Hacker News: lhamil64

New comment by lhamil64 in "I built ChatGPT with Minecraft redstone [video]"

lhamil64 — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 12:48:42 +0000

As far as I'm aware there's no way to do an HTTP request via command blocks, at least in vanilla.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Gmail will no longer support checking emails from third-party accounts via POP"

lhamil64 — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 17:56:58 +0000

Huh, apparently I still have a POP3 email setup in Gmail, my old ISP provided email. Mildly annoying that it's going away, but I never use that email anyway so I guess it's not a big deal for me.

New comment by lhamil64 in "A new experimental Google app for Windows"

lhamil64 — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 23:22:31 +0000

What are your thoughts on screen magnifiers? Personally I tend to increase scaling a bit and use Magnifier for anything that's too small (or increase the font size in the application if possible)

New comment by lhamil64 in "Immich – High performance self-hosted photo and video management"

lhamil64 — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 22:04:39 +0000

I've been keeping my eye on Immich for a while and keep waiting for a stable release to try it out, but that hasn't happened yet. I'm also dreading having to setup proper backups if I were to switch to this over Google photos. My current solution is to backup critical homelab things to Google Drive automatically but I'd want a proper off-site backup if I were going to self host all my photos.

New comment by lhamil64 in "This blog is running on a recycled Google Pixel 5 (2024)"

lhamil64 — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 03:05:53 +0000

One issue I have with doing this is what about security? Many older android phones don't get updates anymore (I'm not sure if a Pixel 5 is still supported, it might be) so I'd be concerned about security vulnerabilities going unpatched especially if the phone is exposed to the internet.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords"

lhamil64 — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 15:02:39 +0000

I personally don't do this because I feel like it defeats the whole purpose of 2fa. If someone gets into your bitwarden account, now they have your passwords and can generate 2fa codes. Of course, if the alternative is just not doing 2fa then it's better than nothing but I'd still prefer an authenticator app or hardware key than putting them in bitwarden.

New comment by lhamil64 in "uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari"

lhamil64 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 12:55:07 +0000

The search in Google Messages on Android is completely useless too. It seems like it only searches within the past few days or something, if I try searching for something from a while back it never finds it. And they removed the feature to quickly scroll back to a date in the past, so the only way to dig up old texts is to manually scroll back in a conversation and hope you find it. It's absolutely ridiculous that the search is so bad when it's an app by Google of all companies.

New comment by lhamil64 in "The Grug Brained Developer (2022)"

lhamil64 — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 10:47:13 +0000

I work with some pretty niche tech where it's usually, ironically, easier to use a debugger than to add print statements. Unfortunately the debugger is pretty primitive, it can't really show the call stack for example. But even just stopping at a line of code and printing variables or poking around in memory is pretty powerful.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway"

lhamil64 — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 15:37:37 +0000

There's also a problem of drivers discriminating, like canceling rides if they see you have a guide dog. It's illegal and they can get banned for it, but it still happens. This wouldn't happen in a Waymo.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Ending TLS Client Authentication Certificate Support in 2026"

lhamil64 — Sun, 18 May 2025 03:41:48 +0000

I've wondered this too. I have a little home server with some self hosted services, and I use a client cert on the reverse proxy to add an extra layer of security before the user can even reach the app. This works fine when accessing things via the browser, but if you want to use something like a mobile app, it almost certainly won't have support for it. It's up to every single app dev to implement support for passing in a client cert on the http requests.

I suppose a VPN is really the better answer here, but that's a pain if I want to give anyone else access and is less granular.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Coding without a laptop: Two weeks with AR glasses and Linux on Android"

lhamil64 — Sun, 18 May 2025 01:17:04 +0000

It sounds like we have a similar situation. I've been wondering if these kinds of glasses would work for me but it just seems like such a hassle to order a pair to try just to end up returning them if they don't work. I wish they were sold in a store that I could just walk into and try them for a minute.

