same as loud subs at a concert to me.

New comment by parabyl in "What’s the world’s oldest language?"

parabyl — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 15:07:14 +0000

Blanking on a source right now, but I recall reading about a study on the 'oldness' of languages and found that the unique sort of phonetics in !Kung and other Khoe or San languages appeared to reduce over time, and simpler hard consonants would emerge in their place - implying that they are indeed some of the oldest languages still around.

Interstingly, there are a number of words from these languages that are still widely used in South African slang: Dagga for Marijuana, Eina for "Ouch!", Gogga for Bug or Insect, and Kerrie for Stick, usually used as the neologism Knobkerrie. Very possibly some of the oldest slang in the world!

New comment by parabyl in "Rust vs. Go in 2023"

parabyl — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 08:05:00 +0000

Spent a few months writing a pretty hefty Cqrs app in Go last year, had a fun but pretty unintuitive experience with rustlingss, and V really does seem like a cool in between! I look forward to taking it for a spin

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Pip Imports in Deno"

parabyl — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 09:53:38 +0000

Super cool! Fun, useful and slightly cursed indeed

New comment by parabyl in "Sixto Rodriguez has died"

parabyl — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 13:57:55 +0000

Segerman's recordshop is still running and an icon in the Cape Town music scene! https://mabuvinyl.wordpress.com/

New comment by parabyl in "A list of recent hostile moves by Google's Chrome team"

parabyl — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:41:40 +0000

I had always assumed it was due to Brendan Eich being the face of the project. Or the built-in adblocking. It's my preference for these reasons as a chromium default - I don't know anyone using Brave who touches the crypto stuff.

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:15:49 +0000

maybe give it another shot? I wasn't able to replicate the issue but haven't seen anyone else have it

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:14:52 +0000

yeah this is what I was referring to, thanks

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 20:58:03 +0000

This is very cool, hadn't heard of it before. Thanks.

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 20:56:14 +0000

Glad you're enjoying it, always open to nitpicky feedback. I'll put all of these suggestions on the backlog and see how they play together - thanks!

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 20:55:19 +0000

Thank you! That's super cool - I'm not nearly as familiar with data science as it sounds you are, I've just made some choice placements in building a UI around the Spotify API. They're hiding the nuts and bolts of turning a set of music feature parameters into a list of recommendations.

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 17:49:11 +0000

If I understand correctly, what I'm getting back from their API is basically what lies between, but without any of the interesting data they're using the do the calculation. One can hope, but I'd imagine that data is priceless to them and won't ever be available to us.

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 17:46:42 +0000

Hey, thanks for the feedback. Sign-in and saving to a profile was the most requested feature across the board when I previously launched Selecta, and as such it needs access to enable features that were requested by those who enjoyed using it.

I'd be more than happy to share what each of those datapoints is used for (and, in some cases where I only need an auth scope for one permission, but they're grouped together). Selecta is strictly open-source and anonymous analytics.

You can find the auth scopes I use in this file: https://github.com/knightspore/selecta/blob/main/src/app/api...

and the related access they provide here: https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/concepts...

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 17:07:43 +0000

If you still want to give it a shot, you shouldn't need an active subscription for it to work. But I do totally get moving away from the streaming world. Even bandcamp is losing its ground as a safe a haven for making sure artists are paid their worth.

New comment by parabyl in "Show HN: Selecta – Tune Your Own Spotify Recommendation Algorithm"

parabyl — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:54:53 +0000

Thanks for giving it a try - I'll take a shot at that one.