Hacker News: tech2

New comment by tech2 in "Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?"

tech2 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:14:17 +0000

Two major issues in my experience seem to occur.

The first is that you had a system with a given set of ownership and now lines need to be drawn between groups to grant each sub-team their own piece of the larger pie. This is where Conway's law comes to bite you because your code is likely structured around your existing team and practices. Deciding how to draw that boundary is a challenge (API-based? Separate services?). Do not skip this part, otherwise you'll have an awful mix of old and new and everyone suffers.

The second is how work is structured. With a small team, anyone can edit anything (ownership again). With multiple teams you need to accept that changes will require multiple stages of development and the rate of change can take a hit due to scheduling and prioritisation for each team. In the small team a single sprint (assuming this is your working practice) may have been sufficient, but with multiple teams those changes will need scheduling.

New comment by tech2 in "Python Type Checker Comparison: Empty Container Inference"

tech2 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:36:09 +0000

It's not entirely fair.

Prior to 2.3 Python didn't have booleans, just "truthiness". In 2.3 they added the Boolean class as a subclass of int (because of patterns of development it was a pragmatic choice). True and False were introduced, but they were able to be reassigned which could cause all manner of fun. 3.x made them keywords which put a stop to that but the int aspect remained.

New comment by tech2 in "Infrastructure decisions I endorse or regret after 4 years at a startup (2024)"

tech2 — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 10:40:08 +0000

I have to ask, because wow that's a lot of buckets, but what kind of activity requires breaching even a 1,000 bucket limit per account?

New comment by tech2 in "Turn Dependabot off"

tech2 — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 23:20:10 +0000

For python maybe pip-audit, and perhaps bandit for a little extra?

It doesn't have the code tracing ability that my sibling is referring to, but it's better than nothing.

New comment by tech2 in "Microsoft Copilot AI Comes to LG TVs, and Can't Be Deleted"

tech2 — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 10:24:54 +0000

I tried to do that, really did, but my TV was circa 2006 and I needed a replacement. None of the options in my region are good, there's no Scepter equivalent unless you pay 3x as much for something akin to a commercial display. So, air-gapping it is!

New comment by tech2 in "Show HN: Forty.News – Daily news, but on a 40-year delay"

tech2 — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 10:41:44 +0000

The one that should probably really freak you out was/is the Soviet "Dead Hand" system. Who needs people deciding whether to launch?

New comment by tech2 in "Basalt Woven Textile"

tech2 — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 18:19:10 +0000

I had wrap from my exhaust system start to unravel at one point during a long journey far from home. I had to unwrap it by hand on the roadside sans-gloves to prevent it from ending up under a wheel and tearing components apart. The end result was that I had to find a local retailer selling duct-tape; Not for the car, but so I could apply segments of it to my skin to pull those tiny irritating fragments free from my inner forearm. Yeah, that itch is evil!

New comment by tech2 in "Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws"

tech2 — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 09:15:41 +0000

Right, but that's a follow on to regulations about increased rear and side still heights for occupant protection, and that's a follow on from increased vehicle sizes, and that's a follow on from commercial vehicles being sold to the general public instead of regular passenger vehicles due to tax breaks, etc.

New comment by tech2 in "Short Little Difficult Books"

tech2 — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 17:30:13 +0000

One of my favourites that starts out difficult but you become fluent in by the end is Banks' "Feersum Endjinn". I love seeing people's facial expressions on first attempting to understand Bascule, or read it "normally".

New comment by tech2 in "The Therac-25 Incident (2021)"

tech2 — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 08:31:44 +0000

The earlier model that the 25 replaced was all mechanically interlocked. The belief was that software provided that same level of assurance. They performed manual testing but what they weren't able to do was reach a level of speed and fluency with the system to result in the failure modes which caused the issues. Lower hardware costs equals higher profit...

New comment by tech2 in "Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act"

tech2 — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 22:29:53 +0000

They may not be against content restriction, instead they may be against removal of user privacy or anonymity. If the proof of age thing was some kind of zero knowledge proof such that the age verifying group has no knowledge of what you're accessing, and the site you're accessing has no knowledge of you as an individual (beyond tells like IP address etc.) then perhaps they'd be more open to it?

New comment by tech2 in "A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)"

tech2 — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 17:39:03 +0000

The issue with the lack of intermediates in the cert isn't browsers (they'll just deal with it). Sure, if they aren't already in the cache then there's a small hit first time. The problem is that if your SSL endpoint is accessed by any programming language (for example, you offer image URL to a B2B system to download so they can perform image resizing for you, or somesuch) then there's a chance the underlying platform doesn't automatically do AIA chasing. Python is one-such system I'm aware of, but there are others that will be forced to work around this for no net benefit.

New comment by tech2 in "A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)"

tech2 — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 09:53:55 +0000

Please though, for the love of dog, have your site serve a complete chain and don't have the browser or software stack do AIA chasing.

New comment by tech2 in "U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites"

tech2 — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 21:36:57 +0000

Maybe we're missing one another here but it appears you're arguing for me. Khomeini is in place _because_ of western influence/involvement, if it weren't for operation Ajax/Boot (depending on whether we're talking CIA or MI-6 naming) and the various aspects of the associated propaganda then Mosaddegh may have remained in power (I say maybe because it was quite unstable times in the early 50s Iran) and Khomeini may never have gained power.

New comment by tech2 in "U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites"

tech2 — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 13:38:08 +0000

Are we forgetting the pushback against nationalisation of their oil industry, operations involving both CIA and MI6, the propaganda campaign to get rid of their elected president, and other such fun? It's not like the west didn't have some rather significant involvement and incentive here. They have what they have because the west (as is common) messed with another nation.

New comment by tech2 in "Cockatoos have learned to operate drinking fountains in Australia"

tech2 — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:09:48 +0000

Weka can be a lot of fun too, I saw a pack of them opening someone's backpack zipper to find out what's inside.

New comment by tech2 in "Shenmue (1999) reverse engineering reveals possible sun position oversight"

tech2 — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 11:17:16 +0000

Athens being its own special hell, looking across the city from Lykovounia and seeing everything in the city at the same ~5 storey level of dark concrete.

New comment by tech2 in "Type 1 diabetes reversed by new cell transplantation technique"

tech2 — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 06:38:38 +0000

Except, a diabetic's immune system already wants to kill those too...

New comment by tech2 in "Zero regrets: Firefox power user kept 7,500 tabs open for two years"

tech2 — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 07:25:33 +0000

I don't recall the last time I lost all my tabs. The only big annoyance I've had in recent years is when something caused my tab tree to flatten so all my arranged nesting was gone. I'm more curious how you end up with a system that destroys your session semi frequently?

New comment by tech2 in "Zero regrets: Firefox power user kept 7,500 tabs open for two years"

tech2 — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 07:21:39 +0000

Tree style tabs extension, nesting in a manner that makes sense to them, probably other extensions too. I only have about 600 tabs at the moment and am impressed by someone managing more than an order of magnitude more than I.