<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: tomxor</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomxor</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 16 May 2026 07:43:18 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=tomxor" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "New statue in London, attributed to Banksy, of a suited man, blinded by a flag"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hah TIL. So it's the river Welsh river on the English side of the Bristol channel.<p>I often feel like I would understand a lot more names if I bothered learning Welsh. It's pretty popular for made up climbing route names too, because Wales is so good for it I guess. Allegedly some of the classics in the Avon gorge are Welsh derived but I could never figure them out to be sure.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 10:52:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007015</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007015</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007015</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "For Linux kernel vulnerabilities, there is no heads-up to distributions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Immediate public disclosure is the only choice that isn't irresponsible as far as I'm concerned.<p>No, it's really not.<p>High severity vulnerabilities are responsibly handled by quietly neutralising them with subtle patches that do not reveal the vulnerability, waiting for those patches to distribute. Then patching or removing the root cause of the vulnerability (at which point opportunists will start to notice), and finally publicly disclosing it when there are already good mitigations in place.<p>Example: spectre/meltdowm mitigations.<p>I've been asked to use this approach myself when reaching out to maintainers. Sometimes it's possible to directly fix the vulnerability as a "side effect" by making a legitimate adjacent change.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:00:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47968175</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47968175</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47968175</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Copy Fail"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>FYI it's dynamically loaded on demand, so lsmod will show it after you try run the exploit, or you can explicitly load it with:<p><pre><code>  modprobe algif_aead
</code></pre>
The following mitigation (from the article) does work for Debian 12 and 13, I've tested this:<p><pre><code>  echo "install algif_aead /bin/false" > /etc/modprobe.d/disable-algif.conf
  rmmod algif_aead 2>/dev/null || true
</code></pre>
First line blocks it from loading, second line is unloading it if it's already been loaded. You can test with the same "modprobe algif_aead".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:03:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47964513</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47964513</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47964513</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "GitHub is having issues now"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Another happy self hosted Gitea user here for ~3 years now.<p>Came from Gitlab which started pushing out basic users in 2022 with massive price hikes. I weighed Github as an option but was like "no I don't want to be dealing with this same problem in another 5 years" when some other rug pull or degradation happens with that service. So I'm feeling pretty validated for that decision these days.<p>The speed improvement was massive (super low latency), and was worth the switch on it's own, but we also saved 90% in immediate cost... probably more in secondary effects from the git host just not being a pain point. The only long or unplanned downtime we've had was 2 hours in that whole 3 years where the tiny Linode VPS host had a total hardware failure and got migrated, which is a pretty damn good number of 9s for a simple easy to host single server solution. We also gained more durable and fast offsite backups (zfs) that Gitlab could never offer, but that's more of a custom self hosted thing not specific to Gitea.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:48:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925603</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925603</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925603</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Human Accelerated Region 1"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> aaand we have Quake and Comand&Conquer - Red Alert<p>Agreed, it would seem that evolutionary biology peaked in the late 90s then</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 10:11:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804306</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804306</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804306</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "30 Years Ago, Robots Learned to Walk Without Falling"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>These robots weren't really "walking" in the sense that humans walk through continuous dynamic balancing, i.e falling forward.<p>These used quasi-static walking, where the zero moment point (like a moving centre of gravity) is kept within the support polygon of the footprint. This is what gives them their weird swaying gait and extremely conservative movement characteristics. You could never make a bipedal robot run, jump or respond to large and sudden external forces using this method. It's essentially a balance free movement hack.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:15:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586910</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586910</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586910</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Our commitment to Windows quality"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Go back to Win98 UI, I know it will never happen but can you imagine...<p>At this point I genuinely think people would be blown away at how much of a functional improvement it would be.<p>There would also be a lot of bewilderment for the younger generations, and people who aren't interested in actually using computers who don't think it looks "sleek" enough or whatever. But in terms of day to day quality of life, those old UIs just got the fuck out the way, and were obvious when you had to interact with it. I have some earned hate for the underlying windows OS, but in terms of UI and desktop, we didn't know what we had until it was taken away.