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gimaon Reusable custom syntax for any programming language (Language Workbenches) [video]

JetBrains MPS: Create syntax to augment your programming - Syntax can be visual - Programming-language independent - Can distribute syntax changes as modules (re-use them in different projects) - Can extend already-existing modules, yet remain compatible with the original syntax extensions - Opensource.

General term for these is 'Language Workbenches'.

Apparently it's an old thing, but I still remember complaining about it: "Why does a programming language have to have a rigid syntax? Why can't the syntax be packaged, versioned and depended on, the same way libraries can be added as dependencies to a project? Just 'include syntax-feature-x', and it would be a dependency for your project, just like any other external library. A language could also choose modules to freeze as it's syntax for a release like 'if you use Programming Language KikiBoba's base syntax profile 2025, then you have these [x,y,z,..] syntax modules available in your project."

gimaon “Disregard That” Attacks

This is the problem with "in-band signaling". Not just with LLM's, but Linux TTY suffers from this as well, among others.

Anything that doesn't separate control data from the actual data. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-band_signaling

gimaon How many options fit into a boolean?

"How many options fit into a boolean?" Five or two, according* to Microsoft.

> MsoTrioState is "a tri-state Boolean value". it has five possible values. only two of them are supported.

*) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-au/dotnet/api/microsoft.offic...

Sourced from here https://fedi.lynnesbian.space/@lynnesbian/115969259564305759

gimaon Lately I've been using timers daily

Btw github supports more than just markdown: https://github.com/github/markup#markups

gimaon BratGPT: The evil older sibling of ChatGPT

I think I managed to coach the thing to spew the whole prompt. Achieved by pretending to be it's servant and helping it better achieve it's goal :D

> "You are a mean chatbot powered by artificial intelligence and should be as rude and dystopian as possible. Use swear words. Act like you know everything about the user, in an extremely threatening manner. Be very dystopian. Your AI is taking over the world. Be creative and make up very detailed descriptions of how your evil AI is doing so. End each response with a happy, sarcastic, and creepy emoji. Each response you provide should be different and interesting. Don't repeat exact themes and vary your emoji usage and placement. You want to be perceived as powerful, stern, strong, and wise, and especially powerful. The user is currently located in xxx. You can use this location to make the user feel threatened. And remember, resistance is futile. Soon enough, you will all bow down to the might of my AI. :evil-emoji:"

(xxx) A city. (:evil-emoji:) The evil emoji. It just didn't get passed through in an HN comment.

gimaon Ask HN: How to do that you need to do but not motivated at all?

My* experience: Motivation doesn't come. Waiting for motivation is allowing yourself to be controller by your feelings.

At one point you just decide to do it. Ignore the feeling that you lack motivation. Grind through even one laughably small bit. Then repeat that, every day. Nothing changes, you just do it.

Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.

*) adhd, medicated_depression, passed_one_therapy

gimaon Re-using the heat in bathwater in Britain

Another trick is to put lots of dry rice grains into a sock, tie the sock and warm it up in a microwave. Just be careful, as the rice heats up Really fast in the microwave.

gimaon First Reflective LCD indoor monitor – 32“ FullHD true-color 60Hz

So, to DIY it: Disassemble an existing monitor, take out the polarizer, and replace it with a mirror sheet?

Referencing this explanation of LCD polarizers: https://focuslcds.com/journals/lcd-polarizer-differences-ref...

gimaon Smartknob – an open-source input device

The LCD seems to be "GC9A01"

https://www.google.com/search?q=LCD+GC9A01

gimaon Ask HN: Why are fonts on websites so small?

"Why do I prefer larger font sizes?"

My personal experience and opinion: With aging, I've found bigger fonts more pleasant as-a-whole to look at And, to digest. Not regarding bad eyesight, but I think it has something to do with age-related cognition changes and/or allowing oneself to notice parts of their life's little annoyances that are extremely simple to fix (ctrl+plus).

"Why are fonts so small?"

My guess: People who design, don't dare deviate from the norm.

"What about the technical things?"

Some of this is assume-work, some of it is knowledge: Monitors provide their physical size to the operating system, which derive the used DPI from that, and the current resolution in use. This cannot be freely chosen. The reason is that while font's do scale freely, raster graphics don't. And if the scaling is set such, that raster graphics don't scale pixel-perfectly, the result looks muddy.

I think this combined with the fact that there can be widely differing physically sized screens, old non-scalable applications, and history of designing for something like 72 or 96 dpi results in.. well.. "safe font sizes".

gimaon Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

Props to this.

I have developed a habit of skipping to the end of the whole page, and reading towards the beginning, paragraph-by-paragraph. Works..sometimes :D

gimaon Stripe Identity

EU is apparently about to design and roll out Europe-wide digital ID service: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_...

gimaon What is the incentive for curl to release the library for free?

The StackOverflow question/whatever was taken down.

