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seblonon Software Bonkers

Maybe not the most interesting article on HN, but I need to agree. Accounting in general is way too completex. For a Non business case (no tax involved), I decided to use hledger, but my "UI" to it is just an LLM. It was nerver so simple to make "okay enough" book keeping.

seblonon Using AI to write better code more slowly

I want to mention, Claude code has a command /code-review. I find it quiet useful.

seblonon Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

42 days sound like a long time, but I'm living in Senegal, cassamance. Me also need to wait mostly 5-6 weeks (regular priority, no express). Also, Transport here is via regular public (but private) busses, and to be honest, I never missed a parcel.

seblonon SDF Public Access Unix System

Shell escape != Unix account escape :-)

seblonon SDF Public Access Unix System

When escaping, you can invoke custom commands and binaries. If a tool is not available, just place them (mail yourself there, use zmodem, ...), via chmod. But you have a disk quota of 20mb, so you're limited as unverified account.

But the whole thing is: if you can escape as non verified user, than you can mass automate it to do ddos etc...

seblonon SDF Public Access Unix System

I found a way to escape their shell (so you can run whatever you want), if you're not verified, it involves multiple steps to archive this. I mailed them 2x to their membership address, but since today no reaction. I asked also in their IRC.

Just a question to HN: should I wait more, try again? Or should I simply publish the vulnerabilities somewhere? If yes, where? It's my first time that I found a vulnerability at my own, not sure how to deal with that.

seblonon Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

Yeah, Software protection was very naive in the beginning. Fun fact: I owned a windows 3.11 for workgroup UPGRADE disc collection, it was clearly explained and also enforced from the setup installer. So, no previous installed win 3.0 == upgrade installer will fail. The fix: just create an empty Textfile named win.com at any place - the installer simple scans the WHOLE disk just for this existing filename. Next fun fact: in reality, the Upgrade contained the full installation, no only a delta. Men, software was so simple these days....

seblonon Ask HN: Share your personal website

http://loncar.de/en/

Minimalistic Style :-)

seblonon Monads in C# (Part 2): Result

Last Year, i wrote some Monad Mini Framework for my own, but focusing only on the Result-Type itself. I planned to publish it, but i think today is a good day. Here we go: https://codeberg.org/Arakis/Result

seblonon Show HN: Phantas – A browser-based binaural strobe engine (Web Audio API)

My thoughts:

- Allow enter/leave Driver mode even while sound is playing

- Hide the "tab to minimize" after several seconds

- Allow customize the pattern. Now it's hard coded perlin noise animation, before it was blank screen white/black without texture.

- Cannot enter email address to unlock private beta while sound is active (chars getting deleting while typing).

- Loses Focus rapidly on multi monitor setup, even when not touching the browser. It seems it's sensitive to focus/unfocus events, not sure what's the exact cause. PS: Regular full screen videos form for example youtube never lose fullscreen with my browser.

- Fullscreen does not full whole screen, there's black border left and right, it seems you're animating a square, not the full landscape rectangle.

- The jump from gain 1 to gain 2 is quite big, so i have to reduce the volume on the system sound, that's quiet annoying, since it's for all browser tabs then / even the whole system, depending on mixer settings.

And several more bugs, i do not remember them all.

One important question, that comes in mind all the time: Is this project vibe coded? Don't get me wrong, i also startet to begin vibe coding my projects, but it seems there's a little mess in the code (without looking into the obfuscated code).

seblonon The Problem of Teaching Physics in Latin America (1963)

This problem is not limited to Latin America or physics alone - it also affects regions such as Africa. For example, many students at universities in Senegal, do not find employment after graduating. Some drop out earlier once they realize their prospects are slim, while others try their luck in Western countries.

seblonon Ask HN: Is Cloudflare Down for You?

But 400..700ms latency are quite high, so this is maybe also a sign, that there a problem.

seblonon Detection firm finds 82% of herbal remedy books on Amazon 'likely written' by AI

The question is, what we can do? I try always to search books, internet articles or even YouTube music for being published before 2022, but I cannot stay with old history stuff forever.

seblonon Record Everything

Reminds me on the device "Friend" https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kodjima333/friend-open-... and "Omi" https://github.com/BasedHardware/omi?utm_source=chatgpt.com

seblonon Interactive Tree of Life Explorer

Where did they get the data from, are there any universal data catalogues?

seblonon A guide to Gen AI / LLM vibecoding for expert programmers

How the hell he's using so much argents at the same time. Is it for 32 different "issues" like feature 1, 2, 3, ...?

seblonon Typr – TUI typing test with a word selection algorithm inspired by keybr

Btw, I also checked out your app, my feedback after 5 minutes: there was at least one case, where a word was splitted instead of clean word wrapping for line break, when the terminal is small.

And one idea: do a audio bell on error, even for tui, this should just be the special "bell control char" written to stdout.

seblonon Typr – TUI typing test with a word selection algorithm inspired by keybr

Several years ago (around 2015), I also developed a typing learning web application. It was inspired by another application that had originally been developed for Windows 95 - with that app, I learned how to type. So in 2015, I decided to implement a web-based version of it.

http://touchtyper.net/en

However, I just checked out keybr.com and have to say - it's a much better system for learning to type! As of today, I now realize I have a huge problem with the letter "q" - I had never noticed that before! ^^

seblonon MS locks out OneDrive user and their 30 years of data

This is exactly what I thought, also!

seblonon I made a chair

I had never seen this type of chair before moving to Senegal as an expat. For several months, I didn’t try them because I assumed they must be incredibly uncomfortable. To be honest, most are made from thinner wood (people here are really poor!), so they didn’t look very sturdy either.

But a few weeks ago, I visited a local woodworker and ordered one of these chairs. I had to let go of all my previous prejudices - this type of chair is surprisingly comfortable and stable. And it's even useful for certain "other" activities :-D

seblonon Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)

I developed multi-ssh, it's a command-line utility designed to simplify the management of simultaneous SSH connections to multiple remote servers. It leverages tmux to create organized sessions, allowing you to interact with servers in separate panes within a single window or in individual windows per server. Features include synchronized input across panes, executing commands on all servers, copying files using rsync, and customizable configurations via a config file.

https://github.com/arakis/multi-ssh