HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

RobGR

552 karma · joined June 29, 2008

I'm a freelance programmer, I also do linux sysadmin work, on a contract basis.
submissionscomments
RobGR··on The Official DR DOS Website
I have used a DR-DOS 7 that was set up with a nice task switcher, between terminate-and-stay-resident programs ( not true concurrent processing ).

This setup started WP5.1, a spread sheet -- I think Lotus123, and a graphics editing program. I think it switches using cntrl and the F keys, similar in feel to how a linux machine switches consoles.

I think at the time this was set up, only DR-DOS could do the task switching. I don't know if that is still true.

RobGR··on Rising carbon dioxide levels now detected in human blood
I've thought about making a C02 scrubber for indoor use. The simplest way, using commercial lime, would mean replenishing a consumable to keep it going. The C02 scrubbers that acquarium owners use also don't seem to be able to be regenerated.

I think it would be interesting to see what effect, if any, an indoor C02 level of near 0 would have on humans and mammals. Because your blood has to stay in a narrow PH range, and C02 is part of maintaining that, I wouldn't presume it would be good.

I think a small desktop C02 scrubber might have a market in the same demographic that pays for air ionizers, de-ionizers, HEPA filters and incense burners.

RobGR··on Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS
This could develop into a chance for a crypto wallet to shine.
RobGR··on Ask HN: Are there examples of 3D printing data onto physical surfaces?
Or, press it into soft clay and then fire the clay.
RobGR··on Ask HN: Are there examples of 3D printing data onto physical surfaces?
I don't think that piece of plastic would last as long as you think. I think even ABS or PETG would be crumbling to powder in 100 years.

But you could use it as a stamp for thin sheet metal, that might last a longer time.

RobGR··on Fixing retail with land value capture
But currently, most of the high intensity retail areas tax the landlords on the value of the land PLUS the value of the building ( "improvements" ). They owe this tax even if the building is empty.

How does switching to a land value tax, which only taxes them on the value of the land, help at all ?

RobGR··on Fixing retail with land value capture
I don't think there is a connection. The situation where the landlords capture most of the increase in value that a cluster of retailers create, would not be affected if we switched from taxing the landlords on the value of their land and building, to taxing them just on the value of the land.
RobGR··on Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
I have hopes that the Slate vehicle will turn out to be a dumb EV, but I'm cynical enough that I want to wait til it hits the market and someone does a tear-down. https://www.slate.auto/
RobGR··on Show HN: Forty.News – Daily news, but on a 40-year delay
I think the NYT is involved in lawsuit claiming garbling them through an LLM is still copyright violation. In any case you could link to them and display the headline, and maybe the first sentence.
RobGR··on Show HN: Forty.News – Daily news, but on a 40-year delay
An automated system was already made to collect and sort them, that system should provide it's sources. I can self-fact-check anything, but a system that could provide origin sources and didn't is just AI slop.
RobGR··on Why top firms fire good workers
This article didn't make complete sense to me. However I think what it describes overlaps somewhat with the "Cravath System" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cravath_System

The wiki page doesn't do it full justice, as I understood it it is:

* A firm can easily end up in a situation where weak performers stay as long as they can, and strong performers leave because they can operate independently. This can have a very strong effect because the partners or permanent management starts seeking out work to keep the bulk of their remnant people busy, which is not the high end work that builds the firms reputation.

* Instead, make offers every year to the top 3 people from each Ivy League law school, but the offers are for 18 months only.

* If the new people aren't going to make partner ever, don't keep them around. Let them know well before the 18 months are up, and have them pick the corporate clients they like and work with them so they can jump over to working for the client directly, and they will then always come back to the mothership when the giant, interesting, complex case comes along.

* Out of each "class" you make partner offer to only the best, maybe none, each year.

This differs from the article because the firm is keeping the best and sending out the rest.

But maybe most firms aren't like the Cravath, they prefer to over charge clients for a weak performer then charge and pay a strong performer ? Maybe this makes sense if you have a very short term view of the life of your firm and it's reputation ?

