Hacker News: zackb

New comment by zackb in "Your phone is about to stop being yours"

zackb — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 04:10:09 +0000

I agree with your sentiment, but I want 100% Linux about a year ago and it's been much better than OSX. Yes, there are downsides - I really miss the iPhone "continuity". But the bugs, gatekeeper, liquid glass, ads in system settings, etc in OSX dwarf the rough edges on Linux desktop.

For non-power users OSX is still a no-brainer, but for a programmer I feel like Apple's left us no alternative.

New comment by zackb in "Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?"

zackb — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 21:52:38 +0000

This is what I kept thinking as well. In my experience big companies can't get things done and people fly under the radar all the time not doing anything.

New comment by zackb in "I didn't realize my LG TV was spying on me until I turned off Live Plus"

zackb — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 05:03:03 +0000

100% agree and do the same. There's no way I'd let one of those things touch the network. That is insane for a techie and even scarier that normal people live that way.

Returning to Linux

zackb — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 02:50:42 +0000

Article URL: https://zackbartel.com/blog/2025/02/return-to-linux/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46116826

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

New comment by zackb in "Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software"

zackb — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 03:21:07 +0000

Asahi Linux[1] is unbelievably great on Apple Silicon. It's honestly the best Linux install experience I've ever had.

1. https://asahilinux.org/

New comment by zackb in "Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software"

zackb — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 03:18:59 +0000

Just did this. I am so much happier. As a lifelong Apple user, and side-quest Linux user the choice is a no-brainer nowadays. Desktop Linux is honestly great now. I love(d) Apple but Tahoe was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

i use arch btw

New comment by zackb in "Finding my rhythm again"

zackb — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 02:25:37 +0000

This sounds almost exactly like what happened to me. I was a runner and a happy overworker. I developed AFib at 38 years old after the pandemic. Studies show a 6–10x higher risk of developing AFib or other arrhythmias within a month of infection compared to baseline. It sucks. I feel for you dude.

New comment by zackb in "Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers"

zackb — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 16:55:08 +0000

Me too, but it's still much better on lichess than chess.com in my experience. Also, cheating is not as bad on lichess

New comment by zackb in "Sketch of a Post-ORM"

zackb — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 17:10:07 +0000

I found JDBi[1] to be a really nice balance between ORM and raw SQL. It gives me the flexibility I need but takes care of a lot of the boilerplate. It's almost like a third category.

1. http://jdbi.org

New comment by zackb in "A Facebook crawler was making 7M requests per day to my stupid website"

zackb — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 19:37:43 +0000

This was happening to us > 5 years ago. The FB crawlers were taking out our image serving system as we used the og:image thing. What we did was route FB crawler traffic to a separate Auto Scaling Group to keep our users happy while also getting the nice preview image on FB when our content was shared. I can't understate the volume of the FB requests, I can't remember the exact numbers now but it was insane.

New comment by zackb in "Things we learned about sums"

zackb — Fri, 29 May 2020 19:44:28 +0000

Thanks for you work on this and making it FOSS. This is the first I've heard of QuestDB. Is it production ready? Whats the scaling story? Thanks

New comment by zackb in "Nvidia CEO Introduces Nvidia Ampere Architecture, Nvidia A100 GPU"

zackb — Thu, 14 May 2020 18:47:19 +0000

I came to the comments with the exact same question

New comment by zackb in "GitHub Is Down"

zackb — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 20:32:52 +0000

I was deploying code to production as it died!

New comment by zackb in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

zackb — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 02:17:43 +0000

Thanks! It’s in the App Store now https://apps.apple.com/us/app/force-code-morse-with-force/id...

New comment by zackb in "Private Kit: Can we slow the spread without giving up individual privacy?"

zackb — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 22:15:13 +0000

A friend of mine is working on this privacy oriented data collection app: https://www.coepi.org

New comment by zackb in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

zackb — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 19:50:03 +0000

Thank you all so much for all the feedback. This community is amazing.

New comment by zackb in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

zackb — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 19:49:10 +0000

This is fascinating. Dasher looks incredible. I was wondering where this thing was going to go (if anywhere) after this initial "use case". I will definitely look into this.

Thanks!

New comment by zackb in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

zackb — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 19:48:24 +0000

Thanks, and thanks for showing me ACAT. I was not aware of it but looks interesting.

New comment by zackb in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

zackb — Sun, 22 Mar 2020 02:16:44 +0000

Yes he is. Thanks!

New comment by zackb in "Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?"

zackb — Sun, 22 Mar 2020 00:08:21 +0000

I'm working on a morse code iOS app that can optionally use Force (3D) Touch. My dad had a stroke recently and is quarantined in a care facility. He can't talk but remembers morse code like a boss. He can't lift his finger off the screen to "tap" and there were no other morse apps out there for people with physical impairment. With this he's able to communicate... I've been coding for 15 years but this was life changing when it worked!

FOSS: https://github.com/zackb/forcecode

only TestFlight right now but AppStore soon under the name "Force Code"