Hacker News: mwest

New comment by mwest in "A list of fun destinations for telnet"

mwest — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:56:52 +0000

That doesn't work either? Looks like the .com and .net domains are sadly just up for sale rather than being used for something fun.

New comment by mwest in "A list of fun destinations for telnet"

mwest — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 07:25:34 +0000

Very cool, some nice nostalgia looking through that list!

Missed a trick not being able to “telnet telnet.org” though. :-)

New comment by mwest in "Lack of sunlight during the day is worse than electric lighting at night"

mwest — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 12:13:43 +0000

The word "adaptation" has a few specific meanings in the field of biology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation

New comment by mwest in "Memories from old LAN parties"

mwest — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 01:38:20 +0000

Insomnia Festival is the largest of these in the UK I believe. In fact, i71 is going on right now. :-)

https://www.insomniagamingfestival.com/lan

Still manages to capture some of that "old school" LAN feel if you bring your own PC.

New comment by mwest in "Keybase.pub Shutting Down on March 1 2023"

mwest — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 17:41:25 +0000

The only one I've seen that comes close is https://keys.pub/ but it still misses a lot of what keybase gives (sigchains, etc.)

Previous HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22995792

Are there any others to consider? It's been quite sad to see Keybase so stifled after being acquired. :-(

New comment by mwest in "Yark: Advanced and easy YouTube archiver now stable"

mwest — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 18:23:02 +0000

Wow, I love the "daily tabs" concept. I'll install this and give it a go. Thanks!

"The use-case of tabs are websites that you know are going to change: subreddits, games, or tools that you want to use for a few minutes daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly."

New comment by mwest in "Yark: Advanced and easy YouTube archiver now stable"

mwest — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 16:12:52 +0000

If you're interested in this kind of thing, you may also want to check out:

- the Distributed YouTube Archive Discord: https://discord.com/invite/PQqks7eSKc

- ArchiveTeam also do a significant amount of YT archiving: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/YouTube

- a similar, but private effort: https://reddit.com/r/Archivists/comments/5uvfpw/youtube_arch...

New comment by mwest in "My secret life as an 11-year-old BBS sysop"

mwest — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 05:26:04 +0000

Some great nostalgia reading this. If you want more, check out Jason Scott's "BBS: The Documentary": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddbe9OuJLU&list=PL7nj3G6Jpv...

New comment by mwest in "After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users"

mwest — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 10:20:05 +0000

In theory you can use OTR[1] but I've yet to see an easy way to use this from a phone.

I remember IRC very fondly, but I feel it has a lot of baggage that makes it difficult to bring into the modern era.

This blog post (not mine) explains it quite well: https://jlu5.com/blog/im-tired-of-irc-heres-why

[1] https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/

New comment by mwest in "After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users"

mwest — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 10:15:36 +0000

Comes up with a privacy error atm. Guess their server got bit hard by HN?

Cached copy here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220915015328/https://pestnet.i...

Reminds me a bit of SILC: http://www.silcnet.org/

Still going to struggle with UX on a phone though...

New comment by mwest in "Manx is experiencing a revival on the Isle of Man"

mwest — Sat, 26 Nov 2022 19:13:45 +0000

I had the same question some time ago. The Wikipedia page is, as always, quite interesting. Although I think the tl;dr is "the name's so old, no one really knows". But the theory is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man#Name

"The name is probably cognate with the Welsh name of the island of Anglesey, Ynys Môn, usually derived from a Celtic word for 'mountain' (reflected in Welsh mynydd, Breton menez, and Scottish Gaelic monadh), from a Proto-Celtic *moniyos."

New comment by mwest in "Just a bunch of idiots having fun: a photo history of the LAN party"

mwest — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 17:57:04 +0000

Although not the same as a LAN party at a friend's house, I've quite enjoyed Insomnia in the UK a few times. Still some great LAN party vibes with a group of friends!

https://insomniagamingfestival.com/lan/

New comment by mwest in "Voting from Antarctica"

mwest — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 09:06:55 +0000

Very chill domain name... ;-)

New comment by mwest in "Ask HN: What is the most efficient way to do good?"

mwest — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 06:29:24 +0000

I too am a fan of FIRE. :-)

I think most folks will still want something to do - and a purpose - post-retirement, especially if it's early. It would be nice to live to work, rather than work to live...

Good luck with your target!

New comment by mwest in "Ask HN: What is the most efficient way to do good?"

mwest — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 18:17:55 +0000

You have ~80,000 hours in your career. Make them count. :-)

https://80000hours.org/

New comment by mwest in "Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment"

mwest — Sun, 06 Nov 2022 05:00:57 +0000

The stand-out innocence (or naivety) of the title is what made me click on this post. :-)

New comment by mwest in "IRC Server as Tor Hidden Service on OpenBSD"

mwest — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 11:25:01 +0000

Thanks for the guide!

I've always felt setting up the server is the easy part. The more complicated bit is setting up the clients, especially for friends who aren't as tech savvy, or just don't want to bother figuring out all the moving parts.

I see you mention client setup in passing at the end, but do you have a suggestions for a more complete guide for setting up things client-side? I've yet to find one.

New comment by mwest in "Defrag Like It's 1993"

mwest — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 01:28:17 +0000

Hah! Something to replace https://www.twitch.tv/twitchdefrags/ which seems to have stopped broadcasting. Now we just need the right sound. :-)

New comment by mwest in "Graph of Keybase commits pre and post Zoom acquisition"

mwest — Sun, 10 Oct 2021 01:35:03 +0000

It's quite heart breaking. I particularly loved the idea of the Keybase Filesystem, sad to see this fall into an abandoned state.

The closest Keybase alternative I've found so far is https://keys.pub/ (on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22995792)

Welcome any suggestions for KBFS alternatives!

New comment by mwest in "One Year of TILs"

mwest — Mon, 03 May 2021 05:16:53 +0000

I'd love something like this.

I've managed to get partway there by using ArchiveBox and feeding it my bookmarks, and then using the sonic to search through them.

Would be great to have this more streamlined into a normal Google/DuckDuckGo/whatever search workflow, with an option to also search your friends' bookmarks.