Hacker News: chaps

New comment by chaps in "TIL: You can make HTTP requests without curl using Bash /dev/TCP"

chaps — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:13:57 +0000

Eh, looking around, I think you're thinking of Debian. They re-enabled it by-default back in 2009. So, sure, I guess. But if you're dealing with an OS that's from 2009 these days, whether /dev/tcp is enabled in bash or not isn't exactly relevant anymore. And I've seen enough broken python installs (even with stdlib) to put my faith in /dev/tcp working in bash :)

New comment by chaps in "TIL: You can make HTTP requests without curl using Bash /dev/TCP"

chaps — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 20:46:48 +0000

Once had a coworker tell me to never to use this because "you never know when the customer doesn't have bash installed; use python instead" even though our contract required that the customer had bash. I'm still laughing at that.

New comment by chaps in "Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases"

chaps — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 23:46:23 +0000

An important thing you should recognize: the judicial system is painfully nontransparent in such a way that even figuring this sort of thing takes an extensive amount of time and is often even impossible. I've personally gone down a similar route (did some journalism for a bit) by trying to understand how shotspotter is used in prosecution, many of which resulted in false arrests and many, many years of life lost across all the people arrested falsely from it.

If you would like to begin trying to answer these, I recommend starting with submitting some FOIAs. Considering your stance seems to be that you won't believe what others are telling you -- I promise you that you'll be surprised.

New comment by chaps in "Doing something that’s never been done before (2025)"

chaps — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 23:06:50 +0000

Throwing yourself at something that's never been done is fun.

But know what's really fun? Taking something that's been done before, has been forgotten about, and can be iterated on with your own spirit. There's so much exploration to be done.

New comment by chaps in "Massachusetts bans sale of precise location data in new privacy rights bill"

chaps — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:23:29 +0000

Are you asking for articles that show how connected car data is being sold left and right?

New comment by chaps in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

chaps — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 20:41:42 +0000

Never let your memes be dreams nor your dreams be memes.

New comment by chaps in "SQLite is all you need for durable workflows"

chaps — Fri, 29 May 2026 19:40:40 +0000

The moment my JSON has any sort of depth and I need to write a parser for it and potentially account for unspecified behavior. JSON's nice when it's nice, but it's terrible when it's terrible. It's 100x easier to write SQL than writing jq and... dear god if I have to use grep -A or -B, I'm doing something wrong. Constraints are actually a good thing!

The underlying database isn't the most important thing. Just use SQL. Its namespacing (eg, through CTEs) is good and you're more likely to have colleagues who know SQL compared to jq.

New comment by chaps in "Legislation Killed Would Have Effectively Blocked Police LPR, Including Flock"

chaps — Fri, 29 May 2026 00:53:21 +0000

For folks wanting to answer this question, please ask yourself:

Which laws?

Where were the cameras installed?

Are the fines disproportionate?

Are subpoenas necessary to access footage/data? If so/not, who's accessed it?

Are there ways to FOIA the data to answer these questions?

New comment by chaps in "The worst job interview I ever had"

chaps — Tue, 26 May 2026 22:52:32 +0000

Sure, but there are some jobs that are so bad that this advice readily applies to. The sort of job that takes you away from your life, family and friends in a way not entirely unlike poverty does. It's good to recognize whether working somewhere will turn into this because it's... hell... working at those places.

New comment by chaps in "Shunning AI is the human choice"

chaps — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:59:56 +0000

Bows and arrows are still widely used for hunting all over the world. I was able do freelance work on a relatively low income because of access to ~150lbs of deer meat that came from multiple bow-hunted deer.

New comment by chaps in "The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers"

chaps — Mon, 18 May 2026 20:21:10 +0000

Presumably it's a system that can be viewed from a phone or from dispatch remotely right? All they'd have to do is share the credentials and that's that.

New comment by chaps in "Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image"

chaps — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:12:06 +0000

A weird tradeoff but an increasingly important tradeoff to keep in mind nonetheless. Like I said, updating immediately isn't a perfect answer. But neither is waiting. I hope you're having this discussion, at least.

New comment by chaps in "SDL Now Supports DOS"

chaps — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:26:15 +0000

Worked at an exchange in 2007/2008 and... we had systems still running from the 80s. Mostly tape audit stuff.

New comment by chaps in "SDL Now Supports DOS"

chaps — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:14:12 +0000

That honestly sounds amazing. Imagine booting into something like a grub menu that's just a list of classic games.

New comment by chaps in "Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image"

chaps — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:35:00 +0000

No, this is not always the case. Regulated industries pin their package versions and store those versions for pulling.

New comment by chaps in "Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image"

chaps — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:39:36 +0000

Friend, considering the supply chain attacks going on these days, automatically updating everything, immediately, probably isn't the perfect move either.

New comment by chaps in "Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image"

chaps — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:18:29 +0000

Your question feels insane to me for production environments. Why aren't you doing a version cutoff of your packages and either pulling them from some network/local cache or baking them into your images?

New comment by chaps in "Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM"

chaps — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:33:19 +0000

Sure, but you're just shifting that cost elsewhere. Not defending the no-code services (they're extremely predatory), just that it's not as simple as cost-vs-no-cost.

New comment by chaps in "Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM"

chaps — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:16:48 +0000

These days I think airtable and other "no code" systems fit this bill well.

New comment by chaps in "Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM"

chaps — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:24:14 +0000

On the flip side, every single MSSQL instance that I've encountered has been legacy. For at least five years.