FWIW, I use a monitor arm that's mounted on the front left side of my desk (my dad also modified my desk so this would work) so I can pull it as close as I need. It does mean I can't push it back to a normal monitor distance but I'm the only one using my PC so that's not a problem. Oddly enough, I recently got cataract surgery so now I have a lens that makes me focus further away, but now text is too small to read at that distance so I have to use readers to focus closer and use the arm.. seems a little silly but it mostly works out.

New comment by lhamil64 in "A kernel developer plays with Home Assistant"

lhamil64 — Sat, 17 May 2025 16:25:49 +0000

I used to use Home Assistant via Docker, but I've since switched to Proxmox with HAOS in a VM and a second Debian VM for everything else. My main reason for this is that it seems like the more supported scenario. For example, when the Voice Assistant stuff first came out the setup was only really documented via HAOS add-ons. I managed to get it working with standalone Docker containers but it was a pain to figure out. It really is simpler to just use HAOS IMO.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes"

lhamil64 — Wed, 14 May 2025 12:59:50 +0000

My area has a dial-a-ride service where you can schedule a ride and they essentially make an on demand bus route for it. I've never actually used it though because it's just really not convenient. You have to call a dispatch number to schedule trips like 3 days in advance, and can only cancel 24 hours before your trip. And you can only schedule trips on certain weekdays (doesn't run on weekends at all) depending on which city/town you're leaving from or going to.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Regex Isn't Hard (2023)"

lhamil64 — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 11:27:55 +0000

One thing I noticed with the example `['0-9a-f']`

Doesn't this go against the "literals are enclosed in quotes" idea? In this case, you have a special character (`-`) inside a quoted string. IMO this would be more consistent: `['0'-'9''a'-'f'']`, maybe even have comma separation like `['0'-'9','a'-'f'']`. This would also allow you to include the character classes like `[d,'a'-'f'']` although that might be a little confusing if you're used to normal regex.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative"

lhamil64 — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:26:57 +0000

Where do you get media from? Piracy is an option, but if you want to do it semi-legally I guess you’d need to rip blu-rays, but that seems like it'd be more expensive than streaming services, and you’d have to wait for everything to be released on blu-ray (if it even does)

New comment by lhamil64 in "Briar: Peer to Peer Encrypted Messaging"

lhamil64 — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:30:54 +0000

Have you seen Meshtastic (https://meshtastic.org/)? It seems like a similar concept but using dedicated devices and unlicensed ISM frequencies, and it's a proper mesh network (so you can even setup repeaters to provide better coverage for an area). I guess they wouldn't work too well if you're travelling to another country since you'd have to get the right radios for the country but it's a neat idea.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Ggwave: Tiny Data-over-Sound Library"

lhamil64 — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 17:02:42 +0000

There's also JS8call which is a modified version of FT8 meant for actual communication. IIRC you can do some neat things with it, like relaying a message through another user if you don't have a direct path to the recipient.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Money lessons without money: The financial literacy fallacy"

lhamil64 — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 15:39:48 +0000

I had a health class in high school that taught things like sex ed, first aid, we even learned CPR (the teacher was also an EMT). I remember one class where we had to bring in newspapers and we drew scenarios like "you are divorced and have sole custody of your child, you make $X/hr" and we had to basically find an apartment in the paper and see if we could make it work, adding in things like food, utilities, etc. IIRC I wasn't able to get my monthly expenses below what I was hypothetically making...

New comment by lhamil64 in "Kids Love Landline Phones"

lhamil64 — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:55:07 +0000

You can get devices that adapt an analog phone to VoIP, something like this https://a.co/d/54J6Svg

I've never used that device so I can't say how good it is, but something like that would let you use any analog phone.

New comment by lhamil64 in "Switching to Linux: Reclaim Your Freedom"

lhamil64 — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 04:01:48 +0000

When my work laptop got an upgrade recently, I received a Dell Precision 5690 and it seems pretty MacBook-like, like they tried to clone a MBP. Granted, I haven't ever owned a modern MacBook so maybe it's not quite as high quality but it's definitely sleeker than my old ThinkPad. The one thing that's very non-Mac is the power adapter. It's a brick, and while it's USB-C, they used a non-standard voltage/wattage so it's unclear if/how well third party adapters would work.