Hacker News: nikolay

New comment by nikolay in "Decayfmt – a file format that corrupts itself a little every time you open it"

nikolay — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 10:30:54 +0000

A virus I wrote in the '90s did just that - every time you opened a file, it damaged a small random part of it. My plan was also to randomly change the digits of numbers when printed on paper. I wrote this because a friend of mine managed to steal my source code during my naive XOR encryption. The "encrypted" files had a bunch of zeroes, and he saw my password. My virus worked. First, it damaged his working copy; then he tried to copy the backup, but in doing so, he damaged it, too, even though he claimed his backup diskette was write-protected. The virus didn't spread because I knew how evil it could be - just as evil as MS-DOS, which would run a hidden .COM file without thinking twice. So many fast typists like me were often mistyping "DIR" as "DUR", so I just put my virus in a hidden DUR.COM, copied it into the empty allocated space of COMMAND.COM (less than 200 bytes), and printed out "Bad command or file name". So, the theft was avenged!

P.S. I didn't specify, I didn't have my own computer, only used computers at school and my friend's personal computers, leaving "encrypted" files in case I forgot to bring my diskette. So, after he stole my code and some personal files, her never left me alone on his computer, but he never thought I would infect his computer so easily right in front of his eyes without him realizing it!

New comment by nikolay in "Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results"

nikolay — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 01:00:31 +0000

I love it. I don't mind paying; I just prefer to tip rather than pay a subscription! I miss Google Contributor [0]!

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

New comment by nikolay in "Git at any scale"

nikolay — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 06:48:40 +0000

People are lazy, and when there are no standards (or when they are not followed strictly), it's no small challenge to build a generic interface that works with multiple providers transparently and interchangeably. Many moons ago, we built an LOS (Loan Origination System) for subprime mortgage companies, and I designed a service that standardized input and output for dozens of mortgage vendors - credit, title - you name it. Every vendor was adding their flavor to the standards; everybody read the standards wrongly to some extent, etc. So, when we were pitching the LOS to a bunch of lenders, many of them came back to us and asked, "Can we just buy your servicing subsystem from you?" although it wasn't a separate product at the time. So, naturally, software engineers don't like one-offs unless they support one of the vendors only (pun intended) - the GOAT. It's not so easy to create or extend a standard that works across all vendor implementations. So, it's human nature to try to avoid this process and just support GitHub. The bigger the mass, the stronger the gravity. The biggest mass has the strongest gravity.

New comment by nikolay in "Git at any scale"

nikolay — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:45:34 +0000

Oh, I told my son to create an org yesterday with Cursor Origin, just in case in 10 years it becomes a thing, and he said: "Oops! Paid customers only!" A GitHub "alternative," really? Well, this is reminding me to cancel my Cursor subscription. I am paying for it but not using it because I don't need it as it offers me nothing. I won't even say that somebody already got my GitHub org name, so I'm sure there will be an aftermarket for org usernames and people who want to get 10-15-20x of their $20 investment. Cursor's shortsighted decision is definitely welcomed by parasites! They rushed out their MVP so badly that they created an identity fiasco!

New comment by nikolay in "Git at any scale"

nikolay — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:39:07 +0000

I use Claude with the Codex plugin as a critic (sometimes I switch and manually review with Claude). With the Superpowers skill (which I am trying to get rid of), it designs expensive models and implementations, uses cheaper ones for other, less important stuff, including Haiku, sometimes upgrading if it hits a roadblock, and then, finally, reviews with expensive ones. Why would I need Composer unless I'm a poor hobbyist? I care about value created, not about the affordable costs. So far, Claude and Codex have given me a huge ROI and are worth every penny. I don't even use an IDE, although I pay for Zed, or the terminal anymore - Claude and ChatGPT desktop apps give me everything and keep things simple. I just watched Theo yesterday [0], and I realized I'm not alone.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLhcLqoff6k

New comment by nikolay in "Git at any scale"

nikolay — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:19:48 +0000

I am just too old, you know. I remember Bitbucket, GitLab, and the plethora of other GitHub killers. GitHub is an ecosystem, not a product. Cursor needs at least a decade to beat that! Maybe more!

