Hacker News: NelsonMinar

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Pixel Watch 5"

NelsonMinar — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 18:35:21 +0000

My WiThings ScanWatch lasts a full month. But it's not a phone-on-my-wrist, it looks more like an analog watch and just has some sensors in it.

FDA says Taylor Farms cyclospora finding was a false positive

NelsonMinar — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:32:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/fda-says-taylor-farms-cyclospora-finding-was-false-positive-2026-07-20/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48979432

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3"

NelsonMinar — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 22:12:24 +0000

One of my favorite easter eggs in Nethack was the way a Mailer Daemon would arrive in-game and deliver a scroll when you received an email on the host Unix system. Which then became a game exploit because there were some obscure in-game uses for the scroll items.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK"

NelsonMinar — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:19:12 +0000

Bazzite mostly suggests installing stuff via Flatpak or Homebrew. (No, really, brew on Linux lol). You can also layer in things with rpm-ostree but it's clunky. I think the immutable OS makes sense for a consumer but not for a developer.

So I'm using Nobara instead. It's a different Fedora-for-gaming but has most of the same improvements. It is a traditional system, not immutable. CachyOS is also very popular and that gets you an Arch-for-gaming. Just yesterday I learned of PikaOS, a Debian-for-gaming.

The main thing all these gaming-customized systems are doing is getting graphics drivers and proprietary codecs installed for you easily.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK"

NelsonMinar — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:23:06 +0000

One thing that's lovely about Linux is this kind of analysis is not only possible, but meaningful. These results will get reported back to the graphics software authors and the distribution packagers and the ecosystem will improve. There's no sense with Microsoft that kind of improvement is possible.

I recently switched to Linux after years on Windows desktop, mostly because the KDE Plasma desktop feels snappier than Windows 11. Also the feeling that if something isn't working right I can probably tinker and improve it. It's been really nice. If you haven't tried Linux desktops in awhile give Bazzite a whirl: it's a Fedora customized for gaming. Even if you don't game it's an easy way to get a very functional Linux desktop in no time at all.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Grok 4.5"

NelsonMinar — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 23:45:08 +0000

Grok is many things but it is not "neutral". https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/06/25/ai-models-valu...

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Grok 4.5"

NelsonMinar — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 23:16:31 +0000

People give them money because of the moral stance. They are either actively fine with the CSAM or just don't care.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

NelsonMinar — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:44:42 +0000

The premise of this statement is wrong.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

NelsonMinar — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 06:34:46 +0000

I realize as a Californian we may not count as "American" in this particular zeitgeist stereotype. But FWIW we have a firework ban in Nevada County that is widely respected. There are very few violations and the law is actively enforced.

The difference is we are in a no-joke dangerous fire situation and everyone recognizes it. Most people know better than to set off incendiary explosives in a forest. Anyone who shot off illegal fireworks would immediately be shamed and censured by their neighbors. I guess it's a form of commune-ism.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration (2025)"

NelsonMinar — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 09:23:22 +0000

numerous vulnerabilities in secure boot deployment over many years. e.g. https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/09/secure-boot-neuteri...

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration (2025)"

NelsonMinar — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:13:11 +0000

I'm surprised more people aren't freaking out about this. It seems likely a whole lot of Linux machines are going to fail to reboot in the next few months. The problem affects VMs too. I was grateful Proxmox put a little warning in its hypervisor GUI with a button to press to fix the BIOS of its VMs.

Secure Boot has been deeply broken for years, not providing meaningful security on most consumer machines.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "FMAG: A single-instruction GPU virtual machine and toolchain"

NelsonMinar — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:33:09 +0000

I love stuff like this. But if it's serious as a thing you might use, would be nice to see some example programs and evaluation of how well they work. Also a test suite.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Who's the smartest corvid?"

NelsonMinar — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:30:15 +0000

If you like the idea of smart corvids, Adrian Tchaikovsky's scifi novel "The Children of Memory" is a fun read.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60850767-children-of-...

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Backrest – a web UI and orchestrator for restic backup"

NelsonMinar — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:08:13 +0000

Backrest is so good as a frontend to Restic I stopped looking for anything better. Is there anything better now?

New comment by NelsonMinar in "What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix? (2014)"

NelsonMinar — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:07:03 +0000

We once deleted the lost+found folder on an old Unix system* by accident. Things went very badly the next time the system rebooted, fsck did not handle it at all well.

* Probably DEC Ultrix 2.2, a BSD 4.2 derivative.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography"

NelsonMinar — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:02:12 +0000

Summary from the study author: https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2026/06/02/the-quiet-numbers-st...

PDF of article (page 62) https://cdn.coverstand.com/61061/865273/2c88ea662e2b57478723...

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot"

NelsonMinar — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:23:59 +0000

This is the classic Terry Moore 3 minute video. It boils down to "tie a square knot". It changed my life too!

I love this video because it's both the perfect TED video and the perfect parody of a TED video.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "RISC-V Router"

NelsonMinar — Thu, 14 May 2026 21:44:46 +0000

Is Start9 a well known company? The page by itself seems indistinguishable from a scam, but maybe they have a reputation that justifies their asking for $250,000?

New comment by NelsonMinar in "GeoJSON"

NelsonMinar — Fri, 08 May 2026 17:59:36 +0000

I like TopoJSON and have used it in projects. But it's weird to set it up as opposition to GeoJSON. It's a complement. GeoJSON is a general data format meant to replace uses of ESRI Shapefiles and other complex formats. TopoJSON is more of a solution for a particular application need.

Is there much work developing or using TopoJSON these days? I haven't seen much about it in a few years.

New comment by NelsonMinar in "Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables"

NelsonMinar — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:40:15 +0000

This reminds me ChromeOS has some USB-C cable identification superpowers: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1pyojjd/comme...

Not sure if it's using the same thing this MacOS thing is doing. In the link the author explains that the cable e-Marker contains a "Discover Identity" message that you can read and display in ChromeOS. Most ordinary Windows hardware can't read it because of BIOS limitations, but Chromebooks can. I'm guessing Macs can too.