Hacker News: smnc

New comment by smnc in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)"

smnc — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:31:38 +0000

Do you mind me asking, what kind of problems did you run into with Neo4j? Did you encounter performance issues after the DB grew to a certain size, or did you realize that the data wasn't suited to a graph DB and weird query patterns started causing trouble, or was it something else entirely?

I'm considering using a Neo4j self hosted instance for a project, but having only played around with it in low-stakes + small-data toy projects, I'm not really familiar with the footguns and failure modes...

All that aside, plugging holes in a sinking database for six months because you can't come to a descision does not sound like a fun time :D

New comment by smnc in "I finally got my sway layout to autostart the way I like it"

smnc — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:04:37 +0000

I've wanted this for i3, but I guess I wasn't sufficiently motivated :) Given that sway's homepage describes it as a drop-in replacement for i3, I'll try it out tomorrow.

New comment by smnc in "Ask HN: Startup getting spammed with PayPal disputes, what should we do?"

smnc — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:31:35 +0000

> - Ports exposed by Docker punch through the firewall

I've been using ufw-docker [1] to force ufw and docker to cooperate. Without it, Docker ports do actually get exposed to to the Internet. As far as I can tell, it does its job correctly. Is there another problem I am not aware of?

[1] https://github.com/chaifeng/ufw-docker

New comment by smnc in "The Windows Registry Adventure #7: Attack surface analysis"

smnc — Wed, 28 May 2025 12:15:12 +0000

Previous posts in the series:

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-windows-r...

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-windows-r...

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-windows-r...

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-windows-r...

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-windows-r...

New comment by smnc in "How Tesla is replacing the age-old CAN bus"

smnc — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 11:13:46 +0000

> CAN uses bit arbitration and the lowest address wins.

And in doing so it prioritizes important messages and enables deterministic timing.

New comment by smnc in "SunVox: Powerful Modular Synthesizer and DAW"

smnc — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 16:04:53 +0000

There are a bunch of modules, you can connect them in various modulation configurations.

> Module is a basic element of the SunVox. There are several types of modules (...)

https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/manual.php#mod

New comment by smnc in "Scan HTML faster with SIMD instructions: .NET/C# Edition"

smnc — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 00:44:46 +0000

> As an optimization, it is helpful to use a local variable for the reference to the first pointer. Doing so improves the perfomance substantially: C# is not happy when we repeatedly modify a reference. Thus, at the start of the function, you may set byte* mystart = start, use mystart throughout, and then, just before a return, you set start = mystart.

Did not expect this.

New comment by smnc in "Migration out of Africa may have been driven by first glaciation of Pleistocene"

smnc — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 12:03:31 +0000

> while Denisovans left at the same time into Asia ending up concentrated in Serbia.

You probably meant to write Siberia.

New comment by smnc in "What is the point of a public key fingerprint?"

smnc — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 21:36:57 +0000

Hashing is not compression, it should not be reversible/inflatable.

New comment by smnc in "The age of average"

smnc — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 17:56:22 +0000

> they go with the aesthetic de jure

You probably meant to write "du jour" :)

New comment by smnc in "If you find this world bad, you should see some of the others (1977) [pdf]"

smnc — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 09:25:12 +0000

Furthermore, from the same article:

> Lem, however, considered one science fiction author as exempt from his scathing criticisms – his denouncer, Philip K. Dick. The title of an essay Lem published about Dick is evidence enough of this high regard: A Visionary Among the Charlatans. The essay itself waxes lyrical on Dick’s many excellent qualities as a writer, and expounds upon the dire state of US sci-fi. Lem considered Dick to be the only writer exempt from his cynical view of American SF.

New comment by smnc in "Sabine Hossenfelder: There are areas where physics blurs into religion"

smnc — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:16:49 +0000

> Having said that, I personally detest the particular populist-with-lack-of-nuance approach Sabine (and others like her) take.

Not arguing against the point you are making, just highlighting a silly turn of phrase. Who ever encountered a nuanced populist?

New comment by smnc in "Show HN: Async UI: A Rust UI Library Where Everything is a Future"

smnc — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 11:19:02 +0000

For a webserver, scalability (as in ability to handle a large number of concurrent request) is a performance metric. Speed of handling each one of those requests is another performance metric.

New comment by smnc in "10 years of Ecce Homo, the worst artistic restoration that changed a city"

smnc — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 09:56:15 +0000

Is this a machine translation?

> The old woman gave various interviews during the Ecce Homo boom era, where she revealed her skills as an artist. He painted for a long time, had exhibitions and even sold his art, which was very different from what he did with "Ecce Homo", although it should be clarified that it was not complete by the time he became famous.

New comment by smnc in "A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire"

smnc — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 21:32:17 +0000

Any recommendations?

New comment by smnc in "Motors Big and Small (1971) [video]"

smnc — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 12:09:23 +0000

One of the top comments on the youtube video:

> That was 1971. Now 43 years later, we still use the over 100 years old combustion engine. Something is seriously wrong in this world.

New comment by smnc in "Reverse-engineering the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer's sound chip from die photos"

smnc — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 00:16:54 +0000

This guy explains the process of creating a basic bass sound quite well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XbrTC0NndM

New comment by smnc in "Ruby vs. Python comes down to the for loop"

smnc — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 14:51:51 +0000

Not sure how they compare feature-wise, but take a look at FoxDot:

https://github.com/Qirky/FoxDot

New comment by smnc in "Comparing H.265 (HEVC) and H265 video file size"

smnc — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 03:22:19 +0000

I wouldn't call that "what was once known in the scene as DivX"...

New comment by smnc in "Brow.sh: a modern text-based browser"

smnc — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 14:48:27 +0000

One of the old Opera mobile browsers (Mini or Mobile) worked in a somewhat similar way.