<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: gknoy</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gknoy</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:53:37 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=gknoy" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Restoring a Sun SPARCstation IPX part 1: PSU and NVRAM (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> We "log in" by running a Python script that pops a root shell.<p>I'm surprised that when you do this, you can't then set the root password.
(Also, holy cow. What a durable machine.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:00:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47311766</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47311766</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47311766</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Use the Mikado Method to do safe changes in a complex codebase"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I find that fascinating, because interacting with the tests in our codebase (both Python and JS) answers a _lot_ about "how is this meant to work", or "why do we have this".  I won't say I do test-driven development, at least not very rigorously, but any time I am trying to make a small change in a thing I'm not 100% familiar with, it's been helpful to have tests that cover those edge cases. :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 07:54:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229483</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229483</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229483</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Dotfiles feel too personal to share"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> My dotfiles are private for now cause I need to clean some commits<p>I had to do similar. I ended up deleting the git history and just recreating it before pushing. The best thing was to add a dependency on `~/.secrets` or other similar un-tracked file, which is basically just a source-able script that defines things like API keys, private URLs, etc.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 Aug 2025 18:20:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44815692</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44815692</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44815692</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Copyparty – Turn almost any device into a file server"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You weren't kidding. I was amused by the humor in the first few minutes, but then I got to its showcase of what you can do, and am just even more blown away. They weren't kidding about doing _just about everything_ pretty well.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:31:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44714577</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44714577</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44714577</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> every time it's like I'm reading it for the first time. I can only remember thew "mood" so to speak,<p>I am like this with a lot of books. I'll remember a very high level overview ("The Historian is about a modern day hunt for Dracula, and it's really cool, and I liked how the story was told, but I can't remember why or any of what happened."), but can't remember much about plot details.<p>It makes re-reading things fun, but also is frustrating because I can't explain why something was good, and I also remember just enough that plot twists don't surprise me the second time. It also means that I completely forget about the "bad" parts of the book, or the parts that didn't resonate with me.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:08:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44562587</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44562587</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44562587</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I appreciate you laying it out like that. I've seen these NVME NAS things mentioned and had been thinking that the reliability of SSDs was so much worse than HDDs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 05 Jul 2025 20:31:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44475314</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44475314</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44475314</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Training AI models uses a large amount of energy (according to what I've read / headlines I've seen /etc), and increases water usage. [0]  I don't have a lot to offer as proof, merely that this is an idea that I have encountered enough that I was suprised you hadn't heard of it.  I did a very cursory bit of googling, so the quality + dodginess distribution is a bit wild, but there appear to be indiustry reports [2, page 20] that support this:<p>"""
[G]lobal data centre electricity use reached 415 TWh in 2024, or 1.5 per cent of global electricity consumption.... While these figures include all types of data centres, the growing subset of data centres focused on AI are particularly energy intensive. AI-focused data centres can consume as much electricity as aluminium smelters but are more geographically concentrated. The rapid expansion of AI is driving a significant surge in global electricity demand, posing new challenges for sustainability. Data centre electricity consumption has been growing at 12 per cent per year since 2017, outpacing total electricity consumption by a factor of four.
"""<p>The numbers are about data center power use in total, but AI seems to be one of the bigger driving forces behind that growth, so it seems plausible that there is some harm.<p>0: <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117" rel="nofollow">https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmen...</a>
1: <a href="https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-06-05-greening-digital-companies-report.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-06-05-green...</a>
2: (cf. page 20) <a href="https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Environment/Pages/Publications/GDC-25.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Environment/Pages/Publications/...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jun 2025 17:24:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44249791</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44249791</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44249791</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Show HN: I wrote a modern Command Line Handbook"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wow. This is amazing. I really like the way you use color and do footnote-like explanations.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 30 May 2025 16:26:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44137776</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44137776</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44137776</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Show HN: Bhvr, a Bun and Hono and Vite and React Starter"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thank you for painting it that way. As someone who has normally done back end stuff in Django, having the ORM magic is so deeply ingrained for me.  I was about to ask what one should use for an ORM, but looking at the Hono examples is pretty helpful.  It looks Prisma is one good example of what I was looking for :D</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 28 Apr 2025 05:45:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43817995</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43817995</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43817995</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Layoffs Don't Work"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The intention of "minimum wage" in the US is not merely subsistence level.  FDR said, "by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." [0]<p>The "iron law of wages" is instead an economic principle that wages tend to trend downwards until people are paid the minimum possible for subsistence.  It's not meant to be a goal.<p>0: <a href="http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html" rel="nofollow">http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Mar 2025 17:17:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322740</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322740</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322740</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I really like that your page talks about _why_ a Hilbert curve is good.  