Hacker News: murphyslaw

New comment by murphyslaw in "We Will Not Be Divided"

murphyslaw — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 21:06:42 +0000

I believe that the biggest problem in the US is the constitution. It's next to impossible to change so the only way to fix it is replacing it entirely with a new one. But good luck with that...

New comment by murphyslaw in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

murphyslaw — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:53:32 +0000

You can pipe the fd directly:

# echo 1 >&2 2>| echo

New comment by murphyslaw in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

murphyslaw — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:50:25 +0000

O'Reilly's Essential System Administration [1], I never do a job interview without it.

[1]: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/essential-system-admini...

New comment by murphyslaw in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

murphyslaw — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:43:14 +0000

It always exists on any Unix system. Even a busybox root environment. Why do you want to save a few bytes to compromise portability?

New comment by murphyslaw in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

murphyslaw — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:38:19 +0000

> You can use /dev/stdin, /dev/stdout, /dev/stderr in most cases

Never ever write code that assumes this. These dev shorthands are Linux specific, and you'll even need a certain minimum Linux version.

I cringe at the amount of shell scripts that assume bash is the system interpreter, and not sh or ksh.

Always assume sh, it's the most portable.

Linux != Unix.

New comment by murphyslaw in "AI is destroying open source, and it's not even good yet"

murphyslaw — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 02:42:01 +0000

Older people like me could say that the Internet was a fun place until AOL came along.

IMO we're going to just have to deal with AI, like it or not.

New comment by murphyslaw in "The Home Computer Hybrids: Atari, TI, and the FCC"

murphyslaw — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 16:28:55 +0000

I used all of these as a kid, and they were the precursor to my C64 and C128. The TI 99/4A was the first real computer I ever used - real in the sense that it had a keyboard!

New comment by murphyslaw in "Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company"

murphyslaw — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 19:39:11 +0000

Just an assumption here, but the project appears to be about the methodology to verify the install. Who holds the keys is an entirely different matter.

New comment by murphyslaw in "Ventoy: Create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI Files"

murphyslaw — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 16:13:46 +0000

All of it is built from source, it's just that the current build process is not easy to audit. The build by definition needs to happen on multiple platforms or cross compiled, a root cert needs to be setup in the windows installer at boot time, and so on.

I agree that this is not an ideal way to boot an ISO, but the general public is unlikely to ever need a multiboot USB stick. I like this project enough to perhaps contribute.

New comment by murphyslaw in "ARM is great, ARM is terrible, and so is RISC-V"

murphyslaw — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 00:04:17 +0000

The author is specifically talking about Raspberry Pi upstreaming changes. Isn't that about as close as you will get to a general purpose SoC?

New comment by murphyslaw in "The End of Finale"

murphyslaw — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 02:22:57 +0000

I "own" Finale and the Garritan instrument package, which cost me around $600 on a student license. I remember having to guide my music composition teacher through installing his MIDI interface which connects his keyboard to Finale when he upgraded his computer.

He is the conductor of a local musical group and rewrites the scores for different instruments depending on the orchestra he can find/pay.

This guy has spent thousands of dollars over the years, and now he is faced with.... what? Relearning the interface? Can he still open his old scores, and (rather importantly), will the score "work" in its entirety, with all the accidentals in the right place, the lyrics in the right position and split to the correct notes to be sung, the trumpets in the right key, the timpani using the correct symbols, the repeats and coda correctly defined, the personal additions still working? What about linking each instrument to the correct MIDI output or instrument package?

This goes way beyond just cost, even if for a musician who doesn't make tons of money. The intellectual investment over decades is hard to express to someone who doesn't write music for a living.

New comment by murphyslaw in "Czech republic sets IPv4 end date"

murphyslaw — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 01:22:13 +0000

Are you sure you want any of those on a public network anyway? If they're not firewalled right now then you're already in trouble.

New comment by murphyslaw in "How thermal management is changing in the age of the kilowatt chip"

murphyslaw — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 19:04:13 +0000

Christ, 850000 cores!

New comment by murphyslaw in "I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans"

murphyslaw — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 11:59:53 +0000

About the job offers: at Cisco they have (or had) only 6 months to fill a "req", i.e. the permission to hire someone. If not filled by then the req got taken away.

So what you do is, you find someone, then open the req, then wait a while and hire the person you already selected.

Internal hiring websites are for show only.

New comment by murphyslaw in "Great Male Renunciation"

murphyslaw — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 12:17:52 +0000

I've worn them for period style music and dance performances.

I'd rather kill myself than wear those all day!

New comment by murphyslaw in "Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme"

murphyslaw — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 19:47:08 +0000

I was part of a conspiracy to commit massive credit card fraud as a minor (thankfully all no longer relevant). I was given AT&T calling card numbers which were pilfered right from the USPS to use to connect to US BBSes to download hacked software.

The Belgian guy I was in with got raided by the police. His hard disks had been hidden behind a brick wall with only the cables visible. They didn't find the hard disks so he got away with it, and I never got arrested or charged.

Good times.

New comment by murphyslaw in "Starlink Direct to Cell"

murphyslaw — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 21:16:05 +0000

Everyone I know in Belgium/The Netherlands/... uses Whatsapp. It's even got into the language: "to app someone", i.e. "iemand appen".

New comment by murphyslaw in "How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?"

murphyslaw — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 03:31:24 +0000

Given that this is meant to be poetic it is likely that a Roman would have said it in Greek, which was considered a more "cultured" language than mere boorish Latin.

New comment by murphyslaw in "Tokyo by Train (2016) [video]"

murphyslaw — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 04:18:13 +0000

What I found really strange when I went there for a few weeks, was that the entire network ground to a halt before midnight. And this for a city of 25 million people.

Which I guess is why I found people sleeping in their suits near Shinjuku station. I still wonder where all the bar staff and their customers went to after closing up for the night. I asked the hotel staff and they said they could sleep on-site.

New comment by murphyslaw in "Milk bag"

murphyslaw — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 04:06:44 +0000

In Europe it's fairly common to find wine in 3L boxes. The quality varies, but the same is true for the ones you find in bottles.

Supermarkets also buy and bottle their own wines so you often find the same wine in both bottles and boxes.