HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

nicholasjarnold

869 karma · joined November 2, 2011

hacking, parenting, building, fixing, exploring, learning, growing, enjoying - in an undefined order

email: hi+hn@nickarnold.name signal: n1ck.01 web: https://nickarnold.name

submissionscomments
nicholasjarnold··on GitLab Outage
Yep, status page was certainly all green when I started noticing it.
nicholasjarnold··on GitLab Outage
Code review for me... Hit the 503. The status page lagged the event by ~10 mins or so it seems.

git+ssh also seems affected, as I'm unable to push/pull right now.

nicholasjarnold··on Roblox Officially Supports GrapheneOS
> I don't really have anything to hide

While I understand your position, I cannot help myself from posting this response with the hope that more people will consider their own "I have nothing to hide" positions. See https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to...

edit: Linking to original HN discussion about this article - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5869394

nicholasjarnold··on Advertise in ChatGPT
Thanks for the reminder. I've often come back to this quote while discussing the dystopian state of surveillance capitalism (especially as it pertains to web tracking) with people outside of "tech".
nicholasjarnold··on My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto
Cathartic to read this! Just had a very similar experience with a Subaru from the same generation as yours.

While that particular issue isn't solvable, I am open to any advice on coding tools that might allow one to unlock other settings or make changes like "ensure auto-stop is fully disabled across restarts and drivers".

nicholasjarnold··on Bye Bye Gmail
Fastmail provides an easy way to migrate [0]. I setup a label in my Fastmail account that will tag all mail coming in from Gmail. Then you go through that list at your leisure and make the requisite contact with the people or services emailing at the old address. It's really not difficult at all. I've been on Fastmail for ~4 years now, and haven't once considered looking back or regretted it. Good luck.

[0] https://www.fastmail.com/features/migrate/

nicholasjarnold··on Postgres extension complements pgvector for performance and scale
Postgres supports the Foreign Data Wrapper concept from SQL/MED. If you configure this you can do joins across instances, even!

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/postgres-fdw.html

nicholasjarnold··on ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team
So if they are using information people freely share to social media sites as the seeds for their investigatory and enforcement actions it follows that there is a simple trick people can employ or minimize their effectiveness.

https://signal.org/download/

nicholasjarnold··on Linux phones are more important now than ever
They do, but some seem to be gradually removing functionality (like check deposit via scan + upload) in favor of using their amazingly convenient (/s) app.
nicholasjarnold··on Google Pixels are no longer the AOSP reference device
Admittedly, that part was a bit tongue in cheek. Rather, I wish that is "what one does now", as I think we might live in a somewhat nicer world rather than one driven by whatever has been happening as many of us get sucked into our algorithmically-driven feeds across various web properties and apps.

Also, fwiw, you can install Play Services after installing GrapheneOS[0]. It runs in a sandbox without the same deep system access that it has on less secure versions of Android. There's no requirement here to authenticate with any Google account. You'd just have the Play Services running/available, which can be a requirement for some apps.

[0] https://grapheneos.org/features#sandboxed-google-play

nicholasjarnold··on Google Pixels are no longer the AOSP reference device
> Judge me if you must, but the only reason I recently bought a Pixel was because of the intention on sticking GrapheneOS on it the second I got it out of the box.

The only judgement is a positive one. I thought this is what one does now that we all understand just how broad and deep the tracking is at nearly every level. Buying a Pixel and immediately flashing GrapheneOS has been my default mode of operation for years now on all cellphones in my home (wife and myself). No Play Services, Google apps or uninstallable Facebook...no problem!

I'd rather my life not be turned into an open book for targeted advertisements and whatever other purposes every detail of my existence is used for now or in the future. It's mind boggling to me how many seem to simply not care.

nicholasjarnold··on Ask HN: What is the best LLM for consumer grade hardware?
AMD 6700XT owner here (12Gb VRAM) - Can confirm.

Once I figured out my local ROCm setup Ollama was able to run with GPU acceleration no problem. Connecting an OpenWebUI docker instance to my local Ollama server is as easy as a docker run command where you specify the OLLAMA_BASE_URL env var value. This isn't a production setup, but it works nicely for local usages like what the immediate parent is describing.

nicholasjarnold··on U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data
"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug.

Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and the normalization of it, is another attack on a democratic pillar.

It really does seem like structural cracks are widening rapidly. I too hope that our current realities cause a sort of 'wake up' to occur in the minds of those whom are too busy, deep in "my team" politics or otherwise not concerned about what's going on right now.

nicholasjarnold··on By Default, Signal Doesn't Recall
I concur. I own a System 76 laptop, and it runs PopOS. It's been stable for years (taking the regular updates). They make a variety of hardware products ranging from portable/lightweight laptop to beefy engineering workstation.

(also not affiliated with them, just want to support good products/company)

nicholasjarnold··on Gemma 3n preview: Mobile-first AI
Networking perms seem to be required on initial startup of the app.

I just installed the apk on a GrapheneOS endpoint (old Pixel 7 Pro) without the Google Play Services installed. The app requires network access to contact Hugging Face and download the model through your HF account. It also requires some interaction/permission agreement with Kaggle. Upon install _with_ network perms the app works, and I'm getting decent performance on the Gemma-3n-E2B-it-int4 model (5-6 token/s). Ok, cool.

Now kill the app, disable network permissions and restart it. Choose one of the models that you downloaded when it had network access. It still works. It does appear to be fully local. Yay.

nicholasjarnold··on The Cult of the American Lawn
> "We were being bullied on our own property."

Solution - Refuse to purchase property subject to an HOA. I realize this might not be a tenable solution for some people, and I find that to be a very unfortunate situation. We should really educate our friends, kids, neighbors on the perils of these often-broad and legally binding agreements that seem to be sneaking into real-estate contracts/deeds at an alarming rate nationally. If you aren't comfortable with each and every provision being enforced upon you, don't purchase!

Regarding the grass lawn situation, there are alternatives like mixing in clover varieties which actually fix nitrogen (e.g. improve soil health) while requiring considerably less water than most lawn grass to survive. Here in urban Denver my wife and I have opted for a 100% "mini clover" lawn in both the front and back yards. It's already green and growing while neighboring yards are still dead winter brown grass. It also stays nice and green well into the late fall after most grass is dormant/dead.

I realize this doesn't do a lot to address the biodiversity angle the article took on, but it's a potential alternative for those seeking options. If you allow it to grow a bit you'll get flowers that are helpful for pollinators in addition to the healthier soil. I can attest that after you give the clover seed 6 weeks or so to set roots and sprout (no walking on, keep it moist) it will serve you for years. We're on year 4 at our house. No regrets.

nicholasjarnold··on Privacy Pass Authentication for Kagi Search
Just adding a $0.02 here - I placed an order for the free/gifted-with-subscription Kagi shirt and received it about a month later. Worn twice so far. Largest complaint? It shrank quite a bit in the dryer on medium heat.

The search engine works great for me. I will almost certainly renew my subscription when it's time to. Glad to see them continually delivering user-benefiting features.

nicholasjarnold··on Fair Pricing
Same. Kagi has been a breath of fresh air after suffering years of enshittification with other search engines whom are much more interested in your clickstream than providing you with quality results.

Good job Kagi et al!

nicholasjarnold··on Onlookers freak out as 25-year-old set loose on Treasury computer system
Exactly. The results of the US Presidential Election in 2024 show us that slightly more than 1 in 5 Americans cast a ballot in favor of Donald Trump.

assumptions: The publicly-available vote count numbers are correct and the US has a total population of around 341 million people.

The view that our Republican party got a "conservative mandate" and "won by a landslide" is an interesting one when considered with the above facts. They won by a margin of ~1.6% of the votes cast. The victory looks like a large one only when viewed through the distorted lenses of our Electoral College system.

> Maybe the real problem isn't who voted for who, but how we've all gotten so used to seeing each other as enemies instead of neighbors who sometimes disagree. Just a thought.

Exactly. Divide and conquer. Historically it's been pretty effective.

nicholasjarnold··on How I Use Home Assistant in 2025
Agree with your Shelly-behind-the-switch model. My one hesitation going all-in with them has been perhaps reaching an eventual state of "too much 2.4Ghz WiFi traffic on a narrow IoT-specific WiFi network", but I suppose that's easily solvable by buying another AP. Currently I'm happily running a few of them behind the wall plate in my switches (check the space in your switch box first!)...no issues after many many months of continuous operation. Didn't know about the new gen supporting Matter, that's great.

Also, I too wanted to extend to you a really big THANK YOU from a very happy member of the HASS community. I came over from OpenHAB a handful of years ago and I couldn't be happier. Please keep up the good work! Good luck with all the hardware sales and Nabu Casa stuff!

edit: clarified that I used to run OpenHAB

nicholasjarnold··on Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design (2020)
> Pedants (which let's face it, most of us are) will often describe what is done in practice as "RESTful" rather than "REST" just to acknowledge that they are not implementing Fielding's definition of REST.

