Hacker News Reader

OuterValeon Bluesky has been dealing with a DDoS attack for nearly a full day

The interface seemed to function as normal, but specifically the API was targeted, which left a lot of confused users who were seeing the interface peppered with errors. Watching as it unfolded, it seems it affected certain regions to begin with and then slowly spread worldwide.

Seems they might have failed to host the status page (https://status.bsky.app) separately as well, because that went down several times throughout the outage. They also weren't very active in updating the status page, and the notice that was there had a typo of 'reginos' and a description of 'null'.

OuterValeon Ask HN: Easiest UX for Seniors

A valuable approach is to aim for AAA WCAG conformance. Obviously it isn't a perfect way to go about it and there are other considerations here, but at level AAA you're more likely than not ensuring an extremely clear and usable interface.

OuterValeon YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney

Invidious' docs recommend restarting the service regularly[1]. I can only imagine that this means there is a serious memory leak somewhere. I notice the hardware requirements specifically note: '2GB of free RAM, as long as it is restarted regularly'

It has been this way for years. Seems odd.

[1] https://docs.invidious.io/community-installation-guide/#crea...

OuterValeon WiiFin – Jellyfin Client for Nintendo Wii

I built a little Jellyfin plugin for KOReader [1] so I can access my books from my Kindle. Jellyfin proved really nice to work with (though there was some poorly documented auth stuff they were in the process of deprecating).

If anyone has been thinking of building something in the Jellyfin ecosystem, I very much recommend it.

[1]: https://github.com/DeclanChidlow/KOReader-Jellyfin-Plugin/

OuterValeon Android now stops you sharing your location in photos

The author wrote about it here: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/09/drunk-css/

OuterValeon X Randomly Banning Users for "Inauthentic Behavior"

> I've also recently heard Elon Musk being described as a "literal Nazi" a lot

The chatbot run by his company has called itself 'MechaHitler' multiple times, and Musk himself did what is widely regarded as a Nazi salute during Trump's second inauguration.

OuterValeon Phyphox – Physical Experiments Using a Smartphone

I've had great fun using Phyphox to visualise my hand getting closer/farther from my phone based on the presence of my magnet implant. So many cool little things the app can visualise and measure, especially when used it creative ways.

OuterValeon The End of Eleventy

I'm still completely in love with WebOrigami (https://weborigami.org). It is a 'dialect of JavaScript' that is designed for building static sites. It isn't super popular, but it much more flexible and comprehensive than anything else I've found. Fills the 11ty gap nicely.

OuterValeon The effects of caffeine consumption do not decay with a ~5 hour half-life

Gwern is active on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/gwern

OuterValeon The effects of caffeine consumption do not decay with a ~5 hour half-life

I feel it my due diligence to advise you that LessWrong is closely associated with the rationalists and all that comes with them. It is worth doing a tad of research into the rationalist community and Eliezer Yudkowsky before going too deep down the LessWrong rabbit hole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community

OuterValeon OpenAI says its new model GPT-2 is too dangerous to release (2019)

It is entirely plausible they were just experimenting with AI tooling to better understand how to use it and what it is capable of. Their saying, 'Despite not knowing this particular programming language or framework.' indicates to me this is probably the case.

OuterValeon The Indie Internet Index – submit your favorite sites

There is also https://personalsit.es which I help maintain.

OuterValeon ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover

That's a shame. Now I can't do anything at ZomboCom.

OuterValeon Abusing Customizable Selects

Patrick is incredibly creative with CSS. Check out his lab on his website which is full of more wild stuff: https://patrickbrosset.com/lab/

OuterValeon POSSE – Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere

Cheers, Chris! Thanks for checking it out. Hope your day is equally wonderful.

OuterValeon POSSE – Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere

I follow the opposite with PESOS: Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site. Work really nicely as I've got some automation and systems in place that allow me to maintain a full firehose of all my posts and notable actions across the web on my own site. Then I can sort through them and reference them (which I do frequently) with ease. I do recommend.

OuterValeon 1kB Club

Also see: https://512kb.club/

OuterValeon Ask HN: Anyone else feel this community has changed recently?

Perhaps, but I can anecdotally attest that they're becoming more common.

OuterValeon Ask HN: Anyone else feel this community has changed recently?

Biggest change I've seen is a corporate approach to everything, rather than a hacker ethos. People experimenting and pushing boundries are penalised for doing so.

Too many cool little projects which are replied to with 'Why not use Y?' or 'Who needs this?'. It is as if projects are deemed as having no worth unless they are economically sound and improve productivity.

OuterValeon Npmx: a fast, modern browser for the NPM registry

Previous npmx discussion from before it launched in alpha:

NPMX – a fast, modern browser for the NPM registry | 153 points | 72 comments | 14/02/2026 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47010823

OuterValeon GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

It is just Android. If you're familiar with the usual Material styling of Android, you're familiar with what Graphene looks like.

OuterValeon Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

Currently financed on user donations. The future plan is to intoduce further features which are costly to provide behind a paywall to remain sustainable.

OuterValeon Ask HN: Share your personal website

https://vale.rocks

See also the https://personalsit.es directory

OuterValeon We can't have nice things because of AI scrapers

The site is down. You can read the article via the Wayback Machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20260112201803/https://blog.meta...

OuterValeon Visual regression tests for personal blogs

I'm familiar with TurnTrout's The Pond using visual regression testing as well: https://turntrout.com/design#visual-regression-testing

OuterValeon GLSL Web CRT Shader

You say this, but the author was born in 1976. It not being perfect doesn't mean that the person involved doesn't know what they're talking about.

OuterValeon The Most Popular Blogs of Hacker News in 2025

Looks like my site (https://vale.rocks) ranked 440 by score, 128 by stories, and 135 by average score. Thanks for everyone here who checked out my writing last year!

OuterValeon A brief history of Times New Roman

Not to mention all the far-out OpenType features.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typographic_features

OuterValeon Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo

Given that my search router is completely client side, importing such a huge collection would be huge and slow things down considerably.

OuterValeon I fed 24 years of my blog posts to a Markov model

Really fascinating how you can get such intriguing output from such a simple system. Prompted me to give it a whirl with the content on my own site.

https://vale.rocks/micros/20251214-0503