Hacker News: stutstev

New comment by stutstev in "Shutting down our public encrypted DNS"

stutstev — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 21:00:30 +0000

I stopped using Mullvad when they discontinued OpenVPN support (another one to add to the parent list). OpenVPN, if nothing else, provides a wider array of connection options that have a better chance of fulfilling your specific network needs. It supports both UDP and TCP, unlike WireGuard.

I say this respectfully, but Mullvad is perhaps “dumbing down” their VPN service in an effort to simplify their operations and cater to a wider and more general audience.

New comment by stutstev in "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp"

stutstev — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:51:23 +0000

Looks like the telemetry was removed:

https://github.com/bjarneo/cliamp/commit/085734a86343a80176d...

You now have my full support. Thank you!

New comment by stutstev in "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp"

stutstev — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 02:40:11 +0000

As someone who is fond of Windows music players and futuristically designed DIN stereos of the early-to-mid 2000s, the variety of console visualizations is wicked cool and very much welcome! This is easily the best feature of cliamp. I'd love the collection of visualizations as a separate program, akin to cava[1], that listens and responds to your default audio sink. I already use a Raspberry Pi for music while driving, so I'm already thinking about displaying these visualizations on my car's infotainment screen somehow.

As a friendly request, I'd love to be able to use up and down keys to seek one minute forward or backward during playback, like with mpv. I play a lot of mixes that are an hour or longer in length, so this functionality would be a nice-to-have. I'll likely submit this idea to GitHub, anyhow.

To share some honest criticism, I was disappointed to discover built-in telemetry. Although it can be disabled with a flag, I dislike how it's enabled by default and unknown to the user unless one specifies the -h flag. I don't understand why user diagnostics data is needed from a console music player. Make this anti-feature opt-in and instead rely primarily on bug reports, or make the user aware of this telemetry upon initial invocation and provide instructions on how to disable it. Constructively, know your audience.

But overall, thank you to all the maintainers for this cool software!

[1]: https://github.com/karlstav/cava

New comment by stutstev in "Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill"

stutstev — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 23:48:01 +0000

There's some hope in New Hampshire. Our legislature just struck down our equivalent bill[1] while it was in committee. And within the last decade, privacy was enshrined in our state constitution[2], providing us with more legal teeth, on top of our free speech protections, to defeat digital age verification within the state.

[1] https://legiscan.com/NH/bill/HB1658/2026

[2] https://www.nh.gov/glance/state-constitution/bill-rights

New comment by stutstev in "Silicon Valley finally has a big electronics retailer again: Micro Center opens"

stutstev — Sat, 31 May 2025 02:33:10 +0000

Considering New Hampshire’s lack of sales tax, I’m patiently waiting for Micro Center to establish a new presence in Nashua or Salem. The Cambridge location, while personally cherished, isn’t that accessible by car because of Boston’s stress-induced car traffic congestion. Even on foot, getting to the store is still a bit of a journey. Also, let’s not forget Massachusetts’ 6.25% sales tax.

In New Hampshire, I am positive Micro Center would attract customers from all over New England and make an absolute killing from sales, potentially overshadowing their Cambridge profits. I would never shop online or in Cambridge for hardware again. But, I’m sure they wish not to jeopardize the Cambridge store or their MIT and Boston tech hobbyist clientele. Otherwise, I am surprised they have not yet acted upon this idea.

But, a man can dream!