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Mar 2026 01:48:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463242</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463242</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463242</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "SSH Secret Menu"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, by generally I really mean all the defaults are pretty permissive, but I understand some people tune both TCP and SSH on their servers to drop connections faster because they are worried about resource exhaustion.<p>But if you throw up a default Linux install for your SSH box and have a not-horrible wifi router with a not-horrible internet provider then IME you can sleep your machine and keep an SSH connection alive for quite some time... I appreciate that might be too many "not-horrible" requirements for the real world today though.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:29:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341108</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341108</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341108</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "SSH Secret Menu"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If hung SSH connections are common it's likely due to CGNAT which use aggressively low TCP timeouts. e.g. I've found all UK mobile carriers set their TCP timeout as low as 5 minutes. The "default" is supposed to be 2 hours, you could literally sleep your computer, zero packets, and an SSH connection would continue to work an hour later, and generally speaking this is still true unless CGNAT is in the way.<p>If you are interested there are a few ways you can fix this:<p>Easiest is to use a VPN, because the VPN's exit node becomes the effective NAT they usually have normal TCP timeouts due to being less resource constrained. Another nice benefit of this method is you can move between physical networks and your connection doesn't die... If you use Tailscale then you already have this in a more direct way.<p>Another is to tune the tcp_keepalive kernel parameters. Lowering the keepalive timeout to be less than the CGNAT timeout will cause keepalive probes to prevent CGNAT from dropping the connection even while your SSH connection is technically idle. For Linux I pop these into /etc/sysctl.d/z.conf, I have no idea for Windows or Mac:<p><pre><code>  # Keepalive frequently to survive CGNAT
  net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time   = 240 
  net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl  = 60
  net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes = 120
</code></pre>
This is really a misuse of these settings, they are supposed to be for checking TCP connections are still alive and clearing them up from the local routing table. Instead the idea is to exploit the probes by sending them more frequently to force idle connections to stay alive in a CGNAT environment (dont worry the probes are tiny and still very infrequent).<p>_time=240 will send a probe after 4 mins of idle connection instead of the default 2 hours, undercutting the CGNAT timeout. _intvl=60 and _probes=120 mean it will send 120 probes 60 seconds apart (2 hours worth) before considering the connection dead. This will keep it alive for at least 2 hours, but also allows us to have the best of both worlds so that under a nice NAT it keeps the old behaviour, e.g if I temporarily lose my network the SSH connection is still valid after 2 hours, but under CGNAT it will at least not drop the connection after 5 mins so long as I keep my computer on and don't lose the network.<p>There are also some SSH client keepalive settings but I'm less familiar with them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2026 02:02:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331024</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331024</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331024</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "The Banality of Surveillance"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> It’s who’s looking at your profile; it’s the profiles that you’re looking at. That was the holy grail<p>Facebook actually implemented this as a user facing feature.<p>I think it was very early days, but I used it, it was fucking creepy, and everyone hated it. I think Facebook probably removed it because it drove people away. It made you feel like a creep for checking on your friends page.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 07 Mar 2026 19:36:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290752</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290752</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290752</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Nobody gets promoted for simplicity"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yup, in a word, ownership.<p>But that's an unpopular approach these days where many companies are obsessed with minimising the bus factor to the point that their IP is as replaceable as their employees.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 06:19:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47243823</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47243823</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47243823</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Meta’s AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I cannot think of a technology more diametric to 'plug n play' than VR, which is very unfortunate.<p>Ironically that's exactly what the Quest solved with SLAM, it really is plug and play, otherwise I would not have bought one... and it sucks that Meta now owns it, but it really is still the best "just works" VR.<p>I also don't think VR has much potential to solve real world problems for enough people, but it doesn't have to because it's pretty good entertainment as a gaming device (albeit still fairly niche).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 02:26:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47227163</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47227163</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47227163</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not Maybe, I owned a 2009 MBP. Everyone with a macbook from that period that I knew had the same issue, they were absurdly bright, you could not keep it anywhere near a bedroom without putting very thick tape over the light.<p>It was a poorly thought out design of aesthetics over ergonomics.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 02:07:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47202851</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47202851</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47202851</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I started making deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes in professional context.