Hacker News: gr33nq

New comment by gr33nq in "Fuck up my site – Turn any website into beautiful chaos"

gr33nq — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 05:15:36 +0000

Wow I just had a faint memory of this the other week! In particular, one of the stamps is a rabbit that I had the faintest memory of. Just did some digging and turns out it was from here: http://www.gemtree.com/

How Morgan Stanley Tackled One of Coding's Toughest Problems

gr33nq — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 15:01:50 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-morgan-stanley-tackled-one-of-codings-toughest-problems-4f465959

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44170851

Points: 11

# Comments: 1

New comment by gr33nq in "Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?"

gr33nq — Thu, 08 May 2025 14:54:14 +0000

What UI framework did you use to build this? I love these types of interfaces in native applications.

New comment by gr33nq in "Every .gov Domain"

gr33nq — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 00:50:12 +0000

I registered and currently manage one of these .gov domains. Registration took some time, but it was an interesting process and felt pretty cool once it was finally provisioned!

New comment by gr33nq in "Microsoft Bob: Microsoft's biggest flop of the 1990s"

gr33nq — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 07:29:24 +0000

I have a vague recollection of a piece of software distributed by Bank of America in the mid-to-late 90s that featured an interface similar to Microsoft Bob. From what I remember, it was similar to Quicken. Was never able to find any information about it, and granted I was probably 5 when I found it on the family PC so the memory is a little fuzzy, but seeing these old design languages from that era of computing is always neat.

New comment by gr33nq in "What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch"

gr33nq — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 22:36:31 +0000

I think you're right, although I've noticed that there's a timeout where newer cars automatically turns off if the key fob doesn't come back within range after so many minutes. Probably a safety feature to avoid accidental walkaways, whereas the button required a deliberate two-step action (hold down while turning and removing the key) to activate the feature.

New comment by gr33nq in "What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch"

gr33nq — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 21:11:11 +0000

At first glance this reminded me of some Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor models which had similar unlabeled buttons. One would disable all exterior lights, including brake lights, for going into stealth/surveillance mode. An adjacent button was used to be able to remove the key and keep the engine running, while preventing the car from being shifted out of park until the key was inserted again. I haven't seen either feature re-introduced in the newer Explorers or Fusions though.

A Million People Play This Video Wargame. So Does The Pentagon

gr33nq — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 17:30:54 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/a-million-people-play-this-video-wargame-so-does-the-pentagon-e6388f50

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41964159

Points: 8

# Comments: 3

New comment by gr33nq in "Home security giant ADT says it was hacked"

gr33nq — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 17:27:48 +0000

I'm curious as to when the attack took place, because our ADT alarm system was going haywire a couple weeks ago. Their support department said they were having communication issues to our control unit, and on our end there were random tones beeping on all of the alarm pads for about twelve hours, yet no fault/communication failure indicator. We've had the system for years and have never had any similar issues. Maybe coincidental? Although I tend take these disclosure statements with a grain of salt and assume that some detail gets quietly swept under the rug.

New comment by gr33nq in "Ask HN: I built a Yubikey-based domain controller. Is it sellable?"

gr33nq — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 22:11:35 +0000

For the past several months I've been wanting to build something similar for a use case that I think would be suitable for such an appliance. Mind reaching out to me via the email in my profile?

New comment by gr33nq in "Making a PDF that's larger than Germany"

gr33nq — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 23:35:17 +0000

Coincidentally, I just finished watching a video that explored the same topic of massive and unique PDF files: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvVNRRQjDh8

New comment by gr33nq in "Coding4Fun Hardware Boneyard – Using the CueCat with .NET (2006)"

gr33nq — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:18:59 +0000

I remember begging my parents to take me to a Radio Shack to get one of these when I was in second grade. The idea of being able to scan various items around the house was such a wild concept to me for some reason. Once we finally tracked one down, I scanned every book on my shelf into a trial copy of Winnebago Spectrum that I had obtained. It was the software suite that my elementary school's library ran off of, and I installed it on a Windows 2000 PC that my dad had passed down to me after upgrading the office computer. God knows how many hours I spent playing library with my younger sister and aimlessly scanning ISBNs - such simple times! Surprisingly I still have that same PS/2 CueCat in my drawer, though it hasn't been plugged in for at least fifteen years.

I know many of us in this community tend to look back at the earlier days of the internet very fondly and feel the nostalgia hit strongly, and I think it's because of the innovations (or maybe gimmicks?) like these that were novel and groundbreaking in many ways. Off the top of my head right now, I can't recall anything in recent times as quirky as the CueCat that would have evoked a similar excitement and genuine intrigue to a child today like I was fortunate to have experienced twenty years ago. But then again, I'm sure back then there weren't many seven year olds hunting down library database software and messing around with it for fun - so maybe my perspective is an outlier...

