Recent submissions

Comment · 10 years ago
Shrinkwrap is ridiculous. I'm expected to go look at every resolved dependency and individually add them if I want to update or not? No thanks; one app at my workplace defines ~50 top level dependencies, but this balloons to almost 1300 - and this is with npm v3 - after npm install. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Deep nesting is not 'solved' it just doesn't happen 100% of the time anymore. If you have conflicts, you still have deep trees. I suppose range operators help with this a little, but looking at what gets installed it doesn't seem to help that much; I still have duplicated dependencies.

I was mentally comparing npm to tools like maven, ivy and nuget, all of which are faster but also not interpreted. Not a fair comparison I guess.

Comment · 10 years ago
I think it's not bashing of npm specifically so much as it is the node ecosystem it serves and depends on; at least in my mind it's difficult to separate node from npm. That said, for what it's trying to do (read a list of deps, resolve vs. registry, download and unpack) it seems to do a fine job of it.

My major complaint about npm is the choice to allow version range operators on dependency declarations. We know the node.js ecosystem places a high value on composability, so using lots of tiny modules which themselves depend on lots of tiny modules is the norm. This is a problem though because range operators get used liberally everywhere, so getting reproducible builds is like winning the lottery.

There are other things I don't like about using npm: node_modules/ is big and has a lot of duplication (even with npmv3), it's pretty slow, historically it has been unstable, its still crap on Windows, etc. - but for someone who has 'ensures reproducible builds' as part of their job description, the way its modules get versioned is its worst feature.

Comment · 10 years ago
It was actually two years ago, if someone wants to correct the title.

Edit: I clearly can't read. Upvoted you both, thanks.

Comment · 10 years ago
You can't, only its application. Genicap's patent does cover application in software though.
Comment · 10 years ago
Is there a meaningful performance difference between ZFS in FreeBSD or Illumos and ZoL?

Edit: this is a legitimate question. I know previously Linux-related ZFS efforts used FUSE, but ZoL is native. I assume performance should be roughly equivalent between Linux and FreeBSD, certainly.

Comment · 10 years ago
Comment · 10 years ago
I was wondering about the 1.3/100m number and found this:

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

It has data from 1994 to 2014, including this plus several other statistics. In particular, it looks like they are tracking on the order of trillions of miles driven per year, so you're right, making any kind of statement after only 100 million is more shameful marketing than anything else.

Edit: this is US-only, while Tesla is claiming vs. worldwide. Clearly more miles driven worldwide, and probably higher deaths per 100m miles.

Comment · 10 years ago
Unless you're OK with breaking compatibility with all existing Windows apps - most of which you have no control over - rewriting the kernel as a POSIX thing is going to look a lot like 'bash on windows' in reverse. You'd have to have some kind of shim layer to translate all the old system calls, so most everyone's existing software is going to be slower and there will be bugs, etc. Including your own, since Windows is a kernel, a ton of drivers, a userland (including basic runtimes), a windowing system, a basic set of productivity tools and games, etc.

I think this would be a total disaster that killed Windows, personally.

Comment · 10 years ago
I don't know the answer to that, or about Roth 401(k) plans, but I think there are a lot of people overall with one or the other. I think that threatening either would have an effect similar to threats on Social Security, without the justification of it being insolvent.

IMO, at worst, Roth plans could get phased out for new contributions with existing deposits and the tax-free withdrawals honored.

Comment · 10 years ago

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton