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nyanpasu64on Cap'n Proto 1.0

Looking at https://sandstorm.io/news/2014-08-19-why-not-run-docker-apps from 9 years ago, it seems you think that Docker was/is poorly suited for individual user administration. Since the Internet has started enshittifying in the last few years I've been turning to self-hosting apps, but this requires researching distro-specific instructions for each new app I install, and I got burned when Arch updated their Postgres package which broke compatibility with the old database formats until I ran a manual upgrade script which required troubleshooting several errors along the way. (In hindsight, I should've picked a fixed-release distro like Debian or something.)

Would you say that there have been user-friendly Docker/etc. wrappers for self-hosting LAN services? Someone has recommended casaOS (or the proprietary Umbrel), though I haven't tried either yet.

nyanpasu64on Kill dwm.exe on Windows for less input lag and better performance

I tried the program on Windows 11 and just got a black screen.

nyanpasu64on A world where people pay for software

Umbrel's homepage seems uncomfortably slick, they're selling hardware but the OS is free to use. The app store seems to have more cryptocurrency apps than I'd expect from a general-purpose self-hosting service, and lacks Miniflux, Breezewiki, and Rimgo, though it has Invidious, Nitter, and Syncthing. And the OS seems to live under a noncommercial-only license (https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel/blob/master/LICENSE.md). Overall the vibes seem to run somewhat in conflict with the "by the community, for the community" ethos I'm more interested in. Perhaps if I have the free time (haha when?) I might see if I can polish up Sandstorm for my personal uses, or if it's more work than juggling Docker containers or AUR packages.

nyanpasu64on A world where people pay for software

I want a plug-and-play way to install services like (front-ends) BreezeWiki, Rimgo, Nitter, and Invidious, and (self-hosted) Miniflux, Gitea, a centralized Syncthing node, and an image sync tool (possibly Immich), onto an old laptop I own, without messing with users, groups, AUR builds, upgrading between Postgres versions... like a world where sandstorm.io had taken off. Then access them on any of my devices, like Tailscale but without binding arbitration and a class action waiver...

nyanpasu64on Got called to a professor’s office after a complaint his SPARC4 was running slow

CRT gaming is fun, both for older console and PC gaming, and even modern games to a degree. The colors are richer than cheap LCDs, the scanlines and/or smoothing act as a beauty filter over visuals, and the strobed image produces unmatched motion clarity (outside of modern gaming monitors with backlight/OLED strobing modes) though it can get uncomfortable for 60fps games (or god forbid 50fps PAL). I've written about it at my blog, at https://nyanpasu64.gitlab.io/blog/crt-appearance-tv-monitor/.

nyanpasu64on Got called to a professor’s office after a complaint his SPARC4 was running slow

I have the misfortune of my rescued VGA CRT displaying incorrect colors in the corners, unless I either leave magnets on the screen, or flip the magnets while degaussing and remove them before using the display.

nyanpasu64on I claim Rich Hickey is wrong about non-null arguments to functions (2020)

I wouldn't say non-generic union types are useless; in fact the vast majority of sum or union types I write in application code (not libraries) are a combination of two or more concrete types, rather than generic ones.

nyanpasu64on I claim Rich Hickey is wrong about non-null arguments to functions (2020)

In Rust you can, in Python an Optional[Optional[int]] is the same as an Optional[int].

nyanpasu64on I claim Rich Hickey is wrong about non-null arguments to functions (2020)

Would union types be manageable if you only use them with concrete types rather than generic or inferred ones, or is it too easy to accidentally refactor a None into one of the cases (possibly hidden behind a typedef)?

nyanpasu64on I claim Rich Hickey is wrong about non-null arguments to functions (2020)

If T is int|None, then None|T can't distinguish between None and T(None), whereas None|Some(T) can distinguish between None and Some(T(None)).

nyanpasu64on Sub-pixel distance transform

Having worked with GTK4's renderer and glyph cache a bit, the reason that GTK4 has blurry text is that some text is positioned at non-integer Y coordinates (unsure if a bug or not), and text isn't grid-snapped vertically while rendering (even when hinting is on, which is useless unless grid-snapping is enabled). For some reason they're considering disabling subpixel horizontal positioning as well as vertical on non-HiDPI displays (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/6190).

nyanpasu64on Sub-pixel distance transform

𓂸... huh, how about 𓂺... Wonder if anyone can read these.

nyanpasu64on A Grub theme in the style of Minecraft

I wonder if it would be possible to center the text in the buttons like actual Minecraft, or if Grub can only print left-aligned text.

nyanpasu64on Faster neural networks straight from JPEG (2018)

As a comparison with removing the top two octaves from a cat's hearing, try removing the top two octaves from an audio file compared to your hearing range (lowpass at 5 kHz or less if you have hearing range loss, and/or resample to 10 kHz/ksps or less) and see if the results are musically noticeable. (At least for humans, the result is intelligible but heavily muffled, I can't speak for my pet cats though.)

nyanpasu64on DSReality: Turns a DS game into a 3D image that floats above your controller

I still think the Metroid Prime games would work well in VR, giving you more depth perception, situational awareness, and ability to look around than the original 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios did.

nyanpasu64on Vale's first prototype for immutable region borrowing

> "64 bit counter will be enough for everybody" is not how systems programming works.

