Hacker News Reader

nickspacekon How the Claude Code team does code review

I used to use semi-colons and parenthesis in my semi-formal writing, but now I find myself reaching for em-dash instead. I'm not sure if my tone has changed as well but LLM-writing has probably influenced me more than I realize.

nickspacekon Hello Toronto – Waymo Is En Route

In New Brunswick (officially bilingual), most signs are bilingual.

nickspacekon Gemini ending free use of Flash and Pro models

The point is that it got to the right answer eventually, which conceivably it could have done at the first step:

1. Open on Google Maps?

2. Validate no extra notices posted on their public website

Even the fact that there is are special notices sometimes posted on their public website is something a model could have been trained to understand, same as a human being.

nickspacekon Big Tech ruined the cloud, so we're renaming ours

I didn't realize Cloudflare also offered:

- Offsite Backups

- Voice control (Alexa & Google Home)

- Voice Processing (STT/TTS)

- Better media streaming (video/audio)

In addition to dedicated support, as part of their free Cloudflare tunnels.

Sorry for being snarky, but given the tone/point of the announcement is anti-big tech it's funny to complain that the pricing is so high compared to big tech.

Taken on its own, for the price of a nice coffee a month you also support Home Assistant development and get something in exchange. Pretty good value.

nickspacekon Cloudflare Quick Tunnels

Switched from Pangolin to Netbird recently and enjoy Netbird more!

nickspacekon Play Store blocks AuroraStore, hurting GrapheneOS users

https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play

> Google Play receives absolutely no special access or privileges on GrapheneOS as opposed to bypassing the app sandbox and receiving a massive amount of highly privileged access.

It doesn't mention IMEI here, but hopefully READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE is included in "privileged access."

nickspacekon CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela

I used this for my family's recent trip in Lisbon and Prague. It worked great! The OSM data was reasonably up-to-date for all of our destinations; I don't remember encountering bad information, even though I often double-checked with other mapping providers (which aren't immune to issues with out-of-date information).

One awesome feature was being able to find "drinking water" while we were walking around. I did come across a tap that was shut off/unavailable, but only once. Again, this is more of an OSM data thing than CoMaps, but I generally found the app pleasant to use.

There sometimes feels like there is something slightly off with the "Route To/From" UX that I can't put my finger on, but no complaints.

nickspacekon Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy

The runner's high I've experienced comes after completing a long, hard race and finally getting to rest after pushing myself beyond what training was like.

nickspacekon Unlimited OCR: One-shot long-horizon parsing

It's the opposite of shade, unless GP is being sarcastic. "Class act" is normally a compliment, and in the context here it sounds to me like they're congratulating Baidu/the researchers in being transparent about where their ideas came from.

nickspacekon Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

For sure, that or just ensuring they have laws in place that grant them access to the unencrypted data we are sending to CDNs operating in their jurisdiction (when necessary for national security reasons).

nickspacekon Tell HN: Litellm 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 on PyPI are compromised

teampcp taking credit?

https://github.com/krrishdholakia/blockchain/commit/556f2db3...

  - # blockchain
  - Implements a skeleton framework of how to mine using blockchain, including the consensus algorithms.
  + teampcp owns BerriAI

nickspacekon Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

There's probably a useful middle ground between tossing people in jail and rewarding with great wealth, power, and influence those people whose main drive appears to be accumulation of said things without regard for their fellow citizens.

nickspacekon Atuin’s New Runbook Execution Engine

We have CI actions we use to configure and deploy dev namespaces. We document a bunch of steps for these actions in a doc, including situational tweaks. I could see this being a great replacement for that, given the right integrations.

nickspacekon Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

I've read good things about Seafile and have considered setting it up on my Homelab... though when I looked at the documentation, it too seemed quite large and I worried it wouldn't be the lightweight solution I'm looking for.

nickspacekon Canada Set to Side with China on EVs

Worth considering at least, and looking at approaches like you mentioned and avoiding allowing free entry of foreign vehicles. We could consider partnerships (if China is interested) like we have with other foreign manufacturers like Honda and Toyota. We should also be considering expanding the existing relationships, though I'm sure there are retooling costs, and possibly playing hardball with other manufacturers to encourage them to setup shop (e.g. Kia/Hyundai).

I doubt I'm offering anything that hasn't been part of discussions already, but having the ability to manufacture vehicles seems like an area of industrialization a country shouldn't part with lightly.

nickspacekon Show HN: Pangolin – Open source alternative to Cloudflare Tunnels

My homelab has a setup like this, but all done somewhat-manually. HTTPS for my Docker images running in the homelab via a certbot image. A Wireguard setup to connect the homelab to a small Hetzner VPS, and a proxy there to allow certain traffic through.

