Readit News logoReadit News
valbaca commented on County pays $600k to pentesters it arrested for assessing courthouse security   arstechnica.com/security/... · Posted by u/MBCook
valbaca · a month ago
This just shows that even in the most obvious cases, if a cop wants to fuck up your life it might only take SIX YEARS to get back to normalcy.
valbaca commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
krlx · 3 months ago
https://mytinycafe.com/

An PWA primarily for my wife and my daughter. They can order their hot chocolate and their coffee as if they were going to grab something at a fancy café downtown, but instead it's at home and I'm the barista. It is quite nice to have for when my wife comes back from work and want something specific, or when we are waiting for the visit of a few friend, they can order exactly the available beverages and everything is ready when they're here.

It was also a good playground for me to implement Web Push notifications (to never miss new orders).

It's a basic Nuxt 3 app with Appwrite as the backend with rough edges, but much enough for our household use !

If you want to spam my phone with notifications, please visit my café : https://mytinycafe.com/alix

valbaca · 3 months ago
This is awesome. Perfectly solving a problem, showing off tech, and adorable.
valbaca commented on I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me   marcusolang.substack.com/... · Posted by u/florian_s
bookworm123 · 3 months ago
Genuine question, what would you write instead of "proceeded to"? To me, as a non native English speaker, it seems reasonable to use this expression, and it would not even stick out to me tbh
valbaca · 3 months ago
> I proceeded to do the work.

> I did the work.

> I worked.

valbaca commented on Go is portable, until it isn't   simpleobservability.com/b... · Posted by u/khazit
regularfry · 3 months ago
All of this, every last bit of complexity and breakage and sweat, is downstream of this:

> Journal logs are not stored in plain text. They use a binary format

And it was entirely predictable and predicted that this sort of problem would be the result when that choice was made.

valbaca · 3 months ago
Unix philosophy strikes again
valbaca commented on Useful patterns for building HTML tools   simonwillison.net/2025/De... · Posted by u/simonw
valbaca · 3 months ago
HTML tools are a good name. I called them something like "a local html file"

One problem I solved with this was a packer needed to scan a few (10-40) ids into his barcode scanner. It was not enough where pulling up their bulk-id-uploader program but also too tedious to go to some "number to barcode" website.

Turns out, barcodes can be made from a google font!

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Libre+Barcode+39

You can just display a number using that font. Then hooked up a for-loop that's progressed by pressing the space bar: paste in IDs, scan first, space, scan next, repeat.

valbaca commented on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2025)    · Posted by u/whoishiring
meganvs · 3 months ago
Sphinx Defense | Engineering, DevOps, & Product | Remote (US Only), DC, Colorado Springs, LA | https://www.sphinxdefense.com

Sphinx Defense builds software to solve complex national security problems for America and its allies. Founded by engineers and technologists with deep experience across commercial and defense technology, we're building a vehicle-agnostic communication infrastructure to enable satellite operators to securely utilize antenna networks and maneuver satellites in real-time. We're bootstrapped, profitable, and growing aggressively.

To learn more about who we are, our engineering culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our Key Values profile: https://www.keyvalues.com/sphinx-defense

Our current openings are: Sr. Backend Engineer - Colorado Springs : https://grnh.se/dx02hydm8us

Sr. Backend Engineer - Remote : https://grnh.se/dx02hydm8us

Product Manager - Colorado Springs - https://grnh.se/dx02hydm8us

Program Manager - Colorado Springs - https://grnh.se/dx02hydm8us

Sr. Program Manager - Colorado Springs - https://grnh.se/dx02hydm8us

Don’t see a role that aligns with your interests or don’t have the specific Space/ Command & Control experience? Apply to the general interest application and list what type of role you would be interested in : https://grnh.se/4ce199d68us

valbaca · 3 months ago
FYI, looks like keyvalues.com didn't pay their bill

> This service has been suspended.

valbaca commented on Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?   martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald
KallDrexx · 3 months ago
EVERY DX survey that comes out (surveying over 20k developers) says the exact same thing.

Staff engineers get the most time savings out of AI tools, and their weekly time savings is 4.4 hours for heavy AI users. That's a little more than 10% productivity, so not anywhere close to 10x.

What's more telling about the survey results is they are also consistent in their findings between heavy and light users of AI. Staff engineers who are heavy users of AI save 4.4 hours a week while staff engineers who are light users of AI save 3.3 hours a week. To put another way, the DX survey is pretty clear that the time savings between heavy and light AI users is minimal.

Yes surveys are all flawed in different ways but an N of 20k is nothing to sneeze at. Any study with data points shows that code generation is not a significant time savings and zero studies show significant time savings. All the productivity gains DX reports come from debugging and investigation/code base spelunking help.

valbaca · 3 months ago
> That's a little more than 10% productivity, so not anywhere close to 10x.

No Silver Bullet still alive and well in 2026

valbaca commented on Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
LanceH · 3 months ago
Lots and lots of articles written about 23% of 300 items -- at one store? Every store?

What's the actual extent of the problem?

There have been way too many articles and videos at this point to keep pointing at the same small data set.

I've personally never experienced an overcharge, and at 1 in 5, it should have happened by now.

Is this a one store thing, or a regional thing, or should I just put those thoughts on hold and rage blindly?

valbaca · 3 months ago
You didn't read far enough:

> Dollar General stores have failed more than 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states since January 2022, a Guardian review found. Family Dollar stores have failed more than 2,100 price inspections in 20 states over the same time span, the review found.

> Among these thousands of failed inspections, some of the biggest flops include a 76% error rate in October 2022 at a Dollar General in Hamilton, Ohio; a 68% error rate in February 2023 at a Family Dollar in Bound Brook, New Jersey; and a 58% error rate three months ago at a Family Dollar in Lorain, Ohio.

> Many of the stores that failed state or local government checks were repeat violators. A Family Dollar in Provo, Utah, flunked 28 inspections in a row – failures that included a 48% overcharge rate in May 2024 and a 12% overcharge rate in October 2025.

> The Guardian’s examination of inspection failures by the two chains was based on record requests to 45 states and more than 140 counties and cities in New York, Ohio and California, along with court documents and public databases.

valbaca commented on Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
parpfish · 3 months ago
an interesting contrast that i think about a lot:

- in rural america, there are dollar stores everywhere that overcharge for small items. people treat them as a necessary evil and begrudgingly shop there.

- in nyc, there are corner bodegas everywhere that overcharge for small items. they are generally seen as beloved neighborhood institutions.

so... what's the difference? corporate owned vs family owned? length of time in community? presence of cute cat at the register?

valbaca · 3 months ago
> what's the difference?

Did you read the article? Charging what's actually on the price tag is the first thing that's the difference.

valbaca commented on Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
valbaca · 3 months ago
> Dollar General said it was “committed to providing customers with accurate prices on items purchased in our stores, and we are disappointed any time we fail to deliver on this commitment”. In one court case in Ohio, Dollar General’s lawyers argued that “it is virtually impossible for a retailer to match shelf pricing and scanned pricing 100% of the time for all items. Perfection in this regard is neither plausible nor expected under the law.”

LOVE LOVE putting what their PR says right next to what their lawyers say in court.

We absolutely need this more in this kind of reporting of late-stage capitalism.

u/valbaca

KarmaCake day1885June 28, 2013View Original