Hacker News: SoleilAbsolu

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway"

SoleilAbsolu — Wed, 27 May 2026 23:24:40 +0000

My eyes first Spoonerized the title to "Hostporn, selfhosted porn gateway". I didn't get a full night's sleep last night...

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "All of human cooking compressed into 2 megabytes"

SoleilAbsolu — Wed, 27 May 2026 18:45:05 +0000

I was gonna post the same, as a lifelong cook (and eater!) Samin Nosrat's book/show was essential for giving me the confidence to improvise in the kitchen while retaining authenticity to regional cuisines.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Native Instruments Is Bought Out"

SoleilAbsolu — Tue, 12 May 2026 00:52:08 +0000

Hopefully this is good news...NI has been pretty moribund as a creative DSP force after the original owners sold...yes there are Massive X and Abysynth 6 but they've all but pulled the plug on Reaktor (modular audio DSP platform which founders used to prototype almost all their products).

TBH if InMusic can't share a clear roadmap for cutting 2+ decades of tech debt and tiny aliased fonts all over the place I don't hold much hope. I've had good luck with lower-end Akai and Numark gear. Recently Reason Studios (originally created by Propellerheads) is on the upswing since being bought by LANDR a few months ago so I am hopeful that iconic music brands can get into the right hands.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "The map that keeps Burning Man honest"

SoleilAbsolu — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:24:07 +0000

Hmm, group mindset...or moop grindset? Either way great work to leave no trace!

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]"

SoleilAbsolu — Tue, 05 May 2026 17:18:15 +0000

I still have the Forrest Mims III Radio Shack "555 Engineer's Mini-Notebook" somewhere in my basement. And rumor has it that Sammy Hagar can't drive 555 because his car just isn't fast enough!

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Don't Stop Me from Pasting Passwords"

SoleilAbsolu — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 02:31:15 +0000

Thanks for "Helping us understand" via Columbo's timeless wisdom. ;-)

I'm in charge of IT for a 120 person org, anything that's a barrier to copying and pasting passwords just encourages simple password re-use, and the dreaded "laptop festooned with password Post-Its".

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico"

SoleilAbsolu — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:39:04 +0000

Looking through the GitHub and the AudioScienceReview link - this appears to be specifically about firmware features. You'd need to ensure that hardware inputs on device have input impedance of at least 250Kohms, probably closer to 1Megohm to prevent loading and signal loss if plugging guitar right in. I'd also assume (didn't see confirmation) that I/O is at line level, which is significantly higher than instrument (passive guitar) level, but this device can clearly add/adjust gain along the way. If you use active pickups with a built-in preamp like EMGs, it would probably work just fine.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Orinoco: Young Generation Garbage Collection"

SoleilAbsolu — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 04:02:43 +0000

Makes me think of Enya's Orinoco Flow...Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrk4X9ACtw

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors"

SoleilAbsolu — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:44:17 +0000

We have a double-boiler Profitec, but I imagine the Go is just as good for its price point. My wife is an espresso fiend, and with this machine it's the first time in our decades together that we can truly make cafe-quality espresso at home. Probably goes without saying, but: be sure to invest in a high-quality burr grinder, makes as big a diff as the espresso machine itself.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "The PowerShell-Haters Handbook"

SoleilAbsolu — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:56:09 +0000

Also - regarding linked article's statement "PowerShell joins MSI files as another type that cannot be run as an administrator" - I have always just started a PowerShell/Terminal app as administrator which has more or less the same effect, though of course everything in that session is run with elevated permissions.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Musicians are manufacturing sold-out shows"

SoleilAbsolu — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:50:00 +0000

Did he ever book shows as Chris Gaines (his alt-rock alter ego) in that timeframe?

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Who Is Blake Whiting?"

SoleilAbsolu — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:53:51 +0000

Let's commission Alan Smithee to make the documentary! ;-)

I've definitely noticed a huge increase in tangential slop when I've made the mistake of searching for books on Amazon in the last year.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "What's the Point of Hardbacks?"

SoleilAbsolu — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 19:42:00 +0000

I experience the same, I feel like it has something to do with the content of a book having a permanent spatial configuration.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Rare concert recordings are landing on the Internet Archive"

SoleilAbsolu — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:32:38 +0000

Wow, this is very cool, I have been looking for the Phish show at Lounge Ax from November 1990 (opening for Alex Chilton of Big Star) for ages. It was first time I saw them live, and next time they came around they graduated from a 300 person club to a 3000 person ballroom!

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

SoleilAbsolu — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 19:31:18 +0000

Me too, as soon as I saw this I put on my Anker Soundcore noise-cancelling earbuds and fired up my AAS Multiphonics CV-3 software synthesizer. Sweeping a sine oscillator, there was zero difference in perceived volume in the 750-780 Hz range.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "John Coltrane Illustrates the Mathematics of Jazz"

SoleilAbsolu — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:47:09 +0000

Actually appears to be 2 concentric whole-tone rings, not chromatic.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Users say Adobe Creative Cloud rewrote hosts file to detect installed app"

SoleilAbsolu — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 23:34:52 +0000

A couple of other user-hostile Adobe practices I've encountered:

- About 5 years ago I pretty much shat a brick as the person in charge of IT at a healthcare org when I discovered that by default Creative Cloud stored copies of any documents edited within an Adobe cloud account - with no opt-in, and the only way to override on Windows was with a registry hack that IIRC we couldn't automate via Group Policy. Basically "HIPAA Breach As A Service"

- If you want to free yourself from the tyranny of Adobe products and subscriptions, good on you, but: be sure (on Windows at least several years ago) to not uninstall from "Windows Add & Remove Programs"...go through the Adobe un/installers...if you don't you can still remove the apps but they phoned home and we got charged until I re-installed the programs and used the Adobe uninstallers.

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "A Message from the Ruby Central Board"

SoleilAbsolu — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:05:18 +0000

MINASWAN...

WTFIDHHSAFA???

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "Explore the Hidden World of Sand"

SoleilAbsolu — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:13:08 +0000

This was part of the plot of an Elementary (modern-day Sherlock Holmes in NYC with Jonny Lee Miller & Lucy Liu) episode called Sand Trap.

https://cbselementary.fandom.com/wiki/Sand_Trap#Plot

New comment by SoleilAbsolu in "A Chess Playing Machine – Shannon (1950) [pdf]"

SoleilAbsolu — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:23:06 +0000

I will have to check that out! I also recommend reading pretty much anything by Richard Hamming, who worked closely with Shannon at Bell Labs, "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" is especially good.