<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: napkin</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=napkin</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:07:50 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=napkin" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "What you need to know before touching a video file"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Things are complicated. As a policy, I wouldn’t want to encourage grandma to be going to any web site to download software. Grandma should probably stick to the App Store. And personally, I would way rather install github builds than downloads from ‘official’/independently maintained web sites. Especially in the case of free / open source projects, sometimes cash constrained. Security is hard.<p>I’m not super knowledgeable about modern video players- I do like Infuse, which is in the App Store.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 03 Jan 2026 05:57:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473203</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473203</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473203</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Study mode"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When prompting an LLM service to leak the system prompt, how do you have the faintest idea as to its accuracy?<p>I‘ve read people say it‘s a difficult challenge for the providers. But aren‘t there some pretty basic strategies? E.g., code pretty near the front of the stack that just does some fuzzy string comparison on all output? They don‘t need to rely on just model behavior…<p>I imagine it‘s likely that the model is just doing what it‘s good at? Hallucinating a prompt?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2025 14:20:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44734595</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44734595</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44734595</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "How to Firefox"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The author recommends this add-on- “Auto Tab Discard”- apparently optimising tab memory management. Why wouldn’t the standard distribution adopt it?<p>I’m reminded of when I used to maintain an epic-sized vimrc, compiled my kernel for a different IO scheduler, etc. The plight of the “power-user” is walking a fine line between tool refinement and over-complication (which in my case can stem from procrastination).<p>There are many reasons to strive for a minimalist setup, main one being that setting everything up from scratch shouldn’t feel exhausting.<p>That said… Firefox, with just uBO and a few basic privacy settings tightened, is pretty great.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 22 Jul 2025 13:37:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44646728</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44646728</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44646728</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Apple Blocks Fortnite's Return to iOS App Store, Epic Claims"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, not arguing the legal specifics. It’s good for Apple to be challenged in court.<p>But Epic did go out of their way to ‘trash’ Apple in the press. For this and other reasons I can’t generally relate to Epic. (e.g. targeting kids with microtransactions, burning piles of money on Epic Games exclusives.)<p>I would also not want to do business with Epic</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 16 May 2025 13:24:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44005214</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44005214</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44005214</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Apple Blocks Fortnite's Return to iOS App Store, Epic Claims"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But you’ve left out part of the narrative: Developer pushes an App update which purposefully violates the TOS, expecting rejection- having planned in advance to kick off an expensive PR campaign and legal battle.<p>I don’t deny Apple’s pettiness… Nonetheless, can you provide a different example of why devs are afraid of publicly criticizing Apple?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 16 May 2025 12:39:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44004720</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44004720</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44004720</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This all doesn’t sound worth reading into. There are other interpretations to supplier leaks. Ditto re: execs moving between teams. Apple AR != Vision Pro. On the flip side Apple is still shipping updates, new content, and selling units. I’ll just wait and see.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Mar 2025 03:01:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43384793</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43384793</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43384793</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is there evidence Vision Pro production was ‘cancelled’ as opposed to just running its limited course as planned? Are there substantial leaks indicating its successor has been cancelled?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Mar 2025 00:32:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43383985</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43383985</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43383985</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The Silk Road represented a tiny fraction of illicit drug revenue per country. Some report-skimming would indicate less than a single digit. A series of more profit-oriented darknet markets replaced it. I don’t know what the costs were associated with its takedown but they must have been enormous. I doubt it became large enough for cartels to care much, but the effect of shutting it down is certainly good for them.<p>I don’t personally hold the opinion that Ross Ulbricht shouldn’t have been pursued according to the law- or support his pardon- or even that darknet drug markets should exist! I’m also not really interested in crypto.