Hacker News: m4lvin

New comment by m4lvin in "Canvas is down as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data"

m4lvin — Fri, 08 May 2026 12:50:32 +0000

As Wikipedia says, "some official plugins proprietary". So "can be" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. I would at most compare it to saying that VS Code is open-source.

New comment by m4lvin in "SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit [pdf] (2017)"

m4lvin — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 09:42:34 +0000

Okay, but how do I use this as a replacement when the mic is not working on Linux?

New comment by m4lvin in "ReMarkable Paper Pro"

m4lvin — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 14:43:49 +0000

I think one reason for the web interface is that the device stays usable. If it would export a block device then it would need to unmount the file system on itself or at least block changes. If I remember correctly in the old days before MTP, all Android did this, making storage on the device itself unavailable while making it available via USB.

New comment by m4lvin in "Terence Tao on proof checkers and AI programs"

m4lvin — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 18:34:28 +0000

The trick is that the human only needs to read and understand the Lean statement of a theorem and agree that it (with all involved definitions) indeed represents the original mathematical statement, but not the proof. Because that the proof is indeed proving the statement is what Lean checks. We do not need to trust the LLM in any way.

So would I accept a proof made by GPT or whatever? Yes. But not a (re)definition.

The analogy for programming is that if someone manages to write a function with a certain input and output types, and the compiler accepts it, then we do know that indeed someone managed to write a function of that type. Of course we have no idea about the behaviour, but statements/theorems are types, not values :-)

New comment by m4lvin in "Apple unveils 'Passwords' manager app at WWDC 2024"

m4lvin — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 19:03:13 +0000

pass is the best.

If your phone is android, I'd recommend https://passwordstore.app/ plus syncthing :-)

New comment by m4lvin in "Resistance Against Git Merge Hell (2015)"

m4lvin — Sat, 04 May 2024 13:34:18 +0000

Thanks for making me look up rerere which I first thought would be a typo but actually seems like a really useful thing :-)

https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Rerere

New comment by m4lvin in "Find My Device on Android"

m4lvin — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 19:01:53 +0000

For anyone looking for a free alternative that works without google play services: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.nulide.findmydevice/

New comment by m4lvin in "The ReMarkable Streaming Tool v2: Elevating Remote Work Efficiency"

m4lvin — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 13:25:48 +0000

No, but many ereaders at least provide a pin code lock which the rm2 does not.

New comment by m4lvin in "Firefox 115 can remotely disable any extension on any site"

m4lvin — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 17:36:43 +0000

Once more I an happy to use the ESR version of Firefox where stuff like this tends to only land much later. Add on top of that the Debian patches and default settings and it's a fine user-agent again :-)

Edit: oops, looks like 115 is the next ESR version, does that mean it gets this "feature" but for a long time will not get proper UI go control it? :-(

New comment by m4lvin in "A Dutch Village Where Everyone Has Dementia (2014)"

m4lvin — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 07:44:23 +0000

They also wrote Wheesp but it should be Weesp.

New comment by m4lvin in "The problem with federated web apps"

m4lvin — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 16:29:45 +0000

Good point, but I think the feature that I can paste any fediverse URL into the search field on my own mastodon instance and view it there, solves around 40% of the problem.

There are also already browser extensions which automatically redirect you to your own instance I think, but those need access to all browsing :-/

New comment by m4lvin in "Everything that uses configuration files should report where they're located"

m4lvin — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 17:34:05 +0000

Nice example, which opened a small rabbit hole for me: what does "first occurrence wins" mean for options that are meant to be used multiple times, such as "Port" in sshd_config. The man page only says "Multiple options of this type are permitted.", but now I wonder what happens when I put my own Port into /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/whatever.conf but leave "Port 22" in sshd_config? Or is the (new since bookworm) default sshd_config commenting it out for this reason?

More generally, for multi-options do we maybe want "first file wins"?

New comment by m4lvin in "Manjaro is a free and open source Linux operating system that emphasizes privacy"

m4lvin — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 07:12:29 +0000

Come to Debian, tomorrow is the perfect day in fact :-)

New comment by m4lvin in "Manjaro is a free and open source Linux operating system that emphasizes privacy"

m4lvin — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 07:11:32 +0000

I think PureOS includes GUFW by default. Does that count or do you mean something else by application firewall?

New comment by m4lvin in "Manjaro is a free and open source Linux operating system that emphasizes privacy"

m4lvin — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 07:09:56 +0000

Okay, but where is the comparison list for Manjaro? ;-)

New comment by m4lvin in "27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)"

m4lvin — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 14:21:33 +0000

The pro1x from fxtec with lineageos plus termux is useful :-)

New comment by m4lvin in "Scrcpy: Display and control your Android devices connected over USB or TCP/IP"

m4lvin — Tue, 02 May 2023 07:19:01 +0000

Cool, thank you!

New comment by m4lvin in "Nostr – Decentralized social network"

m4lvin — Tue, 02 May 2023 07:17:24 +0000

Fun analogy, but I think a better match would be that Thunderbird immediately says that it is an email program.

From my first look I had no idea whether this is an app to connect to Nostr or a completely separate and iOS only network.

New comment by m4lvin in "Nostr – Decentralized social network"

m4lvin — Mon, 01 May 2023 19:45:05 +0000

Can you explain why nostr is (apparently?) your favorite over scuttlebutt? Are the protocols similar?

https://scuttlebutt.nz/

New comment by m4lvin in "Nostr – Decentralized social network"

m4lvin — Mon, 01 May 2023 19:42:42 +0000

How does damus relate to nostr? Your landing page does not explain this at all. Is this because already the concepts of (distinguishing) client and network would be considered too technical for your target audience?