Hacker News: TheSmiddy

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Open source and self hostable/private file converter"

TheSmiddy — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 04:46:31 +0000

they may have updated the website since the numerous comments here but the about section acknowledges all the libraries they use

Libraries

A big thanks to FFmpeg (audio, video), libvips (images) and Pandoc (documents) for maintaining such excellent libraries for so many years. VERT relies on them to provide you with your conversions.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Show HN: Proxmox VE Helper Scripts"

TheSmiddy — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:37:33 +0000

> I don't see any glue scripts to get VMs talking to each other

I'm confused by what you mean here? Don't they just use the network like any other computer?

I haven't had to do any special configuration to get my VMs to talk to each other.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?"

TheSmiddy — Wed, 08 May 2024 03:29:19 +0000

it works in the terminal on a headless server

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Vultr is now claiming full perpetual commercial rights over all hosted content"

TheSmiddy — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 11:09:59 +0000

How so? They're in the same ballpark as digital ocean and linode who would be their primary competitors, each of which are roughly a 3rd of the cost of AWS/GC/Azure.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Most CO2 emissions were in the last 30 years"

TheSmiddy — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 23:51:56 +0000

The population right now is 4x what it was 100 years ago which itself was 2x what it was 100 years before that. so even if our per capita emissions haven't grown (they have, drastically) the graph of total emissions would still be stacked towards the present.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Windows Subsystem for Linux 2.0 release"

TheSmiddy — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 23:50:40 +0000

I also had this same issue and found this on the official microsoft blog which also contains info on how to actually enable the new features.

wsl --update; wsl --update --pre-release

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-subsystem...

EDIT: you also need to be on the latest windows insider build to actually take advantage of the experimental features.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Trademark “X” for social media owned by Meta"

TheSmiddy — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 00:05:06 +0000

Ford owns several single letter trademarks for the purpose of selling cars. This doesn't prevent people from using the letters for other purposes.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Lazydocker: a lazier way to manage everything Docker"

TheSmiddy — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 23:58:20 +0000

The elevator pitch does a pretty good job of explaining the use case imo.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "The Drivers Cooperative: New York’s driver-owned ride-hailing app"

TheSmiddy — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 04:43:54 +0000

It's a perfectly fine objective if you trust your drivers to meet a minimum standard of a good job. It won't work in an adversarial system like Uber where drivers are just numbers but if the drivers are also invested in the success of the platform it's fine.

Given that drivers are driving the shorted distance/time route at the speed limit, treating customers with respect, arriving on time to scheduled pickups, etc. The next thing to focus on is scheduling/filling orders such that drive time is maximised.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "How fast can European steelmakers decarbonise?"

TheSmiddy — Fri, 12 May 2023 22:06:16 +0000

China is rapidly decarbonising their transport, faster than any other country.

They also produce the vast majority of the world's solar panels.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Tesla cancels Model S and Model X deliveries in Australia and other RHD markets"

TheSmiddy — Fri, 12 May 2023 13:28:06 +0000

Yeah I am joking about the yearning as it's obviously not a thing people think or care about. The hallway shuffle happens while walking down a hallway when someone is coming at you so you move to the left to let them pass but they move to their right (your left) and then you do that stupid little dance as you both swap sides at the same time two or three times before you laugh and move past each other. In countries where people drive on the right this happens far less frequently, almost everybody consistently moves to the right and it's not an issue.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Tesla cancels Model S and Model X deliveries in Australia and other RHD markets"

TheSmiddy — Fri, 12 May 2023 12:05:29 +0000

An an Australian who's travelled a little I can tell you that in their hearts of hearts people yearn to drive on the right. In no other country do I find myself doing the hallway shuffle more than this one. If we drove on the right that would at least eliminate the conflict between what people want to do and what the rules say we should.

I don't think it will happen anywhere major without buy in from a few countries at once. Australia might swap if Japan ever decides to swap as they currently do supply a large number of our vehicles. Having said that I see a pretty rapid switch over to Chinese cars over the next 10-15 years as they leapfrog Japan in regards to EV powertrains so we might be willing to switch independent of that to gain access to newer models faster.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought"

TheSmiddy — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 10:20:04 +0000

https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought"

TheSmiddy — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 01:21:36 +0000

The most reliable grids in the world are made up of a large number of small generators rather than a single source which when taken down takes down the entire grid.

If you were to start a new city disconnected from the rest of society then a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and batteries is the cheapest and most reliable system to power that city.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "What does Google say about “last day of march 2022”"

TheSmiddy — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 04:34:51 +0000

Perhaps Google has begun practicing Last Thursdayism

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism

New comment by TheSmiddy in "I Reached $4k/Mo. But How Many Great Startup Ideas Have Died?"

TheSmiddy — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 07:04:33 +0000

>> If you’re doing a micro-startup, you need valuable tools and insight today. You don’t care about 12 months from now. You certainly don’t care about $99 twelve months from now…

Exactly, the value is in the present, not in the future. This is so clearly obvious that anybody purchasing it knows that there's no value exchanged for the recurring fee and thus the recurring fee looks like a shady cash grab and is more likely to result in less overall sales.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Tell HN: Make sure to configure DKIM/SPF with Fastmail"

TheSmiddy — Sun, 27 Mar 2022 22:22:06 +0000

DKIM has been around for close to 2 decades now and fastmail has been rolling out out by default since 2009 [1]. This change only affects fastmail users who manage their own DNS rather than letting fastmail manage it and either set it up a very long time ago or chose not to implement all the recommended settings.

Gmails changes are not deliberately affecting fastmail at all.

[1] https://fastmail.blog/historical/all-outbound-email-now-bein...

New comment by TheSmiddy in "A new wave of Linux applications"

TheSmiddy — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 22:20:49 +0000

It has bluetooth support as well! I use the MX master but it's the same system. There's a button on the bottom to switch between up to 3 devices.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Facebook Pay"

TheSmiddy — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 06:51:16 +0000

In Australia the system is called Osko and we link our mobile phone numbers or email address to it.

New comment by TheSmiddy in "Can I have a smaller Prometheus"

TheSmiddy — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 00:00:34 +0000

vultr lets you install custom ISOs, can also pxeboot.