RobGR··on Cancerous oil-field wastewater is spreading through Oklahoma water supply
If I click through to the original article https://www.texastribune.org/2025/05/28/texas-fracking-water... , it doesn't seem to justify your summary of "giving protections to oil companies leaving poison in the water". What it describes seems to be a fairly cautious attempt to allow and maybe encourage the "produced" brine water to be treated and used:

"companies that sell the water can’t be held responsible for the consequences if someone else uses the water. Treatment and transportation companies and landowners also qualify for protection, including in cases of personal injury, death, or property damage.

Companies and landowners can only be sued when they are grossly negligent, commit intentional, wrongful acts of omission, break state or federal laws, or fail to satisfy standards set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which sets and enforces the state’s environmental rules.

The bill directs the environmental quality commission to write rules around produced water research and reuse."

Basically it seems that responsibility for the water follows ownership of it. Environmental regulations are still in place.

RobGR··on Asbestosis
I would appear that you can buy it on Alibaba:

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?tab=all&SearchText=asbe...

I have not tried, although I was tempted just out of curiosity -- would it make it through customs and get delivered to me in the US ? The rope and fabric style products should not be that dangerous because they are long fibers that should not break off and float in the air, and the cylinder head gasket material is probably chopped short fibers but it's embedded in a matrix of other stuff.

We probably over regulate the long fiber stuff. The short felt-like fibers we used to mix into plaster, cement, anything needing strength and texture, are probably correctly banned; the risk to reward seems not worth it. Many of those products could use glass fiber just as well.

However, I think the general experience of people exposed to rock or cement dust, basically anything silica based that gets into the lungs, is that is really bad. Handling short chopped mineral fiber of any type seems like something that has to have a huge payoff, like part of a rocket for satillite launches, to be worth it.

This is good to keep in mind because there are some really interesting alternative mineral fiber products out there. Basalt fiber in particular, is sold in a chopped mix for adding to concrete, seems potentially bad. There are some interesting ceramic fibers available too.

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?tab=all&SearchText=basa...

https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?tab=all&SearchText=cera...

RobGR··on Show HN: Nostr Web – decentralized website hosting on Nostr
In addition to the browser extension, you need a web proxy -- a bit of server side code that acts as the nostr client and gets the page, and displays it over ordinary http/https.

Of course this means the existing web will find multiple URLs to the same content, if many people run the proxy, but that can be mitigated in various ways, or just ignored.

RobGR··on MinIO stops distributing free Docker images
The point is not about what Minio's legally required obligations are.

The point is, there is a community project, and Minio has revealed they are leaving the community. It's not illegal that they do so, any more than divorce is illegal, but it's concerning to anyone who views themselves as part of that community.

It raises a point that is it smart to join a new community that depends on the same people or organization.

Your persistent inability to comprehend this makes you look like a poor candidate for future professional collaboration. Maybe you are autistic, maybe just a shill, but it's not helping you.

RobGR··on NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
This is an LLM trained using a $100 budget to RENT access to graphics cards. It's not about what you could do BUYING hardware for $100.
RobGR··on Control your Canon Camera wirelessly
This is related, but not wireless, and works only for the Powershot series of cameras:

https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK

It is used for DIY book scanners.

RobGR··on The World's 2.75B Buildings
Your country exports timber to China and has a lot of empty land.

Who benefits from this situation ?

RobGR··on Jef Raskin's cul-de-sac and the quest for the humane computer
https://web.archive.org/web/20181206074048/https://www.fugue...
RobGR··on The Rickover Corpus: A digital archive of Admiral Rickover's speeches and memos
I found this a particularly good read:

https://rickovercorpus.org/?file=https%3A%2F%2Frickover-corp...

RobGR··on Renting Is for Suckers
You are only repeating the arguments of run-of-the-mill management, and most people reading Kelley's blog post will be familiar with them.

There's something else going on here.

After all, as a business manager with a duty to make the most for your shareholders, if you really anticipated scaling your compute needs, wouldn't you invest in the cheapest way to do more computing ?

