Hacker News Reader

effdeeon Using a 1965 Dutch Rotary Phone via VoIP (T65) in 2024

> This old device should support pulse tone dialing, but it did not work with mine. Might be the custom firmware, might be AVM dropping support in later versions, I'm not sure.

The timings of the phone's rotaty dial might be off. Allegedly FritzBoxes are rather conservative when it comes to these timings.

I just had the same problem with an old Tischfernsprecher W 48 which neither worked on a FritzBox 7560 nor a 7590. Adding a pulse to tone converter solved the problem.

Btw, in case pulse dialing works with a FritzBox one can dial # via hook flash. This allows to dial the internal numbers [0].

[0] (in German) https://www.wasser.de/telefon-alt/forum/index.pl?job=thema&t...

effdeeon &udm=14 – easy access to an AI-free Google search

This pairs quite well with &tbs=li:1 ("Verbatim" search).

effdeeon Looking into an apparently scammy looking zsh plugin manager called “zi”

https://archive.is/hmvEh

effdeeon Helium is essential but nonrenewable and difficult to recycle

Someone should probably mention the US National Helium Reserve[0]. Voilà.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

effdeeon The Decline of Usability: Revisited

> What is the "Archive" icon even supposed to depict?

It looks like a labelled archive box to me.

<https://www.google.com/search?q=archive+box&tbm=isch>

effdeeon Google Cloud region currently down due to water intrusion

This post (in french) has some more details:

https://www.mail-archive.com/frnog@frnog.org/msg72320.html

effdeeon Show HN: Quake 1 ported to the Apple Watch

Can't wait for the speedruns.

effdeeon Ask HN: Does anyone use FreeBSD or OpenBSD as a daily environment?

I've been using FreeBSD as a desktop for almost 20 years. Currently running, uhm, CURRENT on an older Thinkpad.

Using FreeBSD as a desktop won't be fun unless one enjoys a raw and rather spartanic UNIX experience, I guess.

effdeeon Ask HN: Annoyed by opening too many browser tabs?

On a technical side: I came to the conclusion that displaying tabs horizontally is, well, stupid. Displaying them vertically is better. Tree Style Tabs for Firefox allows this. It also has hierarchies and folding. Hierarchies allows me to group related tabs. Folding allows me to "reduce the noise" by collapsing groups.

On a personal side: I've learned to let go.

effdeeon Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

Lego is pretty high on my list: it's all about composition with reuseable components that have just the right size. Also, the basic interface is stable since 1958.

effdeeon Expectations for generics in Go 1.18

Pressing ga in command mode in Vim displays the ASCII / Unicode value of the character under the cursor.

effdeeon Proposal: expression to create pointer to simple types

Minutes ago I was wondering about https://play.golang.org/p/9C0puRUstrP (via https://github.com/golang/go/issues/23440).

Thank you for explaining what's going on there! :)

And btw, compiling the above example with -gcflags="-m" (which I learned about earlier today) proves you right.

effdeeon The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

They did the same in NY City and Washington DC [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_112

effdeeon Peripheral vision in Quake

Note that nobody seems to know the "correct" spelling of Giovanni Paolo Panini's last name.

Edit: Looks like he's spelled Panini.

"Arisi showed that the spelling Pannini was a corrupted inscription identifying the artist, rather than a signature, as all of his known signatures read simply Panini." - Mary L. Myers, Architectural and Ornament Drawings, p.40

effdeeon Computers are Brain Amplifiers

I think I've heard this before...

"I believe the computer is the most significant tool invented, as it is unique in mechanizing part of the process of learning and understanding, or at least giving us that potential. All other tools have been extensions of muscles and limbs, whereas the computer is an extension of the brain, and it is that which we make of it." -- Erik Naggum, 1996-02-06 (http://naggum.no/erik/knowledge.html)

effdeeon Are Your Devices Hardwired for Betrayal?

> 1. Firmware must be properly audited.

> 2. Firmware updates must be signed.

> 3. We need a mechanism for verifying the integrity of installed firmware.

I wonder how many bricked devices (or devices malfunctioning in a creative way) it would take to convince hardware manufacturers that these are good ideas?

effdeeon GCC Non-bugs

Type-punning via unions is allowed in both C99 [0] and C11.

[0] see "ISO/IEC 9899:1999 Technical Corrigendum 3", http://www.open-std.org/Jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1235.pdf

effdeeon Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83

🖖

effdeeon Extracting RAW pictures from memory dumps

Sweet memories... sigh :)

There was also a program called ScreenJaeger [1] to grab images from memory.

[1] ftp://ftp.de.netbsd.org/aminet/gfx/misc/ScreenJaeger.readme

effdeeon Little Known Ways to Think about Discipline

Someone should mention the Marshmallow Experiment [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...

effdeeon The Beautiful Geometry of 18th-Century Forts

If you like this kind of "architecture" you should definitely visit Rocroi if you ever happen to be in (the north of) France:

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=49.925021,4.520338&spn...

edit:

Palmanova in the north of Italy also looks nice:

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=45.905658,13.310108&sp...

effdeeon The Future of Europe: An Interview with George Soros

I think this a bad advice. Trying to ignore Soros is a bit like trying to ignore an earthquake.

effdeeon The Future of Europe: An Interview with George Soros

Gustave Le Bon would certainly agree to this observation since it is the essence of his 1896 book "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind".

Staying with physics analogies, this book is like a photon. It is illuminating. Proper absorption leads to a higher state and the world will look a bit darker afterwards.

effdeeon Targeting Huawei: NSA Spied on Chinese Government and Networking Firm

Maybe the Chinese just wanted to find out whom exactly to thank for getting a bit more than they ordered from Boeing [1]?

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

effdeeon Hostile AI: You're soaking in it

"The only useful banking innovation was the invention of the ATM." -- Paul Volcker

effdeeon MH370 disappearance: Goodfellow's theory about fire and Langkawi is wrong.

Australia is out of question. The plane would have been detected by the JORN [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JORN

effdeeon NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls

There have also been rumors about Amdocs [1] being kind of the Israeli counterpart. They do billing for telcos (i.e. determine who talked to whom for how long). The list of their customers is quite impressive.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdocs

effdeeon The Setup: John McAfee

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=467321

Search for "My name is Jesse" and read on...

effdeeon Russia Blocks Access to Major Independent News Sites

Russia is the only safe place for him. If he hadn't gone to Russia he'd be either dead by now or living in a cage wearing an orange suit.

effdeeon File transfer via DNS

Good ol' ping can also be used to send data. Some implementations support the -p flag which allows to send 16 bytes of user-defined data.