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alias_neo

5,312 karma · joined September 16, 2016

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alias_neo··on Descent, ported to the web
One of the first PC games I ever played, I was single-digit years old when this released. Fond memories.

Will have to have a play of this web version and try out Overload, thanks.

alias_neo··on Faster Than Dijkstra?
Deja Vu.

I read this article a few days ago I'm sure, word-for-word, but it wasn't on this site in OP? It stood out because when it mentioned textbooks and said "including ours" I looked at the site and thought to myself "they do textbooks?".

alias_neo··on GLM-5: Targeting complex systems engineering and long-horizon agentic tasks
What's the use case for Zai/GLM? I'm currently on Claude Pro, and the Zai looks about 50% more expensive after the first 3 months and according to their chart GLM 4.7 is not quite as capable as Opus 4.5?

I'm looking to save on costs because I use it so infrequently, but PAYG seems like it'd cost me more in a single session per month than the monthly cost plan.

alias_neo··on The switch to Linux and the beginning of my self-hosting journey
Thanks for the heads up, that makes sense.
alias_neo··on The switch to Linux and the beginning of my self-hosting journey
You seem to have missed a couple of things that have caused you a bit of a headache here, I'm hoping I can encourage you to try again with a little bit of info. I've been using Linux for as long as it has existed, I'm also a backend-dev that works on a Linux machine and targets Linux-based platforms for deployment, even my kids use Linux. Windows went downhill for me after about Windows 2000 and Linux has only gotten better.

> yet it still is not there in usability

I want to wholeheartedly disagree with you. Nothing comes close to Linux in terms of usability for me, but a lot of it is about what you're used to, I've used Window's, I've used Mac, Mac I could live with, but I'll never intentionally use Windows again.

> To be specific what irked me today when I tested them was installing new programs. On Cachy, I wanted to test jetbrains IDE

Ok, let's begin; this one is partly JetBrains' fault, and partly yours.

You can open a terminal and type `paru jetbrains-toolbox`, hit enter a couple of times and it's installed. Don't know what `paru` is? I recommend reading the frankly excellent documentation from CachyOS[0].

> or extract(no option in dir manager or decompression program) the content in Cachy

You didn't specify which Desktop Environment you chose, this is important when helping newcomers because each comes with its own set of tools; but in Gnome's (what I use) the file manager, called Nautilus, I can right-click almost any archive type and will be presented with "Extract", "Extract to..." as well as a few other options. I just looked up how KDE does it, in case you're using that, the file manager is called Dolphin, and apparently you might need to install an archive tool first such as Ark and/or 7zip, gotta give you that one, I'm a little shocked, that's a pretty shitty OOBE in my opinion, but a quick search and you'll now probably be confused because the solution is here[1] but they say to use `apt install...` which you don't have on an Arch based distro. But once you know what the file managers you do have access to are, it should be easier.

> So I wanted to get 7zip but there was no linux version

There certainly _is_ a Linux version. `paru 7zip` and I get at least 3 legit options; the base package, an architecture optimised package, and a GUI for it, as well as a dozen or two community options. You can also try the standard arch package manager aptly named "pacman"; `sudo pacman -S 7zip` and it installs it for me after I hit enter to confirm, don't even need to choose the package. Wtf is `sudo`? That's how Administrator is typically done in Linux.

> Cachy has its own packages that can be opened(website) via its welcome screen(otherwise there is no program manager - no snaps, flatpacks

On Gnome there is "Software" which supports Flatpaks as well as other package types; don't worry about snaps, you don't want them, and there's Octopi from CachyOS. In KDE there's a GUI called "Discover". There are a bunch of others such as Bazaar which you mentioned.

Usability really isn't an issue in Linux once you know the way of your distro; If you're used to Windows, then it's _different_, sure, and in that case I'd suggest taking an hour to read the CachyOS docs; Arch Wiki (CachyOS is based on Arch) is also an amazing resource for all things Linux, and learn a little about how software management is different, we don't (usually) pull random crap from websites, we install from package managers, and sometimes compile the source ourselves.

If you didn't choose one of the two DEs I've mentioned (Gnome, KDE), I'd recommend giving them a go, they're both very mature and usable. If you're into Discord, I can suggest hitting up the CachyOS or another distro's Discord servers, there's lots of helpful people there willing to help, if you had any other questions give me a shout.

[0] https://wiki.cachyos.org/cachyos_basic/navigation-guide/ [1] https://discuss.kde.org/t/how-to-add-extract-here-right-clic...

alias_neo··on Discord Alternatives, Ranked
Yes. The phone number is just for activation, once activated, you can swap the SIM and carry on. Or have the SIM that receives the activation text in another phone, or be virtual, or whatever.
alias_neo··on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
You're implying some difference here that I don't see.

Both platforms need some way for the client to register to their respective push services, Apple needs an Apple account, Android needs google-services.json.

Both platforms require your app to generate a token which the platform's respective push service holds, and send it to your server which you then use to identify the client you're pushing to.

Apple also requires the Auth p8, Bundle ID, Team ID and Key ID, which are roughly equivalent to the contents of the google-services.json.

alias_neo··on Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle
Haha yeah. It was mostly just fun for me as a nerdy child who spent way too much time on Astalavista forum.

Cracking and RE were just gateways into a career in (defensive) security for me.

alias_neo··on UK government launches fuel forecourt price API
I think the fuel passing through is the only method that could be used to cool, the volume of fuel required is presumably constant, regardless of how much fuel you have left, so the amount passing through the pump should be the same until you run out.

On a related note, my car has a fuel heater, to pre-heat the Diesel before it hits the engine, I assume this is typical in modern cars, but using the fuel as a coolant would presumably contribute positively to this desire for warmer fuel entering the cylinders.

alias_neo··on UK government launches fuel forecourt price API
> doesn't the fuel pump use fuel itself as a coolant or something

I know very little about these things, but my understanding was always that any form of liquid pump uses the liquid itself as coolant to some extent.

alias_neo··on UK government launches fuel forecourt price API
As someone who waits until my tank is almost empty, to visit Costco one per month for a fill-up, despite it being 5 miles away, I understand your point.

However, I think (and hope) the point of this service is that by being public, it'll drive prices down for drivers.

I drive 10 miles round-trip once per month to save what I guesstimate is £5 on a tank of fuel, then spend £100-300 in the Costco store while I'm there. I'm not the target audience, but I hope that for those who drive regularly, or for a living, this can help route them to where they can get the best prices as they're passing by.

alias_neo··on Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle
When I was a child, in the 90s, I did this all of the time.

Input a unique string I could watch for, fire up SoftICE, watch for the string, and then step through until the == comparison happened, then either grab the calculated key and input it, or patch the comparison from == to != or just return true, depending on the implementation.

alias_neo··on Claude Code daily benchmarks for degradation tracking
> We never reduce model quality due to demand, time of day, or server load

Forgive me, but as a native English speaker, this sentence says exactly one thing to me; We _do_ reduce model quality, just not for these listed reasons.

If they don't do it, they could put a full stop after the fifth word and save some ~~tokens~~ time.

alias_neo··on How to choose colors for your CLI applications (2023)
I recently spent several evenings re-working all of my colours across all of my computers and screens; terminals, IDEs, etc. Ultimately, despite using the same tools, and always dark mode, across all of my machines, the setup for each was different.

I think it's safe to set a standard colour-set so that it's immediately usable, but beyond that, a user should be customising to their requirements.

Perception differs among people; many of the colours OP listed as unreadable, were barely an issue, bright yellow being the only one I could unequivocally agree on. Perhaps display type, configuration and colour calibration is an important factor, as well as individual perception, ambient conditions, brightness levels, contrast, and perhaps even more variables have a significant effect.

I've also learned, since adding an OLED Monitor to my desk alongside the IPS ones, that it's possible to have too much contrast; brightly coloured text alongside pixels that are literally off can be just as problematic to read at times, as low-contrast.

alias_neo··on ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions
It's certainly been interesting to watch over the span of my career so far.

It's really quite interesting thinking back to that time for me in University, every few years something happens that sparks a memory; right now, it's that roughly 2007-2008 my professor was telling me about this "rollable" screen technology that was going to enable rolling/folding phones at some point in the future; a little earlier he'd been telling me about this funky new thing called 'Organic LED' that was going to enable "printing" flexible circuits

He's an FREng (Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering) and was one of the people involved in the invention of the silicon chip.

Had a Gandalf look to him and was a real fountain of knowledge, I lucked out to get the guy as my professor.

alias_neo··on ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions
> Qimonda

Sorry for the tangent, I haven't heard this name in over 15 years, I interviewed with them the summer before the final year of my BEng, and was offered a job in China to allegedly built a real-time voice/video communications system between what they said were their three facilities in beautiful looking part of China I can't remember the name of now.

Looking through my Gmail, it was 2008 they offered my the position; and looking at the Wiki page, I'm glad I didn't take the offer, as it appears it didn't last much longer?

alias_neo··on France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Ah that's it. I made the mistake of visiting their website which is heavy on marketing and low on what the heck their product actually is.

Makes more sense reading the Github (though that too is pushing the AI angle more than A/V stuff.

alias_neo··on JuiceSSH – Give me my pro features back
They seem to have pulled it, I can't find it on my Pixel.

I paid for it in 2014, and it hasn't been updated in about half of that time, they removed the cloud key backup at some point without notification so I lost all of the keys I had stored, and last time I used it, it didn't even recognise I had paid for it.

I moved to a different app a while back.

alias_neo··on France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.
It's not really clear to me what livekit is, but it appears to be some sort of agentic coding tool.

Perhaps the similarity to Jitsi Meet is due to it regurgitating the source that an AI has ingested.

The code base looks very different but a lot of the same terminology is used and the UI layout, navigation, menu options etc look very similar.

alias_neo··on France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.
> And here's the app, Visio

That UI looks suspiciously similar to Jitsi Meet. I wonder if it's based on it.

alias_neo··on Running the Stupid Cricut Software on Linux
Thanks for the tip. I'll take a look.
alias_neo··on Running the Stupid Cricut Software on Linux
There's a Wiki link in OP that suggests two other pieces of software had added support in the past but were sued by Cricut's org to remove support.

