Hacker News: the__alchemist

New comment by the__alchemist in "The state of building user interfaces in Rust"

the__alchemist — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:36:25 +0000

Wait until you try Device Events on certain newer Linux versions. You might be in for a surprise, of which is no fault of Winit.

New comment by the__alchemist in "The state of building user interfaces in Rust"

the__alchemist — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:11:28 +0000

Can certainly be a downside. Jaded / grumpy rust programmer perspective: I will take this over the typical rust pattern of OSS libs which have been made without being tested in practical applications!

New comment by the__alchemist in "The state of building user interfaces in Rust"

the__alchemist — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:08:39 +0000

EGUI slaps. I'm interested in comparing it with GPUI too: That one gets immediate cred for being demonstrated in a responsive program that demonstrates the range of its complexity.

EGUI bonus: Good integration with WGPU, so you can show 3D things as part of your UI.

Complaining time: Historically, syncing winit, EGUI, WGPU, the binder between GPU and EGUI, and EGUI libs like for file dialogs has been a pain. It gives me anxiety thinking about upgrading versions. That said... the teams are sometimes shockingly fast about syncing their UIs. It is when winnit or WGPU etc make big breaking changes (Often from accumulation over time) where things get hairy!

New comment by the__alchemist in "What if we legally required politicians to work regular jobs 2 months a year?"

the__alchemist — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:05:05 +0000

Remember the jet that went down over Iran a while back? People reading the articles were questioning why a Col was the isolated person. This is an example of this article's principle in action: If the bobs fly, they will have tacit knowledge about what's going on.

New comment by the__alchemist in "A jacket that harvests drinking water from the air"

the__alchemist — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:16:51 +0000

I believe this uses absorption; not cooling [condensation].

New comment by the__alchemist in "A jacket that harvests drinking water from the air"

the__alchemist — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 01:33:38 +0000

Nearly all passive water-from-air devices described in articles are based on false claims. Peltier-based, desiccant/absorption/adsorption based, etc. All end up not working, or not existing. This has been common for ~10 years.

Which category does this fall into?:

  - Fraud
  - Incompetence / misunderstanding that wasn't cleared up prior to publishing an article
  - Neither; this works as expected

New comment by the__alchemist in "Cybersecurity researchers aren't happy about the guardrails on Anthropic's Fable"

the__alchemist — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:38:01 +0000

Ah it just flagged my water solubility question!

New comment by the__alchemist in "Who Runs Your Rust Future? Hands-On Intro to Async Rust"

the__alchemist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:34:58 +0000

Could it be that this is related to the high (anecdotally observed) correlation between Async and webdev in rust? Most of the web-related crates I've run into require Async.

New comment by the__alchemist in "Ask HN: Prediction for SpaceX IPO?"

the__alchemist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:15:28 +0000

I predict I will be opening a moderate short position on it within the first week. HTH!

Are you familiar with https://old.reddit.com/wallstreetbets? It is an invaluable reservoir of knowledge on this matter. It is, in general, a respected source of original research, and speculative commentary on matters bovine and ursine.

New comment by the__alchemist in "Ask HN: Are we all walking into a trap?"

the__alchemist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:46:47 +0000

According to the wise Mr. Betteridge, the answer is No. Hope this helps!

New comment by the__alchemist in "Ask HN: Why won't you be replaced by AI?"

the__alchemist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:42:22 +0000

Hi! I'm a mammal. I am very complex, and contain multitudes of cells, bacteria etc. Honed to very a very robust system over hundreds of millions of years. Anthropic's Mythos is a token. A pair of words which is scattered through threads on Hacker news.

Please report back when your God can fart.

New comment by the__alchemist in "Claude Fable 5"

the__alchemist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:22:29 +0000

Interesting! I have not used Fable, but so far have not hit trouble. I'm a hobby biologist with a home mol bio lab. It wouldn't answer my questions about LNPs, but so far has been fine for my recombinant DNA workflows, lab techniques, environmental DNA protocols etc. I suspect this may become more difficult!

New comment by the__alchemist in "Show HN: Performative-UI – a react component library of design tropes"

the__alchemist — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:28:00 +0000

Wow, Blazing fast! Does this use Fiber?

New comment by the__alchemist in "Thunderbird Littering My Home"

the__alchemist — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:56:41 +0000

Webmail (Fastmail's official webapp in this case)

New comment by the__alchemist in "Thunderbird Littering My Home"

the__alchemist — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:20:18 +0000

There are so many annoyances in TB. I stopped using it after a few days. My primary concerns:

  - Opening an email thread opens multiple (potentially many) tabs, and is difficult to nagivate or understand the flow of messages
  - I don't know how to write an email without it making the spacing between paragraphs/lines larger than I would like. (I.e. double-spacing)
  - Search is unreliable / broken.

New comment by the__alchemist in "Zig Structs of Arrays (2024)"

the__alchemist — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:10:40 +0000

> Meanwhile, game engines need operator overloading for adding/multiplying vectors (spatial transforms, lighting, physics) and core zig design philosophy prevents operator overloading.

This is a frustrating decision. My use cases for low level languages overlap closely with my use cases for vectors (etc) with operator overloading. It was one of the first things which put a bad taste in my mouth about Zig.

New comment by the__alchemist in "Zig by Example"

the__alchemist — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:13:17 +0000

I'm suspicious that the user base is people who like to program using pointers in business logic. So, the subset of current C programmers who are willing to switch.

With this in mind: Does anyone here program in Zig, or know someone who does who is not a current C (or C++) programmer?

New comment by the__alchemist in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

the__alchemist — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:43:36 +0000

I suspect this is a misalignment of overton windows, expectations, and the definitions of "anti" and "ai".

New comment by the__alchemist in "Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux"

the__alchemist — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:02:00 +0000

Inded. But... Let's say by compiling for Windows and MacOS you are making it work on 80% of users' computers. Then you compile on an older Ubuntu version which will work on any newer Ubuntu or Debian system, and you're at 90%. Worth doing. Then you do a Centos/RH build to get to 95%.

This won't work for all Linux users, but that doesn't have to be the bar. Making a few linux builds for the most popular distros is incrementally better than saying it's Windows/Mac only.

New comment by the__alchemist in "Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux"

the__alchemist — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 18:55:16 +0000

I don't have experience with Electron, but... IMO if you compile on something like Ubuntu 20, many applications will work reliably on Ubuntu 20, 22, 24,+, and Debian 2020 editions +. (Assuming same CPU arch as the compiling computer).

Obviously this will probably fail on other distros, but I've found in the past similar groupings. Backwards compatibility is different: I expect a package a compile on Ubuntu 24 not to work on Ubuntu 22.

This is anecdotal, and in the context of rust + EGUI, so I'm not sure how applicable it is to Electron.

I recently hit a Wayland snag: It doesn't support Device Events other than mouse movement. I worked around it by changing to Window events. I could see that being annoying if this substitution weren't acceptable, but it was in this case.