I don't remember ever learning about those before, and now hopefully if I'm ever trying to visualize 1D data, I might remember that :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 27 Feb 2025 17:38:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196560</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196560</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196560</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Some terminal frustrations"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This seems like it would be solved completely by printing the error message ("option b unknown"), and then also printing the "--help" stuff. You can see the error inthe first line(s), so `head` will make that easy to see, but anyone trying to print the help text will get it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Feb 2025 20:29:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43004759</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43004759</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43004759</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Show HN: TinyJs React like framework in 35 lines of code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is somewhat off-topic, but I am blown away by your use of uncommon characters like "①". They stand out so much that they (for me at least) make referencing parts of the code snippet so much easier to follow.<p>I see these _nearly never_, so rarely that I forgot they were available to use. I didn't realize HN supports them, or that I could probably use them in review comments on Github.  Thank you for the inspiration! (now to figure out how to actually type them...)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jan 2025 19:06:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42880989</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42880989</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42880989</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "The protester's guide to smartphone security"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I believe they mean a cover as in a case that has a folding cover, not as in the external layer of the phone itself.  So you effectively turn that otterbox-ish thing into a faraday cage that will enclose your phone.<p>I am not sure how I follow how that isn't completely negated as soon as you go to actually use the phone, though.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jan 2025 20:03:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845016</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845016</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845016</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> show their QR code to vendors who scan it to charge their account.<p>That sounds _brilliant_ -- being able to show a physical QR code card rather than dig out the phone sounds like it would help a lot with preventing damage/loss of phones.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2024 18:57:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380111</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380111</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380111</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Rim/Blackberry tales – reply all"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You jest, but I've noticed that the conventions of "newest on top" vs "newest on bottom" is _seriously confusing_ for some people that I help navigate tech stuff.  I don't know how to describe the heuristic for:<p>- New text conversations show at the _top_ of the list of conversations
- New messages are at the _bottome_ of a conversation
- New emails are at the _top_ of your email client (?)
- and now you remind me that email replies can be both at top and bottom (:<p>It feels arbitrary, but I suspect this is due to the heritage of paper, where newer things are on top of the pile, but in a given document, newer text tends to be added at the bottom/end. (it's a stretch :))</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:23:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42187101</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42187101</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42187101</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For anyone else that followed the "buy a device" link on the docs page, and found yourself on the (ended) Kickstarter page, editing the URL to <a href="https://usetrmnl.com/" rel="nofollow">https://usetrmnl.com/</a> works :)<p>(This is fantastic. Thank you for sharing about it!)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:47:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42139664</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42139664</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42139664</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I sincerely hope more games allow virtual interactions with culturally significant art.  Hell, I'd love a virtual tour of major art institutions!<p>It's not Rodin, but the game Horizon: Forbidden West has a segment where you get to view + interact with renderings of some paintings by Vermeer and Rembrandt. I've seen some of these in person at a museum in San Francisco, but somehow the experience was more meaningful in the game, despite having comparative potato quality compared to real life.  I think what made the difference was that in the game, each painting had several lines of dialogue about what the painting represented, or elements thereof represented, about what was going on when the artist created it, etc, and the dialogue choices included questions I would never have thought to ask about in person.<p>I know that museums have virtual tours that have ausio descriptions like that about the art pieces, but I've never managed to take advantage of them.  Can you imagine being able to take a high-detail virtual tour (even if not in VR) of a museum like the one in the article, or the Louvre, where you could spend as long as you want looking at every painting, zoom in at details like brushwork or how the light hits it, and have an expanding set of accessible narration (or readable text) about each item?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 18 Oct 2024 18:09:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41881964</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41881964</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41881964</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't know why, but I could NOT get into it. I read what felt like 2/3 or 3/4 of the first book, and still felt like I had no clue what was going on, and it felt like a difficult slog (for reasons I don't understand), much like how the Silmarillion felt to me.  I wish I had enjoyed it, because every review or bit of spoilers I've seen about it sounds like a fantastic story, so I don't understand why it was so unenjoyable to read.<p>Meanwhile I'll read any chapter of a Neal Stephenson book and feel the comfort of a tea and warm blanket on an (imaginary) dreary day, and never care about the overall plot, and only feel remotely bad about not finishing the book.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 07 Oct 2024 19:51:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41770213</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41770213</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41770213</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gknoy in "Why to Not Write a Book"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Good grief, Gwern is a treasure. Every time I stumble across a link to something they've written, it's chock-full of side quest links to things that are _absolutely amazing_.  I happened to leave my mouse briefly over one of the drop-caps, and it turns out there's an entire page dedicated to _generating drop-caps_ with AI, as well as showcasing all sorts of stuff.<p>"Thank you for making such awesome stuff" seems so pedestrian of a reaction.  This is like looking at a fractal cathedral made by one person, where every time I look at it it's a hologram of something amazing and beautiful that I didn't even know was possible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Sep 2024 17:41:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41570420</link><dc:creator>gknoy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41570420</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41570420</guid></item></channel></rss>