Hacker News Reader

contingencieson Malleable software = solid bases and custom code

Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. - Henry Spencer

contingencieson Building my own network stack

Many: OS detection (ICMP, IGMP, ARP, TCP, etc.), topology disclosure (ICMP), DoS (many early protocols did not perceive resource exhaustion in their threat model; a prominent example being SYN floods / TCP half-open), etc.

contingencieson Building my own network stack

Much more fun on microcontrollers!

contingencieson New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

Cool product, thanks. Sent back for Kingston RMA, expecting a new drive soon.

contingencieson New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

Happy with M4 Mini, although I recommend using a well ventilated M.2 enclosure instead of the integrated docks as I just had a 2TB Kingston die which I'm pretty sure was caused by "zero thermal forks given (chopsticks only)" UGreen hub design. Also can use as a laptop and replace screen/keyboard/whatever when failed/unsuitable. Higher resulting device longevity, especially with Asahi Linux making such great progress. https://github.com/vk2diy/hackbook-m4-mini

contingencieson Oceans hit highest temperature on record

Where are you based now? Long time between drinks. I think 2600 is still running. Pop in at the next one? https://www.meetup.com/en-au/sydney-2600/events/316056334/

contingencieson One corner of China’s internet is insisting that the Tang Dynasty never existed

Let's not get started on corners of the American internet... ask your favourite AI about "list of historical denial theories with US subscribers, including religious". No doubt longer and more amusing!

contingencieson Oceans hit highest temperature on record

Also, to be more holistic in evaluating things through this icky nationalist lens, China has been a globally significant contributor to alternate fuels including solar and micro-hydro, plus the transition to EVs notably including EV buses (now becoming globally popular) and high speed rail.

contingencieson Oceans hit highest temperature on record

In Sydney it has been raining almost non stop for a year. Really odd. Garden loves it, I'm planting non-endemic native (primarily tropical) species from further north along the coast. I expect a snap-back to extreme drought during this or the subsequent summer. But come further warming, we'll have a jungle.

contingencieson Sydney Marathon medal mistakenly depicts Munich stadium

Hahaha, thanks that gave me a laugh. I assure you my nonsense is natural.

contingencieson Sydney Marathon medal mistakenly depicts Munich stadium

On the subject of flowers, the late Donald was a friend of a family friend who came over one night and after drinking a huge amount of wine decided in a midnight fit of inspiration (when we'd all gone to bed) to rearrange flowers throughout the house. We woke up in the morning to find little bits of flowers everywhere except the vases! Sadly, she passed away recently but it became a running joke in the family. Good sorts.

contingencieson Sydney Marathon medal mistakenly depicts Munich stadium

Logo is https://www.nsw.gov.au/themes/custom/dcs_theme/favicons/sets... whereas the actual waratah looks like https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=waratah

contingencieson New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

Humans everywhere have those characteristics. Currently, China has substantial control of the supply chain for almost everything. I think you'll find Chinese power remains but the wealth and power distribution internally becomes even more centralized. The US and China are similar in this regard.

contingencieson Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

Clearly Homo idiotensis here is incapable of cultivating a factual ontology that would place it below the 'great apes' as the type species amongst amongst the 'asshole apes'.

contingencieson Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down

And what will make Musk's head explode: canada is starting to allow cheap chinese EVs into north america

Another Musk moment: most aluminum in the US comes from Canada. Most of Musk's vehicles are built with aluminum. These tariffs will directly increase Tesla manufacturing cost in the US, making them even less competitive.

contingencieson The Lost Treasure of Sid Meier's Pirates

Can confirm :) Feel like a cat: had 9 lives since then.

contingencieson I accidentally logged hundreds of thousands of phone calls to military bases

Given the author appears to be a 19 year old German girl, UK bureaucrats proxying admin duties for offshore territories are unlikely to be motivated to start an international extradition for what amounts to a helpful tip.

contingencieson The Lost Treasure of Sid Meier's Pirates

Mike Diskett, the lead designer of Syndicate Wars, tried to do a Syndicate remake-ish thang called Satellite Reign recently; it came out on Steam as an early release but never quite made playability IMHO. Shame: the conceptual foundation seems disproportionately more urgently pertinent for mass-comprehension today.

contingencieson Repair Cafe – Fix Your Broken Items

Interesting approach however what's the physical interface for re-enabling when you get back to the machine? If it's a wireless plus socket plus switch thing that's starting to get a bit exotic / high failure mode.

contingencieson Repair Cafe – Fix Your Broken Items

I had a washing machine break a couple of weeks ago. 3 years old. Just past warranty. Manufacturer advertised 10 year warranty on the motor. Motor controller burned out: not covered. PCB looked perfect. Had it swapped today: suddenly everything back to working. $240 for the part, $170 labor. As an individual, I can't buy the part.

