Hacker News: nobleach

New comment by nobleach in "A sentimental tour of late 1990s and early 2000s hacking tools"

nobleach — Wed, 13 May 2026 22:47:49 +0000

I read Hacking Exposed around that time period. Up until then, my only "hacking" experience was with AOHell and everything that came along with that. It was interesting, but I wasn't really into the idea of trying to use CreditWiz to increase my odds of prison time. (I was a kid, I thought everything would lead to prison). Back Orifice just seemed like a great sysadmin tool!

New comment by nobleach in "GeoJSON"

nobleach — Fri, 08 May 2026 15:24:47 +0000

I'm gonna have to dive into a rabbit-hole! I was working on an ESRI Shapefile to GeoJson converter back in those days. But D3 and Leaflet were such cool tech! MapBox too. Linking SagaGIS with PostGIS to do pre/post wildfire analysis was my jam.

New comment by nobleach in "GeoJSON"

nobleach — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:23:08 +0000

We used this extensively when I worked in this space (2010 - 2014). My favorite addition was using https://github.com/topojson/topojson to add arcs. That cut down on quite a bit of points to represent curves.

New comment by nobleach in "Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data"

nobleach — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:18:39 +0000

Were you expecting "Got hacked, BRB"? I'm sure that page is their default circuit breaker.

New comment by nobleach in "Linux 7.0 Broke PostgreSQL: The Preemption Regression Explained"

nobleach — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:47:41 +0000

I get that folks love a good Linus rant. But as someone who's been at the end of that style of "feedback", nothing can be more humiliating or demotivating. Certainly there are contributors that are making "rookie mistakes". There are folks that aren't willing to ingest the entire context of what was tried back in 2.0.36, 2.2, 2.4... etc. And perhaps it's wise to simply stay away until you're completely certain you've got the chops to contribute. More than half the folks that enjoy that sort of abuse don't have those chops.

I can defend someone who is unwilling to yield on quality. Afterall, this truly is his baby. Issuing scathing rebukes to well-intentioned contributors is like slapping my kid when he brings me the wrong type of screwdriver.

New comment by nobleach in "Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs"

nobleach — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:28:57 +0000

That wasn't my experience at all. I had a recruiter screen where she asked me some technical questions. I then had a longer discussion, then a code screen, then an arch-deep-dive. The entire process was very professional and EVERY person came off like they really wanted me to succeed. (Sure it's an act but it's a very helpful act when you're in the hot seat)

My intervews were in 20202/2021. Perhaps things have changed?

New comment by nobleach in "The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs"

nobleach — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:26:19 +0000

Yeah, that's really the hard part of contracting. I was in my 20s and was certain I HAD to win every bid to keep feeding myself. I took longer than I should to realize that 3 worthwhile jobs is far better than 10 hassles. All clients required changes, most thought they were overpaying, and many gave me a hard time when the bill was sent. Meanwhile, when I'd toss out $20,000 as a price tag, those folks were far more serious, and they paid on time! It caused me to learn a valuable lesson. You want to quote high enough to offend the folks that aren't serious. They were gonna be such a pain.

New comment by nobleach in "The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs"

nobleach — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:35:50 +0000

"My nephew makes websites, and he's 14... I could just have him do it"

- Every client of mine during my contracting days. It took me way too long to reply with, "Oh that's great news! I wasn't sure of my availability, and was certain I was going to be way too expensive. Glad you got it figured out."

New comment by nobleach in "A perfectable programming language"

nobleach — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:59:49 +0000

Alright, you and your sibling reply have me wanting to look at it. I wrote Scheme/Racket when I was going through The Little Schemer and SICP. I'll buy a common lisp book. Any recommendations?

New comment by nobleach in "A perfectable programming language"

nobleach — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:58:15 +0000

...in an imaginary world where we're still writing code, yes. It's a musing, not a directive.

New comment by nobleach in "A perfectable programming language"

nobleach — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:57:29 +0000

I'd settle for the Result/Option containers. Kotlin does have ArrowKt to attempt to achieve all the functional goodness of Scala. I think for my needs though, I'd appreciate Rust's "Result".

New comment by nobleach in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"

nobleach — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:04:43 +0000

I still install it and play with it for a bit every other year. I really appreciate that it's held true to its own core. Yes it works with Wayland now, but it's still using its e-foundation libraries. I still wish I had screenshots of my desktop from 1998/1999. Downloading cool software from Freshmeat, hitting up Slashdot (news for nerds... stuff that matters) to see what was going on. Kinda wish I was into IRC back then but I was more of an ICQ->AIM chatter. It's an era I wish we could have back.

New comment by nobleach in "A perfectable programming language"

nobleach — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:20:29 +0000

No, I realize that. It doesn't stop me from having my "perfect language wishlist". The author calling out "perfectable" is what got me thinking. What language would I choose if I were able to "perfect" it just a bit more?

New comment by nobleach in "A perfectable programming language"

nobleach — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:14:13 +0000

oh yeah absolutely. The moment you start blowing up Go with features (for example) the speed decreases dramatically.

New comment by nobleach in "A perfectable programming language"

nobleach — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:41:15 +0000

The perfect programming language has:

  - The compile speed of Go
  - The performance of Go
  - The single binary compilation of Go
  - The type system of Kotlin
  - The ecosystem of JVM (packages for anything I could dream of)
  - The document sytem/tests of Elixir
  - The ability to go "unsafe" and opt for ARC instead of GC
  - The result monad/option monad and match statements from OCaml/Gleam
  - A REPL like Kotlin or even better, OCaml
  - A GREAT LSP for NeoVim
  - A package/module system that minimizes transient dependencies
  - No reliance on a VM like BEAM or JVM

I still dream about this "one size fits all" language.

New comment by nobleach in "Artemis II Launch Day Updates"

nobleach — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:34:00 +0000

Heh, Ormond Beach first, then Flagler - Palm Coast (FPC - go, fight, win!)

New comment by nobleach in "Usenet Archives"

nobleach — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:14:05 +0000

Yup, in the 2005ish era, I found that I was downloading albums just because I could. Some I never even listened to! I got rid of my EasyNews subscription because it all seemed so silly to me.

New comment by nobleach in "Usenet Archives"

nobleach — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 11:57:06 +0000

It's always fun to realize that USENET is still out there humming along. I still remember the thrill of working on my ancient Delphi/Object Pascal projects, and posting questions... waiting a few hours and checking back for responses. There was no "instant gratification" in those days. (I wasn't really using IRC).

Opening this, and just searching "Delphi" I see that USENET never did get that "censorship" that I always assumed would eventually happen. The group names alone are truly unhinged. The Wild West is still.... wild!

New comment by nobleach in "Artemis II Launch Day Updates"

nobleach — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 21:39:57 +0000

80 miles for me! I was a Space Shuttle era kid though. Saw the Challenger disaster during my lunchtime. And then on perpetual replay for the rest of the week on WESH/WCPX/WFTV most likely. Even still, just knowing we were launching all those people into space was awe-inspiring.

New comment by nobleach in "What came after the 486?"

nobleach — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:43:16 +0000

Yeah, I was all about recording music/running the first iteration of software synths. I was a Graphic Design major at that time so Photoshop/Illustrator/QuarkXpress were my jam. Those suprisingly didn't run that bad - in real Graphic Design, no one used Eyecandy (the reason everything on the web in 1998 had drop shadows, outter glows, lens flares) so rendering "3D" rarely came into play.