Hacker News: pratyahava

New comment by pratyahava in "Turn off and restrict access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac"

pratyahava — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 05:53:33 +0000

yes, please, and also via cli so we can automate it.

New comment by pratyahava in "Internet centralization and the original sin of NAT"

pratyahava — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:37:30 +0000

Sorry, i am not very much into kernel/netstack development, but a question. So does it mean that even if an alternative NAT system will be available in Linux (kernel module with a switch or whatever) - it will not be adopted by industry because everyone (and every device) is used to how it works now?

New comment by pratyahava in "Stop Making TUIs"

pratyahava — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 10:40:24 +0000

thanks to the author of the article, it inspired me to try making a small gui app i wanted for long time - it simply reads and shows the contents of the system clipboard in a window. and it was really super easy, i didn't need xcode, only `swiftc` from command line. honestly i didn't know i can make an app without opening xcode, now i want to make more :) so i made the app with approx 500 lines of Swift, with keyboard hotkeys for navigation and style change (fonts, colors, window size), just the way i love it.

  cmd+U scroll to beginning 
  cmd+I scroll to end
  cmd+u page up
  cmd+i page down
  cmd+j one line up
  cmd+k one line down
  cmd+- font size decrease
  cmd+= font size increase
  cmd+0 font size reset to default
  cmd+3 default font
  cmd+4 alternative monospace font
  cmd+[ grow left window border
  cmd+] grow right window border
  cmd+{ shrink right window border
  cmd+} shrink left window border
  cmd+9 switch background and foreground color

all this in one day, with huge help of duck.ai which is completely free. the app size is approx 300kb. using it feels great because i can do the whole cycle with keyboard only:

  - cmd+space to open spotlight search
  - type the name of the app, enter, it opens a new window with clipboard contents, i inspect it with keyboard hotkeys only
  - cmd+q to exit or cmd+tab to switch back to the prev app

for me personally the standard gui apps are annoying because of the standard kb shortcuts - they are hard to remember and even hard to reach. i prefer "sort of vi navigation" because i can keep my hands for navigation at the same position as for typing.

New comment by pratyahava in "Tracking down a Zsh history data loss bug"

pratyahava — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:55:22 +0000

for viewing all the history files at once this is one of the simplest options

  cat $HOME/zsh/*

should be easy to copy-paste or pipe it to an editor.

i mean, the problem of viewing all history files at once is much easier than writing to the same one file from multiple sessions.

New comment by pratyahava in "Tracking down a Zsh history data loss bug"

pratyahava — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 06:43:56 +0000

zshrc for saving history:

  mkdir -p $HOME/zsh
  HISTFILE="$HOME/zsh/$(date '+%y:%m%d:%H%M')-$$"
  echo "HISTFILE $HISTFILE"

for easily accessing the history without running grep... will figure it out later :)))

New comment by pratyahava in "Tracking down a Zsh history data loss bug"

pratyahava — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 06:26:50 +0000

this is an example of overcomplicated solutions that could be avoided with the tool we already have for years - file system - why do this "heroic" effort of "cleverly" putting everything in one file from many sessions if we could just write command history of every session into a new separate file in a directory and read all history files from the dir instead of reading one file.

New comment by pratyahava in "I close SSH port 22 (and what I use instead)"

pratyahava — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 06:57:05 +0000

i cannot trust tech advices from a guy who puts three ad banners (left, right and bottom, taking approx quarter of my screen space) on his personal blog.

New comment by pratyahava in "TSON – A JSON superset with immutable, hash-pinned schemas"

pratyahava — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:59:58 +0000

cue? what is that? i remember only cue which holds audio tracks metadata.

New comment by pratyahava in "Mosh in a Lift (2012)"

pratyahava — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:06:18 +0000

what are those modern quic-based terminal emulators? i never heard about the concept before.

New comment by pratyahava in "Let's Encrypt bans certificate usage in any US sanctioned territory [pdf]"

pratyahava — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:15:24 +0000

any details on that? links to people reporting it?

