Hacker News: 2b3a51

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Open Source Low Tech"

2b3a51 — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:44:01 +0000

Over here in the UK I've seen some pretty original bicycle adaptation with electric motors and even a 2 stroke engine added to aid propulsion.

In India there is a word for this kind of thing Jugaad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad

New comment by 2b3a51 in "WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)"

2b3a51 — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 14:00:09 +0000

Just a footnote to parent post: Groff is developed as a complete set of programs and macro files. Debian, hence Ubuntu and other derivative distros, segment groff into a base package with what you need to display man pages (using the man macros) that comes as part of a base install and an additional package that has the mom macros and all. Just 'apt install groff' to get the full groff distribution.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide"

2b3a51 — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 13:25:39 +0000

Another possibility is Slackware 15.0 which is the stable release that gets updates. Available in 32 and 64 bit, runs a 5.15 series kernel (antiX 26 32bit uses a 5.10.x kernel). I have an install on an ancient Thinkpad T42 with 1Gb ram, a single centrino chipset CPU, 40Gb hard drive and radeon graphics. Chugs along nicely with Abiword, Gnumeric and Dillo. Firefox will load but is deeply unhappy.

(I install everything except the KDE and XAP package sets, and then install selected packages from XAP as I need them e.g. GIMP, xpdf and so on)

MX has more recent packages for some things though, Slackware 15 is getting mature.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off"

2b3a51 — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 08:31:05 +0000

Suspect it is the Anthorn station these days.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)"

2b3a51 — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 08:19:09 +0000

Reaching back decades, I used to do a first draft longhand on file paper, cross bits out, rewrite bits. Then bang it out on a typewriter. Then once over with a red pen the next day, and a complete re-type.

I'm not sure that I could work that way now, but it was more deliberate. Less 'drive by' thought.

"Our Writing Tools Are Also Working on Our Thoughts"

(I'm talking essays for University here not deathless prose).

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct"

2b3a51 — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:56:19 +0000

Best of luck. Without revealing any commercially sensitive information it would be fun to know what the age of the oldest VM running is. Windows 2K? RHEL 4?

(As an end-user sort of person, I get a strong smell of Bladerunner from this kind of thing, where you can see old PCs in the background on top of decks with cables running out of them).

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Tribblix: The retro Illumos distribution"

2b3a51 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 10:54:59 +0000

Edit timeout reached so replying to my own post.

Installed on the Thinkpad T60 using the 'kitchen-sink' option to the install script following the instructions on the tribblix Web site. Left the USB stick in and rebooted and it did some first run stuff (you have to leave the usb stick plugged in at this stage).

Edit: To use a wired connection (e1000 driver on Tribblix) you need to have the network cable plugged in when you boot the usb stick. If you don't, then networking does not get configured.

The xfce desktop installation is quite nice, with emacs, vim and helix editors and Abiword/Gnumeric. Palemoon and Netsurf are available as graphical Web browsers.

Sometimes it is good to try something that works on a different basis to what you are used to - the contrast illuminates (lol) what you usually use.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Tribblix: The retro Illumos distribution"

2b3a51 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 07:53:17 +0000

Would that be a question of using dd to write the iso to a USB stick, or are we talking about burning the iso to a DVD, booting and installing to a USB drive?

PS: Thanks to Peter Tribble for providing this system.

Edit: I've just downloaded the basic (Tribblix 0m40) iso, dd'ed [see below] it to a smallish USB stick and booted an old Thinkpad. Boot succeeded and I was able to log in to the minimal live session. Haven't done more than that yet.

    # dd if=tribblix-0m40.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Leaving Mozilla"

2b3a51 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 13:44:50 +0000

In the UK we have a variety of arrangements for schools. Some are local authority managed, some are 'academy status' which means that they are self managed but often with a cluster of schools sharing a management layer to save money. There are also 'free schools' which are community run with often an 'alternative' ethos. And there are religious schools, run by churches (and other religious organisations). All of those are state funded using a funding formula, and they have to teach the national curriculum, and are subject to inspections. Academy status schools used to get a bit extra but not any more, they can however employ staff who are not qualified teachers (Qualified Teacher Status is a defined set of training and experience requirements).

There are also private schools (some famously called public schools like Eaton or Harrow, but most actually just private companies often with charitable status).

Schools are usually fairly small organisations and generally the management have risen through the ranks as teachers, year heads, and so on. It isn't a sector in which fortunes are made.

So, yes, I think a range of funding and organisational models are possible. But note the role of regulation (direct inspection of what happens in classrooms on a regular basis without much in the way of warning).

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Leaving Mozilla"

2b3a51 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 10:23:44 +0000

Well, from version 151 there is now a setting to turn all the built-in AI off. So people in some part of Mozilla disagreed with your position sufficiently to provide a setting.

PS: I do actually find Google's ai thing in the search useful now and again, so no fantasy world.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Leaving Mozilla"

2b3a51 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 09:40:06 +0000

But perhaps the existence of the forks tells the Mozilla management something?

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Leaving Mozilla"

2b3a51 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 09:37:44 +0000

Yes, I'd echo thanks to parent, the OA and all still in the trenches.

Since 2007 in my case which is when I started using Linux at home. The distributions I use come with Firefox as the Web browser (Ubuntu, Debian and latterly Slackware).

I do find myself turning things off more now than I used to.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?"

2b3a51 — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 18:07:12 +0000

Thanks for posting that, I'd never heard of it. I thought of n(n-1)/2 and coordination issues initially but nah.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Porting the ThinkPad X61 to Coreboot"

2b3a51 — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 07:23:58 +0000

antiX linux v26 might be of interest. I have the 32 bit version with the older Linux kernel (5.18.x I recollect) on a live usb. No mysterious graphics freezes.

The more straight forward (and 64 bit) candidate would be Slackware 15.0 with a few of Alien Bob's slackbuilds.

But, of course, the retro computing approach mentioned by another poster would look really nice and be a conversation piece.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity"

2b3a51 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:38:50 +0000

You could turn that idea over: Newton's alchemical researches may have given him the courage to posit action at a distance. Universal gravitation was very controversial and was not at all accepted initially. Descartes spent pages and pages building theories of vortex action to explain forces.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Azure Linux 4.0 is Microsoft's first general-purpose Linux"

2b3a51 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:34:33 +0000

Oil and gas? Dinosaurs? Can see the connection. Good luck with it next time you are with them.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Azure Linux 4.0 is Microsoft's first general-purpose Linux"

2b3a51 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:30:46 +0000

But if people are paying for RHEL they won't be using Fedora for production workloads will they?

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes"

2b3a51 — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:09:52 +0000

I wonder who would be working in these thinking gyms? Nice idea. Extra mural studies for the age of agentic ai.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)"

2b3a51 — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:15:42 +0000

Around 5000 words on the impact of tourism on de-industrialised cities and how property prices and rents drive new businesses. Some of it seemed reasonable to me (we have some of the pastiche 'experiences' being built in my city and I actually rather like the new mock hutong with the glazed green roof tiles and lions), and some of it seemed a bit clumsy and patronising.

New comment by 2b3a51 in "The Ask"

2b3a51 — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:10:06 +0000

> "optimised evidence-weighted statistical model"

Isn't such a model inevitably going to be lagging what is happening?

(Monkeys can see/smell/recognise the scat or track of a large cat very quickly and don't sit around to check the data)