Hacker News Reader

jonah-archiveon Eating Fruit Skins

I haven't made banana peels specifically, but I have made this for some vegan guests before (as part of a larger dish) and while I wouldn't say it's bacon, it hits all the same notes: https://www.seriouseats.com/crispy-smoked-mushroom-bacon-bit...

jonah-archiveon Transfer files over an Ethernet patch cable

Still very much a thing in the world of optical networking ("rolling the cable", i.e. switching the two sides at one end to match tx/rx up correctly, is a common first step in debugging a link that won't come up -- standard fiber patch cables are effectively crossover cables but when you're running through patch panels, have multiple cables in the path, etc it can end up mismatched). Some plants have primarily switched to bidirectional (bidi) transceivers that transmit and receive on two different wavelengths on the same strand, but that also requires matching optics at the other end with the tx/rx frequencies reversed.

jonah-archiveon Flipper One – we need your help

This teardown and commentary remains a favorite of mine, really worth reading through: https://blog.bolt.io/juicero/

jonah-archiveon DNSSEC disruption affecting .de domains – Resolved

Originally it said:

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The issue has been identified as a DNSSEC signing problem at DENIC, the organization responsible for the .DE top-level domain. Cloudflare has temporarily disabled DNSSEC validation on 1.1.1.1 resolver in order to allow .DE names to continue to resolve. DNSSEC validation will be re-enabled when the signing problems at DENIC are known to have been resolved.

---

(and in case it changes again, now it says)

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The issue has been identified as a DNSSEC signing problem at DENIC, the organization responsible for the .DE top-level domain. Cloudflare has temporarily disabled DNSSEC validation for .de domains on 1.1.1.1 resolver (as per RFC 7646) in order to allow .DE names to continue to resolve. DNSSEC validation will be re-enabled when the signing problems at DENIC are known to have been resolved.

See RFC 7646 for more details: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7646

---

jonah-archiveon How Wake-On-LAN works (2020)

Exactly this. Many modern PHYs also integrate 802.3az (energy-efficient ethernet, a subset of Green Ethernet) but it's not super common.

I also finally found this old page of using an old dev board to construct a WoL listener for a mobo that didn't support it -- might be an interesting read for the curious: https://web.archive.org/web/20140525022112/https://hackingbe...

> In this script a fifo is created where the output of tcpdump is dumped. For whatever reason tcpdum | grep was not working properly, and would have a “miss” rate of about 50%. So tcpdump output is dumped in the fifo:

> tcpdump -i eth1 2>&1 | tee > /tmp/tcp_wol.fifo &

> and it’s grepped in a loop, when the magic packet (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN) is found , a led is triggered, thus powering-up the computer (with a driver and relay, will come back at this).

jonah-archiveon How Wake-On-LAN works (2020)

The original paper proposing the technology is actually very good (and surprisingly still online!): https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/archived-te...

jonah-archiveon I traced my traffic through a home Tailscale exit node

The Tailscale client (non-GUI) is open source: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale

And they collaborate with Headscale to provide an open-source coordination server (with, unsurprisingly, a more limited featureset, but it works fine with their closed-source GUI client): https://tailscale.com/opensource#encouraging-headscale

I use the combination myself and it works quite well, but of course is less convenient than using their product (which I also do in a different context). Overall I'm pretty happy with their open-source stance.

jonah-archiveon Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit (2023)

I've been thinking about that illustration of Smaug for nearly 40 years and I never knew where it came from (I didn't recall it was from a Tolkien-related thing, but I remember it vividly otherwise)! I must have seen it at a friend's or the library since as far as I know we never had these at home.

jonah-archiveon "Just a little detail that wouldn't sell anything"

This someone jogged a memory of an all-time favorite line from a 2005 laptop review (well, more of a rant than a review): https://web.archive.org/web/20090709072628/https://arstechni...

> [The power] light informs the user that the X41 is on—no, really. There should be an ontological indicator next to it to let the user know the computer really exists.

jonah-archiveon Golden Ratio using an equilateral triangle inscribed in a circle

The ratio of the length of the diagonal of a pentagon to one of its sides is the golden ratio -- easiest visualization is with similar triangles. Draw a regular pentagon (sides of length 1 for simplicity) and pick a side, make an isosceles triangle with that side as the base and two diagonals meeting at the opposite point. Go one side length down from the opposite point and mark that (F below). Convince yourself that triangle DCF is similar to CAD (symmetry gets you there).

Now we wish to find the length of, say, CA. From similarity CD/CA = FC/DF, and CD = DF = 1, and CA - FC = 1, so the ratio simplifies to... CA^2 - CA - 1 = 0 which yields the golden ratio.

            A
           .'.
         .' | `.
       .'  | |  `.
    B.'    | |    `.E
     \   F|   |    /
      \   |   |   /
       \ |     | /
        \|_____|/
        C       D

jonah-archiveon How many chess games are possible?

