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giis

3,995 karma · joined April 8, 2011

Founder www.webminal.org

FOSS Programmer.Winner of FOSS India Awards. Storage projects: www.giis.co.in

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giis··on My fat loss experiments with ChatGPT and water fasting
To be honest, for me the result is quite unbelievable. I never thought I'll lose 14kg in my mid 40's but managed to do it with very little exercise and following water fasting and mostly focused on diet, its surprising.

Looking back, when I was not remote working, I did intermittent fasting by default (not eating between 8pm to 11:30am), that kept my health in control. But WFH changed everything and gained weight.

giis··on My fat loss experiments with ChatGPT and water fasting
Yes, definitely dont take medical advice from LLM. Only thing, I suggest is taking food, which foods to take or skip. And also random questions to keep you on track with fasting. like "what happens if I take tiny fruit juice - does it break the fast etc"
giis··on My fat loss experiments with ChatGPT and water fasting
Yes, I know its silly to ask same question, what happens in your body every week to AI. Answers are mostly Same but Just to re-enforce idea, of what you body currently undergoing every few hrs helped me. For example, I watched "What happens with 36hr water fasting youtube video" every time I go on fast - It somehow keep right kind of mindset during fasting. similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URSwRHb4Uv0
giis··on Copy Fail
As soon as I read this

>Shared dev boxes, shell-as-a-service, jump hosts, build servers — anywhere multiple users share a kernel. any user becomes root

jumped out of bed and went straight into webminal.org servers as local user and ran the python code. It says permission denied on sock() call.

Then I tested with local laptop with it:

```

$ uname -a

Linux debian 6.12.43+deb12-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.43-1~bpo12+1 (2025-09-06) x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ python3 copy_fail_exp.py

# cd /root && ls

bluetooth_fix_log.txt dead.letter overcommit_memorx~ overcommit_memory~ overcommit_memorz~ resize.txt snap

```

It does provide the root access!

giis··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)
Yes, GIF in PR is really nice in my view too :) Our reproduction runs in a sandboxed per-repo environment that we re-verify the fix in before opening the PR. Would love to have your thoughts on beta and to see how it goes on real world apps. I'm reachable on support AT neverbreak.ai
giis··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)
https://neverbreak.ai that fixes failing CI and opens a PR with _proof_. Most "AI CI fix" tools read the error log and guess a patch. We actually reproduce the failure, fix it then re-run the test in a fresh environment to confirm it passes before opening the PR. Each PR includes a short GIF of the fix working. If the test doesn't actually pass, no PR gets opened. Works with C, Python, Go, Node.js, Java on GitHub Actions and GitLab CI. Currently working with few beta users.
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
Sure. We had quite a lot of universities and schools used this platform for their classes. I'll be away from system for next 48hrs though.Drop us a mail,will respond.
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
Actually I opened up GitHub Sponsor just few weeks ago. Few tims i received enquiry from users (professors) who wanted to contribute back.only now i have proper channel to redirect such requests.
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
Only UML is the resource consuming part kept as option available on request. Rest of them all shared Shellinabox, nginx,Flask and each active user session consumes little RAM since its a shared terminal. Simple `ls /home` shows all other users on that server!
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
There will be little latency if you access from different region. Server located at Singapore. From India, I checked right now directly via this link https://www.webminal.org/terminal/proxy/index/ I dont see much issue. I use firefox/chrome on Debian. May be try with different browser?
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
Thanks, most of these came out restriction, we cant afford to throw money on horizontal scaling (adding more server,load server etc). So we kind of forced to try out new things to keep cost affordable. There are many thing left out on above doc: IIRC, we started with openvz and even today our security relies on SELinux, how we remapped user account creation with pre-existing templates for ext4 quota, we moved to xfs because of flexibility. Mysqldb quota/limits, fork bombs by college/school students bringing out docker environment. Old school internet is right term.
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
Until few days server ago was using 8GB and I did a cost cutting measure and its running on 4GB server for last week or so. :)
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
In past I have seen around 10 process, but I think with current setup, it could support around upto 20 UML. Remember this runs on the same server where others login and get their normal bash account too. So not a dedicated UML server.
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
It began as on-prem, Freston hosted in his house (we shared server cost, some people called it crazy, because I sent money to someone I met in Linuxforums.org and never seen this person, even via internet, I trusted him because I know him for few years on that forum) After 3 years or so we moved on to cloud servers. Mostly switching from one infra and another if we get some credits :D Couple of years we had Linode sponsoring those nodes until its acquisition.

