Hacker News: porphyra

New comment by porphyra in "Developer gets Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95"

porphyra — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:19:05 +0000

Wild how back in the days, phone chips were 10 years behind PCs in performance, but now they are almost the same (in single-core performance, anyway).

New comment by porphyra in "MiMo Code is now released and open-source"

porphyra — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:17:43 +0000

Pretty neat that you can just install it and start using it (at a Sonnet 4.6-level model) without needing to sign in or pay.

Typically, Chinese websites are a big pain to log in or sign up because they require a +86 phone number due to legal reasons. Being able to use it without having to make an account is amazing for friction reduction. I could probably even just install it onto new machines to help with set up.

I wonder how they are gonna detect and block abuse though?

New comment by porphyra in "If Claude Fable stops helping you, you'll never know"

porphyra — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:05:45 +0000

If your car slows down to 20mph you'd instantly know. If Claude silently switches to dumb mode, you might not even realize.

New comment by porphyra in "Exif Smuggling (2025)"

porphyra — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:44:17 +0000

Mildly annoying how almost everything strips out EXIF data nowadays, in part due to security concerns like this, and then I can't find out what camera, lens, and settings were used to take photos.

New comment by porphyra in "My Agent Skill for Test-Driven Development"

porphyra — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:49:24 +0000

A lot of prompt engineering goes out of date quickly. Nobody nowadays goes "you are an expert software engineer. make no mistakes" lol.

As a personal anecdote, I find that a lot of big prompts and skills use up context window budget and in many cases agents will eagerly try to use a skill even if it isn't super relevant or necessary for the current task. So when I have too many skills I have to spend a bunch of time toggling the checkboxes to figure out which ones are needed for the task at hand before starting...

New comment by porphyra in "Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026"

porphyra — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:42:16 +0000

Nice. In the US, it cost us $35k to install 7.6 kW panels + 13 kWh battery. But our PG&E electricity prices in the Bay Area are also several times more expensive than in Europe ($0.50 per kWh) so it will also pay off in 8-10 years.

New comment by porphyra in "Gooey: A GPU-accelerated UI framework for Zig"

porphyra — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:17:56 +0000

It was made with AI though: https://github.com/duanebester/gooey/blob/main/CLAUDE.md

That said, it fills a legit hole in the ecosystem and the author seems to be hands-on with the technical direction.

New comment by porphyra in "Gooey: A GPU-accelerated UI framework for Zig"

porphyra — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:16:57 +0000

Well, the big CLAUDE.md there is a giveaway that it was AI generated:

https://github.com/duanebester/gooey/blob/main/CLAUDE.md

But still, the project solves a legit pain point. And the author seems pretty hands-on with steering the technical implementation details.

New comment by porphyra in "Nvidia RTX Spark"

porphyra — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 22:52:08 +0000

Lots of comments are expressing skepticism about compatibility but it's pretty cool how Nvidia has the clout to convince a bunch of game publishers and creative apps to release Arm versions. Popular games like League of Legends as well as stuff like Adobe Photoshop and Premiere are getting native Arm ports.

> Over 100 Windows software providers such as Adobe, Blackmagic Design, Blender, CapCut, ComfyUI and OTOY, and game developers such as KRAFTON, NetEase, Remedy Entertainment, Riot Games and XBOX are embracing the new RTX Spark platform. [...] NVIDIA is partnering with Adobe to rearchitect Adobe Premiere and Photoshop for RTX Spark. [0]

> Gaming on Arm is finally coming of age thanks to the NVIDIA partnership. Native anti-cheat solutions from Epic and BattlEye are fully supported on the RTX Spark platform. Major developers are jumping on board, with Riot Games bringing League of Legends and Valorant natively to the architecture, alongside KRAFTON bringing PUBG Battlegrounds. [1]

Also, Nintento Switch is an Nvidia/Arm gaming device so many game publishers already have some experience with the combo.

[0] https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-windows-...

[1] https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/06/01/microsoft-builds-it...