In theory, our national government has a 'crackdown' on 'bullshit whitegoods warranties' this year. In reality: they're letting it happen.[0]

When it costs $400 and two weeks of screwing around to fix a $900 appliance, you just buy a new one.

I'd happily fix the thing myself, but it's not designed to be fixed, and they refuse to sell the part: the supply chain is designed to make the option impossible.

In vengeance, I kept the old motor controller but haven't yet taken a look at it. Might send it to China to get it reverse engineered if necessary or if simple enough just release an open one as a KiCad file. Frankly I think it's just a large motor controller IC, a cap, a heat sink and one or two other components.

The guy fixing it told me basically they're all bad, and designed to fail after warranty now. He said Samsung has good service, Miele has good value, the rest are meh. I hear good things about Fisher & Paykel, which is an AU/NZ brand. He said don't buy combined washer-dryers, and always buy a larger one than you need: mostly they die from overloading not from under-use. He also said: unplug them when not in use. Sadly, that makes sense. I guess they sometimes design them to 'slow burn'.

[0] https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/rising-contacts-raise-...

contingencieson Plastic mechanical computer from 1963: The Digi-Comp 1 [video]

3D print your own: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1477209

This reminds me, a CNC wire bender is on my list.

contingencieson Models Are Getting Dumber on Purpose

Unless you are building a factory assembly line where a model is literally doing the same thing over and over, you almost always want a general purpose model over a specialized one.

Turns out the world is made of simple, specialist processes, not generalists trying to achieve them. Adaptability may be of great benefit in evolutionary terms or for a walking anthropoid, but the majority of biology, chemistry, and mathematics rely upon specialist process for good reason. See also the old trope about robotics: that's what you call it before it works, otherwise it'd be a dishwasher.

The upshot is: use a generalist to create a simple solution once, and scale that. Don't deploy the generalist at scale, that's a waste of resources and an inefficient solution.

contingencieson Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born (2023)

FYI the so-called Bertrand Russell quotation is apparently in fact an expanded paraphrase of Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism (1987):

Britain has produced a range of remarkably gifted multidisciplinary scientists and scholars who are sometimes described as polymaths. The group included, in recent times, Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead, J. B. S. Haldane, J. D. Bernal, and Jacob Bronowski. Russell commented that the development of such gifted individuals required a childhood period in which there was little or no pressure for conformity, a time in which the child could develop and pursue his or her own interests no matter how unusual or bizarre.

Still earlier Sagan The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (1977), Chapter 8, 'The Future Evolution of the Brain'.

contingencieson The Legend of the Novell NE2000 [video]

I remember it being a bit later: like mid 90s was still a mix, things like smc-ultra and lance but by late 90s it was everywhere and well dominant. The price point was very low, I recall around AUD$20. Definitely had NE2000s running on Slackware 3.x, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Win95/98/2K.

contingencieson Tocharian Online

→ Macro African Union → Metazoan Member States → Panspermian Massive → Anomalies Anonymous

"Hi I'm infinity and I... I cracked and generated a self-replicating biology last aeon. By the second kalpa they'd devised a writing system and started battling each other for spacetime. I've got to stop doing that."

contingencieson Choose Boring Technology (2015)

You misspelled 'beers'. A boring technology.

contingencieson Tocharian Online

Wait wait wait: so Xinjiang is an inalienable part of Europe?

For those interested in an overview of the history of the area in an historic dramatic frame of reference I can recommend the group of short stories published as Life Along the Silk Road by Susan Whitfield.

contingencieson Show HN: Tamron Lens Utility Alternative on Linux

Lenses have energy budgets, responsiveness concerns and actuator/sensor pairings through embedded processing. Therefore they need firmware. Firmware goes out of date and has bugs and improvements. Having the ability to configure a lens beyond simply selecting firmware is an obvious second use of the required interface.

contingencieson London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

Sadly, it seems to me that what we are witnessing in our era is a convergence of technology-enhanced surveillance governance globally, greatly eroding personal agency and democratic capacity to institute change.

We desperately need utopian futures but seem to be getting only dystopias regardless of origin state and nominal political ideology: almost as if 1984, Animal Farm, Enemy of the State, Gattaca, Terminator, and THX 1138 had a Waterworld-Mad Max setting.

We should each try to imagine a technology-enabled future utopia and build an enabling technology instead of contributing to this sort of thing - which already exists in most countries not to mention financial surveillance, internet surveillance, mobile phone surveillance, vehicle and commercial flight/ship surveillance.

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Juden einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

contingencieson Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor

Always wanted to do this but enjoying land-lubber life a bit too much at the moment. I'd like to think I've built most of the skills (sailing, electronics, mechanics, sewing, rigging, drinking amicably with strangers, radio, cooking, botany, etc.) but am yet to find a wife who's OK with sailing life: maybe just go anyway?