Hacker News: secretdark

New comment by secretdark in "The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock"

secretdark — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:18:20 +0000

Yeah, might add this as a toggle. Seems to be the bit that people ask about.

New comment by secretdark in "The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock"

secretdark — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:00:30 +0000

I have changed it now (see another comment above.) But now it is less accursèd! Ah well.

New comment by secretdark in "The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock"

secretdark — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:58:29 +0000

I tweaked the labels when I was working on the combined mode, where I figured they make more sense as indicative of the general, combined alphabetical area. I hadn't considered they'd be confusing in the 3-hand mode. I've split the positioning of them between the two now. Appreciate the feedback! It does make it _less_ accursèd now, which I feel could be either an improvement or a regression. I leave it to weigh on your consciences.

New comment by secretdark in "The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock"

secretdark — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:55:12 +0000

I mean to be fair the entire thing is pointlessly confusing.

New comment by secretdark in "Show HN: The Alphabetical Clock"

secretdark — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 07:19:20 +0000

I made an alphabetically-organised clock. I am sorry.

Show HN: The Alphabetical Clock

secretdark — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 07:19:20 +0000

Article URL: https://boat.horse/clock/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571401

Points: 40

# Comments: 22

New comment by secretdark in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"

secretdark — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:37:58 +0000

I've been working on an MQTT Broker/Topic tree explorer. It's intended to help someone understand what kinds of data are moving through their broker, what the busiest data is, and just generally be pretty. https://ryanbateman.github.io/mqtt_vis/

OSS, MIT licensed. Feedback welcomed!

New comment by secretdark in "Every .horse"

secretdark — Tue, 03 May 2022 07:45:01 +0000

A list of every .horse domain.

Every .horse

secretdark — Tue, 03 May 2022 07:45:01 +0000

Article URL: https://every.horse

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31245760

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

New comment by secretdark in "How to Train Your Snail (2015)"

secretdark — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 13:53:15 +0000

For a warm-down, the Unwhorl app would be a good way for your snail to unwind: https://www.unwhorl.com/

The unreasonable ecological cost of cryptoart

secretdark — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 10:47:51 +0000

Article URL: https://memoakten.medium.com/the-unreasonable-ecological-cost-of-cryptoart-2221d3eb2053

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25857566

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by secretdark in "Ant Colony Optimization Visualization for the Travelling Salesman Problem"

secretdark — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 09:31:37 +0000

Neat! A while ago I did something similar using genetic algorithms. https://vimeo.com/666317

New comment by secretdark in "Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work"

secretdark — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 22:57:40 +0000

That's definitely a position worth considering, but I don't think it relates to the reasons behind this change. For one, the straw-man argument you put forward relies on the seller not knowing the customer's intention with their product. Given the timing, I think it's absolute reasonable to assume why they put forward this change (though I'd be happy to be told otherwise). An appliance seller can reasonably deduce that their pressure cooker will reasonably be used for cooking if there's no evidence to the contrary. If a neo-nazi recently featured on the news for blowing up some people with a pressure cooker turns up at your pressure-cooker store asking to buy a pressure cooker and you knowingly sell them a pressure cooker, yes, you are absolutely complicit if they blow up some people. Similarly, if a government organisation, recently in the news for putting children in cages, wants to buy or license your software, it's reasonable to assume that they're going to use your software to directly or indirectly further their goals, which may or may not include caging children. Washing your hands of it, in a pull-request, is a moral and ethical choice, as much as they wish it wasn't.

New comment by secretdark in "Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work"

secretdark — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 20:16:27 +0000

What I find most amazing is less the politics aspect and more the moral/ethical issue. For a company to have an explicit stated policy of _actively_ never taking into account the moral/ethical impact of their work is just... astounding.

It is difficult to imagine a more inhuman and bloodless statement.

Gitlab removes ethical/moral concerns from customer inclusion policy

secretdark — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 11:54:59 +0000

Article URL: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/30656

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21257544

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by secretdark in "Ambient Privacy"

secretdark — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 10:18:31 +0000

This is a personal project in which I downloaded, parsed, listened to, and physically indexed every one of my uses of Google's Voice Assistant technology. It is an attempt to get some insight into both the amount and type of metadata contained in these audio recordings, as well as an attempt at understanding the kinds of conclusions that could be drawn from it by people working on 'surveillance capitalism' products.

It consists of 698 annotated index cards and my full voice search audio archive.

Ambient Privacy

secretdark — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 10:14:57 +0000

Article URL: http://boat.horse/project/ambientprivacy

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20419541

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Emojis in your app description can increase downloads

secretdark — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 15:48:10 +0000

Article URL: https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/26/android-apps-with-emoji-descriptions-get-more-downloads/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13492278

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Writing your first Android Things driver

secretdark — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 10:28:00 +0000

Article URL: https://www.novoda.com/blog/writing-your-first-android-things-driver-p1/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13416375

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

New comment by secretdark in "Under Pressure"

secretdark — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 11:58:19 +0000

Great read, but speaking as someone who lives on one of those houseboats (and passes through Islington occasionally), please don't consider a canal a safe place to 'ditch' potentially exploding things in future.