<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: stephenr</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=stephenr</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2026 18:25:54 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=stephenr" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Dots: Always-on agents"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This mostly copied parts from my comment elsewhere (<a href="https://lobste.rs/s/u1ypx5/stop_using_mysql_2026_it_is_not_true_open#c_wg8ffn" rel="nofollow">https://lobste.rs/s/u1ypx5/stop_using_mysql_2026_it_is_not_t...</a>)<p>Since the day Oracle bought Sun, we've heard how Oracle is going to kill MySQL, and/or make all its features "enterprise" only.<p>Both companies have middleware layers for directing queries, but:<p>- MySQL Proxy/MySQL Router are both GPL2<p>- MariaDB MaxScale is BSL (it's a product of MariaDB the company, not MariaDB the foundation)<p>Codership Oy was a company that produced Galera, a plugin for multi-master replication. It was available for the community editions of Oracle MySQL, MariaDB, and integrated via Percona in their build of MySQL to make Percona XtraDB Cluster aka PXC.<p>MariaDB the company bought Codership Oy last year. Very soon after this happened, the website for Galera started redirecting to MariaDB the company's Enterprise Cluster page with zero mention of the open source project they'd just bought.<p>Not long after that, they stopped making Galera available for Oracle MySQL, and even removed it from the MariaDB community edition builds. It was to only be available via MariaDB Enterprise edition. They have subsequently taken a <i>minute</i> backstop on the MariaDB Community edition scenario, but it sounds very much like it's "we won't rip it out <i>right now</i>", and essentially the Community edition is likely to have to (try to) support its own internal fork of Galera to keep the functionality.<p>This is similar to the scenario Percona is now in - supporting their own version of Galera for PXC. The difference is they're a consulting company and have revenue and paid staff to do so. MariaDB the foundation is essentially joined at the hip with MariaDB the company for resources, but they apparently have very different goals.<p>Literally the only thing the foundation "produces" is the community edition of MariaDB... and they send people for the documentation of said product to MariaDB the company's website. Last year MariaDB the foundation agreed to define and recognise a "Primary Code Contributor" for the project... and it's MariaDB the company.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 06:24:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49905150</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49905150</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49905150</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Dots: Always-on agents"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A lot of people in tech buy every bit into cargo culting and following what they've heard is popular or "what everyone does", without much justification or understanding.<p>Case in point: all the people who <i>still</i> loudly say everyone should jump from Oracle owned MySQL to MariaDB, in spite of MariaDB Inc doing practically everything the original MariaDB fork was meant to "protect" users from at the hands of Oracle.<p>I'm not saying oracle isn't a huge faceless corporation that wants nothing but money. I'm saying that tech people are IME better at following trends than doing real research themselves.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 04:34:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49904382</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49904382</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49904382</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Breaking Up with Google Play: Why Conversations Is Now Free"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Honestly I don't know which is a bigger scourge on humanity: Google doing Google shit or every company with a fucking IVR.<p>You deserve each other.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 27 Sep 2026 06:20:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49863868</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49863868</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49863868</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Breaking Up with Google Play: Why Conversations Is Now Free"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Isn't graphene <i>completely</i> dependent on what Google ships though? Ok they may be able to support Motorola devices longer than Googles releases facilitate supporting Google devices, but it's still ultimately android, which is still ultimately controlled by Google.<p>I'm not saying it isn't an improvement but this feels like choosing centos because you don't like the direction fedora is taking.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2026 13:22:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856303</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856303</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856303</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824</a><p>> one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:29:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49655611</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49655611</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49655611</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Space Force Uniform Is Inspired by Quasi-Satirical Film 'Starship Troopers'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>... is this meant to be satire? You're familiar with the main storyline yes?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 11:11:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49624540</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49624540</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49624540</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Space Force Uniform Is Inspired by Quasi-Satirical Film 'Starship Troopers'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Are you saying that a story where voting is reserved for "some people" is <i>what is needed</i> for a <i>democratic</i> government?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:50:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49623836</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49623836</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49623836</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How long ago was this?<p>I tried their "local ai autocomplete" thing a few years ago for a little while and it was hot garbage. It guessed the right/acceptable completion about 30% of the time at best.<p>I haven't looked at it since.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2026 05:32:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49119354</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49119354</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49119354</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Vinyl Cache and Varnish Cache"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I would happily write stored procs using the current language support for a decade without pay, before I'd subject myself to putting javascript in a fucking database engine.<p>> And how is it "minutiae" to be able to figure out "is my database version actually supported"?<p>Remembering "8.4", "9.7" and "<i>.4" just doesn't seem like a particularly big deal to me. The </i>number* has only changed 3 times in the last 10 years.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:05:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587509</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587509</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587509</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Vinyl Cache and Varnish Cache"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> such as vector indexes and JS stored procedures<p>So, the stuff that basically appeals to people chasing the AI dragon, and has zero practical use for 99.999% of developers making real products?<p>> I wish I was joking!<p>I wish I could care even a little bit about such minutiae.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:42:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587127</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587127</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48587127</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Vinyl Cache and Varnish Cache"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>To me the biggest "unknown" with Percona is that MariaDB (the company) bought out Codership (the creators of Galera Cluster, which XtraDB Cluster is based on) and it doesn't <i>seem</i> to be OSS any more.