New comment by nikolay in "Feature Request: Support AGENTS.md"

nikolay — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:13:58 +0000

The contents of my CLAUDE.md:

  @AGENTS.md

New comment by nikolay in "Git at any scale"

nikolay — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:59:29 +0000

There's nothing Cursor can do that GitHub/Microsoft can't in 2026... And vice versa... after several years of Cursor vibecoding a GitHub clone while catching up with GitHub's new features. Git's performance it's not the issue; it's GitHub Actions, PRs, etc. The moment Cursors steals paid GitHub customers and gets the same workloads, they will start having similar issues! Stealing engineers who couldn't fix this at GitHub won't make much of a difference. GitHub is not just source control; everybody can set up Gitolite and have an amazingly configurable and secure Git setup. I did this 10 years ago, and CODEOWNERS, protected branches, and tags can't do 1% of what I had done before. Cursor is going all over the place as it can't compete with their model. So, this is a defeat, a pivot, not something glorious!

New comment by nikolay in "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"

nikolay — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:58:27 +0000

Well, this is not even an MVP. I couldn't get my GitHub org name, so I'm not interested in your vibe-coded clone. You don't get the value of identity! When you release stuff like this, you can't leave it to be driven by chaos. Facebook had a strict timeline for releasing Facebook users' names, and everybody got an equal chance; it did very well recently with WhatsApp usernames as well. And what you did was let some people grab the usernames of paying customers, who were on vacation or busy at the moment! What a big fiasco, but, of course, you don't care as you've got yours already, right?

New comment by nikolay in "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"

nikolay — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:41:59 +0000

What's worse than GitHub? - Its vibe-coded clone!

New comment by nikolay in "A Preview of DuckDB v2.0"

nikolay — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 20:49:57 +0000

It's sad that almost no migration framework supports DuckDB, and overall support is highly limited, but it's a great product I've been using daily for 6 months without encountering a single issue. I hope v2 brings DuckDB more attention and increases third-party support!

Text Watermarking for Non-Academics

nikolay — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 01:17:40 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.gaborkoos.com/posts/2026-08-12-Text-Watermarking-for-Non-Academics/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49266737

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Compression is prediction

nikolay — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 19:49:44 +0000

Article URL: https://ngrok.com/blog/compression-is-prediction

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49263497

Points: 674

# Comments: 300

Dark mode toggles: two states are enough

nikolay — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:42:06 +0000

Article URL: https://lea.verou.me/blog/2026/dark-mode-toggles/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49250891

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by nikolay in "_for-sale DNS records"

nikolay — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 05:38:24 +0000

Yes, of course. You think I'm subsidizing the renewals without a return on my investment? My prices are low compared to the 3 popular appraising services. I won't consider GoDaddy, as I've always been able to sell my domains well over their appraisals, but I use their pricing as a signal in my blended price as well. I didn't come up with any of these prices - it's all an algo based on credible appraising services: GoDaddy, Atom, Appraise.net, Dynadot. EstiBot is a joke - sometimes it values domains I've sold thousands of times at an appraisal value for less than the renewal cost.

New comment by nikolay in "_for-sale DNS records"

nikolay — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 05:13:42 +0000

Nice! I just implemented it for my portfolio [0], and I'm waiting for the DNS zones to update! Thank you!

[0]: https://namegarage.com

New comment by nikolay in "Cloudflare Wallets: the programmable wallet for the agentic Internet"

nikolay — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 03:30:05 +0000

For example, Meta does. When they started offering reserved usernames on Facebook, they gave advance notice and gave everybody an equal start. With WhatsApp usernames, they also allowed you to pick your Instagram username or your Facebook username. That's how it should be done. What Cloudflare did is basically push me not to use their offering, because I couldn't get my username. I'm not going to rebrand just for them! I'm sure most were reserved by crooks, not real customers, to blackmail the legit parties!

New comment by nikolay in "Cloudflare Wallets: the programmable wallet for the agentic Internet"

nikolay — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 03:25:53 +0000

What a stupid move! So, you have a Workers subdomain, a Zero Trust subdomain, and now a Wallet subdomain - one company with random handles! Cloudflare does not get identity!

New comment by nikolay in "Strategic Oil Reserves Down to a Record Low Two-Week Supply"

nikolay — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 04:57:47 +0000

Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

New comment by nikolay in "Show HN: Let's Seal – Let's Encrypt for document signing, free and self-hosted"

nikolay — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 01:59:07 +0000

How does it compare to DocuSeal?