Hacker News: xav0989

New comment by xav0989 in "The Appalling Stupidity of Spotify's AI DJ"

xav0989 — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 09:12:01 +0000

While I sympathize with the issue and have experienced similar problems with classical music, I found the listing of composers and the holier-than-thou attitude (because “pop is bad”) grating and soured the rest of the post.

New comment by xav0989 in "What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)"

xav0989 — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:36:23 +0000

In the Canadian university lingo, co-op refers to a (usually paid) internship that you complete as part of your degree. You usually have a couple co-op terms/semesters along with your traditional terms. For example, you may start your degree with two semesters of classes, then a semester of co-op, then one of classes, then another two co-ops, more classes, etc. until you complete the degree requirements. Degrees with a co-op requirement usually will make mention of it (e.g. Software Engineering with co-op).

New comment by xav0989 in "DNS-Persist-01: A New Model for DNS-Based Challenge Validation"

xav0989 — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 11:52:50 +0000

If not using something like bind, but willing to run a dedicated dns server for acme challenges, acmedns offers something similar. When you generate a new account, it gets given a unique subdomain. You then cname the challenge domain to the acmedns subdomain and the account can only affect the associated subdomain.

New comment by xav0989 in "Show HN: I audited 500 K8s pods. Java wastes ~48% RAM, Go ~18%"

xav0989 — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 19:49:42 +0000

Curl always requires -L to follow redirects.

New comment by xav0989 in "Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes"

xav0989 — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 14:27:39 +0000

I’ve seen them in stores in Canada, but they’re usually more expensive than the 454g blocks. Expensive enough that it’s usually better to buy the block and portion it as needed.

New comment by xav0989 in "Encryption made for police and military radios may be easily cracked"

xav0989 — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 10:54:07 +0000

Some people I know are building a similar system, watching for the printers that parking attendants carry to issue tickets. When they see one of those nearby, it starts the clock so that they move their car before the time expires.

New comment by xav0989 in "M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued"

xav0989 — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 02:04:51 +0000

Anything that ends in .gov is related to a government entity in the US. Other countries don’t get access to that TLD.

New comment by xav0989 in "Airbnb is in midlife crisis mode"

xav0989 — Wed, 14 May 2025 10:44:17 +0000

Where it’s the law for the lodging provides to have a copy of ID, you either consent to have them make a copy of your ID or you don’t get a place to stay. You don’t get to not consent and also get a place to stay.

New comment by xav0989 in "AT&T Email-to-Text Gateway Service Ending June 17"

xav0989 — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 02:41:40 +0000

Canadian numbers too (and potentially anything in the NANP).

New comment by xav0989 in "A Letter to the American People"

xav0989 — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 23:23:25 +0000

Parcels are not mail. Parcels are the boxes of stuff that people order.

While spam funds a lot of the postal service, it allows it to price mail lower than the true cost of delivering mail across the country.

New comment by xav0989 in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

xav0989 — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:44:08 +0000

Wasn’t there a study that identified that college educated individuals are more likely to be Democrats? Most US government jobs require a college degree (or higher), so it wouldn’t be surprising to see that population match the findings in the general population?

Additionally, the republican image typically espouses the idea of private industry and private capital more so than the democrats, where public service takes a bigger role. If people already identified with a given ideology, it’s likely that their career choice would reflect that.

Finally, one’s political leanings aren’t being used to determine if they should be hired.

New comment by xav0989 in "The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE"

xav0989 — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 08:31:42 +0000

But naming your kids to positions of power because they’re your kids is nepotism.

New comment by xav0989 in "No GPS required: our app can now locate underground trains"

xav0989 — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 07:54:49 +0000

They also partner with transit agencies where the transit agencies pays them to upgrade everyone in the region/system to the premium offering, and the transit app becomes the official app for that transit agency.

New comment by xav0989 in "Do U.S. ports need more automation?"

xav0989 — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 19:56:06 +0000

Likely the second one, things like “take that container and drop it off on that truck, but don’t log it”

New comment by xav0989 in "Uber charges more if you have credits in your account"

xav0989 — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 11:36:24 +0000

I’ve experienced the situation where my partner gets lower rates than I do on nearly all ride sharing apps. We’ll open the app at the same time, from the same place, heading to the same destination, and mine will be at least 10% higher. We have very similar ratings.

New comment by xav0989 in "Canadian Tire Money"

xav0989 — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 11:20:17 +0000

There’s a burger chain called The Works that accepts (or at least used to) Canadian Tire money for one of their burgers. The burger is called the Crappy Tire, which is a nickname for Canadian Tire.

New comment by xav0989 in "SQLite: 35% Faster Than the Filesystem"

xav0989 — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 10:09:04 +0000

Proxmox puts the VM configuration information in a SQLite database and exposes it through a FUSE file system. It even gets replicated across the cluster using their replication algorithm. It’s a bespoke implementation, but it’s a SQLite-backed filesystem.

New comment by xav0989 in "Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes"

xav0989 — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 15:49:16 +0000

There’s actually a ton of interference in the 2.4 GHz space, especially at venues like outdoor festivals. However your solution does work. I work at a festival that provides a WiFi network and an Ethernet drop for the ticket scanners. We have to use multiple APs to cover the main entrance area, but it’s feasible.

New comment by xav0989 in "Rebuilding my homelab: Suffering as a service"

xav0989 — Sat, 18 May 2024 14:20:16 +0000

I switched my home lab to nomad, which I find much easier to wrangle, but we’ll see what happens with the IBM acquisition.

New comment by xav0989 in "FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules"

xav0989 — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 11:23:41 +0000

Another hypothetical: your isp zero rates the news sites with a given political leaning, but not yours. Reading the news that they want you to costs nothing, whereas reading the news that you want, or getting an alternative perspective on a story costs you something.