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kown7on I hate you Microsoft

I don't know what you're doing and I feel all of your Visio pain, but have you tried typst?

kown7on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)

Trying to summarize my career advice reading: https://www.nordstroem.ch/posts/2026-07-12-collected-career-...

Open to feedback and missing pieces.

kown7on 'There Is No Going Back': The Inside Story of Europe's Rupture with America

At least historically, this isn't supported. I'd refer to Sarah Paine's talks for more details.

More fault lines and pirates and no one to police them.

kown7on But yak shaving is fun (2019)

My favourite Yak from Malcolm in the middle.

https://youtube.com/shorts/kSJgLA1frS4?is=2RA7C0EDEe7Mg8Fp

kown7on Can LLMs model real-world systems in TLA+?

Have you considered P? It feels like a good abstraction for engineers as it's "proper" code.

https://github.com/p-org/P

kown7on My AI-Assisted Workflow

If people actually read the original paper by Royce 1970 they would see that it's an iterative process with short feedback-loops.

The bad rep comes from (defense|gov.) contracting, where PRDs where connected to money and CR were expensive, see http://www.bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html for better details.

kown7on Keychron's Nape Pro turns your keyboard into a laptop‑style trackball rig

But where?

kown7on A tab hoarder's journey to sanity

What solved some of my problems was a Firefox plugin called MarkDownload. Instead of saving a bookmark, just download the thing (as a text file) which makes it easier to find by search (or just grep -R).

kown7on FPGAs Need a New Future

That was my point as well: what can't you do with a uC or RPi?

It feels the use cases are dwindling and eaten by ASICs and uC

kown7on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

The live site has a blogging feature: Title, Text, Picture. Once I'll get to it, it'll be added to the demo site.

Comments is just the text aspect. So it's already working!

The question here though: in a low-trust environment, i.e. the public internet, what do you do with API key for your GitHub Actions/CI pipeline. Can they be narrow enough to be considered public? Can you get rid of the Cloudflare Workers?

kown7on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

I'm in the progress of open-sourcing (and extending) my static-site generator "CMS" (with big air-quotes).

The idea is to add dynamic content, i.e. reservation tool, to what is essentially a statically hosted web page.

Demo: https://astro-booking.pages.dev/booking/

A bit more details: https://www.nordstroem.ch/posts/2025-01-15-to-the-stars.html

kown7on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

I like Tasks.org for Android and I think it syncs with CalDAV that comes with my e-mail provider. That should just about do the trick, even with Thunderbird.

kown7on 20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 4)

Office works like a charm if you install Chrome. That's a whole other can of worms though.

kown7on I'm tired of talking about AI

It's such a wild clash of (sci-)fi dis-/utopias. It's almost dialectic.

kown7on Pocket Keyboard Design Contest

I'm having this idea of using an Xreal Air 2 Pro combined with an RPi Keyboard as a mobile computer.

But these keyboards might be even better.

Just power an RPi with a large power bank in your pockets.

kown7on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2025)

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Remote: yes / hybrid

Willing to relocate: depends

Technologies: python, VHDL, hardware-in-the-loop verification engineer, regulated industries (space, railways, interested in medical). General fullest-stack developer from PCB to web.

Résumé/CV: on demand atm

Email: info@sltoo.dev

kown7on Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?

and then my coworker comes up to me saying my blog post from years ago fixed his problem. It's a small world

kown7on Big Ball of Mud (1999)

If it were that easy, why do most systems converge to The Big Ball of Mud?

kown7on The Economics of Status (2006)

As stated elsewhere, flat org charts lead to informal hierarchies which adversely affects already marginalized groups.

Not sure if that's the answer.

kown7on Constellations are younger than continents

There are no trees ;)

kown7on Why Emacs Keys Are Painful

I've started swapping ESC and caps-lock first using emacs. However, I feel, if you have a good MX keyboard and press Ctrl with your palm. It is actually really nice

kown7on Git Based SDLC

This is taking these ideas to the logical conclusion.

That's another idea of mine that's been brooding for a long while.

kown7on Git Based SDLC

Concurrent editing or Collaborative real-time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_real-time_editor) is perhaps a better choice words.

Notion is supposedly able to do it: https://www.notion.so/help/collaborate-within-a-workspace#re....

Wikimedia is apparently working on it: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Real-time_collab...

kown7on Git Based SDLC

I haven't really considered security/rights management yet, that's a good point.

kown7on Cyberpunk in the Nineties (1998)

I'd say the rave scene in the 90s was very much counterculture. It had it all: the music, clothes, and drugs

kown7on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2023)

  Location: Zurich/CH
  Remote: Yes/Hybrid
  Willing to relocate: maybe
  Technologies: FPGA (VHDL), Python, Functional Safety, testing in general 
  Résumé/CV: ask me
  Email: info@sltoo.dev

kown7on Virgin Orbit pauses all operations

Europe will have to develop a fully reusable launcher to be competitive. Let's call it Ariane 7 and expect it to fly around 2035. They first have to get Ariane 6 off the ground and that's, from what I've heard, a horribly slow process.

kown7on UML: My Part in Its Downfall

I feel the attempts to build SysML just have to go the same route.

Does anybody have information why this shouldn't be the case?

kown7on SSH into private machines from anywhere using Cloudflare Tunnel

Have you seen http://cactus.chat?

kown7on Unix in the Browser Tab

Good rewatch - pandemic or war is close enough I guess