In this lovely paper: https://tom7.org/chess/longest.pdf

The author points out that:

"This rule only applied to games started after its introduction, so it is possible that some pre-1561 games are still in progress and may never end."

jonah-archiveon Internet Archive's Storage

This comment has, I think, made me more sad than anything I've ever read on HN before. David is one of the most thoughtful, critical, and valuable voices on the topic of digital archival, and has been for quite some time. The idea of someone dismissing his review of a much more slop-adjacent article as such is incredibly depressing.

jonah-archiveon There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

That's my understanding as well, but I still wouldn't disassemble a 1960s microwave without protection (I have assisted in the dismantling of a couple microwave communications devices which did contain BeO and were also very well-labeled as such). Anything from the 80s on at least is almost certainly aluminum.

jonah-archiveon There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape

As a second regards the microwave, depending on the age, please be extremely careful about the magnetron the insulators on which could contain beryllium oxide, which can kill you.

There are a lot of fun parts inside microwaves (a personal favorite is the high-torque-low-speed-line-voltage motor, which I use to make creepy Halloween decorations) but the caps, transformer, and magnetron are all useful for somewhat... more dangerous... pursuits.

jonah-archiveon Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)

There are approaches to real-time ethernet (some industry implementations like profinet or ethercat, 802.1as from IEEE) but support is spotty and it requires specialized gear to be effective.

jonah-archiveon Fix HDMI-CEC weirdness with a Raspberry Pi and a $7 cable

A long time ago I used one of these HDMI-CEC-to-USB/serial bridges: https://web.archive.org/web/20110219131237/http://rainshadow...

(I'd gotten a large LG monitor instead of a flatscreen tv, and it didn't talk HDMI-CEC but it had a serial-over-TRRS control interface, so I listened for messages on the bus and my media PC translated and relayed them to the monitor.)

jonah-archiveon What will enter the public domain in 2026?

We'll be celebrating this at the Internet Archive! As a lead-up, we're again hosting our Public Domain Film Remix Contest: https://blog.archive.org/2025/12/01/2026-public-domain-day-r...

We'll be having an in-person celebration at our SF HQ later in January as well, details to come!

jonah-archiveon Tektronix equipment has been used in many movies and shows

If you have the opportunity, I would strongly recommend visiting the vintageTEK Museum whose site this is on (it's just outside Portland) sometime. Many of the folks working there are retired from Tektronix themselves and the amount of (working!) equipment they have is astounding.

jonah-archiveon A turn lane in Rhododendron

Among the many reasons that stretch of 26 is dangerous is that the approach from Portland is essentially a freeway from Gresham through Sandy, and then turns into a rural highway until it begins the climb up to Hood. This is because of a remnant of the Mount Hood Freeway construction, which resulted in a lot of little oddities that linger in Portland to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood_Freeway

jonah-archiveon Emily Riehl is rewriting the foundations of higher category theory (2020)

I'm maybe too close to the problem to evaluate well (studied foundational math) but I know that Lawvere and Schanuel's book "Conceptual Mathematics" has been fairly well-regarded as a path into category theory.

jonah-archiveon Root System Drawings

It's kinda gimmicky but I found this thing on clearance at a local hardware store and it works fairly well (gets most weeds out without me having to bend over, which is nice): https://grampasweeder.com/collections/grampas-gardenware/pro...

It doesn't get everything but I can do more work on the tough ones when so many come right out.

jonah-archiveon ADS-B Exposed

I had the same concerns awhile back and ending up running a slightly modified version of https://github.com/wiedehopf/mlat-client -- not quite as simple as an http push, but much simpler than a containerized feed client.

jonah-archiveon Ahab's Arithmetic: The Mathematics of Moby-Dick

Lovely, thank you! Looking forward to checking it out.

jonah-archiveon Ahab's Arithmetic: The Mathematics of Moby-Dick

Do you happen to recall which version? I've picked up a couple kid's books/playsets but mine is ready for a chapter-book type version soon. FWIW my favorite reading copy is the UC Press version based on the incredible Arion version (https://www.ucpress.edu/books/moby-dick-or-the-whale/paper) but any edition based on the Northwestern-Newberry text is solid.

jonah-archiveon 1 Trillion Web Pages Archived

Hi, I run the datacenter/infrastructure team at the Internet Archive! We would love to see you at our various events this fall but if paying for the ticket is difficult for you, please email me (in bio) and we'll get you in (if possible).

jonah-archiveon IP over Lasers

There's not a huge amount of info I've seen on the specifics of Starlink's LISL setup, but there are a couple interesting bits in here: https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-laser-system-is-beaming...

> Brashears also said Starlink’s laser system was able to connect two satellites over 5,400 kilometers (3,355 miles) apart. The link was so long “it cut down through the atmosphere, all the way down to 30 kilometers above the surface of the Earth,” he said, before the connection broke.

(the presentation that's being reported on, which I don't have access to: https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of... )

jonah-archiveon IP over Lasers

Free-space optical transmission is a thing, though it's environmentally quite challenging. We tested some gear from https://www.koruza.net at the Internet Archive ~10 years ago or so (I've also built some 10G point-to-point links in my garage, though I'd hardly call them reliable). It is pretty cool to see a scratch build rather than using commercial transceivers

jonah-archiveon Investigating a Forged PDF

All good! Figured I'd flag it since it seemed a little odd.