Except when it is: https://threatpost.com/another-linux-kernel-bug-surfaces-all..., fix at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

nyanpasu64on Vale's first prototype for immutable region borrowing

You can't allocate and deallocate the same address (incrementing that address's generation by 1 each time) 100 billion times per second.

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

You may be correct (and I was mistaken in my previous post) for audio. The leaked (DP isn't really an open standard) DP-1.2.pdf on glenwing's site says that "The dummy stuffing data symbols during the video blanking periods (both vertical and horizontal) may be substituted either with main stream attributes data or a secondary-data packet", and the public 1.1a PDF indicates similarly.

MST is quite complicated and appears to interleave bytes from different video streams within 64-byte packets (rather than solely during blanking):

> The MTP (Multi-stream Transport Packet) is 64 link-symbol (1 byte of video data or special symbols) cycles (that is, 64 time slots) long, starting with MTP Header in the first time slot (or Time Slot 0), and is constantly transported regardless of the presence/absence of streams.

> The Payload Bandwidth Manager of each uPacket TX in the path from a DP Source to a target Sink device allocates time slots within the MTP to a VC (Virtual Channel) Payload to establish the virtual channel for transporting a stream.

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

> If you see a DisplayPort interface on your board where you’d usually expect HDMI, that might just be because the company decided to avoid HDMI’s per-device royalties, and do firmly believe that this is a good thing.

Wikipedia says DP 1.3 requires "mandatory Dual-mode for DVI and HDMI adapters". Does this mean that all DP 1.3 ports must output HDMI (and presumably pay HDMI licensing fees) as well?

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

Ouch that's unfortunate :(

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

Doesn't MST merely chop up the bandwidth of the lanes you have? So why would you update different parts of a single display using MST (each stream only getting part of the bandwidth of the link), rather than using the whole link to update the display from top to bottom at the same pixel depth and clock?

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

Did you decrease the USB ALSA period to the lowest practical value (eg. 128 or so)? In theory this provides finer-grained position updates and better stability at any given latency, but I'm not sure how it interacts with USB's polling rate.

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

Are you already aware of the PipeWire batch flags which add additional latency to USB audio devices (dependent on ALSA period rather than quantum)? https://pipewire.pages.freedesktop.org/wireplumber/configura...

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

Never mind KVM switches, I wish powering off my DP monitor while leaving wall AC power plugged in didn't appear as a display disconnect to the computer.

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

I think that you can actually transmit audio, or other displays' signals (DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport), in place of stuffing symbols.

nyanpasu64on Displayport: A Better Video Interface

One (extreeeemely pedantic) difference is that (I think) HDMI begins and ends its vsync pulses when the preceding hblank begins, whereas VGA begins and ends them slightly later when the preceding hsync pulse begins (I documented this at https://nyanpasu64.gitlab.io/blog/crt-modeline-cvt-interlaci...).

I also think that DP rouuuughly reflects CRT timings complete with active vs. blanking intervals, but doesn't actually have a fixed pixel clock (perhaps it does? I didn't quite figure out synchronous/asynchronous pixel transmission when reading the spec) and doesn't transmit hsync pulses once per scanline.

nyanpasu64on Shortening the Let's Encrypt chain of trust

I'd think that a cache of known keys (trust on first use), synchronized across devices using browser sync, would be quite effective at protecting against MITM attacks as long as your first access to a LAN server (on any computer you have) is safe. Additionally there are orders of magnitude less attackers to a computer on a LAN than an Internet-facing machine. In fact, unless I have untrusted boxes on my network or targeted attacks, I actually feel safe hosting HTTP services (and I'm doing so right now, more or less safely), and if someone is performing targeted attacks on my network they could just break in and clone my hard drives without having to bother MITMing my connections (I value the ability to access my data across dual-boots more than I value disk encryption through Bitlocker or Linux-specific methods).

nyanpasu64on Shortening the Let's Encrypt chain of trust

It's true that TLS 1.2 is still considered OK, but cacert now only serves on TLS 1.3, Windows 7's integrated HTTP stack only supports TLS 1.2 and below, and Scoop relies on using PowerShell or similar to download cacert before it can install curl, meaning I can no longer install curl that way on Windows 7 (still an OS nearly as usable as Windows 10 and Linux, though apps are sadly starting to drop support for it).

nyanpasu64on It Took Me a Decade to Find the Perfect Personal Website Stack – Ghost+Fathom

I bounced off the WordPress ecosystem. Most of the themes are targeted towards commercial websites including web shops, rather than blogs, and charge money to buy or unlock features (while making a token effort towards GPL compliance). The Gutenberg editor was dreadfully buggy, IIRC I still prefer a more semantic/Markdown-style editor (like writing blog posts in Obsidian) over the presentational HTML Wordpress classic editor, and converting posts between the two types was a disaster. And static HTML export was tricky to get working as well.

nyanpasu64on Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://nyanpasu64.gitlab.io/

I write about hobby projects including CRTs and analog video, basic electrical engineering, and technology/programming/audio tinkering. The website is implemented in Zola using a customized template.