Hacker News: gmac

New comment by gmac in "Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP"

gmac — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 22:10:18 +0000

Fair enough! I just don’t think I fully understand what you’re suggesting.

New comment by gmac in "Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP"

gmac — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:39:49 +0000

Can you elaborate on how using the network sharing features of CUPS would let you achieve the same thing (printing to old USB printers) in any major web browser?

New comment by gmac in "Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP"

gmac — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:05:41 +0000

Huh, interesting. Is the driver built in to Windows, downloaded from Canon, or acquired some other way?

TBH the web app story on Windows isn’t ideal anyway because you have to install Zadig before it will work.

New comment by gmac in "Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP"

gmac — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:26:51 +0000

I mean, anyone is welcome to do just that! But I guess coding Rube Goldberg machines in JS (to push the boundaries of the web) is a thing I really kind of enjoy.

New comment by gmac in "Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP"

gmac — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:08:32 +0000

From the Gutenprint home page, https://gimp-print.sourceforge.io/:

As of July 7, 2024 the Gutenprint project has formally deprecated MacOS support. This means that no further MacOS-compatible binaries will be produced.

Gutenprint has not had an active MacOS maintainer for over three years, and the remaining developers lack the technical ability to produce MacOS binaries, much less undertake the substantial amount of work necessary to produce, test, and support binaries on newer (post-Mojave/10.14) MacOS releases.

New comment by gmac in "Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP"

gmac — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:00:23 +0000

Interesting suggestion: I guess that would have been possible. On the other hand I think this is a more general solution, and it does minimal reinventing-the-wheel.

Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

gmac — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:33:57 +0000

Article URL: https://printervention.app/details

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677885

Points: 136

# Comments: 56

New comment by gmac in "Show HN: A web app to rescue old printers, using WebUSB and Linux in a v86 VM"

gmac — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:42:23 +0000

In case you were to miss it, there's some background and explanation here: https://printervention.app/details

Show HN: A web app to rescue old printers, using Linux in a v86 VM plus WebUSB

gmac — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:41:50 +0000

Article URL: https://printervention.app/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665907

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by gmac in "The road to electric in charts and data"

gmac — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 10:14:32 +0000

It doesn’t much change your calculations, but if you charge at home in the UK (we trail a cable across the pavement with a low-profile cover) then the electricity _is_ all but free.

We pay 7.5p/kWh for 6 hours overnight, but we also get £5 per month back (if we charge at least 10 hours) in return for having charging interrupted for up to an hour each night when the grid has least capacity. I drive about 7000mi/year, which means I’m paying about 1p/mile on average for home charging.

(The £5/month is from the charger manufacturer, SyncEV).

New comment by gmac in "Apple Just Lost Me"

gmac — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:56:06 +0000

Apple verified my account that very way this morning!

New comment by gmac in "Apple Just Lost Me"

gmac — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:55:05 +0000

In the UK, having a credit card is an overwhelmingly good move even if you never use the facility for credit. You can set up a direct debit to pay it off in full every month, making it effectively a debit card, but you get what are known as Section 75 protections on all purchases. So if you’re buying online and the firm goes bust (or you for any other reason don’t receive your goods), the credit card firm has to compensate you in full. For this reason I always make larger online purchases on credit card.

New comment by gmac in "Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance"

gmac — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 15:12:41 +0000

Renault Mégane and Scenic EVs are also great.

New comment by gmac in "White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward"

gmac — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:21:23 +0000

Right wingers have a whole different set of moral values that strike me (as someone more on the left) as _immoral_ values. Look up moral foundations theory by Jonathan Haidt and others. I’ve found this in one sense useful (so _that’s_ why Republicans react to ${ISSUE} the way that do!) and in another depressing (how do you _deal_ with people who think that doing what they’re told to do by an authority figure is intrinsically a moral virtue?).

Ctrl-C in psql gives me the heebie-jeebies

gmac — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 17:57:01 +0000

Article URL: https://neon.com/blog/ctrl-c-in-psql-gives-me-the-heebie-jeebies

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47278579

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Ctrl-C in psql gives me the heebie-jeebies

gmac — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:38:38 +0000

Article URL: https://neon.com/blog/ctrl-c-in-psql-gives-me-the-heebie-jeebies

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47263824

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by gmac in "iPhone 17e"

gmac — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:04:29 +0000

Must vary by car — not had any problems with my iPhone 17 + Renault.

New comment by gmac in "How will OpenAI compete?"

gmac — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 07:32:16 +0000

Yeah. Vauxhall/Opel has always been my go-to example here. Their cars excel at nothing. They’re not especially stylish. Not the fastest or nicest to drive. Not unusually efficient. Not particularly reliable or guaranteed for a long period. By no means the cheapest. They don’t even achieve a sweet spot of averageness across all these things. Yet people have somehow carried on buying them over decades.

New comment by gmac in "A word processor from 1990s for Atari ST/TOS is still supported by enthusiasts"

gmac — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:52:28 +0000

Huh, 1st Word Plus was what I had! Sudden recollection of pressing a rhombus-shaped F10 key to reflow after editing ...

New comment by gmac in "Parametric CAD in Rust"

gmac — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 07:37:37 +0000

The certificate just expired, so mobile Safari is not willing to let me see it. :(