Hacker News Reader

Yes, I would consider HN as social media/networking site

Is there a name for oft-repeating content/post and the overall discussion on a given topic (dotfile management in this case) on HN?

I am not complaining about the repeat. It’s just that I find it very amusing to see different people kinda-sorta reinventing the wheel (and discussing the nuts and bolts) again.

wadkaron The maddening mess of airport codes [video]

We’re just looking at the manifestation of one of the hardest problems in software engineering - naming things.

There’s no one good answer. Instead we must design our system to be “soft” i.e. malleable - able to evolve as the world evolves.

wadkaron Scientists may have solved Stephen Hawking's black hole paradox

Note that the design of the experiment needs to be able to disprove theory. That is to say if the results don’t match calculations then their theory is falsified and we make progress.

wadkaron In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

All of these incidents remind me of episodes from House MD. I swear they made one on this Antartica where House did a “zoom call”.

The airplane guy had more complications than ruptured lung but apparently he had just came out of scuba diving into the plane.

wadkaron An antimatter experiment shows surprises near absolute zero

I don’t understand how an anti-proton can orbit a nucleus without annihilating into pure energy with a proton from the nucleus.

What am I missing here?

Honestly speaking I am really amazed by these researchers ability to separate and then “shove” an anti-proton in a Helium gas.

wadkaron Learn the workings of Git, not just the commands (2015)

> git branch blah_branch_backup

Don’t forget to commit your changes if you’re going to `reset --hard` later!

wadkaron Ask HN: Why were a few rank numbers black on the homepage?

Don’t worry, he can edit it ;-)

wadkaron Common shell script mistakes (2008)

Not controversial at all!

Most linux distributions come with python installed. Anything more than invoking a binary and redirecting the output? Just write it in (pure) python I say!

Edit: by pure Python, I mean don’t require any `pip install`s

wadkaron Magnus Carlsen wins longest world chess championship game of all time

> Bit of a spoiler :(

I get your sentiment but this is really exciting news in the chess community. A win after so many years!!

wadkaron Magnus Carlsen wins longest world chess championship game of all time

Vishy Sir during the end game commentary said that the engines say it’ll be a draw.

Where/which move did Ian make the mistake?

Anyways, hats off to everyone involved. Magnus, Ian, commenters, and the chess twitterati. What a game! ~8hrs!!!

wadkaron SSH Tunneling Explained

I have read far too many ssh tunneling articles and all of them either forget about the bind address or just pretend that the only host that can be tunneled is localhost.

The fact is that ssh tunnels are bound to an interface on one side and the other can be any (reachable) host:port. So if example.com:1234 isn’t reachable from your host network, you can do a local port forward to example.com:1234 from an intermediary host that can reach example.com:1234

wadkaron Processing Semi-Structured Data in the Unix Shell

Very interesting though it’s just reinventing the database wheel

wadkaron How do I opt my access point out of Google Location services?

I can’t make sense of this. Are you telling me that any Android user with “default” pixel setup will use my SSID for location tracking?

And that if my WiFi shouldn’t be part of Google’s (and Microsoft as well) data collection I need to suffix my SSID with _optout_nomap??

This has to be a joke. Any docs/refs/links?

wadkaron Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

Heck, even today it’s the polite way to communicate with drivers and maids. Don’t answer the call, but immediately call back and ask them if everything is ok. They won’t call you if it’s not urgent and important.

wadkaron Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

The company ceased operations in 2016 as per the article

wadkaron What was the point of [ “x$var” = “xval” ]?

Personally, I learnt my bash by reading a lot of Gentoo EBUILD scripts and config files. I can recognize other Gentoo users just by how many curly braces and double quotes I see in a simple one liner.

The one resource that I have bookmarked decades ago and would highly recommend to get the ball rolling are the TLDP pages on bash:

https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html

https://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/index.html

https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

Not certain if they’re up to date or error free but I really enjoy the style and tutorial/show by example nature of the TLDP

wadkaron Icecream: Never use print() to debug again in Python

Indeed but the operator is useful beyond fprint

wadkaron Whistleblower: Ubiquiti Breach “Catastrophic”

PoE is probably Power over Ethernet. With that you don’t have to worry about laying down electrical line to power the APs. The APs draw power from the Ethernet line itself

wadkaron Icecream: Never use print() to debug again in Python

I believe the walrus operator `:=` was introduced in Python 3.8. So keep that it in mind.

wadkaron Icecream: Never use print() to debug again in Python

It was “recently” introduced in Python 3.8. See sibling for link to issue tracker

wadkaron Ray Dalio says the government could ban bitcoin

Cash enables tax evasion, sponsoring terrorism, all kinds of …

Should we ban cash?

wadkaron Signal apps DDoS'ed their own server

it's also quite possible to design and implement this one the server side. I mean one can implement Circuit breaking, exponential backoff etc. at network level (e.g. istio) based on the "internal service" (could be VMs/nginx rever proxies) outage error.

wadkaron Apple Backtracks After Popular Mac App 'Amphetamine' Threatened with Removal

Didn’t know this existed because I rely heavily on Caffeine when I am presenting or doing something that requires no interaction with the mac for long periods of time. And the caffeine app(also a shell command) has been since like forever!

wadkaron 20 Years Later

OR perhaps the issue that the same people who are in the clique of the said field are also evaluating the research proposals. So the funding doesn’t run dry?

Not that that’s a good or bad thing. You wouldn’t want a “non-expert” to evaluate the proposal. And perhaps a tapering of the funding is better indicator of interest/progress of the field?

wadkaron Atlantropa

Comments do not support HTML. I would imagine Too many issues with parsing, injection/security etc.

wadkaron Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

Nope, Apple Watch requires an iPhone

wadkaron Germany's State Distance-Learning University

Ironically, I concur :-)

wadkaron Germany's State Distance-Learning University

> It’s so much easier to express yourself in good and convincing and clear ways (plus as the lingua franca in many of those domains, there isn’t necessarily a great German translation).

It’s easier to express because Englisch is _the_ lingua franca of those fields. It would have been a totally different case had some other language, say French or Mandarin had been at the forefront of scientific literature advancement and dissemination.

wadkaron Germany's State Distance-Learning University

Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache