Hacker News: cricalix

New comment by cricalix in "Is PHP Running on Your ColdFusion Server? How to Check, and Remove It"

cricalix — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 06:15:45 +0000

Frontpage on Linux, backed by file storage on Netware. That was hell to support (student home pages).

New comment by cricalix in "The Curse of Soldered RAM"

cricalix — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 09:03:30 +0000

I'm looking to replace my "eats batteries inside 4 months" (set to charge to no more than 90%, health is 60% in 4 months after less than 20 cycles) second-hand Carbon, and urgh, so many soldered RAM or memory on package designs. Some of Lenovo's 14 inch laptops are still SODIMM or LPCAMM2, but most appear to have gone the non-maintainable route.

Tried a Tuxedo laptop, lovely 120Hz display, but keyboard layout and I disagree. Turns out I really like the older ThinkPad inverted T with pgup/pgdown bracketing, and the 4 keys to the right of the F keys. Problem is, that locks me to ThinkPad/Lenovo, as everyone else seems to use the split up/down cursor with Fn to get page keys. Also really prefer physical mouse buttons over the trackpad, and the Tuxedo was haptic only.

The upgrade cost on the LP RAM though.. 940 EUR for 32 -> 64. Sure, 23% is VAT, but damn the hardware costs hurt right now. At least SODIMM is still cheaper.

New comment by cricalix in "Bitwarden Dual License Model"

cricalix — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 16:28:44 +0000

1Password has the whole thing of providing money to Omarchy's foundation. For some, that is a hard blocker.

New comment by cricalix in "Barcodes are about to go extinct"

cricalix — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:48:24 +0000

Because of interference between cables. Consider how flag labels will interact with each other when there are 72+ connected in a space that's 19 inches wide and 1RU tall, and they all need to be dressed neatly and not snag on each other.

Then consider things like pulling cables along cable trays. The smoother the cable the better.

New comment by cricalix in "What is going on with ceiling fans"

cricalix — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 15:14:10 +0000

Obligatory Tech Connections video?

https://youtu.be/_KWdCqpXB7A

New comment by cricalix in "Barcodes are about to go extinct"

cricalix — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 11:09:45 +0000

If someone works out how to print a 2D code that can be read when wrapped on a 2mm diameter cable (with a single scan, no rolling/twisting of the cable as it's fibre optic) I'll be interested. For now, regular Code128 style codes are the only ones that work reliably on cables that small.

New comment by cricalix in "Barcodes are about to go extinct"

cricalix — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 11:07:11 +0000

Urgh. Yazio. Use it for basic calorie tracking and the camera support. Could do without the gamification. Could really do with "scan barcode, OCR the nutrition table". Manual inputs by the other users has led me to find multiple foods where the kj value was supplied as the kcal value..

New comment by cricalix in "Stripe said to abandon $50B pursuit of PayPal"

cricalix — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 05:49:04 +0000

PayPal is, unfortunately, not dead. It's used by RMV in Germany for a start - only way to pay for a bus ticket in the app/website. No credit or debit card, straight up PayPal account.

New comment by cricalix in "Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone"

cricalix — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 20:26:36 +0000

Slow Mo Guys have a Phantom that rocks up around 1.5 million FPS. They've used it to show how glass cracks etc. when you get to that speed though, you need a LOT of light, and a very low resolution.

New comment by cricalix in "I'm a USB-C Maximalist"

cricalix — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:15:26 +0000

Change the device? It works fine. The cable is labeled. I know where to find it. I'm not throwing away perfectly otherwise-good hardware because of that.

New comment by cricalix in "I'm a USB-C Maximalist"

cricalix — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:58:46 +0000

Sometimes it's not the cable. Sometimes it's the sodding device. I have some IP60-something speakers for the shower. Write up says USB-C power. Brilliant says I, I've got plenty of good ones I use for charging laptops and other USB-C form factor accepting devices.

Sodding things only charge with their special USB-A to USB-C cable. They're in the bag labeled "cursed usb-c charge cables".

New comment by cricalix in "New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing"

cricalix — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:01:47 +0000

I have content in mkv and mp4, SDR and HDR, 264 and 265. I stream from a Jellyfin container with an onboard Intel GPU passed through for transcoding as needed. The client is a 8 series NUC on gigabit using the Flatpak Jellyfin app on a Fedora 44 install. I've yet to encounter any issues with any of my library.

Anecdotes aren't data and all that.

New comment by cricalix in "Wiki Builder: Skill to Build LLM Knowledge Bases"

cricalix — Wed, 06 May 2026 06:22:11 +0000

Looking at the name that keeps showing up on the linked site, I suspect a collision is most likely (to be charitable).

New comment by cricalix in "rpg: A modern psql-compatible Postgres terminal and TUI written in Rust"

cricalix — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:25:51 +0000

I get the name, but for a moment I thought someone had made a RPG IV or similar interpreter/compiler in Rust..

New comment by cricalix in "LibreOffice Writer now supports Markdown"

cricalix — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 06:56:13 +0000

And potentially get fired for using unauthorised software on a corporate machine. Or find out tha USB storage is disabled (which is better than getting fired).

New comment by cricalix in "Indefinite Book Club Hiatus"

cricalix — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 08:03:47 +0000

Physical letters do not obviate scams, nor is the cost that prohibitive. I remember actual 419 scams on blue airmail all-in-one letters back in the 80s. And that was international post too.

New comment by cricalix in "Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition"

cricalix — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 07:25:28 +0000

12‽ I'd swear the Slackware I downloaded was closer to 30+. On dialup. Via a VAX. Using FTP to go from internet to the VAX box, then Kermit from the VAX to the DOS PC using Procomm Plus. Write it all, start the install sequence, find out that the 18th disk was bad. Reboot. Rinse. Repeat.

X disks were X11. There were also the A,B, C etc disks.

Then there was the Coherent install, with massive manual on ultra thin paper with the shell on the front.

New comment by cricalix in "Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle"

cricalix — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:19:39 +0000

UnRaid does a variant of this; license is tied to the serial of the USB drive. It barely writes to the drive, so wear isn't meant to be much of an issue.

New comment by cricalix in "Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle"

cricalix — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 06:47:13 +0000

Tangential to this was the existence of California Software Product's "Baby/36" software. My father was a 36/400 programmer and sysadmin, and in his spare time used Baby/36 to write software for local businesses. I have vague memories of parallel port dongles being involved back then too. Don't think he mandated their use, was more a "framework" requirement.

New comment by cricalix in "AI Slop Report: The Global Rise of Low-Quality AI Videos"

cricalix — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 10:11:04 +0000

For me, in Ireland, tacking "-ai" on the end of Google searches disables the hallucination engine. For now at least.