<p>However I strongly believe that a completely different approach to drug laws & regulations is necessary to make people safer and reduce crime.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jan 2025 20:24:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42797081</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42797081</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42797081</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You really cannot stop illicit drug use. A hard approach to prohibition not only makes people less safe, it’s a massive waste of spending. On just a pragmatic level- Fentanyl and analogues are by weight hundreds of times more potent than morphine. How do you even effectively stop that from getting across borders? Silk Road provided a brief counterpoint, and ideally wouldn’t have had to exist. The ideals it represented were more broad- for drug regulations/spending that focus on safety, and respect individual rights / bodily autonomy (ofc limited to not harming or endangering others).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jan 2025 19:29:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42796555</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42796555</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42796555</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>(SWIM’s experience with Silk Road):<p>For LSD there existed a third-party forum, where a group of (supposedly) vendor-neutral, unaffiliated individuals would purchase samples from vendors, send them to private or state-sponsored labs around the world and publish/discuss the results (often with online links to lab results).<p>Yes, of course vendors could have also attempted to infiltrate these forums. But as enough of these functions were provided by/for the community, the profit incentive tilts. If you ran a vendor account on the Silk Road, your effort was better spent maintaining/improving good infosec and mail/postal security. Some techniques they developed were quite innovative, the professionalism was evident.<p>Ross’s story is fascinating and tragic- as everything that’s said for and against his character is generally true. Silk Road was built on naive yet admirable ideals. It fostered a special community, some of which really did reflect those ideals. He got in over his head, and really did try to have someone killed.<p>Though, the details on that latter point are a bit more complicated- authorities had infiltrated Ross’s inner circle- the motive and the ‘hitman’ himself were fictional. Ross still took the bait though, which is pretty damning. Until that point, they weren’t sure they had a sufficient case on him.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jan 2025 17:22:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42795179</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42795179</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42795179</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>“This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.“
(* deleted tweet by Netanyahu)<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231017165958/https://twitter.com/IsraeliPM/status/1713949754948718657" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20231017165958/https://twitter.c...</a><p>Top-down messaging like that certainly doesn’t strengthen whatever ‘policy’ is</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Jan 2025 03:59:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42721011</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42721011</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42721011</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Coding on iPad using self-hosted VSCode, Caddy, and code-server"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I’ve been maining an M4 iPad Pro for a few months now since frying my laptop (which ran Linux) while travelling. There’s a lot to love about it.<p>Sadly, one discovers dozens of minor bugs and annoyances, that are mostly specific to doing productivity/dev work.<p>For example, when I use Cmd-Tab to switch tasks, there’s a ~ 1/20 chance that the Cmd key will become ‘soft-stuck’. That is, I’ll start typing and the OS will act as if I’m holding down Cmd, often messing with my browser or active project. I have to tap Cmd again to ‘unstick’ it. It’s not a hardware issue- An Apple store has already replaced the keyboard for me, and the problem persists.<p>I guess no one at Apple dogfoods the iPad for productivity? Which is sad, because here this thing is! It exists! Productivity features have been at least added to iOS!<p>On the plus-side, I’m getting deep into doing sound synthesis / music production in iOS. The ecosystem is kind of exciting. I spend most of my time inside Audulus (Max/PD-like data flow/DSP) - it is criminally underrated, and so much fun.<p>I could really go on about the pros and cons but will refrain. It’s just such a mixed bag.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Sep 2024 18:58:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41449264</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41449264</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41449264</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Godot on iPad, Toolbars, Importers, Embedding, Debugger"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I primarily use an iPad pro. Hardware-wise, I think it’s a superior paradigm. Most of the time I’m using it with the magic keyboard. I love that if the keyboard is damaged, it’s totally removed from the device.<p>We don’t need to talk about the OS!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 01 Sep 2024 21:42:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41420636</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41420636</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41420636</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Show HN: A WireGuard Powered Remote Shell"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A less finnicky approach would be binding to 0.0.0.0, then configuring incoming firewall policy. By default deny, then allow SSH through wireguard network. Or by default allow then deny SSH through public network.