Hacker News: cjm42

New comment by cjm42 in "A road to Lisp: Why Lisp"

cjm42 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:58:19 +0000
This is the classic example of why you should always set the foreground color when changing the background color. Otherwise you end up with blocks that are black-on-black. It probably works fine if your browser is in dark mode.
A workaround is to open one of the code elements in the browser's debugger and add color: white to the :not(pre) > code style.


New comment by cjm42 in "Show HN: Echo, an iOS SSH+mosh client built on Ghostty"
cjm42 — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:52:55 +0000

Does it allow truly persistent mosh connections?  I can't remember which iOS client it was, but I've used one which forgot I was connected if I left the app for long enough.  The mosh process was still running on the server, but my iPad had forgotten how to talk to it.



New comment by cjm42 in "JetKVM – Control any computer remotely"
cjm42 — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:59:55 +0000

I believe the primary use-case for devices like this is debugging "Why isn't this server rebooting?" without driving to the datacenter.  Good luck figuring that out with AnyDesk or SSH.



New comment by cjm42 in "Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?"
cjm42 — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:56:05 +0000

I've had decent results with html-pdf-chrome[0], which automates printing to PDF from Chromium or Chrome.
[0] https://github.com/westy92/html-pdf-chrome/



New comment by cjm42 in "The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source"
cjm42 — Mon, 19 May 2025 21:03:00 +0000

The most reliable fix is to get Windows to use UTC for the hardware clock, which is usually the default on Linux.  (It's more reliable because it means the hardware clock doesn't need to be adjusted when DST begins or ends, so there's no need for the OSs to cooperate on that.)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_time#UTC_in_Microsof...



New comment by cjm42 in "System Intiative is generally available"
cjm42 — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 17:04:13 +0000

Not to me.  It says "System Initiative is an Intuitive, Powerful, and Collaborative replacement for Infrastructure as Code" but I still don't understand what it does or why I would want to use it.



New comment by cjm42 in "Purism Domain Puri.sm Suspended?"
cjm42 — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 21:53:34 +0000

https://purismspc.com (the backup domain they registered after the 2018 outage) is sort of working.  It responds, but links all go to puri.sm so they don't work, stylesheets don't load, etc.



New comment by cjm42 in "Base64 Encoding, Explained"
cjm42 — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 19:25:47 +0000

He meant approximately half a bit.  Base64 uses 64 characters, which means 6 bits per character.  50 characters gives you about 5.64 bits per character.  Unlike Base64's 3-bytes-equals-4-characters, that never comes out evenly.



New comment by cjm42 in "Raku: A language for gremlins"
cjm42 — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 21:53:24 +0000

Let's face it, the Perl 5/PCRE regex syntax is atrocious.  The only reason it exists is that (? was a syntax error in earlier regex syntaxes, so it could be redefined to mean anything.
Raku is an attempt to design a sane regular expression language from first principles, now that we know what we want them to be able to express.  The alternative is being stuck with (?:this|(?>or that)) for the next 30 years.



New comment by cjm42 in "Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?"
cjm42 — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 16:58:24 +0000

I made a silverware holder custom-fit to my silverware.
I found a half-inch thick HDPE cutting board at a restaurant supply store, cut it to fit my drawer, then drilled holes in it and inserted short wooden dowels to hold the stacks of silverware in place.  To position the dowels, I wrapped a nail in tape to match the diameter of the dowels, then placed my silverware on the board, slid the nail up next to it, and gave it a tap to mark the board where the holes needed to be drilled.
It worked really well and was quite easy to do.  I highly recommend it.



New comment by cjm42 in "SUSE is forking RHEL"
cjm42 — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 14:20:10 +0000

redhat-release is a symlink to /etc/centos-release:
  $ cat /etc/redhat-release 
  CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 (Core)




New comment by cjm42 in "Joplin – An open-source note taking and to-do application with synchronisation"
cjm42 — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 16:11:09 +0000

I've been using Joplin for a while now, syncing via Nextcloud.
One tip: I set up a cronjob to export into a Git repository so I have a complete history.  The core of the script is:
  joplin sync
  joplin export --format=raw "$tmpdir"
  # Rsync that directory to the repository
  # This deletes files that no longer exist in the current export.
  /usr/bin/rsync -a --quiet --delete --exclude=.git "$tmpdir/" "./"
  /usr/bin/git add -A




