Hacker News: DHowett

New comment by DHowett in "USB Cheat Sheet (2022)"

DHowett — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 23:32:13 +0000

Excellent article.

If I could offer one correction, it would be that SBU (as specified by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group[1]) means "Sideband Use" rather than "Secondary Bus".

On some devices, it is used to carry UART; on others, audio.

[1]: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%... (pdf)

New comment by DHowett in "5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens"

DHowett — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 23:40:47 +0000

There was a project a while back that attempted to do this, named “Dotsies”.

https://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/dotsies.htm (original site https://www.dotsies.org, which has a casual introduction text that slowly transitions into dots; however, it was unavailable at the time of writing.)

New comment by DHowett in "Veracrypt project update"

DHowett — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:41:08 +0000

Three lines of text in 12-point font in the corner which can be covered by a window is hardly “the entire screen.”

New comment by DHowett in "Git's Magic Files"

DHowett — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 01:51:48 +0000

!! Thank you!

New comment by DHowett in "Git's Magic Files"

DHowett — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 19:06:59 +0000

.git-blame-ignore-revs, while great, unfortunately belongs in the “Other Conventions” section.

If you configure your git client to use it, git blame will fail in any repository in which one is not present.

New comment by DHowett in "Seven diabetes patients die due to undisclosed bug in Abbott's glucose monitors"

DHowett — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 03:49:48 +0000

It appears to be in the fourth paragraph.

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls-a...

> As of November 14, 2025, Abbott has reported 736 serious injuries, and seven deaths associated with this issue.

New comment by DHowett in "Google releases its new Google Sans Flex font as open source"

DHowett — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 23:13:34 +0000

I had always wondered if that happened because of a proliferation in folks named EionMusk.

New comment by DHowett in "Copy-Item is slower than File Explorer"

DHowett — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 00:11:52 +0000

tar.exe, however, beats both of those in terms of archive format support and speed.

New comment by DHowett in "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"

DHowett — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 05:35:17 +0000

It comes with Windows, and has since 2022! Alas, if you mean Windows 10 then you can use some DISM magic to add it to an install image.

ByteDance Proposes "Parker" for Linux: Multiple Kernels Running Simultaneously

DHowett — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:50:37 +0000

Article URL: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Parker-Proposal

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45362060

Points: 27

# Comments: 5

New comment by DHowett in "DXGI debugging: Microsoft put me on a list"

DHowett — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 22:50:18 +0000

The author of the post indicated that they are releasing an update to an existing game, which we can presume has the same executable filename.

Phison Pre-Release Firmware Linked to SSD Failures, Not Microsoft Patch

DHowett — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:23:05 +0000

Article URL: https://www.guru3d.com/story/phison-prerelease-firmware-linked-to-ssd-failures-not-microsoft-patch/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45172706

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by DHowett in "Raspberry Pi 5 Gets a MicroSD Express Hat"

DHowett — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 18:17:11 +0000

I’ve noticed most of the replies to your comment address the first half, and none (as of right now) address the second:

> So the question that comes to my mind is whether this is yet further new and different Raspberry Pi 5 hardware that comes with no software or prospect of software.

If by “this” you mean the MicroSD Express hat from the article: this is a hobby project produced by a hobbyist, who seems to have no plans to sell or mass produce it.

It is unfair to the creator for you to lump it in with, and draw a conclusion from, the works produced by Raspberry Pi Holdings.

New comment by DHowett in "It's a DE9, not a DB9 (but we know what you mean)"

DHowett — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 19:23:50 +0000

If you can turn the port off and then back on remotely, perhaps you can skip the unplugging part completely? I know that some managed PoE switches even offer a button to power cycle a port.

You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

DHowett — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:29:52 +0000

Article URL: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/you-dont-own-the-word-freedom-a-full-burn-response-to-the-gnulinux-comment-that-tried-to-gatekeep-me-off-my-own-machine/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44394935

Points: 34

# Comments: 25

New comment by DHowett in "Open WebUI changed license from BSD-3 to Open WebUI license with CLA"

DHowett — Tue, 06 May 2025 04:48:48 +0000

Have you come by your certainty that they have not asked because you were a contributor?

New comment by DHowett in "Idiomatic Go (2016)"

DHowett — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 05:47:19 +0000

The advice in the 2014 talk applies to exporting specific types of errors as part of a package’s public API surface.

The article, on the other hand, advocates for local variables storing errors not to have distinct names.

Smarter IRQ suspension in the networking stack

DHowett — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 14:38:52 +0000

Article URL: https://lwn.net/Articles/1008399/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43172414

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by DHowett in "Show HN: Interactive systemd – a better way to work with systemd units"

DHowett — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 22:02:40 +0000

systemd services are named "foo.service", and you do not need to specify the ".service" in almost any case.

New comment by DHowett in "Shaping ligatures in monospace fonts"

DHowett — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 04:01:21 +0000

> > advance

> you can just manually make any letterform 2x width,

Yes. Any glyph may be wider than its advance. The advance, however, must remain the same across all glyphs. If it does not, the font is not monospaced.

The passage you’ve quoted refers not to the width, but to the advance.