Hacker News: wmantly

New comment by wmantly in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)"

wmantly — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:47:04 +0000

Location: New York City

Remote: Yes (Remote or hybrid/in-person in NYC)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python, JavaScript, Node.js, Go, PostgreSQL, ZFS, Linux (Mint/Debian/Ubuntu), Proxmox VE, Docker, Git, AWS, GCP, OpenAPI, MCP (Model Context Protocol), local LLM deployment (Ollama, vLLM), agentic RAG infrastructure.

Résumé/CV: https://william.mantly.vip (At bottom of page)

Email: william@mantly.vip

Senior Software Engineer and Infrastructure Architect with over 20 years of hands-on experience spanning core backend engineering, high-concurrency data pipelines, and infrastructure automation. Previously served as VP of Software Engineering at JPMorgan Chase, navigating complex data integrity and financial compliance frameworks. Founder and CEO of Theta 42, a technology consulting firm. Self-taught computer science background with current Cisco and A+ networking certifications. Extensive background maintaining high-availability distributed infrastructure, managing server clusters, and handling bare-metal and VPS networking. Strong track record of technical mentorship and training, including instructing Python/Django backends with a documented 90% placement rate for students. Actively building local AI pipelines, structured tool-use interfaces, and custom reverse-proxy systems.

New comment by wmantly in "Microsoft Says Windows May Need Up to 8 Hours to Update"

wmantly — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 23:27:45 +0000

The major difference is Linux can update in the background, with out much effect on working performance. Linux also doesn't force you to update, or block shutdown/boot events to perform an update. Its simply a much better experience.

New comment by wmantly in "Microsoft Says Windows May Need Up to 8 Hours to Update"

wmantly — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 20:29:48 +0000

Most people do everything in the browser, so Linux Mint gives the end user everything they need with little down side.

New comment by wmantly in "Microsoft Says Windows May Need Up to 8 Hours to Update"

wmantly — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 19:23:35 +0000

Windows update is the number one driver for people switching to Linux in my experience. I personally know at least 20 people who are are non-technical who switched to Linux solely because of windows update.

New comment by wmantly in "Tesla Solar Roof buyer left without roof and tarps over his house after 2-months"

wmantly — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 14:07:08 +0000

Tesla "solar roof" are not panels, the roofing tiles them selves are solar and it looks like a normal roof. Its also suppose to last longer then panels.

New comment by wmantly in "I Can't Believe I'm Writing This Linux Article About Loving the Xfce DE"

wmantly — Tue, 21 May 2019 22:11:02 +0000

Me too, I used 10.04(i think), the last gnome version until the repo stopped updating. Linux Mint has been my desktop of choice ever since. With their MATE and Cinnamon version looking like a DESKTOP and everything works out of the box its win/win. In 2010~ every one lost their collective mind when it comes to UI.

New comment by wmantly in "What are good Linux laptops for 2019?"

wmantly — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 02:19:50 +0000

I have been using Linux on many higher end HP laptops without issue. At the moment I have HP Spectre x360 15in 2016,8th gen i7 16gb RAM, 512GB SSD and 2gb mx950 Nvidia. After installing Linux Mint 19 everything worked out of the box and i get about 6-hour of battery. I have a few older HP envy series and each of them work with out issue. The only issue i have had in the past 5years is laptops with more then 2 speakers. Linux just assumes 2 speakers and you get shit sound. This is fixable with jack-reset.

