Hacker News: kovac

New comment by kovac in "I'm addicted to being useful"

kovac — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 02:57:51 +0000

Also, Gogol's Chichikov is a better metaphor for the dysfunctional corpo software dev than Akakyevitch...

New comment by kovac in "Static site search without JavaScript (Perl + FastCGI + SA index)"

kovac — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 12:39:55 +0000

Implemented search for my website (lup) using Perl + FastCGI + SA index. A throwback to the old net.

Send me some search traffic, and ideas on what I could improve. I've linked the source for both search and the benchmarks.

Static site search without JavaScript (Perl + FastCGI + SA index)

kovac — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 12:39:55 +0000

Article URL: https://www.asciimx.com/log/site-search/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46678329

Points: 5

# Comments: 2

Show HN: 13MB full-text site search

kovac — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 13:36:41 +0000

Static site search without JavaScript.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46667711

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by kovac in "10 years of writing a blog nobody reads"

kovac — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 10:19:28 +0000

> My goal now is to use less words to convey an idea.

This is what I'm encouraged by Grammarly as well. To some extent, perhaps the book "Elements of style" encourages this too.

However, I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. She writes long (wordy?) sentences that are clear, and even feels beautiful to read. I really enjoyed her writing.

But I'm not a native speaker. A question for the native speakers: what's your take on this? Has Shelly's writing style gone out of fashion, or are these two (Shelley's style and succinctness) different things?

New comment by kovac in "LinkedIn is loud, and corporate is hell"

kovac — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:30:08 +0000

I'm not convinced that we can spend quality time with loved ones outside work while spending most of our time at work pretending, and doing useless or unnatural things. I think what you practise shapes you.

New comment by kovac in "LinkedIn is loud, and corporate is hell"

kovac — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:04:03 +0000

Right. During times I'm looking for a job, I use uBlock Origin to completely hide the feed. Otherwise, I see no reason to use LinkedIn at all anymore.

New comment by kovac in "FSF announces Librephone project"

kovac — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 01:12:01 +0000

I think this is the right place to start.

A free OS will empower developers to implement technical workarounds that could trick these apps into working there. If the OS is tightly controlled, we have no recourse.

Even in the worst case scenario, we could use a cheap big-tech-approved phone for these applications (a glorified digital token) and use the free phone for everything else. When there's enough adoption and trust in the new phone, non-technical avenues are available to influence these organizations to accept the alternative.

New comment by kovac in "Free software hasn't won"

kovac — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 08:56:25 +0000

If winning means mass adoption, I think by definition free software won't win while remaining free.

If a tech becomes main stream, corporations (and people) begin commercializing it. The de facto strategy in our era for commercializing any tech is surveilling its users.

If a technology can't be harnessed, corporations will contain if not outright kill it.

We've seen this time and time again. So, the only way to win, in the sense of surviving and thriving, would be for that tech to fly under the radar. Remain in the hands of individuals who care and build it for themselves. In that sense, there are many free software that have already won.

My question is, why on earth are people obsessed with things like the year of the Linux desktop, and more people adopting their software.

Fragmentation is probably the only way free software will remain free.

New comment by kovac in "Qualcomm to acquire Arduino"

kovac — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 01:50:28 +0000

Thank you for sharing. As a hobbyist with a devotion to the field, I'm fascinated by how the actual professionals work. It's a very challenging domain.

New comment by kovac in "Qualcomm to acquire Arduino"

kovac — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 23:18:20 +0000

When professionals use Arduinos for such use cases, do they use the Arduino software platform or do they use the chio verndors' toolchains? Just curious how the professionals work with these things.

New comment by kovac in "Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits"

kovac — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 00:29:27 +0000

> My daycare sends me updates, my barbershop tells me when they're closing and I used it to sell my fridge.

To consider the other side of this, read "The age of surveillance capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff (really read it though, not chatgpt the summary :).

All the benefits you mentioned are real. But, at what cost and could we have reaped the same benefits without surrendering all agency to those who can't be held accountable?

New comment by kovac in "Meta’s live demo fails; “AI” recording plays before the actor takes the steps"

kovac — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 03:44:16 +0000

Forgot to reset the context after a test run? :p

New comment by kovac in "Why do we keep gravitating toward complexity?"

kovac — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 10:39:49 +0000

"Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better." - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra.

Simple/complex is subjective. Software domain is very diverse that it's unlikely we'd agree on them.

Take mathematicians, for instance. They generally have a shared sense of elegance/beauty. That's the result of a refined intuition from years of study.

New comment by kovac in "React is winning by default and slowing innovation"

kovac — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 09:21:14 +0000

How is inferno? Is it ready for production? I'm not a frontend dev, but been looking for a light weight, fast framework. Inferno looked pretty good alternative to react.

https://github.com/infernojs/inferno

New comment by kovac in "William Gibson Reads Neuromancer (2004)"

kovac — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 01:59:36 +0000

I thought it was just me. I gave up on reading the book midway,because I was confused most of the time, and found it hard to engage.

New comment by kovac in "This blog is running on a recycled Google Pixel 5 (2024)"

kovac — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:48:42 +0000

Impressive. The page loaded very quickly for me here in Singapore. Is it still running on the Pixel?

New comment by kovac in "Bear is now source-available"

kovac — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 01:43:42 +0000

Thanks for the bear blog.

Considering how LLM companies don't respect licenses, and if your livelihood depends on it, I'd go a step further and only make the source available upon request, under strict agreements about how it's used.

There's a lot of "open-source" nowadays that has nothing to do with the spirit of hacking.

New comment by kovac in "Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android"

kovac — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 23:26:28 +0000

The 2FAs require their mobile app sometimes.

New comment by kovac in "Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android"

kovac — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 23:24:09 +0000

Do you not have to use a 2FA app for things like banking? In Singapore, they are phasing out 2FA options other than the banking app. The banking apps only work on iPhones and Google-approved Android phones. It's pretty bad.