Hacker News: charlieboardman

New comment by charlieboardman in "The paper computer"

charlieboardman — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:18:42 +0000

Fair enough, I actually have been thinking about this topic lately since I have to generate and print and fill out and sign a lot of paper vouchers in my job. I would prefer having a dedicated scanner to just throw them into in a stack with a server/cron job/bash script always watching for new incoming documents rather than a more complex camera setup but yeah something like a camera over your shoulder on your desk could pick up documents too

New comment by charlieboardman in "The paper computer"

charlieboardman — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 04:23:16 +0000

Receive email, render page with the email and a reply section and a unique ID, print it out physically

Human picks up all the sheets out of the printer, writes out replies with pen

Human puts the stack of answered email sheets in a multi-page scanner

Scanner physically scans them, agent transcribes them and matches them back to the incoming emails via the unique ID on each sheet, sends replies

You could adjust this flow for anything where human input is just one part of a larger sequence: just add print -> write -> scan into your flow where you'd normally have a human type. It's kind of a rebirth of faxing

New comment by charlieboardman in "Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why"

charlieboardman — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:52:56 +0000

If they have stock outlook they are doing normal networking and are connected to the normal internet over some deep-space antenna setup. So why not just use Debian and gmail in the browser if you want easy? The ISS uses Debian. I can't believe it's too hard to get astronauts to open Firefox

New comment by charlieboardman in "Study: 'Security Fatigue' May Weaken Digital Defenses"

charlieboardman — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:58:21 +0000

My Steam password is one short weird phrase that I can remember. I haven't changed it since high school, ~15 years ago. Never had any security issues.

The modern landscape is frustrating because that setup actually works. Passwords, from a technical perspective, are actually great and are are bulletproof as long as they don't leak. No 2FA required. The entire issue is data leaks and phishing.

New comment by charlieboardman in "Every V4 UUID"

charlieboardman — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 19:16:26 +0000

They are not, 100% strictly speaking, “ensured”. But they are 128bit numbers, so you have realistically no chance of generating a uuid that someone else has already. Age-of-the-universe type chances of duplicating one.

New comment by charlieboardman in "NewPipe on Linux, Using Android_translation_layer"

charlieboardman — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 20:54:47 +0000

I have been hoping for compatibility layer + application flatpaks for a while so it’s nice to see someone doing it. My dream is to have a bunch of flatpaks for the Microsoft office suite

New comment by charlieboardman in "Limewash (2005) [pdf]"

charlieboardman — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 06:23:49 +0000

I actually have a lot of firsthand experience with limewash on stucco. I don’t know if our lime guy is just screwing it up, but I have been very unimpressed. The claims of vibrancy and longevity just don’t pan out in my experience. A house project I worked on last year used limewash and it’s already falling off and fading. It may have been the contractors not applying it properly, but our lime guy himself said the issue was applying to a wall that the sun was hitting, so it dried too fast. It seems like a very fragile process to get everything right, which makes it a huge pain to use.

New comment by charlieboardman in "Is this Duplo train track under too much tension?"

charlieboardman — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 18:31:50 +0000

To expand on the angles of a polygon idea. It looks like each of these tracks has about a 30 degree bend. So you should have 360/30 = 12 more right-handed than left-handed tracks, or vice versa. It takes some counting, but you could probably get pretty quick at going around the track and adding or subtracting 1. If you end at 12, perfect. Your distance from 12 is an estimator for tension.