Hacker News Reader

jdboydon A few concrete arguments for e-bikes

I hope that your bike failed like that was a fluke. I didn't recharge my $1100 Ancheer all winter and it was fine when I started using it again 2 weeks ago. I didn't even think it might be a problem to worry about. I'll have to be more careful next winter.

FWIW, I would encourage anyone who isn't certain enough about it to buy a $3,000 bike to start with a cheaper Chinese model to decide if it is for them. There are things I don't love about this bike, but it definitely has me sold on electric assist bikes given the hills I have around me and my knees, and when it comes time to replace it, I expect I will get a nicer model.

jdboydon The History of Franz and Lisp

Maybe what we need is a commercial IDE to use with SBCL, ABCL, or CCL then.

jdboydon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2022)

SEEKING WORK | East Coast USA | REMOTE

I am a 20+ year experienced developer.

Most of my work has involved embedded development (Linux, RTOS, baremetal, C/C++/uPython), including various forms of networking and distributed systems, audio/video, as well as backend services (usually using Python, Django, and Go), deployments (AWS, DO, Ansible, Docker, etc). I also do iOS and Android development. I do some frontend work, but that isn't my specialty.

I love helping people develop new products to meet their goals and needs, especially with a focus for getting it in use and making money as soon as possible to demonstrate utility and make money. I also have extensive experience taking over existing legacy codebases

I am available for part-time or full-time contract work, long-term or short-term. I would love for every project to turn into a lasting business relationship.

Github: https://github.com/jd-boyd

website: https://blog.jdboyd.net/

Email: jdboyd@jdboyd.net

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdboyd/

jdboydon Ask HN: Share your personal site

https://blog.jdboyd.net/

I started several posts in 2020/2021, but I failed to get any finished to actually post. I really need to get one of them done, or start a new one that I will actually get finished.

jdboydon Android 13 virtualization lets Pixel 6 run Windows 11, Linux distributions

It seems that putting a timer on the power source (set to say 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off if the load justified it) would be a fairly simple way to significantly extend the battery life. I've been thinking of putting together something like that for myself to charge a bank of test phones for 30 minutes twice a day.

jdboydon Street Fighter II paper trails – allocating sprite space by hand

Why doesn't pinch-zoom work on mobile?

jdboydon Drgn: How the Linux kernel team at Facebook debugs the kernel at scale

Yes, but good luck getting a licence to do so.

jdboydon Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine (2014)

From a historical interest perspective, I would love to see some Symbolics simulators.

From a productivity and ergonomics perspective, I don't think chip level simulation would be the way two go. First, Genera has been ported forward to new system. First OpenGenera was released for Tru/64 on the DEC Alpha platform as an official product. The fastest Symbolics hardware was about 6 times faster than the original Symbolics hardware. OpenGenera on a 533mhz Alpha was about 3 times faster still. There is a project called VLM to let you run OpenGenera on x86 or ARM and I would imagine it is many times faster still. Also, to my understanding, OpenGenera can still be purchased from symbolics-dks.com for a heft fee.

Second, I think that productivity will be limited by how much it is stuck in the past. If nothing else, crypto being behind the times seems likely to be an issue with networking with the rest of the world.

I would love to see a more modern system like OpenGenera. I also would love to see Symbolics style keyboards be made and possibly upgraded with things like better keyswitches and USB. That should be doable for someone who wants to make a custom layout, circuit board for that layout, and keycaps but based on QMK compatible hardware.

jdboydon Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine (2014)

This appears to be from 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20140614152722/http://lispm.de/s...

jdboydon Young viewers prefer TV subtitles, research suggests

This is certainly something my kids like to do. They aren't in the target age range for the study though.

jdboydon FreeBSD switches the default root shell from csh to sh

I've been trying to stick with bash for at least 20 years (I did have a brief tcsh phase before that) since a time when sticking with it meant having to install it on every unix system I touched. However, now that MacOS defaults to zsh, I'm starting to wonder if I should summon up the effort to change again.

jdboydon A DIY E-bike Conversion on the Cheap

An Ancheer ebike from Amazon cost around $1k, and while possible, it would be hard to get a car for that price. It seems pretty well made for the price, but it doesn't include the best quality shifters. I can set the saddle high enough for my 6'5" self, but I do want the handle bars raised as well. I suspect that for people 6' and under, it would be fine as is.

jdboydon Second IC

I wonder if it could support specialty audio chip manufacturing.

jdboydon Noise in Creative Coding

As a matter of safety, I never read non-expired patents to avoid possible willful infringement.

jdboydon Ask HN: Should I pass on a new job because they want me to sign a non-compete?

