Hacker News Reader

rabfon Brits would quite like their private messages to stay private

David Cameron was guilty of over-estimating the British public. The Brexit vote was intended to put an end to the anti-EU contingent in the conservative party, he never expected that it had any hope of passing.

rabfon Xorg-server 26.1.0 rc1

Modesetting work was done in 2022, but for some reason no one had released a new stable release of the Xserver with this patch included since then. This was one of the reasons Xlibre was created, there was all these improvements to Xorg sitting ready for release but never being released.

rabfon Americans are rallying against data centers. Surprisingly few are getting built

Their position is to build the data centers in space, so apposition on the ground plays directly into their hands!

rabfon Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake

Possible that a lot of those shorts are by early SpaceX investors who want to lock in a specific price before their share lockup period ends.

rabfon Google Discloses $94.1B in SpaceX Stock, Marking 6% Stake

Spacex has no existing customer to satisfy their future launch ambitions with Starship, hence data centers in space, just like they did with starlink to provide the necessary demand for Falcon 9. The launch business is not profitable without a regular cadence, too many fixed costs - ground infrastructure and personnel.

X can supply training data to to Xai and Grok is heavily integrated into X so there is some synergy there.

rabfon Samsung Magician disk utility takes 18 steps and two reboots to uninstall

Those users have never heard of the word `uninstall` nor have any comprehension of what it would do. They will after a time, just buy a new computer because the old one is full up.

rabfon Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords

Password recovery where you enter your mothers maiden name and favourite food.

rabfon OpenAI – How to delete your account

I just find it strange that you have the same people always complaining about how big tech is too powerful. If you have a problem with what you military is upto, you should take that up with your elected representatives. Boycotting an AI company is a laughable response and will have no effect on outcomes here.

rabfon OpenAI – How to delete your account

First you want the goverment to regulate AI. Now you want AI companies to regulate the goverment? Personally when I buy something I do whatever I want with it and imagine the DOD feels the same.

rabfon Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

They have an API.

rabfon Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

https://github.com/rabfulton/ViewMD

Markdown viewer for Linux

rabfon Samsung Upcycle Promise

The motorola razr flip phones are great in my opinion.

rabfon Intel XeSS 3: expanded support for Core Ultra/Core Ultra 2 and Arc A, B series

My concern is that it will make developers even more lazy when optimising their code. What one hand giveth the other takes away. When has any advancement in the hardware not led to the same or worse software performance in few years time? There surely must be a name for this paradox. This will not result in you getting 1000fps. You will end up with the same `acceptable` refresh rates with worse rendering through novel hacks.

rabfon FreeCAD

I use GIMP and FreeCAD quite often and find them very powerful programs, but maybe I'm some sort of genius? I think where these programs don't do well is among the crowd who expect to be able to just click around an advanced piece of software and somehow it just works to get things done! For basic apps this is a reasonable expectation, but CAD is not a simple process.

PS: I've still not managed to learn Blender, not put enough hours in, it is a hugely complex beast of a program that basically requires keyboard shortcut use imho. That interface (beautiful as it is) has so many options that even if I know what I'm looking for I can't find it!

rabfon FreeCAD

OpenSCAD is ideal for making models that can be modified! You have to program your models with the mindset of parametric CAD though, if I was making a battery case I would start by defining variables for battery length, diameter and count and work from there.

rabfon Show HN: A small, simple music theory library in C99

Very few people are using C for `quality-of-life features`. I'm fairly certain I've never even seen any C23 code, is it supported by many compilers or C tooling? One of the great things about C is that it is fairly easy to write code that runs everywhere and for a library that is especially important. There are many who just stick to C89.

rabfon Tesla Sales Down 55% UK, 58% Spain, 59% Germany, 81% Netherlands, 93% Norway

I'll burn what little karma I have and say that for market insights and interesting perspectives, x.com is the best place (manual curation required). Beyond that you should be watching earnings calls each quarter for a range of companies in the market. Most of what is written here, in the press and on reddit is complete nonsense.

rabfon Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue

https://github.com/rabfulton/Auriscribe

My take for X11 Linux systems. Small and low dependency except for the model download.

rabfon I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

Perhaps it thinks you need to exercise more?

rabfon Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

You know, AI might actually be able to fix this!

rabfon Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, Polarization (2025)

Bring back webrings!

rabfon Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)

Oh and porting my first ever OpenGL project to modern Linux for some nostalgia.

https://github.com/rabfulton/Hotrocks

rabfon Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)

Applications for Linux that I always wanted but could never quite find the one that works how I think it should.

traymd: A system tray notes application that supports basic live input of markdown. https://github.com/rabfulton/TrayMD

reelvault: A local film browser and launcher. https://github.com/rabfulton/ReelVault

preditor: A simple image viewer that shows each image in the center of the screen in a window sized for that image with some basic editing functions built in. https://github.com/rabfulton/preditor

rabfon Voxtral Transcribe 2

I made this for myself, might not work on wayland though if thats an issue.

https://github.com/rabfulton/Auriscribe

rabfon Film students who can no longer sit through films

Install Davinci Resolve on your phone.

rabfon Film students who can no longer sit through films

Perhaps as a film student you were meant to be looking at the composition, the shot structures, the color grading, the use of sound? The film may have been boring in its message or story but still a technical masterpiece?

rabfon Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor

CRT screens did 75Hz/85Hz/100Hz quite well, but rendered only one pixel/dot at a time. This is in no way equivalent to 60Hz on a flat panel!

rabfon We put Claude Code in Rollercoaster Tycoon

I had the books (from the library) but never managed to get a compiler for many years! Was quite confusing trying to understand all the unix references when my only experience with a computer was the Atari ST.

rabfon We put Claude Code in Rollercoaster Tycoon

I have had codex recover things for me from its history after claude had done a git reset hard, codex is one of the more reliable models/harneses when it comes to performing undo and redo operations in my experience.

rabfon Xfce is great

You do not need fractional scaling, just set the correct dpi in settings and use a high dpi theme.