skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Show HN: cfnlite - a simple and sensible CloudFormation generator
TL;DR cfnlite is yet another YAML based config file format, but its the last one, I promise. <insert-relevant-xkcd>
I wanted to create a CloudFormation generator with a simple interface and better devUX.

Longer version:
So I've recently found myself in a somewhat low code team which is pretty adamant on using CloudFormation for all IaC (we're all in on AWS). My background is mostly in building on-prem data centres and realtime video, so I'd never worked on "the cloud" before now. So, I spent the first two weeks speed running AWS basics and then another two weeks looking into IaC, mostly writing CFN.

Very quickly I realised that working with raw CloudFormation is an PITA. I tried everything to create sensible, reusable, modularised templates - you know the kind of ideals most of our other code is built on - but it just become a pile of parameterised garbage.

Anyways, I then discovered all the options for imperative IaC (CDK, troposphere etc), and had a mess about with those. Heres a hot take: I actually think YAML is better than most of the imperative stuff for at-a-glance debugging/understanding. Regardless, I knew for sure the team was never going to agree with using any of that (they said so lol).

So I decided to build a little library for myself so that I could at least generate CFN for my own work. One thing lead to the other and I decided I could make some kind of CLI tool that takes a small config file and generates the CFN. That way, I wouldn't even need to write custom CDK code for each new CFN template I wanted to make.

And thus the beginnings of cfnlite was born. It kind of started with a series of "What if..." type questions:
- What if I could generate CFN from a small config, what would that config look like?
- What if I didn't have to actually remember what CFN calls each type of resource?
- What if it gave me all the required fields with some defaults?
- What if I could validate types without needing to run the template?
- what if the library could resolve dependecies and do all the !Ref/DependsOn stuff?
- What if it had loops and simple ternary conditions? (haven't answered this one yet)

After a while I realised I could create something in a language agnostic interface, an interface that the team already knew but would also hugely simplify mine - and hopefully my teams lives. I'm also a compiler nerd so I was never going to let the chance to write a code generator pass-up.

I recognise to most I've just recreated a shoddy terraform (although this tool is heavily inspired by Ansible, my fav YAML based IaC) that nobody else will probably ever use but within my constraints, it solved a real problem and more importantly, has been super fun to work on.

How it works

Its basically a wrapper around troposphere:
- yaml config comes in, it gets parsed
- cfnlite builds a dependancy tree based on ref's and DependsOn
- maps user input to troposphere objects for each resource (most of the logic is here)
- spits out the template to stdout or a file
The drive arrays back then were crazy expensive as well. One 90GB array was made up from 2 16-drive chassis. The price tag was more than a house. This was connected to an Onyx 2 running Discreet's Inferno. The Onyx 2 wasn't cheap. The cheapest part of any of it was the software, which wasn't cheap in its own right either. That was back in the day's of charging $1,000+/hr for sessions.
Yes but we were talking about the writer's purpose for writing the books. You're right those other books are less popular yet they exist and they serve as an example of non-white main characters in books 1950s by a popular author. It's not CS Lewis' fault that those books are less popular.

And, yes being the main character of a book feel special, there's no denying that but there's also the fact that the previous poster (and many others because even if they're less popular, 371k ratings on goodreads is nothing to scoff at) could find himself in those other books.
What contortions? None of my machines needed more than `chmod +x` for llamafile to run.
My favorite here was we found Google's assigned ads consultant, when we dug into their glowing numbers, got us a big traffic spike in school kids using google's search bar as a graphing calculator. We are a b2b graph analytics company.
It's programmable enough to have bugs, and ephemeral enough to roll back state when things don't work out for the majority [1]

It's like a credit card that you can't claim chargebacks on when you're defrauded, only there's no actual credit card and the PIN is too long to remember.

You can store your PIN on your hard disk like James Howells [2], or store it with a trusted organisation like Mt. Gox [3]

If you want to certify digital ownership, you get to pay money to copy a GIF, rather than just copy the GIF.