Yes, exactly. I've never actually worked with any group whom had actually implemented full REST. When working with teams on public interface definitions I've personally tended to use the so-called Richardson's Maturity Model[0] and advocated for what it calls 'Level 2', which is what I think most of us find rather canonical and principal of least surprise regarding a RESTful interface.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardson_Maturity_Model

nicholasjarnold··on Why is Cloudflare Pages' bandwidth unlimited?
Gotcha. Yeah, I mean all of these platforms are certainly juicy targets for room 641A [0] shenanigans. I just wondered if there had been some public leaks or something which we might not all be aware of yet.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

nicholasjarnold··on Why is Cloudflare Pages' bandwidth unlimited?
I was assuming that it's a loss-leader sort of business strategy at play before reading your comment. Do you care to share any insights/references to support this claim?
nicholasjarnold··on Nevada court shuts down police use of federal loophole for civil forfeiture
> When most money exists in digital form in a database somewhere, over time, the concept of real paper money gets that assumption of wrong doing.

It's already happening, and it probably just depends on the teller you get. I have no idea if it's policy or not, but I've been questioned pretty intrusively for cash transactions even under the reporting limit of 10k (see: BSA, CTR).

nicholasjarnold··on Nullboard: Kanban board in a single HTML file
I run Planka in an LXC container on Proxmox, but this looks useful (despite being 'beta') for anyone who just wants an absolutely no frills local-first GUI for simple task management.

The README mentions that "Trello wasn't bad", but storing this type of data in the cloud wasn't desirable. Well, Planka is the answer to that.

nicholasjarnold··on USDA locks barn door after Listeria escapes
tl;dr No barn doors were actually locked. A series of protocol changes are suggested to specifically address listeria bacteria in food processing plants.

Also, conjecture: Closing a barn door would likely not solve any actual food safety issues, but it might keep the livestock in place.

nicholasjarnold··on Evolving my ergonomic setup (or, my laptop with extra steps)
Full agree. My wife is a physical therapist (DPT, Northwestern) and the owner of a PT practice. I say this with some (very limited) authority, repeating things she has said to me:

1) Absolutely seek the advice of a good PT. It's not like going to a chiropractor where you'll get signed up for the "forever plan". You go, pay for a few visits or even just 1 and they will evaluate and give you things to do on your own. You're empowered directly to change your trajectory vs being reliant upon them week after week. In many states PTs have what is called "direct access" meaning they can see and treat you without any MD referrals being required. Also if you can afford it (HSA/FSA accounts are fine here), try to go to a "cash pay" PT that isn't burdened by death grip of our insurance system. You'll get better 1:1 attention and probably a much less overburdened PT.

2) Stand up and walk around at least a couple times an hour (I know, not practical for many of us) for 5 mins or so.

3) Sit on an exercise ball while at your desk and simultaneously think about your posture on a background thread. This will help you with core strength quite a bit over time. This is something most of us with desk jobs (and even most of us period) could use improvement on. She sees serious athletes who even have weak <random latin word> muscles hidden in spots they'd never think about.

4) Sometimes, like when it comes to pain in hands/wrists, you would want to seek out an occupational therapist (OT) instead of or in addition to a PT, who don't specialize in treating those types of dysfunctions.

Good luck getting/staying well!

disclaimer: This is not medical advice and I have zero formal training in any physical or medical science. Consult a professional. :)

nicholasjarnold··on Shopify Is Winning Salesforce Clients, Stoking E-Commerce Rivalry
When you say "SF is pushing a microservices architecture for e-commerce hard", I wonder if you mean they attempt to rope customers into buying into the Mulesoft ecosystem (most of which, btw, is old versions of Spring on old JVM under the hood). They now own Mulesoft, and there is an army of sales people whom are presumably really good at getting the execs excited for groundbreaking features like "API Governance", "API Gateway", "low-code" and my favorite "security".

A company I worked with suffered some serious setbacks after a lot of promises, many months and many many millions burned on this stuff. I'll be a happy man if I never have to hear about SAPI/BAPI/CRAPPI from ProServices people that don't even understand their own products let alone sound engineering principles again. I must admit that I wasn't directly involved with SF/Mulesoft impls, but I did suffer through many regrettable touch points with it.

nicholasjarnold··on Hacker Typer
This is so nostalgic. Many of the engineers at a company I worked for over a decade ago used this one day when our little startup was visited by some Important People. We were so 1337. Haha! Good times. Good Friday post. Thanks.
nicholasjarnold··on Video Surveillance with YOLO+llava
Can confirm. The Coral inference accelerator is quite performant with very low power draw. Once I figured out some passthrough and config issues I was able to run Frigate in an LXC container on Proxmox using Coral USB for inference. It's been working reliably 24/7 for months now.
Page 1 of 8Next →