New comment by wmantly in "Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality"

wmantly — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 19:12:22 +0000

This is from a 4 socket Xeon E7-4860 with 64 ram slots(16 in use)

  e7-4860:~ Mon Jun 11
  03:06 PM william$ numactl --hardware
  available: 4 nodes (0-3)
  node 0 cpus: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
  node 0 size: 16035 MB
  node 0 free: 1306 MB
  node 1 cpus: 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
  node 1 size: 16125 MB
  node 1 free: 3237 MB
  node 2 cpus: 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
  node 2 size: 16125 MB
  node 2 free: 11004 MB
  node 3 cpus: 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79
  node 3 size: 16123 MB
  node 3 free: 12044 MB
  node distances:
  node   0   1   2   3 
    0:  10  20  20  20 
    1:  20  10  20  20 
    2:  20  20  10  20 
    3:  20  20  20  10

The chart at the bottom of the output is the weight for accessing a memory pool from a CPU socket. This is the most important part of the output.

On this server, CPU socket 0 is hardwired to ram slots 0-15

CPU 1 to ram slots 16-31

CPU 2 to ram slots 32-47

CPU 3 to ram slots 48-63

If CPU 0 wanted to read something outside of its local ram slots, it would have execute something on CPU n, then copy that segment to its local ram group.

New comment by wmantly in "Intel 28-core fantasy vs. AMD 32-core reality"

wmantly — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 04:48:11 +0000

It has to do with memory. In server grade computers, each socket has memory local slots that it can read and write to very fast. Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_memory_access

New comment by wmantly in "Company gives non-smokers six days holiday to compensate for cigarette breaks"

wmantly — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 19:33:18 +0000

Where I work, if the smoke break isn't solo, it's a meeting. We even take non-smokers that would be relevant to the conversation. Sometimes us smokers are the only single to non-smokers that maybe you should get up for a few minutes. I use to work in windows building, after my first few days my co-worker who doesn't smoke thanked me for being smoker, he worked there for about a year prior and never knew when he should get up and go outside, I gave him that guidance.

Every job I have worked that isn't hourly, break times are not monitored. If you have something during the work day, just go, if you want to walk around the park and clear your mind, have fun, need a smoke, shit have 2. So long your not screwing something up timing wise.

Also, it seems to me that the people who complain about such things have unimportant roles...

New comment by wmantly in "Gnu Privacy Guard relies on one underfunded person (2015)"

wmantly — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 17:52:20 +0000

This is sad, we need to fund projects like this.

New comment by wmantly in "Bitmessage: a decentralized, encrypted, trustless communications protocol"

wmantly — Sat, 15 Oct 2016 18:27:36 +0000

I would be very weary of this product. I used it a while ago on a project for a course I was taking. During my research, I found a FAQ where the creator stated that if ever asked to place a back door in it, he would.

New comment by wmantly in "Why Debian returned to FFmpeg"

wmantly — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 17:15:14 +0000

About time, libav has never meet my needs.

New comment by wmantly in "Helsinki’s free, city-wide Wi-Fi network is faster than your home internet"

wmantly — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 23:37:39 +0000

I disagree. http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4418586540

New comment by wmantly in "Your Linux browser is too old"

wmantly — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 03:57:18 +0000

This is from using Debian stable, and normal. Debian has 4 "branches"

1. Old stable, the previous stable version and only receives security updates.

2. Stable, the current stable version. There is a massive amount of stability testing and security hardening that go into ever package before its allowed in this branch. This is usually a very long process and the packages are usually old.

3. Testing, This is where packages live while they are being tested for stable. This branch may be broken, but is generally working during the release cycle, and may not receive security updates in timely manner. 4. Un-stable, This is bleeding and mostly in broken state...

During the release cycle, packages are selected and brought closer and closer to 'stable' and move though the branches. At a certain time, the package version are frozen in a feature freeze, and are not allowed to have feature updates, only stability and security hardening. When are the packages are ready, the debian team releases alpha and beta builds to test everything. Then, and only then is a new stable released.

If every thing had the Q&A of debian, nothing would crash, but everything would be old.

This is the reason why so many people use one of the many distro based up of debian testing. Ubuntu, Linux Mint and many more are based off of testing, with newer packages and there own feature freeze. The ubuntu cycle tries work like clock work every 6 months and debian has more of "when its ready" mind set.