It works if you want to certify ownership of physical works of art too, such as the famous Mona Lisa (painted by Terence Eden) [4]

Its value is so stable that you need a separate class of cryptocurrencies which peg themselves to a fiat currency rather than replace it. And their value crashes anyway [5]

And it's become so mainstream that in 10+ years I've yet to walk into a shop that accepts payment in crypto.

But since it's inevitable, there's no need for me to seek it out, we'll all just end up using it.

[1] https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_buried_in_Newport_land...

[3] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mt-gox.asp

[4] https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vi...

[5] https://www.deltecbank.com/news-and-insights/the-history-of-...
Office owner begs plebs to return to office.
Actually, they have plenty of opportunity to realize that it's not for them. We have a site, and the app store page is quite verbose, with videos and a full set of screenshots.

One set of folks that might like it, are Zoombombers. They sign up, hoping to use it to cause harm to others, then realize that it isn't actually very good for that. The people the app Serves have a lot of haters (I’m sure some of them hang out here). I try to do my best to shield them; or at least, not make it too easy to attack them.

People tend to be cruel, shallow, and puerile. The Internet has allowed us to really riff on our Ids.

BTW: As I’m sure you are aware, “Looky-loo” was the term used in the article. It’s not one that I have ever used, myself, or plan to, in the future.
That sounds like a crime. Maybe someone should be chaerged with one. Too bad there's no police around.
Do note that I was instigating a point. (is it instigating?)

The point of my question to the poster was whether they had been part of any such processes.

I do appreciate the point on merit, and have a richer view of it than I may have let on.
Given that it was based off of the design of OS X's launchd, I think it's probably more accurate to say it's "doing Linux services the Apple way".
oh that's MUCH better!! I was hoping you erred.
It's like the modern equivalent of:

"Apart from [big long list of stuff people never thought much about before] what has the EU ever done for us?!?"

The Treaty of Rome indeed.
The architectural solution to gender neutral bathrooms is floor to ceiling panels and doors that actually close. It's quite simple and extremely common in newer buildings in Europe.
What a throwback to the glorious golden age of the atom! See

https://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/VEAChapter1_Robocknew...
The back will get hot since the oil improves the heat transfer from the front to the back. The sun will always heat the front, but as long as the heat transfer rate to the back is low enough it won't feel hot - your body will absorb the heat and reach an equilibrium temperature which feels natural.
Looks like it. The imperfections are just glare from the lighting.
Things just havent been the same since Jacquard's loom
This looks cool! Stablecoin on-ramps are still not perfect. I think it's important to meet customers where they're at, so a lot of the banking-centric onboarding options won't work everywhere. Don't really understand a lot of the criticism on this thread, seems to mostly be caused by the "crypto = bad" opinion. Good luck with Karsa, keep up the good work!
I'm nearly hit daily walking around the my NY suburb. Barely conscious drivers in over protective vehicles with no sight lines and poor road design.

Often the pavement ends or is covered in snow and I need to be in the road.

I'd sooner every one have guns here then the current everyone has an suv/truck. At least the guns are dangerous to the user.
I thought maybe someone wanted to create a self-cooled compute or mega-DR datacenter that could be satellite based and cover US and EU, but Starlinks inclination is not high enough.
I can see how this might be surprising for people, but it's also basically how email has always worked -- so it's a bit weird to ding Gmail for it. The address book would need to have two entries for names: one for you to type as a shortcut, and one to put on the outgoing message.
LLMs lack the core capabilities they need for true empathy and cognitive understanding, preventing their full potential in areas like mental health support human-quality customer support. Here's a path to solving this challenge. Would love your thoughts.
Biocrust / cryptobiotic soil exists all over the South-West US, including in my front yard. Stay on the trail!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_soil_crust
So was I, I was just hyperbolizing what it looked like from the outside!
DFIR is implemented in Rust, if that's what you're asking.
Humans cannot feel x-rays in the dosages you'd experience in an x-ray room. A sufficiently powerful x-ray would feel hot the same way a bright light does.
Apple files emergency motion to become defendant in US vs. Google [pdf]
Some of these HN for X do manage to break free. I like jgc's Two Stop Bits retro "HN", which is a very small community, but active:

https://twostopbits.com/news
Of course they can. They just haven’t, yet, due to different priorities. Also, I barely use search in my terminals, and I believe there’s more of us for who lack of this feature is not a deal breaker.
> It's built on theft, IP and tech, training on other's work without license

Yes, yes, we're familiar with Chatgpt.
BAML: Bringing Software Engineering Rigor to LLM Development
DeepSeek ripped up the AI playbook–and why everyone's going to follow it
You must be aware the US operated concentration camps for US citizens of Japanese origins during WWII, right?
... orrrrr I have never hit the issue, so that's why I'm asking.

Calm down. It's Friday, time to relax, my friend. ;)
I have to admit I'm not a big fan of s6 - I found it very hard to understand the scripting language execline.

So in Hacker News fashion: dinit is the one I find easiest so far. It has a declarative syntax but it's not a monolith. For me it solves every thing I didn't like about SystemV and yet it's not embrace, extend, smother.
I don't get it. The 'Modelfile' files are used to save and restore chat history as well, set custom system prompts and lots of other stuff that would require custom coding with most other local AI frameworks. Llama.cpp certainly doesn't offer anything like that out of the box. Those sorts of complaints seem pointless to me.
Zusie – My Relay Computer
The other half of the chicken and egg is that hn is “hn for devs but actually just for techy people to cover all sorts of stuff” whether that’s the intent or not.

By limiting the surface area, it’s bound to never become larger than the restriction.
It will help, but you won't be able to totally level the playing field.

For entry level, recruiters get thousands of candidates. They skim each resume for 30s to decide who to bring on to interview and usually don't have the technical context to understand OSS / side projects. If you don't have a degree you likely won't make it past the screen. Also there are many new grads with impressive OSS contributions / side projects.

Also, making a meaningful OSS contribution is ... hard. You have minimal programming experience, you're going to need to learn a lot just to be able to fix a typo. Not to discourage, but just to put into perspective (I work on OSS for FAANG).
Sure, but you are comparing 1981 Quantel Paintbox with 1996 SGI Onyx2 - unless I misunderstood you.
I mention in the post that, if nothing else, this feels more like a UX failure.

Yeah, this _is_ expected behavior, but at the same time I think will catch most people off guard, especially people who aren't as technically inclined.
I think GP means the taste, not the effects.

There are plenty of drugs that are way better than alcohol if you are looking for a specific effect. Maybe a little too good actually, the toxicity of alcohol acts as a deterrent, no one enjoys hangovers. Most of them are illegal, but alcohol would be too if it wasn't so easy to make and part of our culture. And by the way, alcohol is the most common date rape drug by far.

But most of these drugs are not enjoyable to taste, in fact, many are downright disgusting.
Not that much to be honest.

Yeah, he cycled through spouses, smoked pot live on a podcast and had a sometimes ... reckless attitude, but constantly delivered in exchange - without Musk, we'd still be stuck getting fleeced by ULA/EADS, ICE car manufacturers bribing politicians to soften emissions regulations and satellite internet being GEO only.

"Old Musk" was a bit much at times, but acceptable in exchange for how society profited from his unwillingness to accept a "no". "New Musk" has that same unwillingness but is willing to destroy democracy itself, and that makes him orders of magnitude more dangerous.
They are against censorship of THEM not censorship of YOU
The Germans have a saying that nicely illustrates the current situation in the US: "Den Teufel mit dem Beelzebub austreiben" ("Exorcising the devil with Beelzebub").