<p>I've also noticed an increase of this in myself and others, I used to edit a lot more before sending anything, but now it seems more authentic if you just hit send so it's more off the cuff with typos, broken sentences and all.<p>I'm sure an LLM could easily mimic this but it's not their default.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:53:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47159207</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47159207</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47159207</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> the number of bus stops might matter at the margins, we’re not talking about a system where marginal improvements will matter<p>The central argument of reducing stops is increasing <i>bus speed</i>, not reducing margins, It's in the second paragraph.<p>[edit]<p>Top comment is a straw man, attempt to correct course downvoted... I'm not sure how much value HN has left for useful discourse, who the fuck are you people, if you even are people.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:55:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47156038</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47156038</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47156038</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, I ambiguously said "started this space"... and to be honest even in the most generous interpretation that's probably incorrect, maybe ZeroTier started "this space", in that it had NAT busting mesh networking first.<p>As far as I understand Tailscale brought NAT busting mesh networking to wireguard + identity first access control, and reduced configuration complexity. I think they were the first to think about it from an end to end user perspective, and each feature they add definitely has this spin on it. It makes it feel effortless and transparent (in both the networking use sense and cryptography sense)... So i suppose that's what I mean by started, TS was when it first really clicked for a larger group of people, it felt right.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Feb 2026 19:58:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47065541</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47065541</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47065541</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have the same fears. Last year they have publicly stated they are not interested in acquisition [0]<p>> Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).<p>> “Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”<p>Nothing is set in stone, after all it's VC backed. I have a strong aversion to becoming dependent upon proprietary services, however i have chosen to integrate TS into my infrastructure, because the value and simplicity it provides is worth it. I considered the various copy cat services and pure FOSS clones, but TS are the ones who started this space and are the ones continuously innovating in it, I'm onboard with their ethos and mission and have made use of apenwarrs previous work - In other words, they are the experts, they appear to be pretty dedicated to this space, so I'm putting my trust in them... I hope I'm right!<p>[0] <a href="https://betakit.com/corporate-vpn-startup-tailscale-secures-230-million-cad-series-c-on-back-of-surprising-growth/" rel="nofollow">https://betakit.com/corporate-vpn-startup-tailscale-secures-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:38:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064501</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064501</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064501</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How about inverting the issue, highlight posts with an opt in label. e.g<p><pre><code>  Show HN [NOAI]:
</code></pre>
Since it's too controversial to ban LLM posts, and would be too easy for submitters to omit an [LLM] label... Having an opt in [NOAI] label allows people to highlight their posts, and LLM posts would be easy to flag to disincentivise polluting the label.<p>This wouldn't necessarily need to be a technical change, just an intuitive agreement that posts containing LLM or vibe coded content are not allowed to lie by using the tag, or will be flagged... Then again it could also be used to elevate their rank above other show HN content to give us humanoids some edge if deemed necessary, or a segregated [NOAI] page.<p>[edit]<p>The label might need more thought, although "NOAI" is short and intelligible, it might be seen as a bit ironic to have to add a tag containing "AI" into your title. [HUMAN]?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:21:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050961</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050961</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050961</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "Intermittent fasting may make little difference to weight loss, review finds"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This study is measuring the wrong thing. <i>Any</i> diet that restricts calories will cause weight loss, that's just physics not biology. So long as the person strictly sticks to that diet it will work.<p>Strategies like intermittent fasting or diets that moderate what you eat rather than quantity are focused on the later aspect "strictly sticking to that diet". Because being strict is not sustainable, will power is limited and inconsistent, so wasting it on strategies that are hard to stick to is both futile and a waste of will power. Changing what and when you eat accounts for biology instead of just physics, because those variables have a huge impact on satiety.<p>The study has a minimum interval of 4 weeks, which does not take much will power. Not to mention the psychological impact of being part of a study.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 17:32:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47037743</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47037743</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47037743</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by tomxor in "AI generated music barred from Bandcamp"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's great, but on the flip side<p>> We reserve the right to remove any music on <i>suspicion</i> of being AI generated.<p>It's going to really suck when someone eventually gets removed based on false positives... Similar problem to auto DMCA false positives.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 14 Jan 2026 15:09:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46616888</link><dc:creator>tomxor</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46616888</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46616888</guid></item></channel></rss>