Hacker News: charlietran

New comment by charlietran in "Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS"

charlietran — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:00:54 +0000

Thank you for sharing, I appreciate the emphasis on local speed and privacy. As a current user of Hex (https://github.com/kitlangton/Hex), which has similar goals, what are your thoughts on how they compare?

New comment by charlietran in "Why doesn't Apple make a standalone Touch ID?"

charlietran — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 02:34:10 +0000

I did this recently, though on a much lower budget. You don’t need to buy a new $150 magic keyboard or a 3d printer.

1. Buy an old A2449 keyboard, ideally one with broken keys or battery but working touch ID. I got mine for $45 shipped. Recent listing example: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=magic+keyboard+a2449&_s...

2. Pry it apart as described in the article (really, there is so much glue) and then use some spare Legos to make an enclosure like this person: https://grepjason.sh/2022/standalone-touch-id-part-2

The standalone Touch ID key button is just under the size of 2x2x1 Lego. I integrated mine into a space diorama set for better vibes: https://imgur.com/a/Im7t9Xb

New comment by charlietran in "Scaffold Level Editor"

charlietran — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 21:35:17 +0000

Excellent article, and I appreciate how you gave an overview of solutions that didn't make sense for you but were otherwise important to know about.

Could you expand on how your pathfinding works for both ground-based and flying enemies? I've been trying to wrap my head around how to handle this on my own game, and trying not to invent a wholly separate solution for enemies than can avoid obstacles vertically.

New comment by charlietran in "Crokinole"

charlietran — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 22:21:58 +0000

This is true, I jammed the game out rather quickly but next thing I’d try is a hold-for-power control scheme (like the interactive demos in the article)

New comment by charlietran in "Crokinole"

charlietran — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 19:06:26 +0000

That's great feedback, thank you. I built a rudimentary control scheme on top of the minimal Crisp library and will take a look into doing a little more with it.

New comment by charlietran in "Crokinole"

charlietran — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 18:31:15 +0000

I love IRL Crokinole so much that I made a single-player tower-defense-ish version of it for the browser: https://games.charlietran.com/crokunolu/

Made it with the Crisp game library which I highly recommend for quickly making charming little 2D games: https://github.com/abagames/crisp-game-lib

New comment by charlietran in "Do not try to be the smartest in the room; try to be the kindest"

charlietran — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 16:09:14 +0000

from the context in the article, this seems to be the Spanish equivalent of “jack of all trades, master of none”

New comment by charlietran in "Server-Sent Events: an alternative to WebSockets"

charlietran — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 22:48:13 +0000

The workaround/hack is to send your token via the "Sec-WebSocket-Protocol" header, which is the one header you're allowed to set in browser when opening a connection. The catch is that your WebSocket server needs to echo this back on a successful connection.

New comment by charlietran in "Show HN: I made an app to draw stickers for iMessage, Discord, and Slack"

charlietran — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 21:49:43 +0000

This is excellent! There used to be a similar app called "Sticky AI", but the company abandoned it after a while and the backend for the app shut down. This works great and has no external dependencies.

New comment by charlietran in "Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M"

charlietran — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 22:01:30 +0000

(disclosure: I work on the backend at Parsec)

For those who don't know either company: Unity is a popular 2D/3D commercial game engine, and Parsec is a low-latency remote desktop tool that initially focused on gaming, but pivoted to an enterprise product for remote creative teams during the pandemic.

Unity to acquire Parsec for $320M

charlietran — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 21:14:01 +0000

Article URL: https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2021/Unity-Enters-Into-Agreement-to-Acquire-Parsec/default.aspx

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28134653

Points: 198

# Comments: 88

New comment by charlietran in "Bypass Paywalls Clean for Chrome/Firefox"

charlietran — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 19:38:24 +0000

How is this related to the existing bypass-paywalls extensions from https://github.com/iamadamdev?

How WeWork Went from Unstoppable Unicorn to Postponing Its IPO

charlietran — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 16:09:40 +0000

Article URL: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/what-happened-at-we-why-wework-postponed-its-ipo.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21116883

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by charlietran in "Ask HN: Best scifi of 2017? (Vernor Vinge/Larry Niven style)"

charlietran — Sat, 13 Jan 2018 06:56:42 +0000

Ninefox Gambit / Raven Strategem were great, my favorite military sci-fi since Old Man's War.

New comment by charlietran in "Ask HN: What are some sabbatical programs for working software engineers?"

charlietran — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 21:53:25 +0000

recurse center anecdote: one of the engineers on our team did a 8 week sabbatical there to dabble in erlang and machine learning. they had a fantastic experience and enthusiastically recommended it to everyone else.

New comment by charlietran in "SFO near miss might have triggered aviation disaster"

charlietran — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 05:03:07 +0000

There's an mp3 of the radio chatter here:

https://forums.liveatc.net/atcaviation-audio-clips/7-july-ks...

> Audio from the air traffic controller communication archived by a user on LiveATC.net and reviewed by this newspaper organization showed how a the confused Air Canada pilot asks if he’s clear to land on 28R because he sees lights on the runway.

> “There’s no one on 28R but you,” the air controller responds.

> An unidentified voice, presumably another pilot, then chimes in: “Where’s this guy going. He’s on the taxiway.”

> The air controller quickly tells the Air Canada pilot to “go around.” telling the pilot “it looks like you were lined up for Charlie (Taxiway C) there.”

> A United Airlines pilot radios in: “United One, Air Canada flew directly over us.”

> “Yeah, I saw that guys,” the control tower responds.

Etsy CEO steps down, 8% of workforce to be cut

charlietran — Tue, 02 May 2017 20:57:47 +0000

Article URL: http://www.businessinsider.com/etsy-ceo-stepping-down-earnings-layoffs-2017-5

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14250505

Points: 26

# Comments: 1

New comment by charlietran in "Ask HN: Online Security Tips for Newbie Freedom Activists?"

charlietran — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 00:01:51 +0000

Thank you so much for this list, it's more concise and useful than any corporate security lecture I've ever received! Some questions:

> 10. Install a password management application that doesn't store your secrets in the cloud.

Great recommendation, but how do you handle syncing passwords between your computer and phone?

> 2. Enable "code-generating" or "authenticator app" 2FA on all your accounts, particularly email (this is called "TOTP").

Do you recommend using the TOTP feature of 1Password, or would you consider storing your password / TOTP together a loss of the "2nd Factor"?

New comment by charlietran in "Pooper"

charlietran — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 22:24:20 +0000

Satire: http://www.fastcompany.com/3062224/gigged/this-uber-for-dog-...

New comment by charlietran in "How We Do Spikes"

charlietran — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 14:31:33 +0000

Great article! What did you end up replacing the asset pipeline with?