<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: peterldowns</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=peterldowns</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 21:05:44 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=peterldowns" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Judson's Last Ride"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Judson sounds a lot like Henry, my twin brother, in terms of his abilities and profound autism. Growing up I learned to say that Henry is “autistic retarded” but I am sure that’s out of date. Anyway, God bless Judson, his family, and especially his caretakers and teachers. It is a special form of selflessness required to help the severely disabled and I am forever in awe and forever grateful to anyone who does so.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 03:56:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254228</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254228</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254228</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Mini Shai-Hulud Strikes Again: 314 npm Packages Compromised"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes. This is partially why other ecosystems don’t see as many supply chain attacks.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 13:52:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48193332</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48193332</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48193332</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Los Alamos and the long path to detecting neutrinos"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Neutrino research is so cool. SNO+ is entering a new phase this year, with a new scintillator fluid that might allow us to determine their Majorana status. Always cool to realize how much is still unknown, and how tenuously we “know” anything.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 06:09:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059234</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059234</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059234</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Principles for agent-native CLIs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is really good, particularly the async tasks part. Hadn't thought about that. We'll be thinking about these lessons for the next version of our agent CLI.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 22:05:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48055758</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48055758</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48055758</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "GitHub Actions is the weakest link"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh sweet, thanks Mitch! I was a customer of Buildkite a few years ago, looking forward to working together again.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:10:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949534</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949534</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47949534</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "GitHub Actions is the weakest link"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Founder is active on HN and the service is high quality. Support is reasonable. Machines are fast and work well. There are a bunch of alternatives, the switching cost is extremely low, pick whatever you'd like.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 04:07:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944071</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944071</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944071</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "GitHub Actions is the weakest link"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yup! Still haven't switched off of Github, but considering it at this point. If you're in my shoes, here's some tools we use that help:<p>- <a href="https://github.com/sethvargo/ratchet" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sethvargo/ratchet</a> for pinning external Actions/Workflows to specific commit hashes<p>- <a href="https://www.warpbuild.com/">https://www.warpbuild.com/</a> for much faster runners (also: runs-on/namespace/buildjet/blacksmith/depot/... take your pick)<p>- soon moving to Buildkite for orchestration of our CI jobs<p>I still just need a reasonable alternative for the "store our git repo, allow us to make and merge prs" part of things. Hopefully someone takes all the pieces that the Pierre team is publishing and makes this available soon. The Github UI and the `gh` cli are actually really nice and the existing alternative code storage tools are not great IMO.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:48:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937904</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937904</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937904</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "You don't want long-lived keys"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Agreed! Been working on infra for an early-stage company recently and it's been awesome using OIDC and IRSA (or WIF if you're on google) for as many things as possible. Basically, there are no permanent keys for anything.<p>Slightly annoying to have to wrap some clis in scripts that generate the short-lived token, but it feels really magical to have services securely calling each other without any explicit keys or password to even store in our vault.<p>Lots of cool benefits --- for instance, we ran the compromised Trivy github action a few weeks ago, but our Github Actions had 0 keys for it to leak! Also really great that I don't have to worry about rotating shared credentials on short notice if an engineer on my team decides to leave the company.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:11:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47897346</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47897346</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47897346</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Sam Altman's Creepy Eyeball-Scanning Company Gets in Bed with Zoom and Tinder"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Would make way more sense to just use verification claims backed by government issued IDs, rather than relying on a third party like World(coin).<p>For instance, something like <a href="https://self.xyz" rel="nofollow">https://self.xyz</a>. It's strictly better than the alternatives:<p>- already works with existing government-issued ids<p>- doesn't require submitting scans of your ID to third parties that can then be stored and leak<p>- allows privacy-preserving verification like "is this person older than 18" without requiring sharing of the person's exact age</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:45:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47866055</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47866055</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47866055</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "The Vercel breach: OAuth attack exposes risk in platform environment variables"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I see it the same way. Interesting times…</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:27:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47856933</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47856933</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47856933</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ah ok thanks very much!