Hacker News Reader

mkasbergon Hacking with Claude on a $27 Smart Watch

Nice! This looks fun, maybe I'll need to try this next!

mkasbergon Embeddings are underrated (2024)

I started using embeddings to find similar posts on my blog about a year ago. The results were awesome: https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2024/04/23/better-related-p...

Such a simple tool to implement with so much power in certain situations!

mkasbergon Tips for mathematical handwriting (2007)

I changed the way I wrote my y's (now very curly) and z's (now crossed) in college while studying math after realizing I was making silly mistakes changing y's to x's and z's to 2's.

mkasbergon Librebooting the ThinkPad T480

Love seeing stuff like this on old laptops!

I recently built https://linuxlaptopprices.com/, inspired by diskprices.com.

mkasbergon Show HN: SQLite Plugin for Jekyll

I've been using Jekyll for my blog for nearly 10 years now. I also recently wrote a little plugin that uses SQLite, though I'm using it in a minimal way as a vector database rather than storing content in it right now.

https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2024/04/23/better-related-p...

mkasbergon IRS Free File is now available for the 2024 filing season

Who's eligible for IRS Free File?

> Taxpayers, including active-duty military, with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $79,000 or less in 2023 can likely find an offer from an IRS Free File provider that matches their needs. Some providers also offer free state tax return preparation. Those with an AGI over the limit can still file their return for free using Free File Fillable Forms.

mkasbergon Ask HN: How can I make local dev with containers hurt less?

VS Code takes an opinionated view of this with "dev containers". Other IDEs (including JetBrains) have support as well. It's probably worth looking into a little, whether you decide to use them or not, to understand why they made some of the trade-offs they chose. I wrote a little blog post as an intro a while back: https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2021/11/06/what-are-dev-con...

mkasbergon Fail2ban Sucks (2020)

On a related note, the number of HTTP 404 errors I see to /wp-login.php on my static website is ridiculous. (But absolutely not security risk.)

mkasbergon Firefox Developer Edition and Beta: Try Out Mozilla's .deb Package

That would do it, or do this: https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2022/03/21/how-to-fix-firef...

mkasbergon Ask HN: How to delete all Google photos so that I don't lose access to Gmail?

Shift-click (on the last photo) to select bulk photos works in the web interface. Not sure you can do all at once but you can probably do hundreds at once.

mkasbergon Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

Most important quote:

> Buy products that work locally and won’t stop functioning when management wants an additional revenue stream.

mkasbergon Windows 11's default mail client will show ads starting 2024

Same thing happened to me. 10 years ago using Linux on the Desktop was tricky but worth it for me. Now it's almost the opposite, my Linux desktop feels smooth and unobtrusive compared to Windows, and rarely has any problems!

mkasbergon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://www.mikekasberg.com

Some programming stuff, some totally random stuff, and lately some 3D printing stuff!

I think my most well-known post is a how-to for encrypted dual-boot in Ubuntu: https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2020/04/08/dual-boot-ubuntu...

More recently, I've gotten into some programmatic 3D printing stuff like this: https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2023/04/27/3d-printing-the-...

mkasbergon Show HN: Speeding up the code-test cycle for Java developers

> without the need to execute the whole call hierarchy. (e.g. an HTTP endpoint)... > “Evaluate Expression” was quite useful in exploring new codebases and checking return values of my own functions as a sanity test.

Keep pulling on this thread... pretty soon you'll be writing unit tests!

mkasbergon Microsoft shows full-screen Windows 11 upgrade ads with two 'yes' buttons

Crap like this makes my Linux desktop (Gnome on Ubuntu) feel nice in comparison. As the mainstream players have added more bloat/ads/etc (e.g. ads in the start menu) over the last N years, and the Linux desktop has gotten more mature, it really does just feel simple & smooth in comparison.

Not suggesting Linux is for everyone, but if you happen to use it or are thinking about it, it's nice.

mkasbergon Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

I had bumped mine up once before (to 200K) and I just bumped it up again to 600K. But my wife (registered several years ago, like me) was still at 5K, I just bumped hers up too. Wish Bitwarden would force this for anyone still on an old default - particularly given the LastPass compromise we just saw.

mkasbergon Snap updates happen without user consent

The way Snap updates packages caused some problems with Firefox on recent versions of Ubuntu - I wrote a blog about it: https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2022/03/21/how-to-fix-firef... Perhaps this update mechanism was part of the solution to some of those problems...

mkasbergon Tell HN: Amazon shopping is racing to the bottom of quality

I've found recently that walking into the local Walmart, Costco, or grocery store is a better experience than shopping on Amazon, and I increasingly try to do it instead.

Need a spatula? You could look on Amazon and hope you get something relatively sturdy and that isn't filled with chemicals harmful for cooking/eating. Or, you could walk into a local grocery store or Walmart where they probably have 2 or 3 to choose from, they've already researched and selected the best items to stock, and you can feel and see the item before you buy it. I like to think that if enough people realize Amazon is selling garbage and start doing this more, Amazon will need to respond to consumer demand (or will fail).

mkasbergon Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

You should look into a Dell Latitude. Specifically, look for one with Intel Graphics (for better Linux compatibility and battery life). I'd personally go for a 74xx model. They work great with Linux, in my experience. They're also business-grade, so they have decent longevity and repair-ability, with easy to find parts.

https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2021/08/12/dell-latitudes-a...

mkasbergon Ask HN: Share your personal site

https://www.mikekasberg.com

A personal blog - mostly programming and Linux.

mkasbergon Ask HN: How can I make a “kid's computer” today as good as an Apple II?

Maybe give this a shot for mobile apps: https://appinventor.mit.edu/

It uses the same puzzle pieces as scratch, but it's a little more advanced.

mkasbergon I host this blog from my garage

It's unfortunate that there aren't better solutions for securely exposing a part of your home network to the cloud. Imagine if it were easy to set up a secure solution to access your home lab from anywhere - you could use it as your own private cloud. And perhaps then it would also be easy to expose part of that publicly, like a blog.

mkasbergon Stacked changes: how FB and Google engineers stay unblocked and ship faster

I proposed a feature along these lines as GitHub feedback. Would love to see more upvotes there if you support the idea! https://github.com/github/feedback/discussions/6125

mkasbergon Rockstar thanks GTA Online player who fixed load times, official update coming

"...without working for Rockstar"

mkasbergon How to Dual-Boot Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10 with Encryption

It's a reasonable question. I've run Linux as my primary OS for years, and I have no desire to run Windows as my primary OS. (Linux is what I'm used to.)

My primary goal with the Windows partition was gaming, so it made more sense to dual boot than run Windows in a VM. So dual-booting made the most sense for me, even though as you say a Linux VM can be a great dev experience too.

mkasbergon Students think the College Board is running a Reddit sting

Agreed! To build on your point - I used to teach Algebra 1 in a Title 1 school. What many people don't realize about "memorizing math facts" in elementary school is that if someone doesn't have a basic level of numeracy, it's really hard to learn more advanced concepts (like solving for x in a simple equation). You can't understand solving for x if you don't fundamentally understand how two numbers change when I subtract 5 from each of them, and you also don't have free working memory in your brain for learning if you're using all your working memory to do the subtraction. It's an anecdotal observation, but it's something that isn't often talked about in conversations about "memorizing facts".

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's useful to be able to calculate a tip without a calculator or tally a grocery bill. But more importantly, it'll be a big hurdle to learning slightly more advanced math concepts if you can't do some of the basics in your head.