Hacker News: idatum

New comment by idatum in "A Practical Guide to SSH Tunnels: Local and Remote Port Forwarding"

idatum — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:03:38 +0000

What I've found beautiful about -J is the host you jump through requires no privileges on the final host. Only my laptop has the SSH key to access my home server, not my cheap VPS.

And this allows me to have zero open ports on my home internet. I do a reverse tunnel to my VPS from my home server (in a FreeBSD jail), and that port is what my laptop client jumps through.

New comment by idatum in "Ten Basic Clouds"

idatum — Fri, 29 May 2026 15:26:04 +0000

Living in the PNW it's good to have an interest in types of clouds and weather generally. Helps keep ones sanity during the rainy season.

New comment by idatum in "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"

idatum — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:53:06 +0000

But you can just use any cloud blob storage provider (including the big ones) along with the rclone utility. rclone supports many.

I even use rclone to sync photos to OneDrive I can then share with family/friends.

New comment by idatum in "Museum of Pocket Calculating Devices"

idatum — Thu, 21 May 2026 18:41:48 +0000

I have 2 listed: HP-35 and HP-41CX.

Still use an HP-11c.

Will die on that hill defending RPN!

New comment by idatum in "OpenBSD 7.9"

idatum — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:00:44 +0000

Runs well on my Lenovo T-490. I use this as my main non-Windows laptop.

New comment by idatum in "The Car That Watches You Back: The Advertising Infrastructure of Modern Cars"

idatum — Fri, 15 May 2026 02:27:25 +0000

My 2016 Golf GTI also lost its 3G modem service in the US. Perfect.

New comment by idatum in "Ti-84 Evo"

idatum — Sat, 02 May 2026 01:07:07 +0000

Bring back the HP-10c. RPN with "scientific calculator" label. Pure and simple, and approved for testing that forbids any programmable devices.

EDIT: oops, conflated with HP-35, from a decade earlier. 10c was programmable. HP-35 was not.

New comment by idatum in "US Supreme Court reviews police use of cell location data"

idatum — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:59:14 +0000

> 'If you don't want the government to have your location history, you just flip that off. You dont have to have that feature on your phone. so whats the issue?'

> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-location-tracking-data-w...

Can someone catch me up on how the settlement against Google where turning off location on your phone didn't stop them from collecting location data, plays in this Supreme Court case?

Isn't this like cell tower data, where the user doesn't have a choice if their location data is collected?

New comment by idatum in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

idatum — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 01:19:49 +0000

My wife is on a business trip and so it's just me. Some learnings to share on how the house works:

- Weirdly, the kitchen sink is almost exactly the geometric center of the house; hence, equal probability for odors to travel.

- And that reminds me: Need to download PDF for dishwasher operation.

- Day 2 (Friday) of my wonderful better half's travels, I started laundry. I remembered less then 2 days later that I need to transfer the clean (??) clothes from the bottom device (water/soap) to the upper "dryer" -- this device produces some serious heat. Kills odor causing bacteria, and stuff. Will call that a success.

- I find my clothes are scattered on the floor randomly. Seriously high entropy -- reminds me of CloudFlare's lava lamp application: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand

- Yep, total regression to the mean of bachelor-self and loving life..and the miracles of modern technology, where like the water automatically fills in the washing device. But not the soap.

New comment by idatum in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

idatum — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:00:03 +0000

"Can you see my screen?"

grrr

New comment by idatum in "Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone"

idatum — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 23:19:55 +0000

Haywood reads anxiously! Memorable scene.

New comment by idatum in "GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating system"

idatum — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 22:13:28 +0000

Can someone catch me up how FB et al are not the ones responsible for age verification?

Is it lack of something similar to PKI for identify verification?

New comment by idatum in "Lost Doctor Who episodes found"

idatum — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 02:07:47 +0000

Someone at the BBC with a degausser yelling "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

New comment by idatum in "Digg is gone again"

idatum — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:41:44 +0000

> Digg's founder who started the company back in 2004

Their plan is to make the internet what is was 22 years ago.

New comment by idatum in "NASA's DART spacecraft changed an asteroid's orbit around the sun"

idatum — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 01:43:13 +0000

Is there really better confidence we could now detect a similar 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor event?

New comment by idatum in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"

idatum — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 02:50:25 +0000

IRL

> If I went to the store and asked for a pack of cigarettes

online

> and I have no idea if I can trust them with my info

Why did you trust how your ID was scanned (if carded)?

With security cameras present, where did that scanned data end up?

New comment by idatum in "Acme Weather"

idatum — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 20:39:38 +0000

After losing Dark Sky on Android, I discovered Foreca app. Works well in my area in the PNW.

One thing I learned is some post processing done by these services are better in some areas than others.

New comment by idatum in "Hilbert Map of IPv6 address space"

idatum — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 05:45:59 +0000

Will share this with my (IPv4-only) ISP. I'm sure it will help.

New comment by idatum in "A brief history of barbed wire fence telephone networks (2024)"

idatum — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:58:38 +0000

I couple years ago I read "A Mind at Play", Soni & Goodman, a biography on Claude Shannon. He grew up on a farm and the book mentions how he made extensive use of barbed wire fence telegraph (and if I recall telephone). Perhaps one of the early experiences Shannon had regarding information.

The MIT Museum had a display (last year) of Shannon's "toys", including the famous mouse maze. I don't recall any mention of his early days using barbed wire telegraph though.

New comment by idatum in "Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month"

idatum — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 20:34:28 +0000

I'm seeing Groups.io show up more for hobbies/interests I have. It seems email can be a way to slow down heated discussions. Perhaps at the expense of push-back on using more email?

Anyone have any experiences to share with moving their discussion groups from Discord to Groups.io?