>shared screen comms system is outrageously crazy,

Thats Freston idea. I remember our typically chat begins with something like "Hey Laks, Can you see me typing!" ;)

giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
Yes, User mode linux pretty cool project. If I'm not wrong, UML is kind of predecessor to gvisor or firecracker from a different era.
giis··on 15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die
Sure thanks, Let me know if you have feedback.
giis··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2025)
Yes, I know the risk involved. Just 1 or 2 trades per day not more. Always used the amount that I can afford to lose. No gambling.
giis··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2025)
Quantitative Trading Co-Founder | US https://0dte.tech/

Seeking US-based co-founder with _strong_ FOSS credentials to establish and operate quantitative trading firm. Prior Trading experience desired.

email me: lakshmipathi [dot] g [at] gmail [dot] com

giis··on Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
To be honest, I do regret it. After 20 years of working on FOSS projects, I've invested enormous amounts of time, effort, and money into these and other free/open-source initiatives. It was enjoyable initially - there's something addictive about receiving praise from strangers and unknown communities. You keep going because it feels good and you develop a sense of moral superiority. But years later, when the people closest to you are no longer around - you pause and reflect on how much energy you devoted to random strangers instead of those who shared your life. If I had invested even 1% of the time and effort I put into FOSS projects into my relationships with loved ones, they would have been so much happier. Now I'm left wondering what the hell I was doing all those years https://giis.co.in/foss.html
giis··on Helium: Lighter Web Automation with Python
Looks nice. Is it possible start_chrome() with specific chrome browser profile name or re-use existing open firefox/chrome browser session and launch a new tab with specific domain?
giis··on Started a guide to writing FUSE filesystems in Python
If you have recent kernel version and using ext4, case insensitivity for specific directory can be enabled using casefold feature. See https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/558977/how-to-enabl...
giis··on Show HN: SQLite Database Explorer
At-least for now, you need to move these into readme.md These animated gif gives better idea about this tool! nice work!
giis··on Indian investigators ask Apple to access Delhi chief minister's phones
Just a background for people who don't know about Delhi CM:

- He came to power by using India Against Corruption movement which was led by Anna Hazare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Hazare

- Once capturing power, he kicked out founding member like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumar_Vishwas and his close associates like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogendra_Yadav and many others & became de-facto leader of this party. (Now his wife seems to chief of this party)

- In this specific case, Indian Investigators summoned him 9 times and he refused their request for meeting and finally he was arrested after court refused to stay any arrest by Investigators

IMHO, he should have corporated with Investigator, rather than trying to keep them at bay.

PS: I used to be huge supporter of him during those time (2011-2014) and even donated small money (my only donation to any political party till now) while he formed the party (which I regret now).

PS2: Interestingly, his mentor Anna Hazare (who stayed away from his political party and doesnt have political ambitions) said "His arrest is a result of his own actions" https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/result-of-his-own-act...

giis··on I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions
Great! This will be excellent for beginners. I'm considering teaching chess to my kids. Can I still find it online? My searches on Amazon and Google haven't yielded the results I need.
giis··on Ask HN: What are you grateful for?
My father, who departed exactly 60 days ago on October 25th, began his journey in profound poverty. Throughout his life, he never harbored anger or resentment towards anyone. Always content with our circumstances, he lived a life that has only now made me realize that if I can emulate just 10% of his approach, I would consider myself a successful person. https://community.webminal.org/t/goodbye-my-great-father/827... I'm grateful that I'm his son.
giis··on Show HN: eBPF tool to monitor disk usage, perform actions
I find not much storage based epbf stuffs out there, so want to start somewhere :D Nice work on Dtrace, I'll check it out. Reg bio to fs path, If I'm not wrong, I think we already reached block level and vfs layer is the best bet. But then there has to be filter on vfs layer to track specific path.
giis··on Show HN: eBPF tool to monitor disk usage, perform actions
IMo,it provides smooth development experience. I had some trouble while trying to pass initialize global variable which seems more easier in C (eg: skel->bss->mypid) than go
giis··on Show HN: eBPF tool to monitor disk usage, perform actions
I'm exploring eBPF tech, that's the main reason. Yes, more like POC with eBPF.
giis··on Bram Moolenaar has died
vim is my favorite editor. Thank you Bram for your work and time, RIP.
giis··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2023)
Webminal (www.webminal.org) | Lead Front End Engineer | 100% Remote | $0USD,15% ownership

We launched in 2011 and so far helped more than 350,000 users with our platform. I'm looking for NextJS/React Enginner to lead the front end effort. I can't pay for this position hence I'm offering 15% ownership for this role. Few months back we decided to re-write site and we have partially completed NextJS/React with the help of freelancer. If you are interested, please reach-out to efgadmin AT webminal DOT org

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