Hacker News: gzalo

New comment by gzalo in "Unrolling the Codex agent loop"

gzalo — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:31:25 +0000

I know, but part of the logic from below the line I linked could have been deterministic, it could benefit from a single "load skill" tool that just loads the files client side!

New comment by gzalo in "Television is 100 years old today"

gzalo — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:10:55 +0000

Yes you can, see https://neslcdmod.com/

It basically mods the rom to allow for a bit more latency when checking the hit targets

New comment by gzalo in "Unrolling the Codex agent loop"

gzalo — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 05:55:48 +0000

Wow, this part where they describe skills sounds quite odd https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/99f47d6e9a3546c14c43af9...

Why wouldnt they just expose the files directly? Having the model ask for them as regular files sounds a bit odd

Show HN: IMSAI/Altair inspired microcomputer with web emulator

gzalo — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 01:57:37 +0000

I designed and built a physical replica of a 1970s-style front panel microcomputer with 25+ toggle switches, 16 LEDs, and an LCD display. The brain is a Raspberry Pi Pico running an Intel 8080 CPU emulator.

The main twist: I decided to see how far I could get using Claude Code for the firmware. That and the web emulator were written almost entirely using Claude Code (Opus 4.5). I've kept the full prompt history here: https://github.com/gzalo/microcomputer/blob/main/ai_prompts....

It was able to create the emulator in just a few prompts! It really surprised me that it was able to make a WebAssembly version from the same code (compiled with emscripten) and get the physical layout of the panel from a given photo. It also created some simple working examples using 8086 instructions!

Repository: https://github.com/gzalo/microcomputer

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46626963

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by gzalo in "Deliberate Internet Shutdowns"

gzalo — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:08:47 +0000

The bad part is that it cannot create a world wide mesh, as has a low max hop limit (7), and the nodes need lines of sight. So more than 200 km in a mostly flat city is almost imposible.

I wish we had an HF ISM band that could be used for this purposes without needing a license, combined with LoRa radios would yield great results

New comment by gzalo in "Donating the Model Context Protocol and establishing the Agentic AI Foundation"

gzalo — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 20:49:35 +0000

Something like https://github.com/huggingface/smolagents

Needs a sandbox, otherwise blindly executing generated code is not acceptable

New comment by gzalo in "LM8560, the eternal chip from the 1980 years"

gzalo — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 14:25:25 +0000

Related video: stop using the LM741 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e67WiJ6IPlQ

New comment by gzalo in "A laser pointer at 2B FPS [video]"

gzalo — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 01:24:30 +0000

Hmm, it's a clever hack, but they would use an oscilloscope with an "External trigger" input, like most of the older Rigols. That would let you use the full sample rate without needing to trigger from CH2

Cicoparser: Game Modding [video]

gzalo — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 03:40:55 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtAVcQEU48s

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44166042

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by gzalo in "How a 20 year old bug in GTA San Andreas surfaced in Windows 11 24H2"

gzalo — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:43:21 +0000

I agree, this can also detect brittle tests (e.g, test methods/classes that only pass if executed in a particular order). But applying it for all data could be expensive computation-wise

New comment by gzalo in "Oliver Heaviside and the theory of transmission lines (2021)"

gzalo — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 15:48:40 +0000

Indeed, if you search for "ceramic antennas" you'll see that they are already being used and smaller than equivalent PCB antennas. They rely on a dielectric material with high e_r, which implies that speed of light is slower there. Lots of portable devices use them nowadays!

New comment by gzalo in "GitHub projects targeted with malicious commits to frame researcher"

gzalo — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 22:39:31 +0000

Not really. The username from the commits is the same one that created the PR. The username evildojo666 was available and the attacker just used it.

New comment by gzalo in "Show HN: Flash Kitty – Archive of Adobe/Macromedia Flash Movies from Flash Kit"

gzalo — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 19:28:41 +0000

Yes, in the games category you can find some. But for playing the classic fully fledged games I suggest something like https://flashpointarchive.org/ , which is more organized

Show HN: Flash Kitty – Archive of Adobe/Macromedia Flash Movies from Flash Kit

gzalo — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 17:41:43 +0000

After realizing a few months ago that the current flashkit owners didn't really back up any of the user submitted movies, and getting some Flash nostalgia, I created this working Flash Kit archive using data from the Wayback Machine/Internet Archive. It uses Raffle so you can watch the submitted movies in a modern browser without needing plugins.

It's not curated so you'll find a variety of things, some things are really creative and can be used for inspiration.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42108910

Points: 58

# Comments: 10

New comment by gzalo in "Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer"

gzalo — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:12:14 +0000

I wonder if it's feasible to make diy Thermal paper using lemon juice, like the old "invisible ink experiment"

New comment by gzalo in "Tell HN: GitHub removed Classic projects and wiped my ideas without warnings"

gzalo — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 13:16:12 +0000

Update: The support team was able to remigrate all of the cards :D so issue solved. Thanks for the support!

Tell HN: GitHub removed Classic projects and wiped my ideas without warnings

gzalo — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 16:05:53 +0000

I've been using github projects for a few years now, mostly to track ideas and ToDos for side projects.

A few weeks ago GH sunsetted the classic github projects: https://github.blog/changelog/2024-05-23-sunset-notice-projects-classic/

This caused me to permanently lose some list of ideas and ToDos I had, because they handled the migration really poorly:

- They never sent any warnings via emails regarding the sunsetting, even though I've had ~10 Classic Projects for a few years

- The "automated migration" they ran migrated only cards last updated within last year. Some cards with ideas/ToDos/backlog weren't really updated within that period so they weren't migrated.

- The changelog mentions that the REST API is still available, but the projects that were partially migrated don't appear anymore. This means that the non-migrated cards cannot really be recovered.

I only hope that some GH employee reads this and can provide a backup of what I had before the migration.

Why would they even impose that arbitrary 1 year limit?

Designing a migration procedure that loses data on purpose seems evil.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474642

Points: 12

# Comments: 6

New comment by gzalo in "A cheap barcode scanner helped fix CrowdStrike'd Windows PCs in a flash"

gzalo — Sun, 28 Jul 2024 23:59:31 +0000

Interesting idea, but keep in mind that older laser-based barcode readers don't work when reading from an LCD screen

New comment by gzalo in "Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)"

gzalo — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:59:39 +0000

Fair enough, if it supports being charged using any port that is reasonable. I would assume that the notebook has some other internal 5v regulator, maybe for the embedded controller or some other legacy device

New comment by gzalo in "Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)"

gzalo — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 18:04:03 +0000

I don't get the point of designing and building a 3.3 to 5v booster instead of just wiring a cable to one of the existing USB C vbus 5v pins? Am I missing something?