New comment by pratyahava in "Let's Encrypt bans certificate usage in any US sanctioned territory [pdf]"

pratyahava — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:00:56 +0000

can you please suggest any alternatives to switch to? i hardly can find any alternative which provides free service and is a non-profit org at the same time.

New comment by pratyahava in "The Boring Internet"

pratyahava — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:41:49 +0000

even this "ascii" (i expected raw text but still got html+css) was hardly readable for me, had to reach to the reader view, finally readable, ohh... looks much like ai-generated, why did i spend so much time jumping over obstacles...

New comment by pratyahava in "I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers"

pratyahava — Sun, 03 May 2026 11:25:39 +0000

afaik tcp and udp are the same on top of ipv6 as they are on top of ipv4, there are no tcp6 and udp6, the "6" suffix just hints they are comminucated on top of ipv6, but the packets are the same as before, no new standards.

New comment by pratyahava in "I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers"

pratyahava — Sat, 02 May 2026 08:55:23 +0000

can you please demonstrate the workflow you are suggesting? asking because i tried what you suggest, and it does not work.

New comment by pratyahava in "I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers"

pratyahava — Sat, 02 May 2026 08:49:15 +0000

can you please explain what you mean by this? because technically i do not see any similarity in this "analogy".

New comment by pratyahava in "I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers"

pratyahava — Sat, 02 May 2026 08:46:05 +0000

the question was "can we use port names from /etc/services instead of port numbers?"

how about "ssh://git@ssh.github.com:https/golang/go.git" instead of "ssh://git@ssh.github.com:443/golang/go.git"? does not work, hmm.

New comment by pratyahava in "I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers"

pratyahava — Sat, 02 May 2026 08:32:24 +0000

URI contains ":port" tho, but practically it is only digital number.

the OP made a tool which helps them to avoid using port numbers. people commented in a way that looked like laughing at him, like he reinvented the wheel, and talking about /etc/services. well ok, i decided to try using /etc/services for the purpose of using names instead of port numbers.

would it be possible to add "myapp 60001/tcp" to /etc/services and then work with "http://localhost:myapp"? NO! browsers do not translate these names into port numbers. netcat does. curl does not.

so probably the OP's solution is not that questionable and really solved their need? and "good old friend /etc/services" is not useful for this? i dont know what it is useful for as running services on non-standard ports actually helps with hiding from security/vuln scanners and is practiced widely.

New comment by pratyahava in "I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers"

pratyahava — Sat, 02 May 2026 05:27:49 +0000

if you configure sshd to listen on port 443, does it become an https server? i was just trying to demondtrate: pick any port from /etc/services and try to use the name instead of port number. no, it does not work well when trying to use for local-hosting http(s) services. so to address the irony and sarcasm of the messages i was replying to:

  zdw: It's like someone should make a file... maybe in /etc ... and put short names for services in it... maybe it could be called /etc/services...

  tolciho: And then they might code up some sort of service lookup tool thingy to use on the train wreck that is the modern web.
  $ getent services gopher
  gopher               70/tcp

New comment by pratyahava in "I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers"

pratyahava — Fri, 01 May 2026 06:37:09 +0000

ipv6 packet does not have any port field. ports are on the level of tcp and udp, and you don't have to use tcp or udp on top of ipv6. ipv4 packet does not have any port information as well.

New comment by pratyahava in "I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers"

pratyahava — Fri, 01 May 2026 06:14:12 +0000

i know, but the OP's goal was to host/access http(s) services with names and avoid port numbers, and gopher service name was chosen by me as an example. my point was that /etc/services cannot be used for the OP's need.

if you host an http(s) service on port 11111 you can reach it with url http://127.1:11111, but url http://127.1:vce/ would not work in most software.

  $ grep 11111 /etc/services
  vce  11111/udp   # Viral Computing Environment (VCE)
  vce  11111/tcp   # Viral Computing Environment (VCE)