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zabi_rauf

285 karma · joined December 15, 2013

I blog at http://zohaib.me

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/zabirauf; my proof: https://keybase.io/zabirauf/sigs/PtZU6ntpGJAsihAViO94Egg3TqYIM9S657ZT7hsHX_I ]

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zabi_rauf··on The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader
Love my X4. Shameless plug, I also built an iOS/Android app to manage books and also send web articles over to Crosspoint

https://crosspointsync.com/

zabi_rauf··on A fundamental principle of aeronautical engineering has been overturned
Aren’t Turbulators doing similar thing i.e. its keeps the boundary layer for longer before it totally turns into turbulent layer?
zabi_rauf··on Community firmware for the Xteink X4 e-paper reader
I love this device and the firmware. It has increased the amount I read now, just because it's convenient to have all the time and use it instead of doom scrolling.

P.S: Shameless plug, I also built an OSS iOS/Android app to help syncing files and clipping web articles/blog and sending to X4 on the go https://crosspointsync.com/

zabi_rauf··on Show HN: ctx – an Agentic Development Environment (ADE)
I have the exact same setup and editor for me is just neovim as I can easily see changes (lazygit) and make small tweaks. The only thing I’m missing in my workflow is some isolation for running claude so I can let it go without having to approve tools.
zabi_rauf··on Artificial-life: A simple (300 lines of code) reproduction of Computational Life
Can you please share sources, would love to read about it more.
zabi_rauf··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)
One month ago, I purchased this small eink reader (Xteink 4) and I've been loving reading on that device. It made me read much more in the past month (already more than 50% through Fall or Dodge in Hell).

The stock firmware is horrible but the community has this firmware called CrossPoint. I wanted to be able to upload, manage files etc. from my iPhone on the go and also send over web articles. So I build this app CrossPoint Sync https://crosspointsync.com to do just that.

I've already published it on App Store and pending publishing on Android. The community is niche and has also been using the app, so its been fun building for my use and in turn also getting good feedback from community.

If you are using the Xteink and CrossPoint firmware, then give the app a try.

iOS App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/crosspoint-sync/id6758985427

Android Beta: https://crosspointsync.com/android/join-beta

GitHub: https://github.com/zabirauf/crosspoint-sync

zabi_rauf··on The Annotated Transformer (2022)
I loved the GPU puzzles, after completing all of them, I wished there were more. Learnt a bunch in process.
zabi_rauf··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)
I was trying out an MCP tool and hit few issues, even though there is MCP inspector which sets up a webserver etc. I wanted much simpler tool I can use in SSH environment, so I built (with Claude Code) a terminal tool to proxy any stdio MCP server and then use the monitor TUI to see all the flow of calls between MCP client and server. Its been helpful to learn thing about MCP as you see the flow of calls happening and inspect them.

https://github.com/zabirauf/mcp-trace

zabi_rauf··on All Kindles can now be jailbroken
I love Kobo for that. I hooked UART with a Variometer (measure rate of climb in aircraft) and use it in glider soaring as a flight computer (good contrast on sunny day)

Posted the details here: https://zabirauf.dev/blog/aviation/glider_flight_computer

zabi_rauf··on Using LLMs and Cursor to finish side projects
I think Aider (https://aider.chat/) is what you are looking for.
zabi_rauf··on Ask HN: Is it just me or GPT-4's quality has significantly deteriorated lately?
Yes, definitely faster now but crappier.
zabi_rauf··on Hyperpaper Planner: fully interlinked dayplanner for e-ink tablets
If I wanted to change it, add something after I generate does it mean I have to pay another $20 or does it allow multiple generations after buying? I tried finding the answer in FAQ but couldn't.

BTW, the PDF do look sleek.

zabi_rauf··on Flipper Zero – Portable Multi-Tool Device for Geeks
Got the same issue
zabi_rauf··on Ask HN: What'd you do while HN was down?
Restarted my phone thinking something wrong with it. Then changed to Cloudflare DNS instead of PiHole thinking it maybe pihole issue. Because when does HN ever go down :D
zabi_rauf··on Julia frameworks to create desktop GUIs and web apps
Shameless plug.

I have been building a blog using Next.js (for static content) with Pluto (for interactive and richer content, inspired from MIT Intro to Computation Thinking).

I think it's a great combination of richness and expressive content which brings the user along with the interactiveness.

Example post: https://zabirauf.dev/blog/notebooks/understanding_std

Source code: https://github.com/zabirauf/blog

P.S: Still dealing with some bugs in deploying PlutoSliderServer so interactivity is broken.

zabi_rauf··on Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?
Thats great! How did you start with finding consulting projects and building street cred? Has writing blogs bring you more business yet?
zabi_rauf··on Securing MongoDB Using Let's Encrypt Certificate
Good point, I'll take a look at the creating an internal CA and generate own certificate. The point of LE API servers down is pretty good and makes the use of own CA more enticing. I suspect that will also break a lot of other websites as well as the usage of LE grows overtime so I suppose critical systems should avoid LE altogether.
zabi_rauf··on Securing MongoDB Using Let's Encrypt Certificate
Can you please elaborate more on what other ways are you referring to? This particular way was used to communicate with the DB hosted on a different cloud provider from where it was being used. I would like to learn about different ways to accomplish the same securely. This was one of the ways I could find.
zabi_rauf··on How can you program if you're blind? (2013)
Saqib from Microsoft is blind and demoed using Visual Studio at Build this year

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0

zabi_rauf··on Ask HN: What do you want to learn in 2017?
I recently started to brush up on my Linear Algebra and found this very useful

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVF...

zabi_rauf··on WebRTC file sharing broker using Elixir Phoenix
Thanks for pointing it out. It is still in development. The reason i was using CDN was because of bandwidth and reusing the cached JS if the user already has that. What will be the best way to tackle this? If I put all those under one CDN then I guess the bandwidth problem will be solved but I wont be able to reuse the JS that user might already have. At the end of the day I still have to trust the third party JS.
zabi_rauf··on WebRTC file sharing broker using Elixir Phoenix
Yep you can. There was this http://peercdn.com/ that did that and I remember a post on HN where it served the page from other clients but used web sockets instead.
zabi_rauf··on Binary pattern matching in Elixir
Author here. My intent was never to say that this feature is something unique to Elixir. The intent was to introduce pattern matching to people new to it with a solid example. It just happened that my choice of language was Elixir and I'm aware that it wouldn't have been possible in Elixir if Erlang didn't had it in the first place :).
zabi_rauf··on Monads in Elixir
I've seen the same video before i knew what a monad was, it helped me in understanding the use case of monad and ultimately monad. Monad is just a generalization of that particular use case. Some resources that helped me in understanding monads

1. Brian Beckman: Don't fear the Monad - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhuHCtR3xq8&feature=share

2. Functors, Applicatives, And Monads In Pictures - http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_...

3. Three Useful Monads - http://adit.io/posts/2013-06-10-three-useful-monads.html

So its been not just one resource but multiple resource before it hit me that it was such a simple concept. So i would suggest to go over them (in order) and also look at other resources (mentioned by others).

zabi_rauf··on Show HN: Simple Chat Application Using Elixir Phoenix Running on Raspberry Pi 2
Thanks, yep i need to add that. I just put it together from the fork of chrismccord chat example, did'nt put much thought into the rate & limit.
zabi_rauf··on Ask HN: What are some good CV template for a Software Engineer
Yep jsonresume has good themes but don't use space efficiently. Resumonk has some decent themes, i might try that out. Thanks.