Hacker News: gildas

New comment by gildas in "Gwtar: A static efficient single-file HTML format"

gildas — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 23:43:44 +0000

I just ran a test on a 10GB HTML page and called window.stop() via a 100ms setTimeout, which, in my opinion, simulates what would happen in a better-implemented case in SingleFile if the call to window.stop() were made as soon as the HTTP headers of the fetch request are received (i.e. easy fix). And it actually works. It interrupts the loading at approx. 15MB of data, the rendering of the page, and it's partially and smoothly displayed (no freeze). So it's not totally useless but it deserves to be optimized at a minimum in SingleFile, as I indicated. In the end, the MDN documentation is not very clear...

Edit: I've just implemented the "good enough of my machine fix" aka the "easy fix", https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/single-file-core/commit/a0....

Edit #2: I've just understood that "parent" in "this method cannot interrupt its *parent* document's loading" from the MDN doc probably means the "parent" of the frame (when the script is running into it).

New comment by gildas in "Gwtar: A static efficient single-file HTML format"

gildas — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 22:45:48 +0000

The call to window.stop() stops HTML parsing/rendering, which is unnecessary since the script has downloaded the page via HTTP and will decompress it as-is as a binary file (zip.js supports concatenated payloads before and after the zip data). However, in my case, the call to window.stop() is executed asynchronously once the binary has been downloaded, and therefore may be too late. This is probably less effective than in your case with gtwar.

I implemented this in the simplest way possible because if the zip file is read from the filesystem, window.stop() must not be called immediately because the file must be parsed entirely. In my case, it would require slightly more complex logic to call window.stop() as early as possible.

Edit: Maybe it's totally useless though, as documented here [1]: "Because of how scripts are executed, this method cannot interrupt its parent document's loading, but it will stop its images, new windows, and other still-loading objects." (you mentioned it in the article)

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/stop

Edit #2: Since I didn't know that window.call() was most likely useless in my case, I understand your approach much better now. Thank you very much for clarifying that with your question!

New comment by gildas in "Gwtar: A static efficient single-file HTML format"

gildas — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:52:10 +0000

The reason I did not implement the innovative mechanism you describe is because, in my case, all the technical effort was/is focused on reading the archive from the filesystem. No one has suggested it either.

Edit: Actually, SingleFile already calls window.stop() when displaying a zip/html file from HTTP, see https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/single-file-core/blob/22fc...

New comment by gildas in "Gwtar: A static efficient single-file HTML format"

gildas — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:38:35 +0000

I haven't looked closely, but I get the impression that this is an implementation detail which is not really related to the format. In this case, a polyglot zip/html file could also interrupt page loading via a window.stop() call and rely on range requests (zip.js supports them) to unzip and display the page. This could also be transparent for the user, depending on whether the file is served via HTTP or not. However, I admit that I haven't implemented this mechanism yet.

New comment by gildas in "Gwtar: A static efficient single-file HTML format"

gildas — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:30:39 +0000

I would like to know why ZIP/HTML polyglot format produced by SingleFile [1] and mentioned in the article "achieve static, single, but not efficiency". What's not efficient compared to the gwtar format?

[1] https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/Polyglot-HTML-ZIP-PNG

Gwtar: A static efficient single-file HTML format

gildas — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:28:49 +0000

Article URL: https://gwern.net/gwtar

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46771811

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by gildas in "Await Is Not a Context Switch: Understanding Python's Coroutines vs. Tasks"

gildas — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:29:37 +0000

If we were to compare this to the JS world, it seems Python’s async is closer to Babel-style generator-based coroutines [1] than to JavaScript’s async/await execution model.

[1] https://babeljs.io/docs/babel-plugin-transform-async-to-gene...

New comment by gildas in "Await Is Not a Context Switch: Understanding Python's Coroutines vs. Tasks"

gildas — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 11:55:40 +0000

You haven't got it wrong, the first example in the article behaves the same in JS, see https://jsfiddle.net/L5w2q1p7/.

New comment by gildas in "Perkeep – Personal storage system for life"

gildas — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 22:05:09 +0000

Thank you also for the kind words! Regardoing support, you can choose whichever method you prefer; it makes no difference to me actually.

New comment by gildas in "Perkeep – Personal storage system for life"

gildas — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 10:14:23 +0000

Author of SingleFile here. Sorry, this is obviously not normal. Please feel free to report any bugs here https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/issues.

New comment by gildas in "Ask HN: How to stop an AWS bot sending 2B requests/month?"

gildas — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 08:51:35 +0000

Great idea, some people have already implemented it for the same type of need, it would seem (see the list of user agents in the source code). Implementation seems simple.

https://github.com/0x48piraj/gz-bomb/blob/master/gz-bomb-ser...

New comment by gildas in "Peeking Inside Gigantic Zips with Only Kilobytes"

gildas — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 08:38:13 +0000

FYI, zip.js has no issues with 1 (it can be fixed with standard extra fields), 3 (zip64 support), and 5 (you cannot have more than 64K of comment data at the end of the file).

New comment by gildas in "Peeking Inside Gigantic Zips with Only Kilobytes"

gildas — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:03:07 +0000

Unfortunately, I will have difficulty answering your question because my knowledge is limited to the zip format. In the use case presented in the article, I find that the zip format meets the need well. Generally speaking, in the context of long-term archiving, its big advantage is also that there are thousands of implementations for reading/writing zip files.

New comment by gildas in "Peeking Inside Gigantic Zips with Only Kilobytes"

gildas — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:51:30 +0000

For implementation in a library, you can use HttpRangeReader [1][2] in zip.js [3] (disclaimer: I am the author). It's a solid feature that has been in the library for about 10 years.

[1] https://gildas-lormeau.github.io/zip.js/api/classes/HttpRang...

[2] https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/zip.js/blob/master/tests/a...

[3] https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/zip.js

New comment by gildas in "uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari"

gildas — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:16:04 +0000

The warning message you mentioned simply means that the extension can inject "content scripts" into the web pages you visit. This feature is necessary, for example, to remove ads that cannot be blocked via HTTP.

New comment by gildas in "A sysadmin's rant about feed readers and crawlers (2022)"

gildas — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 13:54:15 +0000

Bonus point for clients that don't support the HTTP “Accept-Encoding” header [1] and consume all your bandwidth.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Ac...

New comment by gildas in "China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns"

gildas — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 21:02:42 +0000

Thank you for explaining your point of view on the interest of this conversation. Here's mine, I consider an offense to be something quite subjective sometimes. In some cases, it's possible to offend someone without meaning to. The solution to this problem is to apologize and offer to talk about it. If that doesn't work, and the offense is in some way "forbidden", then the offended person can simply defend themselves by going to the “authorities”.

New comment by gildas in "China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns"

gildas — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 18:26:29 +0000

I'm sorry. I'm open to discussion if you can explain what is offending to you

New comment by gildas in "China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns"

gildas — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 18:24:37 +0000

I'm sorry if you feel offended. My comments will be removed by HN moderators if they think it's necessary. You can flag and downvote them meanwhile. You can also contact the moderators or your local police if you think it is necessary.

EDIT: It might not be possible to flag or downvote comments. So, I recommend you to contact the moderators or your local police. You can find my name and address on my GitHub profile.

New comment by gildas in "China tells its AI leaders to avoid U.S. travel over security concerns"

gildas — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 09:44:40 +0000

I sincerely apologize again if you found my response offensive. You can contact your local police to make a complaint, I suppose.