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 20:01:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853791</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853791</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853791</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh no not in the public domain, I better not build something cool!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 20:01:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853784</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853784</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853784</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've been meaning to build ~exactly this experience, but for the 1952 Encyclopedia Brittanica Great Books of the World collection and its experimental index <i>Syntopicon</i> [0]. Would love to know more about how you OCR'd or otherwise ingested and parsed the raw material. I have a physical copy of the books, and I found some samizdat raw-image scans and started working on a custom OCR pipeline, but wondering if maybe I could learn from your approach...<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Syntopicon" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Syntopicon</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 19:10:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853126</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853126</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47853126</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "What are skiplists good for?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Why come here to just post AI comments? I don't get the point.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 19 Apr 2026 14:53:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824759</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824759</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824759</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "There are zero-day exploits for your mind"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This post is garbage slop. Read BLIT instead<p><a href="https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm</a><p>Or my favorite of his basilisk stories, different kinds of darkness: <a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-of-darkness/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-o...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:36:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711178</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711178</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711178</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Mario and Earendil"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My very first real tech job in the bay, my new boss recommended I study up on Armin's open source code in order to get better as an engineer. It's been very interesting following his work over the years. I'm extremely curious to see how Earendil goes — no surprise if it's a success.<p>Congratulations Armin, and Mario, and good luck.<p>Dug up the email, here's what my boss said directly:<p><i>In terms of tech to keep up on, it might be worth while to play around with node.js a bit as we've been doing a few small projects using the Express MVC framework. A great reference for js, (which I remember chatting with you briefly about) is Javascript the Good Parts (Douglas Crockford). You may also consider seeking enlightenment on Armin Ronacher's github page (he's a python master, leader of flask, genshi, pocoo, long time python contributor) <a href="https://github.com/mitsuhiko" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mitsuhiko</a>. His code is pretty top notch. I follow Kenneth Reitz quite a bit too (Armin and he often work on projects together). Kenneth is know for le*git and python's request library.</i></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:27:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691551</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691551</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691551</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>are there any tricks you'd suggest, or starter prompts, for using claude to analyze my own company's services for security problems?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:32:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47682686</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47682686</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47682686</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thanks for sharing this, going to modify a bit and give it a try.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 06:14:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47671312</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47671312</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47671312</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Principles and Gear"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you're not injured you're probably fine, most of the time there's not a big difference. The reason I recommend a local running store is that they can usually help people who are out of shape to get the right shoes, which sometimes requires gait analysis. And they're usually nice people who can connect you to local running clubs, races, etc. If you know what you're doing you absolutely don't have to go to a running store. I still go because I know the people at mine and they're nice.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:39:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586477</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586477</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586477</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by peterldowns in "Principles and Gear"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's cool. The double watch is smart. I never run longer than a half marathon in training so I don't bother with headphones but most of my serious running friends insist, makes sense when they're running 80-100mi weeks.<p>If you're thinking about getting into running, I'd say the first piece of gear to buy is a good pair of shoes from your local running store. Don't worry about fancy watches or gels or arm sleeves or whatever.<p>I did finally buy a smartwatch (coros) last year, after training my whole life with just a casio. It's made me a lot more adventurous as having the GPS tracking means I can run offroad and even off-trail without worrying about keeping accurate track of my distances and paces. This is probably the second piece of gear I'd recommend buying and I wish I had done it sooner. The numbers are useful, it makes it easier to do the hobby, and it means I can use Strava which is a fun way to stay in touch with my fitness friends.<p>Third piece of unsolicited advice is that you absolutely don't have to run marathons.<p>> t. slow, but ran the fastest mile of my life last year, good friends with many semi pros.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 03:04:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582284</link><dc:creator>peterldowns</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582284</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582284</guid></item></channel></rss>