Hacker News Reader

Marry Christmas to all HN readers from me too!

Not on rotation, but one never knows how much something escalates, therefor and for the team members silence if of course preferred ;)

sllabreson The Rise and Fall of the 'IBM Way'

Particularly the Gen Z should know at least the IBM Mainframes

sllabreson Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

I wasn't aware that rclone could create a direct connections and had a quick skim through the documentation where I found this in the FAQ (https://rclone.org/faq/)

----

Can rclone sync directly from drive to s3 Rclone can sync between two remote cloud storage systems just fine.

Note that it effectively downloads the file and uploads it again, so the node running rclone would need to have lots of bandwidth. ----

sllabreson Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

Can you explain, why this is subjective/meaningless? Apparently he paid the amount that Google wanted for the unlimited service?

sllabreson Lockheed is now tracking phones and walkie-talkies from space

Yes, it was not for high bandwidth applications. Nevertheless when you can receive something like SMS it seems possible to locate you phone with similar technology.

sllabreson Lockheed is now tracking phones and walkie-talkies from space

If this [1] works, why shouldn't locating mobile phones from space work?

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/fcc-aims-to-help...

sllabreson Obfuscating Lua (2019)

Yes, but automatic obfuscation can be interesting, if not only simple substitution methods presented here.

E.g. something like [1] (Devirtualizing Nike.com's Bot Protection) discussed here [2]. Or something like this [3] (Analysis of Obfuscation Techniques Found in Apple FairPlay)

[1] https://www.nullpt.rs/devirtualizing-nike-vm-1

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34285747

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307653

sllabreson 6502 back end for LLVM (2022) [video]

For those who want to read further:

https://llvm-mos.org/wiki/Welcome

sllabreson How to catch a wild triangle

A bit further down in the same article: "Unfortunately, this method did not allow us to intercept HTTPS traffic of Apple services (including iMessage), as iOS implements SSL pinning for this"

sllabreson How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

I've been using three AirTags and two of the cheaper clones mentioned above. I can activate both about 100m away in the forest, if there is a line of sight.

On the other hand, i can walk an entire day through the forest (with some other people around every now and then) without a single position update from the tag.

sllabreson Turning an old car into a powerful generator

Fascinating to watch the larger (professional) generator doing their work

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SzKu9QBGI4s

I always think what happens when they fail to sync in time -- a bad day for a datacenter or worse

sllabreson FAA authorizes Zipline to deliver commercial packages using drones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c

sllabreson FAA authorizes Zipline to deliver commercial packages using drones

Came here to say that (i think their operations in Africa are quite impressive) but it seems as their "Zips" are a different kind of breed and more like a drone than a plane.

sllabreson Retrieving 1TB of data from a faulty drive with the help of woodworking tools

I didn't understand the blog post as a challenge to only use carpentry tools but think he used what was available in his shop. (Most carpenter wouldn't have thermal adhesive tape or a thermal camera either ;-)

sllabreson Retrieving 1TB of data from a faulty drive with the help of woodworking tools

"But, of course, the SSD gets quite hot during operation so I used one of the heatsinks from the PC and another made from part of carpentry square and some thermal adhesive tape to keep things cool."

Instead of this i would suggest a fan. Even small ones create much more airflow than needed when please next to a device.

sllabreson Try the last internet Kermit server

The same here. My BBS time was with [xz]modem only, but as the author of the article I've used kermit for a HP48-SX too (Love it that there is a android emulator for this calculator :-)

sllabreson How to steal a masterpiece: Advice from the world’s greatest art thief

There was a thief of famous old books from the monastery Mont Sainte-Odile in France / Alsace. As they found out after some time (riddled as he broke in several times without them noticing) the the thief entered through secret stairways and chambers. [1] If I remember correctly the thief didn't try to sell them but hoarded them.

There are many other articles about the heist if you google for "Book Thief Mont Sainte-Odile".

[1] https://www.goodnightandgodbless.com/travelogues/the-book-th...

sllabreson Ditherpunk – The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering (2021)

Even if posted more than once on hacker news, there is a interesting forum post [1] from Lucas Pope, the author of Obra Dinn, describing dither mapping in 3d. [2] (2017) has some more links

[1] https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg136374... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15766249

sllabreson Show HN: Nonius Clock

Yes if I remember correctly that was not only a linear scale, but with no timezone intended so that you could say: Meeting at 300 and it would be the same for both parties.

sllabreson Pigz: Parallel gzip for modern multi-processor, multi-core machines

There is a _parallel_ bzip2:

http://compression.great-site.net/pbzip2/

which should solve the 'my cores are idle' issue.

sllabreson Pigz: Parallel gzip for modern multi-processor, multi-core machines

Hardware accelerated [1] "GZIP Acceleration with AIX on Power Systems " pigz

[1] https://community.ibm.com/community/user/power/blogs/brian-v...

sllabreson Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

Thanks for designing and publishing your work! I was surprised too, that there is nothing similar when I was at a stroke unit for a relative.

I wish you all the best for your mother. Keep caring for her, before caring for the website.

sllabreson WezTerm is a GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal emulator written in Rust

Probably inspired by the performance problems with the windows terminal [1] and the accelerated terminal [2] developed by Molly Rocket as 'answer'? A series of videos presenting the poc [3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28743687 (It takes a PhD to develop that) [2] https://github.com/cmuratori/refterm [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxM8QmyZXtg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgoetgxecw8

sllabreson Ethically Sourced Lena Picture

I haven't read about the background story and the new website but I hadn't thought that she thinks so especially I have read [1] some years ago. But as said I don't know the new developments regarding the famous photo.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/finding-lena-the-patron-saint-of...

sllabreson Ask HN: Are people still using Pascal?

https://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Free_Pascal

https://delphi.fandom.com/wiki/Good_Quality_Applications_Bui...

https://lazarusccr.github.io/apps/

sllabreson Bing AI can't be trusted

I'll would currently use it as it has been named: ChatGPT Would you trust some stranger in a chat on serious topics without questioning critically? Some probably would, I not.

sllabreson Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

Or here https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n863gt#2f0b1162 Took 2 1/2 hours to plot this :)

sllabreson TWM − Tab Window Manager for the X Window System

I never had problems wir Focus follows mouse in XWindow and like the feature very much.

I've even used a program that did the same for Windows (that sometimes had issues as the windows programs didn't expect that the activ window was not on top). I didn't remember the name of the program but this [1] sounds close.

[1] https://superuser.com/questions/954021/how-do-you-enable-foc...

sllabreson Hermes: An open-source document management system

It probably depends on what you trying to archive. I have some experience with FileNet. It worked quite well for over two decades but required some attention. But we had some volume (~150k pages scanned and CI pages per day) for the time and the system was highly customized. Today it is easier to accomplish the technical and regulatory requirements with the available systems. But for a larger volume, long archival times (20++ yrs) and guarantees for reliability and imputability it's still a task that require it's attention.

I've seen some inhouse developed system due to the high price tags, but these had there issues too. With long archival times I would always recommend something as "KISS" as possible, even for smaller environments. Supporting special features for a long time can we demanding task on its own.

One thing I'm missing especially is a standardized API like you have SMPT for email systems.

The same with file formats originally used for archival (e.g. PDF/A) have much to many revisions with too many features.

We had quite good success with conversation of complex data formats to TIFF (limiting to basic features of this format) or plain text at the time of the archival together with the original format.

sllabreson Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

Heat your plates (e.g. with the cooking water) and rub dry to prevent your your delicious meal get cold too soon. This is of course not only good for pasta.