If you were a board member of a trucking company, and your CEO told you "Managing trucks is a pain, always filling them with fuel and stuff, I outsourced it to another trucking company, they are only charging us 5 times our previous budget in equipment and drivers salaries. Now we can focus on what we do best, making our customers happy" you'd fire that CEO.

"It's easier to hire for cloud skills that bare metal skills" is self-fulling in part, but if you are doing self-hosting correctly, it's also meaningless because you will just run largely the same software infrastructure. You can go to Dell or HP and have them deliver you a rack or more that already have the cloud software you want installed.

The "it frees up organizational focus for your customer's problem" is the closest to being meaningful. Modern corporate management seems weak generally, other examples include the trend of not promoting internally and instead hiring from outside -- it's like the none of the corporations trust themselves to evaluate people themselves, and inherently feel more confident hiring someone another corporation has found valuable.

"We are bad at managing our core business which has a profit margin of 10%. Therefore, we will take an essential service in support of that, outsource it to a company which is known for algorithmically detecting customer lock-in and raising prices, and is extremely difficult to leave, and will charge us 5 times as much."

RobGR··on The Role of Blood Plasma Donation Centers in Crime Reduction
My gut feeling is that is what is going on. But, the creation of new plasma donation centers is not a random process, so we've identified a correlation, not a definitive cause and effect. What if areas that are on an upward economic trajectory are more likely to have new businesses open ? Maybe those are the areas where it is easier to get the necessary zoning or building permits.
RobGR··on The time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs
You can call any self-interested decision "greed" if you need to just turn off your brain and emote.

But they were making high profits for decades, and being greedy for decades. Then there were a lot of layoffs. What changed ?

RobGR··on Ask HN: What is the best method for turning a scanned book as a PDF into text?
There was a thread here recently about OCR4All ( I haven't used any of these tools recently, but I'm keeping track because I might be doing that soon ).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43043671

https://www.ocr4all.org/

RobGR··on Convert plastic bottles into 3D printer filament
I think he switched to this tool and wire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRc7ZDRcgrQ , but he made the PET strip material popular in the bushcraft community, and from there I think it crossed over to the 3D Printing / Maker community and got picked up for making filament.
RobGR··on Convert plastic bottles into 3D printer filament
Yes, that is who I was thinking of.
RobGR··on Convert plastic bottles into 3D printer filament
I have followed various open source projects to produce filament this way for a few years, starting from a facebook group.

It is called "pultrusion". A key property of PET plastic is that it is not infinitely re-meltable, it gets more brittle each time. If you melt bottles to form filament, then melt it again when printing, those two re-melts are too much.

But, you can heat it enough to soften it without truly melting it -- so it does not loose strength -- and pull it through a heated nozzle, that kind of wraps the little strip around into a tube, sometimes with a small hollow center like a straw.

There is then one full melt left in the plastic's life to allow a 3D printing.

You might have to adjust for the filament being hollow and extrude a bit more.

You also get a filament with a shorter length, just the plastic from one bottle, because joining the filaments is finicky and no one seems to have come up with a reliable way yet.

In spite of all this, it's really appealing because getting one more human use out of the vast volume of PET bottles that are thrown away seems really useful.

Note, that the strips that you cut the bottles into, are useful by themselves. There are a series of youtube videos by a Russian guy building a log cabin in the woods, and he utilizes those strips extensively -- if you use them to tie things together, you can pour hot water on them or heat them with a flame and they will shrink and stick to themselves, making a really strong joint.

RobGR··on Tell HN: Cloudflare is blocking Pale Moon and other non-mainstream browsers
To add another link, I think this is the same issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/421396
RobGR··on Tell HN: Cloudflare is blocking Pale Moon and other non-mainstream browsers
I think this is the same issue as is being discussed here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/421396

It sometimes blocks me on fairly major browsers, such as google chrome ( but on an older Ubuntu ).

RobGR··on Oracle Cloud deleting active user accounts without possibility for data recovery
If it was caused by a bug they wouldn't have told him "you have no future with oracle" and that he couldn't create a new account -- they would have just created a new account, apologized, and given him a few months credit.
← PreviousPage 2 of 13Next →