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bennyp101

1,736 karma · joined June 1, 2013

Email: HN@<first>.<last>.co.uk ---
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bennyp101··on Kiosk mode bypass for an Ariane Allegro Scenario Player based hotel check-in te
Not the year for it
bennyp101··on Hacking millions of modems and investigating who hacked my modem
So open it up to anyone? DMZ is an open target, not what you want to be doing.
bennyp101··on Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
I worked somewhere about 18 years ago that was a TUI for the call center staff, and it kinda made sense. A few keystrokes and the info you needed was there, no "fluff" or clicking around the place, just type in what the customer said, tab, and done.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was still in use now.

bennyp101··on Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana
I've been using a few of these on various devices https://www.mylocalbytes.com/products/smart-plug-pm
bennyp101··on I don't want to fill out your contact form
I'm sure I've said this before on here, but I used to work for a company that provided a SaaS solution to my countries biggest Telecoms provider, and I remember them saying that they actively did NOT want people contacting them - I wouldn't be surprised if at some point actively "hostile" interfaces cost less than meat answering the phones/emails
bennyp101··on Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24
Do you need an MVP or an idea? US or international?
bennyp101··on Cloudflare acquires PartyKit to allow developers to build real-time multi-user
The PartyKit website is wild, random cursors from other people! Quite fun to be chasing them around the screen!

(Which does seem to show off the lack of lag and responsiveness)

bennyp101··on Surveillance by the New Microsoft Outlook App
Just don't try and use it with Edge - on my work Ubuntu laptop, the PWA is a steaming pile - locks up, crashes, eats all the CPU - I gave up and just have it as a pinned tab now.
bennyp101··on Bruno: Fast and Git-friendly open-source API client (Postman alternative)
There was a discussion a while back when the whole insomnia thing happened, where the dev points out how he aims to not go the same route

https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/discussions/269

bennyp101··on Varda Capsule Reentry – Five Minutes from LEO to Earth [video]
That meringue got toasted!

Pretty neat the way it went from crazy hyperspace to a gentle, peaceful floating in the air!

bennyp101··on The Ultimate Guide to PostgreSQL Data Change Tracking
Assuming by issue an alert you want to call an external service, I’d go with listen notify and use something like Graphile-worker to pick it up and process it. Or you could stay in pg and use a FDW with a trigger
bennyp101··on Home Assistant: Three years later
I've used things like this SMS plug[0] before for places that I needed to power cycle to bring connection back.

[0] https://cpc.farnell.com/tekview/powertxtuk/gsm-power-socket-...

bennyp101··on ICO fines HelloFresh £140k for spam texts and emails
We tried them towards the end of last year, but compared to Gousto, found the quality and recipes lacking. Then there were the weird free things in the box, some Nivea face cream in one of them… very strange. I guess they must be making enough from cutting back and 3rd party deals to not worry about the slap on the wrist
bennyp101··on Block cookie banners on Firefox
Cookie consent banners and GDPR are different things though - it just happens that GDPR also classifies cookies as identifiers.
bennyp101··on Show HN: New visual language for teaching kids to code
Looks pretty cool, I’ll give it a go on a computer tomorrow!

One thing I noticed, when I did the rectangle demo, I’d click on the “123” to input a number, but my phone showed the full keyboard, would be nice if it defaulted to numbers for that. (Obvs it’s not designed for a phone but I assume the same on a tablet?)

bennyp101··on River: A fast, robust job queue for Go and Postgres
Nice, I've been using graphile-worker [0] for a while now, and it handles our needs perfectly, so I can totally see why you want something in the go world.

Just skimming the docs, can you add a job directly via the DB? So a native trigger could add a job in? Or does it have to go via a client?

[0] https://worker.graphile.org/

bennyp101··on Show HN: Obligator – An OpenID Connect server for self-hosters
I've found https://zitadel.com/ to be a light weight version of keycloak.

Lots of options that are useful, and pretty good UI for setting things up

bennyp101··on Webhook Failure Scenarios
Those terms are very confusing - to me orign would be the SENDER ... where the message ORIGNates from ...

But yes, those are common scenarios, and most services that offer calling a webhook have retries baked in for such things. It is the responsibility of the consumer to verify if they have already received a message or not.

You should not be consuming a webhook 'live' and attempting to work on it the moment you receive it - that way lies dragons!

I have dedicated endpoints for services to send to, and they are verified and consumed as quickly as possible and put into a queue to be processed after. That way I can at least see what was sent, and if we missed something.

bennyp101··on An Opinionated Yubikey Set-Up Guide
Yep, thats the same guide I used a few years ago as well!

I use it daily for Github/ssh in general - and the 2 slots are used for part of passwords for a couple of other things.

I have a couple that are used daily, one in a safety deposit box (which is the "master" key), and a stack of new ones on my desk in case anything breaks. (I used that Cloudflare offer to get a hefty discount on them).

I also have a paperkey copy that lives elsewhere.

bennyp101··on An Internet of PHP
"The ability to interleave code and HTML was also tacky and never taken seriously" - That was the whole point of it! The day I found PHP and could leave behind the cgi-bin and SSI it became my favourite thing - and has paid me well for the last 20+ years :)
bennyp101··on Kagi Small Web
Ah gotcha, I misunderstood that part :)
bennyp101··on Kagi Small Web
Pretty cool - just wondering why one of the requirements is "The website can appear in an iframe"?
bennyp101··on Postgres Task Queues: The Secret Weapon Killing Specialized Queue Services?
I use Postgres as a queue for some bits at work using Graphile-worker [0] and it works perfectly. No need for another moving part when the data I need is in the db. Also avoids having to do outbox stuff.

It’s quite cool just how far you can get with postgres

[0] https://github.com/graphile/worker

bennyp101··on Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
Not really relevant to the discussion, but those are some lovely looking buildings!
bennyp101··on Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase
Is this not a sign that letsencrypt has taken away their golden goose?
bennyp101··on Why Tailwind CSS Won
For me, when I'm working on a layout (I'm not a designer at all) it's quicker for me to parse words that describe what I want, than to type out

style="border-radius: 5px; border: 1px solid #2563eb; background-color: #3b82f6"

Personal choice obviously, but I work with frameworks and components if I'm doing frontend stuff, so having things as a single name for something that is consistent across everywhere I use it makes it easier for me.

It's not for everyone, and that's cool.

bennyp101··on Why Tailwind CSS Won
For getting designs up and running quickly, it really is great.

Being able to think "Hmmm, I want a rounded button, with a border and a blue background" and just typing class="rounded border border-blue-600 bg-blue-500" and it's done.

With lots of UI being components now, it doesn't really matter that it is verbose - I actually find that helpful. And even if you want to have a class that you use all over the place, just use @apply and create a custom class that you can use anywhere.

One place it can be hard to use, is if you have a specific design system - then yea at that point you either work with Tailwind and modify the config to match, or you just go with standard CSS - but at that point it probably makes sense.

bennyp101··on Online Safety Bill – Some futures
We ended up just saying no, you aren't allowed to watch youtube - and blocked it on their devices. Even youtubekids seems to have the odd video/ad that is not really young kid friendly.
bennyp101··on Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365
I've noticed that search has got a lot better in the last few months, seems to be pretty quick at digging up stuff from a few years ago.

I'll give you the image uploads/embeds - it really can be pot luck if it works or not

bennyp101··on Amateurs obsess over tools, pros over mastery
“Obsess” is a strong word, but keeping an eye out for tools that could make things easier is a no brainer. Things move at a fast pace and whilst the script or hammer from 10 years ago works, why not keep trying new things to see?

I’d say the amateur is the one who mastered the hammer and thinks everything is a nail.

Edit: rather, not realised yet that everything is not a nail

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