Unless people come to their senses and boot this insane POTUS and its misanthropist servants, it will end the same fate everybody in Europe had to suffer through during the first half of 20th century. There will be no winners because everybody will just lose. So sad to see this insanity being revived.
If you're running WordPress, WPX is top tier. The customer service we get from them is unbelievably good. It's an easy move from Namecheap, and it's a real step up.
Yes, that's what I meant, sorry if it was confusing: The problem that Llamafiles solve is making it easy to set up one model without infrastructure.
The most unambitious way to build a startup
Ask HN: Help on Visualizing DSA Code Execution
Hey folks,

I'm working on a project to help beginners learn Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA) by visualizing code execution. The idea is like LeetCode, but when you run your code, it shows you animations of the algorithm at work.

For example, if a user writes a linear search algorithm on an array [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] to find 3, they’ll see the animation step through each element, showing how the search works.

The Challenge
I can parse the code into an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) to understand its structure, but here’s the tricky part:

How do I track loop iterations and conditionals in real-time?
How do I capture execution flow so I can animate it?
Possible Solutions
Debugger Integration: Can I use something like a debugger API (Java JDI or Python's pdb) to track execution?
Code Instrumentation: Would logging or monitoring help in tracking iterations and steps?
Custom Interpreter: Is there a better way to simulate execution step-by-step and gather data for animation?
Capped supply is overrated: https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
I might be reading into it, but there seems to be a bit of a condescending tone with this comment.

The "oddly specific" website has 191K followers on Instagram[1] and has done interviews with Hodinkee, one of the most well known 21st century watch magazine/blogs. It is not that different from others that hit the first page here on HN.

[1] https://www.instagram.com/watchesofespionage/
And this approach actually works for inland waters since NOAA predictions are accounting for geographic effects. (e.g. the tide in Seattle is drastically different in timing and magnitude from the Pacific Coast)
I agree, once of the biggest mistakes almost all companies make these days.

They just can't stand the idea of employees not being super busy.

The result is everyone optimizing to look super busy.
Western world thought such things, too.

> Flames were considered to be a mix of phlogiston and water

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory
Trailblazing a Secure Digital Tomorrow
Zuckerberg coming out strong for free speech, and then sending employees who push back on anti-DEI policy changes to HR...

Free speech if you're a billionaire.
Colorado AI VIP: Dave Mayer, connector of people and community builder
One of my favorite examples is the possibility of humans to have magnetoreception.
I'd imagine most are either planar or complex/undefined. Most meshes in gamedev probably aren't even closed with a unique inside/outside; just "pile of triangles".
Barclays bank hit by major IT outage on tax deadline day
A Portrait of an Immigrant Community Living Under Threat of Deportation
> The so-called vestigial organs probably all have uses.

You’re right that some organs have been labeled vestigial and turned out not to be, but there are other organs that we know are vestigial because they don’t occur in all humans (same goes for other species). Evolution doesn’t weed things out without there being relatively strong effects on survival, and some of these things don’t affect survival so they drift.

This also isn’t binary. There are organs that are still classified as vestigial, but have minor or secondary uses, perhaps enough for evolution to keep them around, or again perhaps because having them doesn’t result in any statistical mortality.

Speculating and/or carrying beliefs that contradict modern evolutionary biologists probably isn’t going to work out. School might not be always right, but it is most of the time, and it’s right more often than no school, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality
> and also flex some muscle which pops my ears. Useless human tricks.

Also useful when you're diving. I can equalise without holding my nose for the first 10-15m, just by doing the thing with the ears. Doesn't work all the way down tho...
I'm a bit confused, or maybe I've been doing it wrong. DEI-related things don't usually go in Broader Impacts, do they? When I've written grants, Broader Impacts was just generally for "how is your research going to help society?"; it was the Broadening Participation in Computing section that was oriented toward DEI.
FCC Chair Orders Investigation into NPR and PBS Sponsorships
Someone recently told me that its genetic. Not everyone can control that muscle. I can, I learned it after seeing someone do it by lifting eye brows. I can control it without moving eyebrows now.
The Chesterton fence argument is that you need to understand why the fence is there. If you do understand it, and still remove it, it doesn't say that's bad.
I'm trying to work out how the author came to the presumption that contact names would ever be private. As in, what other software are they using where that would be a standard feature?

