markbnj (u/markbnj) - Readit News

markbnj commented on Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help hey.paris/posts/appleid/... · Posted by u/parisidau

num42 · a day ago

Off-topic and a stupid question: why does anything related to Apple attract so much attention on HN? As a newcomer, I assumed HN focused mostly on reverse engineering,retro computing, and deep technical topics.

markbnj · a day ago

I would not say your list is anything like complete, although those topics are often discussed here. Apple is a huge player in the general computing ecosystem, and probably a majority of front- and back-end developers these days work on macbooks, so it isn't surprising that the things they do resonate in this community.

markbnj commented on I don't care how well your "AI" works fokus.cool/2025/11/25/i-d... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

markbnj · 18 days ago

I think the dangers that LLMs pose to the ability of engineers to earn a living is overstated, while at the same time the superpowers that they hand us don't seem to get much discussion. When I was starting out in the 80's I had to prowl dial-up BBSs or order expensive books and manuals to find out how to do something. I once paid IBM $140 for a manual on the VGA interface so I could answer a question. The turn around time on that answer was a week or two. The other day I asked claude something similar to this: "when using github as an OIDC provider for authentication and assumption of an AWS IAM role the JWT token presented during role assumption may have a "context" field. Please list the possible values of this field and the repository events associated with them." I got back a multi-page answer complete with examples.

I'm sure github has documents out there somewhere that explain this, but typing that prompt took me two minutes. I'm able daily to get fast answers to complex questions that in years past would have taken me potentially hours of research. Most of the time these answers are correct, and when they are wrong it still takes less time to generate the correct answer than all that research would have taken before. So I guess my advice is: if you're starting out in this business worry less about LLMs replacing you and more about how to efficiently use that global expert on everything that is sitting on your shoulder. And also realize that code, and the ability to write working code, is a small part of what we do every day.

markbnj commented on GitHub: Git operation failures githubstatus.com/incident... · Posted by u/wilhelmklopp

yoyohello13 · a month ago

We've been self hosting GitLab for 5 years and it's the most reliable service in our organization. We haven't had a single outage. We use Gitlab CI and security scanning extensively.

markbnj · a month ago

Ditto, self-hosted for over eight years at my last job. SCM server and 2-4 runners depending on what we needed. Very impressive stability and when we had to upgrade their "upgrade path" tooling was a huge help.

markbnj commented on Look Out for Bugs matklad.github.io/2025/09... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

markbnj · 3 months ago

I once found a bug in code that was read to me over the phone while I sat in an airport waiting for a flight. So I agree that constructing a model of the program in your head is the key, and you can use various interfaces for that. Some are more optimal than others. When I first started learning to write programs we very often debugged from printed listings for example. They rolled up nicely but random access was very slow.

markbnj commented on Type checking is a symptom, not a solution programmingsimplicity.sub... · Posted by u/mpweiher

markbnj · 3 months ago

A type system lets different parts of a program agree on how to interpret a pattern of bits in memory and then enforce that interpretation. I don't think electronic circuits built from discrete components that have immutable physical properties are analogous in the way that the author apparently thinks they are.

markbnj commented on EverQuest filfre.net/2025/07/everqu... · Posted by u/dmazin

mike1o1 · 5 months ago

I absolutely loved EverQuest and it’s still probably holds some of my fondest gaming memories. My favorite feeling about it is that it felt like a real world first, gameplay second. It had a real sense of danger and wonder that I think will be almost impossible to recreate.

Going from Qeynos to Freeport, or crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous. It was wonderful, but not something I would want to play today now that I have real life obligations.

markbnj · 5 months ago

> crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous

Given the way death was implemented ("LFG @ EC tunnel for a corpse run to Guk!") and the fact that you could fall off the ships in the middle of the ocean when the game lagged, it _was_ epic and dangerous. I remember the first time it happened to me and players in public chat coached me through a 20 or 30 minute swim to get my wizard and stuff to an island with a portal.

markbnj commented on GCP Outage status.cloud.google.com/... · Posted by u/thanhhaimai

Axsuul · 6 months ago

Does anyone know if instance-to-instance networking has been affected? My Redis instance has been throwing a lot of connection errors.

markbnj · 6 months ago

We're not seeing any connectivity issues between pods and vms in our vpc, but your mileage may vary.

markbnj commented on My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer gill.net.in/posts/my-ques... · Posted by u/mygnu

nemacol · 7 months ago

> a general deterioration in driving skills

Is that a measured observation? Not trying to nitpick - genuinely curious if this is your observation from experience or there are some studies that you are referring to.

markbnj · 7 months ago

>> Is that a measured observation? Not trying to nitpick - genuinely curious if this is your observation from experience or there are some studies that you are referring to.

It is from my experience as a rider, as I said in my post, but there are also plenty of studies showing increased deaths and injuries among pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.

markbnj commented on My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer gill.net.in/posts/my-ques... · Posted by u/mygnu

beloch · 7 months ago

Motorcycle fatality rates have been trending upwards, not downwards[1]. Brake lights on helmets may illuminate one of the culprits: An ever increasing number of American trucks with poor visibility. Sitting on a bike, you're even shorter than a pedestrian and more likely to be completely out of sight. Perhaps its time to start regulating for better visibility, as Europe has done.

[1]https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-motorcyc...

markbnj · 7 months ago

As an almost-daily motorcyclist with 15k miles on my current machine (Suzuki DL650), I absolutely agree that the increased proportion of pickup trucks on the road increases the risks for riders, however I suspect it is mainly because the larger, heavier vehicles aggravate the effects of a general deterioration in driving skills and attitudes. One thing about riding a motorcycle is that you are, unless you have a death wish, an active and observant participant in what you are doing, which alone separates you from a seeming majority of those driving cars and trucks. You become much more aware of what others on the road are doing, and what they are doing, in large numbers, is acting like twits.

Driving crazily fast in residential areas, rolling through stop signs, blowing off yellow and even red lights, ignoring turn signals, aggressively tailgating cars, trucks, even motorcyclists like myself, tapping away at their phones and steering with their knees. I think I see just about every variation of all of these things at least several times a week, to the extent that I have thought about the idea of creating some kind of org or foundation or even just a blog to advocate a return to taking driving seriously. I don't have a lot of confidence that I could make a difference though. I suspect a lot of the problem is simply many more cars on infrastructure that we haven't put enough money into for decades, but I'm no expert.

markbnj commented on Deafening Silence from the Cybersecurity Industry forbes.com/sites/tonybrad... · Posted by u/rbanffy

markbnj · 8 months ago

Like using a throwaway account to accuse someone of cowardice.