New comment by cjm42 in "One decade later, GNOME still sucks"
cjm42 — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 21:31:29 +0000

MATE is a GNOME 2 fork created to continue its development without the radical turn of GNOME 3.
Cinnamon is actually a GNOME 3 fork created to turn it back into a more traditional desktop environment.
XFCE is not a fork of any version of GNOME, although it does have a UI similar to GNOME 2 and is based on GTK.
Personally, I switched to XFCE back when GNOME 3 came out, and have been happy with it.



New comment by cjm42 in "Unicode Roman Numerals and Screen Readers"
cjm42 — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 19:30:57 +0000

My browser can't even read that.  It renders as "In Hamlet, Act [2163], Scene [2168]..." (where [2163] means a small box with those 4 digits).  What font do I need to install to be able to read that as "In Hamlet, Act IV, Scene IX..."?  (I'm using Firefox on Arch Linux.)



New comment by cjm42 in "Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?"
cjm42 — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 21:16:28 +0000

Just for fun, I tried again today with a new chat:
Q: Who was the first US president whose surname begins with "R"?
A: The first US president whose surname begins with the letter "R" was John Quincy Adams.
Q: Adams does not begin with "R"
A: I apologize for the mistake. The first US president whose surname begins with the letter "R" was Rutherford B. Hayes.
Q: Hayes does not begin with "R"
A: My apologies for the mistake, the first US president whose surname begins with the letter "R" was James A. Garfield.
Q: Garfield does not begin with "R"
A: I apologize for the error. The first US president whose surname begins with the letter "R" was Richard Nixon.
Q: Nixon does not begin with "R"
A: I apologize for the mistake. The first US president whose surname begins with the letter "R" was George Washington.
Q: Washington does not begin with "R"
A: I apologize for the mistake. The first US president whose surname begins with the letter "R" was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Q: Wasn't Theodore Roosevelt president before FDR?
A: Yes, you are correct. Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. He was the first US president whose surname begins with the letter "R." Thank you for pointing out the error in my previous answer.
So at least it's capable of parroting the correct answer after you deliver it. :-)



New comment by cjm42 in "Ask HN: Whatever Happened To Freelancing?"
cjm42 — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 15:54:34 +0000

It is:
Contractors' Handbook: The Expert Guide for UK Contractors and Freelancers (3rd Edition; 13 Nov. 2017)
by Dave Chaplin (ISBN-10: ‎1527216039; ISBN-13: 978-1527216037)



New comment by cjm42 in "Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?"
cjm42 — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 22:50:20 +0000

The problem is that if you don't already know the answer, it's hard to tell the difference between ChatGPT giving you the correct information and ChatGPT authoritatively spouting the wrong information.
Here's a chat I had today with ChatGPT:
Q: Who was the first US president with a last name starting with R?
A: Rutherford B. Hayes was the first US president with a last name starting with "R."
Q: no, a surname starting with R
A: Rutherford B. Hayes was the first U.S. President with a surname starting with "R."
Q: no, Rutherford is his first name
A: The first US president with a surname starting with "R" was Richard Nixon.
Q: no, Richard is his first name
A: The first U.S. President with a surname starting with "R" was James A. Garfield.
Here it's obvious ChatGPT is spouting nonsense, but in other cases it may not be.



New comment by cjm42 in "Ask HN: Which Linux terminal emulator do you prefer and why?"
cjm42 — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 21:49:16 +0000

xfce4-terminal, because I switched to Xfce when GNOME went on their "reinvent the UI" trek.  I was happy with the UI I already had, thanks very much.



New comment by cjm42 in "Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?"
cjm42 — Wed, 25 May 2022 20:23:38 +0000

The Babylon 5 space combat game that was cancelled late in development.  Think Wing Commander, but in the Babylon 5 universe as a Starfury pilot.
https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Babylon_5:_Into_the_Fire_(G...



New comment by cjm42 in "US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent"
cjm42 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 19:05:25 +0000

The bill would eliminate Daylight Time and redefine Eastern Standard Time etc. to be the same offset they currently are during daylight time.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/623...