Hacker News: mrspuratic

New comment by mrspuratic in "TIL: You can make HTTP requests without curl using Bash /dev/TCP"

mrspuratic — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:05:09 +0000

This feature has been part of bash since 5.1 (ca 2020), though it may not be enabled in all distros.

  cd src/bash-5.3/examples/loadables
  make accept
  enable -f ./accept accept
  (accept -r RHOST -v SOCKETFD -b 127.0.0.1 8000; 
    read -u $SOCKETFD SOCKETDATA; 
    printf "%s: %s\n" "$RHOST" "$SOCKETDATA";
    printf "goodbye, world\n" 1>&${SOCKETFD} ) &
  nc 127.0.0.1 8000 <<< "hello, world"

For real use you may need to add "exec {SOCKETFD}<&-" to close the FD.

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39369749 (2024)

New comment by mrspuratic in "Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time"

mrspuratic — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:00:42 +0000

Plus /actual/ flywheels to compensate for non-synchronous generation: https://www.esbinternational.ie/case-studies/details/moneypo...

New comment by mrspuratic in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

mrspuratic — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 08:57:37 +0000

Land grab strategy 101.

New comment by mrspuratic in "Shunning AI is the human choice"

mrspuratic — Thu, 21 May 2026 16:25:22 +0000

Not as long as there's money to be made schilling and selling "qualifications" in prompt engineering.

New comment by mrspuratic in "Poland is now among the 20 largest economies"

mrspuratic — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:00:48 +0000

This is how it works. Ireland was a net beneficiary until 2018, and now it is a net contributor (one of only 10 net contributors). These are decades long investments, Poland joined in 2004. Per capita Poland is not the "greatest" beneficiary but I don't think that will help win any arguments for those already resistant to facts or reasoning. https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/12/09/eu-budget-who-p...

New comment by mrspuratic in "Appearing productive in the workplace"

mrspuratic — Thu, 07 May 2026 11:24:30 +0000

\usepackage{comicsans}

New comment by mrspuratic in "Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers"

mrspuratic — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:27:24 +0000

"updoc" is still my favourite joke name. A long time ago (predating E lang's updoc afaict) I wrote a toy markup for semi-technical docs, named so with the specific intention of dropping it casually into conversation. Still funny :D

New comment by mrspuratic in "ChatGPT Images 2.0"

mrspuratic — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:40:35 +0000

showdead=no in user settings hides flagged & moderator killed posts

New comment by mrspuratic in "Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)"

mrspuratic — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:56:26 +0000

Smoke yes, but you're also turning a carbon sink into a carbon source. At ~16% of the island's surface area, peatland stores an estimated 53% of soil based carbon. (source: Irish Peatland Conservation Council)

New comment by mrspuratic in "Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78"

mrspuratic — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 16:21:22 +0000

[dupe^2], previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46897340

New comment by mrspuratic in "In Memoriam Robert Tinney"

mrspuratic — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 19:11:23 +0000

Robert Frank Tinney, artist for over 100 Byte magazine covers 1975-1990, passed away peacefully on February 1st, 2026, at the age of 78.

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607038

New comment by mrspuratic in "DNS Explained – How Domain Names Get Resolved"

mrspuratic — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 19:30:41 +0000

I grind my teeth every time I hear "I need an urgent DNS change" :/

New comment by mrspuratic in "Norway EV Push Nears 100 Percent: What's Next?"

mrspuratic — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:50:06 +0000

Hydro can help a lot with that. Grid stability is a big issue with non-synchronous power sources (SNSP).

New comment by mrspuratic in "ISO PDF spec is getting Brotli – ~20 % smaller documents with no quality loss"

mrspuratic — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 18:16:14 +0000

> I couldn't quickly find a way to decompress them

    pdftk in.pdf output out.pdf decompress

New comment by mrspuratic in "We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports"

mrspuratic — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:21:13 +0000

Although it's not mentioned in those, it's going away at the end of the month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46701733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46678710

New comment by mrspuratic in "Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them"

mrspuratic — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 18:09:19 +0000

I got a Foxydry (Italy) wall-mounted rack a few years back, best €100 I spent that year. Bottom rack folds up flush to the wall, top rack raises nearly to the ceiling. Towels dry fine spread over extra bar or three to allow for better air circulation.

New comment by mrspuratic in "What a year of solar and batteries saved us in 2025"

mrspuratic — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:42:57 +0000

No fridge? That's a heat pump.

New comment by mrspuratic in "Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere"

mrspuratic — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 17:51:37 +0000

This. I have that type (regenerative MHVR) installed in the attic for upstairs, and a synced pair of in-wall ceramic (recuperative) types on opposite sides of main living area downstairs (eliminating ducting, albeit with reduced efficiency). I haven't attempted any energy/ROI calculations but fresh filtered air, lower humidity and good nights sleep are well worth the claimed single-digit watt power usage to me.

New comment by mrspuratic in "Aliasing"

mrspuratic — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 19:39:54 +0000

In old school FORTRAN (I only recall WATFOR/F77, my uni's computers were quite ancient) subroutine (aka "subprogram") parameters are call-by-reference. If you passed a literal constant it would be treated as a variable in order to be aliased/passed by reference. Due to "constant pooling", modifications to a variable that aliased a constant could then propagate throughout the rest of the program where that constant[sic] was used.

"Passing constants to a subprogram" https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/fortran/ch1-8.html

New comment by mrspuratic in "CO2 batteries that store grid energy take off globally"

mrspuratic — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 18:43:10 +0000

Ireland is lucky enough to have several suitable sites, but just one operational: Turlough Hill, which has been running for over 50 years and is in use daily. It's at least as useful in terms of grid stability and (relatively) rapid dispatch as capacity. Output ~0.7% of total daily (~120GWh), ~5% of daily peak (~6GW), wintertime figures. For comparison electricity usage has increased about 8-fold since it was deployed in 1974.