New comment by porphyra in "Nvidia RTX Spark"

porphyra — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 20:14:43 +0000

technically in order for something to be turing complete it needs infinite memory

New comment by porphyra in "Nvidia RTX Spark"

porphyra — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:18:42 +0000

Strix halo's 8060S gpu is very weak, and is roughly equivalent to a 4060 laptop GPU, whereas GB10's gpu is equivalent to a desktop 5070. For LLM throughput, tok/s is similar due to bottleneck by memory bandwidth, but the GB10 has 3x faster prefill. People have also been able to squeeze out much better performance on GB10 using NVFP4 and other improvements in the months after the DGX Spark launch, so don't be misled by early lackluster benchmarks. For the RTX Spark, which also targets gaming and creative applications, the 3x faster GPU is quite nice.

New comment by porphyra in "We should be more tired than the model"

porphyra — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:13:43 +0000

Code generation isn't antithetical to high level reasoning skills and even with "vibe coding" you can still exercise way finer control than the slot machine analogy.

I typically prompt the AI with a detailed plaintext description of the algorithm and have a firm grasp on the time complexity. Perhaps my low level implementation skills are atrophying, but now I have greater bandwidth to think about the higher level goals now that I don't need to worry about the nitty gritty stuff.

It's kinda like how we went from handwriting machine code to programming in FORTRAN, and then going to a higher level language like Python. To me, using AI is just another level higher. Skill retention of understanding machine code and assembly went away in the majority of software engineers, but we gained a lot more than we lost.

New comment by porphyra in "It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12"

porphyra — Fri, 29 May 2026 20:59:13 +0000

Dell just announced an XPS 13 that is $699 (with a $599 education pricing) and fairly nice CNC machined body (1 kg) and nice screen (2560x1600 30-120 Hz 500 nit 100% DCI-P3). That could be a tempting alternative to the Macbook Neo for people who don't want to use macOS. Unfortunately for the Framework, it is no longer competitive even with other PC laptops.

https://videocardz.com/newz/dell-unveils-xps-13-its-lightest...

New comment by porphyra in "News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development"

porphyra — Thu, 28 May 2026 18:32:57 +0000

The 8GB Pi 5, at $170 [1], is encroaching on Jetson Orin Nano Super's $240 price point [2]. But the Jetson has a faster CPU (newer a78ae cores rather than a76) and, obviously, a whole-ass GPU.

[1] https://www.microcenter.com/product/673711/raspberry-pi-5

[2] https://www.microcenter.com/product/691058/nvidia-jetson-ori...

New comment by porphyra in "Ferrari shares fall after launch of first EV as Jony Ive design proves divisive"

porphyra — Tue, 26 May 2026 17:50:49 +0000

And the original Model S proved that you can have a nice electric car that looks nice and "normal" as opposed to weird blobs of the time.

New comment by porphyra in "What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard"

porphyra — Tue, 26 May 2026 07:32:13 +0000

Spain sounds like a child's paradise. Too bad their birth rates are one of the lowest in Europe (and in the world) at around 1.1 births per woman.

New comment by porphyra in "My two-part desk setup (2025)"

porphyra — Sun, 24 May 2026 22:34:37 +0000

That's a great desk top but the industrial appearance of it looks like it belongs in a garage rather than a fancy midcentury modern home office of a guy with a Leica M11 and Vitsoe shelving.

New comment by porphyra in "My two-part desk setup (2025)"

porphyra — Sat, 23 May 2026 20:33:28 +0000

I mean, you can say that about any luxury good right? It just looks nice and makes you feel good.

IKEA doesn't actually make any modular wall shelves like that anymore, after discontinuing the SVALNÄS. For a wall mounted shelf on a budget you could go for the Elfa system or the Fasttrack one.

New comment by porphyra in "My two-part desk setup (2025)"

porphyra — Sat, 23 May 2026 18:50:41 +0000

Wow this guy has the 606 Vitsoe Universal shelving [1] and USM Haller desk [2]

A dream setup.

[1] https://www.vitsoe.com/us/606

[2] https://us.usm.com/collections/tables-desks

New comment by porphyra in "Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)"

porphyra — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:41:38 +0000

Thanks for the correction. That sucks then. Dude should have stayed in his lane making rockets instead of commenting on agriculture.