The closest I can come to is _maybe_ SMS where names never transit the system, only the phone numbers. So whatever name you associate to a number in your phone stays in your phone.

Email has certainly never worked that way.
flowers and digital currency are not the same.
What I want is to be able to feed in a bunch of videos and generate an animatable (from talking) 3D face from that data. I suppose you in theory only need 3 images (front and sides). But mapping pixels to motion is interesting (facial expressions).

There wouldn't be depth data so it would be inferred from shadows
72-line script to share secrets
Distro (YC S24) Is Hiring a Chief of Staff in Palo Alto
We've banned this account. You can't attack another user like this here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
If they update F91W to include better backlight, then good riddance. Their newer models (like A700W) have single-LED backlight, and it's excellent (probably better than EL, but I haven't used EL in a while). The watch is very thin too, unlike EL models.
The point is people don't want to get into crypto, they want to get into USD. But capital controls make it difficult, so USD stable coins are a good enough alternative.

Bitcoin is extremely volatile.
Comparing CPU frequency (tens of thousands individual lanes that have to be skew-matched) to single-path stuff is quite apples to oranges.
Processor frequency is mostly limited by interconnect and cooling (and silicon, but there are other materials available, it's just not worth switching to those unless you solve cooling). Even thunderbolt transceivers go 40GT/lane=20GHz and that's consumer tech. With InP you can go slightly above 100GHz afaik.
The mandatory shielding around these rooms is robust. I shadowed a technician inspecting a newly fitted x-ray room and observed the very sensitive equipment used to verify absence of leakage. There was a small puncture in the lead shielding that was quickly found and resulted in a delay until patched.

I don't know what you mean by "around" but if you mean walking down the hallway outside the x-ray room, my guess it's the low frequency sound these machines often produce that you're reacting to and not x-rays themselves. Not to mention the almost sci-fi signage alerting your brain to danger.

And inside the shielding envelope, modern x-ray equipment is still at very low levels unless you're the patient (and even as the patient, imaging requires much lower levels than in the past).
Money. It's as simple as that. Europe (glossing over relatively minor regional differentials here) still is one of the richest places in the world.

They just decided to use those resources for the wrong purposes. Again, it's as simple as that.
If a mill worker encouraged fellow labourers to work for free for the factory owner who was actively replacing them with machines and a handful of low skilled, powerless and badly paid workers, that worker would be considered insane.
Gen Z: Trends, Truth and Trust
The UNIX philosophy (about which there’s a book by the same name by Michael Gancarz, and which I highly recommend) Is that each tool should do one thing and do it well.

The old school init styles, whether BSD or SysV, adhere to that philosophy.

Systemd is a travesty. I think it was about a decade ago that there was a remotely exploitable root equivalent compromise in the system DS built in DNS resolver. And these days includes not just DNS but also privilege escalation and who knows what else

It’s probably fine for most people and most purposes. And by fine, I mean most people can probably use it and never see a live exploited against it.

And if you care about security, you can probably apply enough mitigating controls that it’s not gonna be a disaster for you.

But for me, defense in depth means avoiding systems to begin with and not trying to bandit over the problems with it
Exactly. I'm applying societal pressure in the form of bullying in order to discourage language from being shaped by the profit motives of advertising agencies that push these puritanical cancers into the public lexicon.

I have no issue with the youth coming up with new slang or changing the definitions of words that are no longer as relevant as they once were. As you say, language evolves like that. But when the changes to language are being top-down forced by megacorps so they can more effectively target ads to children, that's when I want them burned in fire. I'm honestly surprised at just how justified I feel in being mean to the people who propagate this bullshit.