I would consider the scope what what is considered competition to be excessively broad. That must either be narrowed considerably, or they must pre-agree on what severance would be. The last time I was faced with such a non-compete, I did hire a lawyer to review and help negotiate it, and I did get it narrowed to something I could live with, and it only cost a few hundred to do so.

When the time finally came to part with that company, I was very grateful for the narrower scope.

jdboydon K-9 Mail is looking for funding

I sometimes wish k9mail was available on the desktop.

jdboydon System76 Launch Configurable Keyboard with Open Source Code

One possible reason is that it would continue being Dvorak if you moved it to a new computer.

jdboydon System76 Launch Configurable Keyboard with Open Source Code

There is more involved if you want USB, not to mention multi-keystroke macros and/or user configurable macros.

jdboydon "ERROR: could not open temporary file" after upgrade to Mac OS Big Sur

How does permeance compare? Also that doesn't look like a good option for M1 mac users.

jdboydon Ask HN: When coding, how to do remember what you were doing the previous day?

I write myself a note on a post-it as a reminder when I feel like I might need a reminder.

jdboydon Ask HN: I have $1M cash in my bank. How can I stretch it so I can retire?

Freelance contracting is probably the easiest way to work part time. There is some stuff that is only x number of hours a week. This seems to mostly be sysadmin work or basic web design. The other option is to do something like 3-6 months on, then however long you want off, etc. Probably easiest for web and mobile developers.

jdboydon Synology vs. Nextcloud – Which Is Better for a Home Server?

It is proprietary, but it is also a hardware device, not just a software to install on a spare PC.

jdboydon The new pricing model for Travis CI

One man multi platform projects strongly benefit from CI to test the other platforms.

jdboydon Bits of History, Words of Advice

Giving up your editor to tough, so I'll come back to that. I believe that Pharo and some other smalltalks no longer require giving up Git[1], and by extension, I assume that would allow keeping any git based review strategies. Some deployment strategies can also be kept largely intact[2][3], but I don't know what you give up by doing so. In those links, a lot of things aren't done how I would do them, but I can see how to adopt what is shown there to my preferred deployment tools.

Getting back to giving up your editor. It should be possible to use many editors with the smalltalk of your choice. However, in practice, there are many half finished and abandoned tools for doing so[4], and fighting with that while learning the system is unlikely to be productive.

[1] https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg [2] https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/job/EnterprisePharoBo... [3] https://www.slideshare.net/umejava/dockerizing-pharo [4] https://dmitrymatveev.co.uk/shampoo/

jdboydon Finding Linux Compatible Printers

I suspect that any printer with airprint and Ethernet will just work at this point. I've yet to see an Ethernet printer that required a special app to set it up. A lot of multifunction machines will even support scanning to a network share. I would only work about compatibility for printers that need a USB connection, or large format printers that need special RIP software.

jdboydon Finding Linux Compatible Printers

In my house we print receipts for tax deductions, tax documents, agreements that need signed then scanned, todo lists for kids, the occasional academic paper, Christmas cards, occasional party invitations. A few of those are outsourced to OfficeMax or Costco, but I'd like to upgrade my printer to stop doing that soon.

jdboydon Move over Graphene? Here Comes Borophene

Modern graphene work looks to have started in 2004, so it hasn't really been all that long considering that it takes time to work out how to produce it, how to actually make use of it, how to manufacture the things that make use of it, life span in applications, toxicity, etc. Also, any initial patents wouldn't have run out yet, which could prohibit bringing it to market.

I wouldn't be surprised if it takes another 20 years to take off in actual products.

jdboydon Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX Spotted

You can go to Dell, HP, or Lenovo to get a premade Xeon workstation. Getting Epyc premade requires rather more research to find and qualify a vendor, and that vendor may not make it easy to configure and but from the web site with or having to enter a relationship with a sales rep.

jdboydon DIY True 4K Projector

A number of them support the unit being placed about 6in. from the wall. When you include the depth of the unit, that may be placing the mirror closer to 2ft. away, but that is still pretty darn close.

jdboydon Ansible Alternatives in Python

The push versus pull difference between ansible versus salt is a worthwhile design choice. In my opinion, salt does start to make sense until about when you would outgrow ansible. That said having to replace all the playbooks and. Roles written in ansible.when you outgrow it is a bummer. I don't want ansible to move away from push, but it would be nice if there was a layer to let it work both ways.