I've been wanting to add some authentication lately so that I can manage access to the homelab resources. I currently prohibit all traffic and only allow the Wireguard subnet, but this means any clients have to be provisioned in Wireguard, which is a nuisance to setup manually. It does seem to work well enough though.

Pangolin seems like it would be a one-stop replacement and simplify the setup, especially once I look at adding user management to the mix.

nickspacekon Why I left my tech job to work on chronic pain

Lots of anecdotal cures here, but I'll add Aloe Vera gel to the mix since it seems to help* both soothe/recover/prevent the return of my reflux symptoms for long periods of time.

nickspacekon Show HN: PyDoll – Async Python scraping engine with native CAPTCHA bypass

Yes, I was imagining never seeing a captcha on any device without needing extensions though.

I think it exists already, found this randomly today: https://github.com/FlareSolverr/FlareSolverr

nickspacekon Show HN: PyDoll – Async Python scraping engine with native CAPTCHA bypass

As someone who uses ISPs and browser configurations that seem to frustrate CloudFlare/reCaptcha to the point of frequently having to solve them during day-to-day browsing, it would be interesting to develop a proxy server that could automatically/transparently solve captchas for me.

nickspacekon Sodern launches Astradia, a star tracker for GNSS-denied navigation

Neat, this latest implementation seems a little more compact than the SR-71's, but it's hard to tell.

https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics...

nickspacekon Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

Look into Backblaze B2. Use rclone, or another backup tool that has S3 compatibility (though B2 API has some additional bells and whistles).

With rclone, you can also have a step to seamlessly encrypt the contents on the client side before sending to an external provider like B2.

I chose B2 because it is the most affordable option, but rclone supports many backends.

nickspacekon Locating Stealth Fighters with Cheap Cameras Without Using AI or Radar [video]

Could the advantage be that a military monitoring installation of cameras is less detectable than a high-frequency radar monitoring installation? My understanding is that active radars are easily detectable, but perhaps cameras could be less so and that advantage could allow them to be deployed closer and might require less protection themselves.

nickspacekon Tesla sales drop 35% in San Diego County

Our Kia EV6 (similar platform) has been great, besides its 12V flooded battery once going flat and disabling the vehicle.

The EV6 has a big touchscreen, a touch screen for combined media/climate controls, capacitive buttons for seat heat and steering wheel heat. However, many of the controls are available as physical buttons as well.

nickspacekon Android phone will run Debian Linux soon (like some Pixels can)

You can use Termux:X11 now which is an X server you can target from your Termux shell. I've used it with Andronix distros and plain XFCE inside Termux and it works, ish. I occasionally experience crashes and it gets memory-killed on my phone.

nickspacekon How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40

I wonder if the mispronunciation of "polish" as "Polish" had anything to do with missing out on a win with the fairy submission? Fun read!

nickspacekon We've built the Ultimate e-Bike Battery that you can Repair and Refill

Here's some more information I found linked through the reservation process: https://docs.gouach.com/

nickspacekon Piezoelectrics enable displays to provide both audio and touch feedback

Here is an example video I found from the author's of the article, Synaptics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyTAcVjJsd0

I wondered what would happen if you were touching the screen, but it doesn't seem to interfere with the audio too much.

nickspacekon JetBrains' unremovable AI assistant meets irresistible outcry

I started exploring the neovim world. It's a bit of work to get started but I'm getting close to realizing the same, or pretty close to, features that I expect. I haven't gotten to renaming, moving methods, etc. yet though.

I started with NvChad (weird name) and have been happy so far. I love to ecosystem of Pycharm Professional, but I have to restart it frequently as it slows down my system. I haven't been able to determine if it's a specific plugin, or just a result of my fairly bland usage patterns.

nickspacekon Anduril Builds a Tiny, Reusable Fighter Jet That Blows Up Drones

Not sure about alternative paywall-free sources, but here's one I found:

https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/30/anduril-unveils-roadrunner...

nickspacekon Oink's Pink Palace

This annoys me to no end. I'm sure there are more curated playlists on Spotify out there, but having it always shoveling music at me based on whoever is paying them the most to push it is exhausting. And as others have pointed out, the app experience has seemingly deteriorated over time to the point where my Offline music is difficult and frustrating to get to play... when offline!

I'm slowly returning to curating my own music files and integrating them into my homelab via Jellyfin and Fintunes (can be found on F-Droid). I currently keep Spotify around for its podcast archive but those days are likely numbered as well. I'll end up supporting them forever though, since weaning my family members off of its convenience is unlikely to happen.

Edit to suggest "Cloudspeakers Weekly Chart" as my recommendation for a curated Spotify playlist with a wide variety of new music with updates on Saturdays. Occasionally includes pop hits, but I've otherwise found lots of new artists in there. Found it through a recommendation on here, definitely not through Spotify itself.