Hacker News: gh02t

New comment by gh02t in "Ask HN: So what happened to Facebook "localhost" tracking?"

gh02t — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 03:31:38 +0000

This also got me on my partner's Macbook. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why I could access my local services on (Safari? I forget which one actually worked) but not on Firefox/Chrome.

New comment by gh02t in "NLAB: The worlds smallest electronics lab"

gh02t — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:36:27 +0000

The specs are underwhelming, but I could see the value to a beginner being in the software that accompanies it tightly integrated with parts kits and instructions. I'd honestly prefer to see a logic analyzer instead of a mediocre oscilloscope; I feel like the projects that most people learning want to do these days are digital, and simple logic analyzers are more amenable to being cheap while still being useful.

New comment by gh02t in "Love systemd timers"

gh02t — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 22:08:37 +0000

Yeah, I certainly have my complaints about systemd but the parent's point is undermined by the fact that cron still works. If you prefer it, carry on I doubt seriously it's going anywhere. I still do sometimes.

New comment by gh02t in "News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development"

gh02t — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:41:09 +0000

Yeah, one of my bigger complaints especially on the Nano was the GPU only had really limited model support (iirc, mostly tflite but maybe I'm misremembering) and it sounds like the newer ones are more normal. That and what seems from the docs to be better headless support would be major improvements. Going further to mainline distro support would make them interesting to me again.

I was always disappointed by the Nano as it was a pretty capable device, but it seemed like not many people picked it up as a platform for cool things which I always attributed to the software.

New comment by gh02t in "News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development"

gh02t — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:07:57 +0000

Nvidia's software platform for the whole Jetson series was, at least in my experience, absolutely awful on the Jetson Nano and Orin boards I worked on. Has that improved at all? I did not appreciate that the only option they provided was a full desktop version of ancient Ubuntu... and even flashing the OS image was a bizarre process.

Edit: looks like they at least have a better headless option now.

New comment by gh02t in "Blog ran on Ubuntu 16.04 for 10 years. I migrated it to FreeBSD"

gh02t — Thu, 21 May 2026 21:30:15 +0000

Rocky's docs are also really nice. They aren't as thorough as RedHat's, but they're much more readable and concise, and tend to be written for a less enterprise-y audience.

New comment by gh02t in "Disney erased FiveThirtyEight"

gh02t — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:43:30 +0000

I agree, it's far from pointless. The 538 model is arguably close to the best you can do considering how difficult the task is, but it's important to understand it as purely a reflection of the polling data (and 538's reliability scores for polls), and that polling data is inherently flawed. After all, there are only 2 ways to perform a perfectly accurate poll: either know the outcome a priori, or run the election. We shouldn't be too surprised when models like 538 fail to correctly predict the outcome, because that's not what they represent. It's an analytical tool for understanding the current state of polling.

New comment by gh02t in "Disney erased FiveThirtyEight"

gh02t — Tue, 19 May 2026 21:34:47 +0000

The real caveat is that 538 was a Monte Carlo model, and is only as good as its inputs. "Here's what the current spread in polling numbers is *given our model and the current polling and their reported uncertainties.*" Polling uncertainties are themselves computed under certain models, and those models are subject to errors. I don't think 538 hid this, but it's a difficult caveat for people to reason about because the sorts of modeling errors that have the most influence usually represent "unknown unknowns".

New comment by gh02t in "Kv4p HT – A homebrew 1W radio (VHF or UHF) that plugs into an Android phone"

gh02t — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:49:59 +0000

Compact HF/shortwave radios with transmit capability exist, but they're pretty expensive and are generally definitely portable but not quite handheld. The biggest user of such equipment is the military, so a lot of the tech is engineered for that with civilian/amateur use as an afterthought. ICOM, Yaesu, and Xiegu are probably the best known makers, and you're looking at ~$1000 as table stakes for a modern one, though there are some slightly cheaper options.

Handheld CB radios do exist and are cheap, but I've never really used them.

New comment by gh02t in "Kv4p HT – A homebrew 1W radio (VHF or UHF) that plugs into an Android phone"

gh02t — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:35:07 +0000

Analog handhelds are still abundant, they've gotten smaller and more efficient but older ones are still basically just as good as new. IMO digital handhelds are superior, but digital protocols are much more fragmented so analog remains king as a common denominator (practically every digital handheld can do analog, too).

New comment by gh02t in "Kv4p HT – A homebrew 1W radio (VHF or UHF) that plugs into an Android phone"

gh02t — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:29:17 +0000

You only really get attention from the FCC if you interfere with some other service, especially broadcast or emergency communications frequencies. Grumpy Hams will also hunt you down sometimes, but only if you're persistent. Otherwise yeah, the FCC can't practically enforce every rule everywhere and doesn't really try. Still, get a license and be a good citizen if you want to play with this kind of thing, it's not very difficult.

New comment by gh02t in "Nullsoft, 1997-2004 (2004)"

gh02t — Mon, 11 May 2026 20:12:00 +0000

I always thought WASTE was so cool, but my family was pretty late get off of dialup to be able to actually use it. Sounds like it's still around in some form, do people actually use it nowadays?

New comment by gh02t in "Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license"

gh02t — Wed, 06 May 2026 16:22:46 +0000

This was always the dream for 3D printing, heck going back to classic Star Trek replicators and other science fiction. Granted, even with these models available it's kinda difficult to print large organic shapes like the main housing shells on most affordable consumer printers so I suspect there might not be too many people actually doing it. However, having the exact CAD files makes designing mods and 3rd party upgrades much easier.

New comment by gh02t in "It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs"

gh02t — Tue, 05 May 2026 15:46:58 +0000

The concern with this law is that it's constructed in such a way that the only way to comply may end up being for VPN providers to ban Utah. Though that's not the same as Utah banning VPNs since private VPNs would still work, for most users it would be since setting a private VPN up is beyond most people.

Plus the issue of compelling otherwise fully lawful speech around providing VPN instructions.

New comment by gh02t in "10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home"

gh02t — Sat, 02 May 2026 02:53:15 +0000

It's 4x faster? If you have a storage server, its easy to exceed 2.5 or even 5 gigabit with SATA spinning disks if they're in an array. 10 gig is fast enough to work with network storage like it's local: do your work, store your steam library, edit videos, etc, but store it all somewhere else and share it with multiple computers.

New comment by gh02t in "10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home"

gh02t — Sat, 02 May 2026 02:47:49 +0000

Even CAT5e can do 10 Gbps if you do a decent job making the cable, even though it's out of spec. 6A can do it easily, in spec. I used it in my previous home.

I much prefer to use fiber, but copper with good old RJ45 works fine for 10 gig.

New comment by gh02t in "My Stratum-0 Atomic Clock"

gh02t — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:05:52 +0000

I'm aware, and yeah GPS is disciplining the TXCO, but I'm saying it's stable enough for non specialty uses outside of stuff like serving as a frequency reference. If you just want a clock source for NTP without the internet then all of this is already overkill.

You're also not likely to be out of GPS for particularly long stretches of time.

New comment by gh02t in "My Stratum-0 Atomic Clock"

gh02t — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:58:49 +0000

I have an NTP clock that uses GPS PPS and has a local TXDO. For any reasonable amount of time that you'd be out of GPS (barring nuclear war) a TXDO should be plenty sufficient for any sane time-related needs at a tiny fraction of the cost. Serving as a frequency reference for radio or precision counters or other semi-exotic (for at home) is the only reason I can see to actually have CSAC other than cool factor. Which, fair.

New comment by gh02t in "Diatec, known for its mechanical keyboard brand FILCO, has ceased operations"

gh02t — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:00:17 +0000

FWIW, not all mechanicals are loud. The clicky audible feedback is a deliberate thing on some types of switch, and you can get others with less or even virtually no noise.

New comment by gh02t in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

gh02t — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 03:09:29 +0000

My interpretation was that it's easier to physically force someone to mash their finger on the sensor than to get them to divulge a password, not that it offers you any kind of legal protection. But yeah, it's a plausible but somewhat contrived situation to find yourself in.