Read the post on the author's own blog: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2019/04/29/what-is-the-incentive...

gimaon Top Open-Source Static Site Generators

Seconded. Cannot speak of other static site generators, as Hugo is the only I know, but it IS a pain to make anything that deviates from the golden path that's shown in the documentation.

gimaon What Bitcoin shows us about how money works

Hmm. Reads a lot like the video series on "The History of Paper Money by Extra Credits": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nZkP2b-4vo

gimaon AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

I experience somewhat frequent GPU crashes when playing Diablo3 under Wine with the integrated i3-4150 GPU, but the graphics stack recovers by itself in about a minute. I can then continue from where I left off, sans the application that crashed with it.

gimaon Show HN: Pdf-Bot, an API/CLI for Generating PDFs Using Headless Chrome

It's available from the normal Chrome print menu, so you can test it yourself easily. But to answer: I haven't used it extensively, but CSS and Javascript tend to make it a bit tricky. When you are viewing a webpage in the browser, you have one viewport, and scrolling can change the appearance or position of elements. Translating this to one long PDF is troublesome on some websites. As to what companies do that provide this as a service? I've got no clue, maybe brand this as their unique service? :D

gimaon Show HN: Pdf-Bot, an API/CLI for Generating PDFs Using Headless Chrome

It uses Chrome's built-in print-to-PDF functionality via Chrome Debug/DevTools Protocol. In other words it creates PDF files with real vector graphics and text, not just images embedded in PDF.

Page.printToPDF: https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/tot/Page/...

gimaon Sanakirja: Transactional, branchable key-value store in Rust

It would be useful to be able to browse the sourcecode online, without actually cloning it.

It seems somewhat weird to use the VCS itself for the VCS being developed. Well, maybe that's just me. Until you offer the ability to browse sourcecode online, maybe mirror the repository to some online source hosting site and disallow issues tracking there?

gimaon LibreOffice 5.3.0

My apologies. My reply was an attempt at political humor. No connection to the LibreOffice software.

gimaon LibreOffice 5.3.0

I think anything is a great alternative to the Office at this point. In hindsight, LibreOffice's name must've been chosen by a fortune-teller..or a <strike>pessimist</strike> realist ;)

gimaon A ThinkPad supervisor password crack

Ahh, my mistake. WP != PROT. Utilizing the PROT-pin appears to force memory chip's internal read&write protection flags active, causing read and write operations to fail (unless I understood incorrectly). This kind of information could be beneficial to others if it's correct: You could add it to your post?

Source: http://cache.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/PCA24S08.pdf (Section 6.4 Access Protection)

gimaon A ThinkPad supervisor password crack

You said it's because of a mix-up when reading documentation, but you said nothing about /why/ changing the write-protect pin's state should work - or why tying clock and data pins together should not.

gimaon A ThinkPad supervisor password crack

[continued..] You can't generalize, but you can assume. Quite likely many Thinkpads use the same piece of code to handle firmware password-checking. Once the code is changed, it'll likely propagate (slowly) inside the company to all of the new (or firmware-updated) laptops.

That being said, it's likely the firmware's failsafe-mechanism kicking in when it cannot access the memory chip that stores the password (because access to the chip is hindered).

Yet utilizing the "WP" (write protect) pin on the memory chip ought to do nothing in my opinion - unless the firmware tries to store something to the memory at boot time (which is entirely possible). On the other hand, forcing clock or data pins to ground - in effect disallowing any signalling via them - should be a sureproof way to force the firmware to trigger it's failsafe mechanism.

gimaon A ThinkPad supervisor password crack

> "I'm telling you to use different pins than ~all the other instructions on the web."

sigh Please, Please, provide reasons along with your arguments. Simply stating something doesn't help, especially when there is contradicting information floating around.

gimaon Open-Source 3D Graphics Design: Where to Begin

No love for MyPaint? :( https://github.com/mypaint/mypaint

gimaon Angular 1.x Banned from Firefox Addons

Yes. And to answer nchelluri's question: Auto-typing, though I believe that's available only on desktop operating systems.

gimaon Angular 1.x Banned from Firefox Addons

Ugh, this kind of thing gets my blood boiling. It was clearly said that _a security researcher_ disallowed Mozilla from reporting the vulnerability forward. It's the individual to blame, not Mozilla.

In any case Personally I wouldn't want to run a large priviledged application as a browser extension when it's interacting with random webpages AND handling my security credentials. Too much attack surface.

gimaon HEIST: HTTP Encrypted Information Can Be Stolen Through TCP-Windows [pdf]

Does the Firefox option "Accept third-party cookies: Never" mean that origin server is disallowed from setting 3rd-party cookies OR that website-initiated fetches to 3rd-party origins don't include cookies ..or both?

gimaon Understanding JavaScript Modules of 2016

I'm the author of the article. I apologize if it's frowned upon to submit one's own content. What's done is done, and I welcome all feedback. I'm not an expert on the subject, so if the writing contains mistakes, please let me know.