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 12 May 2024 15:22:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40335182</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40335182</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40335182</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "12to11 – run Wayland applications on an X server"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sure, you wouldn’t call the Steam Deck a Desktop. However as you pick apart its software stack, you’d be hard pressed to find a few parts that don’t also benefit the Desktop usecase. Valve delivered a device that mostly just works for gaming, and the improvements they’ve invested in also benefit Desktop users. I don’t own a Steam Deck, but I am a decades-long Linux desktop user, and Valve‘s success thrills me.<p>Btw I take screenshots often w gnome+wayland, it just works so I don’t even know how it’s implemented. Not sure if you were making a Wayland jab.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Apr 2024 12:32:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40179446</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40179446</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40179446</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "12to11 – run Wayland applications on an X server"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The argument that it is ‘screwing desktop Linux’s progress’ doesn’t hold well in light of the success of the Steam deck- selling to millions- and running a Wayland compositor. Which ‘non-wayland’ efforts have been thwarted, that had any such numbers?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Apr 2024 11:59:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40179287</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40179287</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40179287</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Show HN: Kyoo – Self-hosted media browser (Jellyfin/Plex alternative)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wish I could say it was more sophisticated than slow trial and error. I tried changing many different aspects: MTU, forcing different routes/peering through different VPSs, various reverse proxy configurations.<p>I guess what started leading me down the right path was a more methodical approach to benchmarking different legs of the route with iperf: Client <-> reverse proxy, reverse proxy <-> jellyfin server. I started testing those legs separately, w/ and w/o Wireguard, both TCP and UDP. The results showed that the problem exhibited at the host level (nothing to do with Jellyfin or the reverse proxy), only for high latency TCP. The discrepencies between TCP and UDP were weird enough that I started researching Linux sysctl networking tuneables.<p>There might be something smart to say about the general challenges of achieving stable high throughput over high-latency TCP connections, but I don't have the knowledge to articulate it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Apr 2024 13:42:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39952403</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39952403</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39952403</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Show HN: Kyoo – Self-hosted media browser (Jellyfin/Plex alternative)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I had this problem too! Jellyfin behind a reverse proxy over Wireguard. For intercontinental visitors (high latency), there would be an initial burst of reasonable transfer speed, but within seconds, slow to an unusable crawl. It took a long time to identify the problem as relating to packet congestion.<p>Try changing Linux's default congestion control (net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control) on your Jellyfin & reverse proxy servers to 'bbr'. I don't understand the details- there might be negative consequences [1]- there might be better congestion algos- but for me, this completely solved the issue. Before, connections would stall out to <10%, sometimes even 1% line rate. In quiet/optimal network conditions.<p>Also, Caddy enables HTTP/3 by default. I force it to HTTP/2.<p>I should probably investigate using later versions of bbr, though.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408406">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408406</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2024 22:42:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39948171</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39948171</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39948171</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "OpenVoice: Versatile instant voice cloning"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I’m currently using xtts2 to make language learning more exciting, by training models on speakers I wish to emulate. I’m really into voices, and this has helped tremendously for motivation when learning German.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 Mar 2024 12:03:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39863011</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39863011</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39863011</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by napkin in "Gaza's Imminent Famine: 1.1M Face Catastrophic Food Insecurity"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The circumstances around this particular crisis are spiritually difficult to process. I'm cynical, but not cynical enough to have imagined the political alignment that we currently ('the west') hold, to enable/allow this level of suffering to occur, in Gaza. When an _entire_ (state/state-less) population is displaced, facing famine, disease, with no functional infrastructure- is it not reasonable to suggest that historical/political differences of opinion around the conflict are not the pressing matter? That even the most cynical interpretation of the 'human shield' argument can not justify this level of collective suffering? That there are other options, least of which simply minimise suffering? Over a million people are lacking basic human needs. We could easily help but, for political reasons, do nothing.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 19 Mar 2024 20:09:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39759755</link><dc:creator>napkin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39759755</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39759755</guid></item></channel></rss>