The real take home (as OP is clear about), is don't buy anything from this shitty company, but at least if you already have, and really must use it, you can get their shitty, proprietary, locked down software running on Linux using OPs instructions.

I had always wanted a cutting machine like this, to complement my 3D printers, but I had learned about their plans to charge a subscription to use their software; OPs linked Wiki suggests that was scrapped after backlash; but the damage is done; I'd never buy a thing from them.

alias_neo··on Replacing Protobuf with Rust
I was equally confused by the headline.

I wonder if it's just poorly worded and they meant to say something like "Replacing Protobuf with some native calls [in Rust]".

alias_neo··on Instabridge has acquired Nova Launcher
I'll have whatever you're smoking please.

You don't acquire something like this, as a metrics company, who does cohort analysis and touchpoint tracking[0] simply to make a bit of ad revenue.

Nova is dead. No room left for optimism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_(company)

alias_neo··on Instabridge has acquired Nova Launcher
Their former name "Branch Metrics", tells you all you need to know about them.

> Branch also uses tools for cohort analysis and touchpoint tracking

Just the kind of company I want in my phone.

alias_neo··on Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
There are a lot of variables that need to be factored in, and they don't cover many of them in these cheaper quotes.

What size inverter? Is it a hybrid inverter? 10kWh of Storage is 8-9kWh usable because batteries are only warrantied to 80-90% depth-of-discharge, is that enough?

Since there's only ~5.6kWp of panels in that quote it's probably over-provisioned, and it will likely come with a smaller inverter, say 3.6kW, which is what a lot of these cheaper companies will do, and export will be limited under G98 to 3.68kW.

That also means that in peak sun, your 5.6kW of panels are going to clip at the inverter capacity and you won't be able to access more than that limit in power.

£200 per extra panel isn't bad, the company I went with charged £300, but mine came with per-panel optimisers (at my request, mainly for the monitoring functionality rather than optimisation). If I wanted to add an additional elevation though, that would be per-panel cost plus ~£2000 for the additional elevation of scaffolding.

If you're going for one of these installations and haven't already, ask these questions, and if you can get a decent price that's great, I wish you luck. I'm not on reddit so I can't comment on the quality of that sub.

alias_neo··on Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
I wasn't ripped off, but I didn't go for the cheapest quote either. I wasn't trying to suggest my installation was typical or what someone could expect to pay in the UK, the point I was trying to make was the cost of labour adds significantly, and overall even if you paid half what I did, it's still too much to expect the majority of UK households to take it up.

My system is larger than typical for a UK home, I also paid a premium to have it installed by a company with an excellent reputation for their work, I'd had a new roof the week before and wanted a high quality installation.

I also went with a company that let me decide how I wanted it installed; other companies wanted to put the batteries in my loft or under the stairs which was an absolute no from me, I don't want them inside my home, and I had them install the batteries and inverter in a brick out house on the opposite end of the property to where the consumer unit is, again, at a premium.

I had per-panel optimisers and monitoring hardware installed, and because I wasn't aware of it until later, I added the bird-mesh on after signing the contract and did get ripped off on that part (NOTE: if you get solar in the UK, and have ever so much as seen a pigeon, get bird mesh).

It's also worth noting that checking today, all of the hardware has dropped in price, my panels are now 20% cheaper, batteries are 15% cheaper, inverter is 10% cheaper, and I imagine installations and labour might be cheaper in the winter than the peak of summer like I had mine installed.

All of that said, the total cost of installation doesn't really matter so much as the ROI, which for me works out at most ~6 years, if none of the hardware fails in the meantime.

EDIT: There's a mistake in my previous comment which I based all of the subsequent numbers on; the cost of 2 batteries + inverter was closer to £5k not £3.5k.

alias_neo··on Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
In the UK, it's expensive, and it's not the technology, it's everything else. I don't see how that can improve unless the installation costs come down, and I don't know how that could/would happen.

I had solar installed last year, at the end of the summer, it cost roughly £14,000 for a system that can produce 6.51kWp and with 12kWh of battery storage (about 10kWh usable).

The 465W all-black panels (14 of them) I had installed are a little under £100 each to buy off-the-shelf, that accounts for 10% (£1400) of the cost of my system.

The batteries and inverter together another roughly £3.5k, so, about £9k of that cost was not for "solar and battery tech", a good chunk of it, somewhere around 40% of the total was labour, and the rest in scaffolding. Even if we allocate say another £1k to "hardware"; rails, wire, switchgear etc, that's still £8k easily.

Even if the hardware was free, £8-10k installation costs seems prohibitively expensive for the average UK household, unless you were totally wiping out your monthly bills and could pay it off over the lifetime of the system.

I suspect part of the issue in Australia is the same; I believe (perhaps incorrectly) you have a lot more sun down there so I'd expect the scale of (number of) installations to be higher.

alias_neo··on Go.sum is not a lockfile
I would hazard a guess that the (former) head of the Go security team at Google (OP) _does_ in fact understand.
alias_neo··on Show HN: UK Butchers Meat Price Tracker
Same sadly. Will check back later.
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