<p>I'm sure for some shops this will drive them to pay for the same feature in MariaDB cluster, but I'm more likely to just transition to MySQL Group Replication.<p>This is my whole point about MariaDB - they are steadily making their OSS software completely dependent on the company (paid) versions for anything beyond toy scale.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:46:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585233</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585233</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585233</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Vinyl Cache and Varnish Cache"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The comparison with MySQL/MariaDB is unfortunate, given that since the "split" MariaDB has shown itself to be every bit the corporate owned "FOSS" project while its supporters still harp on about how terrible oracle is for OSS, without actually acknowledging the real history of each respective project and accompanying company.<p>Given that MariaDB the company is now owned by a private equity firm, I doubt it's going to get better.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:32:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48583817</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48583817</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48583817</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "The solution the supply chain problems is removing your deps from .gitignore"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We are clearly talking about different things.<p>Access to source control is required on a developer workstation.<p>It is not required inside an application environment on that workstation (eg a VM or other such system that both provides a standard environment and creates separation)<p>I'm not making any claims about the security of react.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2026 00:59:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302883</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302883</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302883</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "The solution the supply chain problems is removing your deps from .gitignore"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Most of the recent supply chain attacks specifically target stealing secrets from development environments.<p>If your secrets in a dev environment can actually do <i>any</i> damage if leaked, you're doing something very fucking wrong.<p>> React's last minor version bump included 100 files and ~5k changes.<p>So you're choosing over engineered dependencies and then complaining they're too big.<p>Somehow I think the problem, as usual, started with the meat sack on the chair.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 13:45:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48294295</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48294295</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48294295</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "The solution the supply chain problems is removing your deps from .gitignore"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> If you already had left pad cached then you were not affected by its disappearance.<p>The evidence of course is that when you say "left pad" no one knows what you're referring to because nothing bad ever happened.<p>> If a package needs an install script to be used, to compile some native code for example, you still need to run the install script before you can use the package.<p>This already sounds like a giant red fucking flag, but sure whatever, what you're using needs some compile step. You can be in control of what runs when and where. Heck you could even take the fucking maverick solution and compile the shit once out of band and deploy the compiled binary to your production environment. I know that forethought and planning ahead will come as a fucking shock to the NPM using community, but try it some time, it's really kinda good.<p>> Manually repeating the actions npm does automatically does nothing to protect you from supply chain attacks.<p>I mean it does, inherently, if you're running those actions locally in an environment without production access...<p>Oh noes, your compromised module stole your DB credentials, and your SES credentials to spam all your customers..... and just got a bunch of failures or sent messages to no-one because the environment has dummy data and uses a locked down sending configuration for SES.<p>There is 100% benefit in running that shit in a development environment.<p>> The only thing that helps is to review code before you run it.<p>Right, and somehow you think having the code in question literally in your VCS, waiting for a merge like all the other code... that's not apparently helpful.<p>But hey thanks for proving me right about the unhinged complaints. Stong echoes of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 16:56:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268993</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268993</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268993</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "The solution the supply chain problems is removing your deps from .gitignore"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I mean even if you blindly copy in the dependency (I'm not saying you should) you've already solved two supply chain issues with install-on-prod:<p>- dependencies "disappearing" (aka left pad 2, electric boogaloo)<p>- dependencies running nefarious "install scripts" on prod<p>Apparently some language package managers also will silently install newer versions than a lock file specifies, if you use the <i>wrong</i> install command. So that's arguably more a case of saving you from yourself but the example I saw said that "... install" is wrong you need to use "... ci" which is kind of asinine IMO.<p>Things like sudden changes in dependencies should also be noticed more readily.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 11:48:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265764</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265764</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265764</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "The solution the supply chain problems is removing your deps from .gitignore"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm glad other people are starting to realise this.<p>Just a word of warning from someone who's always advocated for this approach:<p>Prepare to be inundated with ridiculous, nonsensical arguments about why it's impossible to work that way.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 12:59:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48256930</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48256930</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48256930</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "PHP's Oddities"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If I show a person on the street a Fuji apple and a Honeycrisp and ask if they're approximately the same, they're going to say yes even if they're labeled.<p>Php has had a strict equals operator for decades. You not using it is not a language fault.<p>For the second point: I doubt you'll fine any language where you can just do an equals comparison on floats and it works as expected. That's the nature of floating point numbers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 09:16:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48255803</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48255803</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48255803</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Why I don’t vibe code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm pretty sure it is actually.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 12:07:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234737</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234737</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234737</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stephenr in "Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>South Australia. Possibly other Australian states too, I haven't checked (I live overseas currently)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 04:59:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48232150</link><dc:creator>stephenr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48232150</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48232150</guid></item></channel></rss>