New comment by gr33nq in "Secret government telephone numbers"

gr33nq — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 22:00:33 +0000

I currently carry a GETS card in my wallet, along with a second WPS-enabled iPhone. My agency instructs us to place a test call to the GETS/WPS "Familiarization Line" on a monthly basis to ensure we are able to connect successfully (and I suppose to also become comfortable with the process should we ever need to use it in a true disaster).

As the article mentions, we also have the app pushed out to all of our phones that can place outgoing calls with prioritization, but it only automatically keys in your PIN and the number you wish to reach after calling the dial access number. It's more of a convenience feature for those not wanting to manually enter the long string of digits for GETS. The app offers three modes to dial out: WPS, GETS, WPS+GETS. I always thought the WPS+GETS method seemed redundant, but I'm glad the author made the distinction on why stacking both methods makes sense.

New comment by gr33nq in "BlazingMQ: High-performance open source message queuing system"

gr33nq — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 17:58:45 +0000

Does anyone recommend any particular piece of software for creating these types of visualizations with relative ease? I've always been a fan of animations for helping to understand some technical topics.

New comment by gr33nq in "Government URLs that don't end in .gov"

gr33nq — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 16:59:27 +0000

You must be an official government entity at a local, state, or federal level. This can include cities, counties, special districts, joint power authorities, state offices, etc.

New comment by gr33nq in "Government URLs that don't end in .gov"

gr33nq — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 16:37:55 +0000

I went through the process of registering a .gov domain recently and it definitely takes a couple of months. It requires a letter of intent, wet signatures from elected official(s) on official letterhead, a phone call to a publicly listed number of an elected official, 2FA enrollment for the management of DNS/WHOIS, and a period of time in between some of these steps for some behind-the-scenes verification to take place. Despite the many steps, I did find it relatively straightforward and appropriate given the exclusivity of the TLD. In fact, the most difficult part (that I'm still working through) is convincing management that we should make the full migration to the .gov now that we have it registered...

New comment by gr33nq in "What Is Radio Spectrum?"

gr33nq — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 21:15:31 +0000

Something I've had a longstanding desire to learn about is radio frequencies. I'm a very visual person, but I have yet to find any resource that explains it in a way that really makes sense to me. Especially when you start getting into modulation and whatnot. I'm fortunate to be able to use a variety of wireless technologies at work (licensed 80GHz, 18GHz and 950MHz frequencies), but I admittedly only have basic working knowledge and don't clearly comprehend what's happening at the lower physical level.

Does anyone have a good recommendation on any material that really made wireless technology understandable for you?

New comment by gr33nq in "The new desktop Outlook is a bad idea"

gr33nq — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 15:23:17 +0000

We had a few users try it out before we had a chance to block it using Group Policy. It was an abysmal experience for those who opted-in, and I can't imagine it ever replacing the native client without massive backlash in its current state. It clearly caters to a subset of basic users who only send/receive individually. Shared calendars, shared mailboxes, rule management, plugins, etc. were all absent and are features that a majority of our users rely on day to day. There's clearly a huge gap between the folks working on this new version and the native app's userbase — and sadly, as we've all observed, that's becoming the norm with a lot of releases coming out of Redmond lately.

New comment by gr33nq in "IBM AS/400: Databases all the way down (2019) [video]"

gr33nq — Tue, 02 May 2023 17:59:34 +0000

We still work with an AS/400 (IBM iSeries) on a daily basis for legacy data, and it's impressive to watch how quickly our older staff members navigate the interface and get work done with it. It's several orders of magnitude faster than our newer web-based ERP, and I don't think I can be convinced that any modern browser UI will ever match the efficiencies offered by a terminal-based interface. That's not to discount the numerous technical benefits you reap by moving to a modern software stack, but strictly from an end-user usability standpoint, the AS/400 still wins in my book.

New comment by gr33nq in "City Council to install 20 cameras as automated license-plate recognition system"

gr33nq — Tue, 02 May 2023 03:05:12 +0000

Or even easier, simply drive in the middle lane while adjacent to another vehicle to block the camera's view of your plate. Flock's cameras mount in the center median or sidewalk and are only capable of reading plates from the two nearest lanes of traffic. There are better solutions out there which mount onto traffic signal poles and monitor each lane from above, making it much more difficult to circumvent (intentionally or by happenstance).

Of course this isn't much of a concern when installed onto a two-lane residential street for targeted enforcement. Though I know most municipalities opt to only place cameras at points of egress/ingress on their borders with other cities, and those roads tend to be more than just two lanes.