Hacker News: ufocia

New comment by ufocia in "A most elegant TCP hole punching algorithm"

ufocia — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:34:00 +0000

You're assuming that the firewall was configured correctly or that the firewall admin is cooperative. That's a big ask.

On the other hand, there is plenty of badly written networked software. I bet most of the networked software developers have no idea how to correctly plumb their software. They just open whatever connection, e.g. sockets, their OS provides and just run with it without care of the underlying layers. The OSI model theory in fact encourages this ignorance.

New comment by ufocia in "A most elegant TCP hole punching algorithm"

ufocia — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:15:14 +0000

I can almost guarantee that all of AI runs on deterministic hardware and software. AI is just (near?) the top of the stack. There is no reason, and probably never will be to have a purely heuristic computer. Deterministic systems are way simpler and cheaper to handle very routine well defined tasks. Even AI authors code behind the scenes to process data files deterministically.

New comment by ufocia in "A most elegant TCP hole punching algorithm"

ufocia — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:02:49 +0000

Meh. "It is assumed another process will coordinate the running of this tool." Coordination is the crux of the problem for fast convergence. Otherwise you're stuck with an infinity cubed, hypercubed, or worse problem.

New comment by ufocia in "A decade of Docker containers"

ufocia — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 15:26:16 +0000

Laziness

New comment by ufocia in "A decade of Docker containers"

ufocia — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 15:19:56 +0000

Wow! That's digging deep in history. Has Plan9 been updated for modern hardware?

New comment by ufocia in "A decade of Docker containers"

ufocia — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 15:18:32 +0000

Maybe the RAM crunch will get people optimizing for dedup again.

New comment by ufocia in "A decade of Docker containers"

ufocia — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 15:00:18 +0000

Facts! That would've been covered on Hackaday not here.

New comment by ufocia in "A decade of Docker containers"

ufocia — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:43:01 +0000

SLIP not PPP. Those are two very different protocols. Otherwise your comment is fairly accurate. There were dial-in terminals, whether more expensive or not, that could be repurposed for generic Internet access.

I don't recall whether you could technically open listening ports, at least for a single connection, using slirp, but many, if not all systems, limited opening ports under 1024 to superusers, which (would have?) made running servers on standard ports more difficult.

In any case, I'm glad that you pointed out ACM's apparent revisionist history. They should know better.

New comment by ufocia in "Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues"

ufocia — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:27:33 +0000

Your memory may be failing you. The "maxima" you cite still exist, but they are merely statutory damages provisions. In other words, the plaintiffs can obtain such damages without proof of actual loss, i.e. strict liability. If the plaintiffs succeed in pricing actual damages beyond this level, they can obtain them.

New comment by ufocia in "A Nationwide Book Ban Bill Has Been Introduced in the House of Representatives"

ufocia — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:14:28 +0000

Doesn't look like a ban, a mere withholding of federal funds.

New comment by ufocia in "MinIO repository is no longer maintained"

ufocia — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 13:59:50 +0000

Customers are the ones that continue to pay. If they continue to pay they will likely receive maintenance from the devs. If they don't, they are no longer or never have been customers.

New comment by ufocia in "MinIO repository is no longer maintained"

ufocia — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 13:56:19 +0000

> what do you prefer, the developers abandoning the project, or at least having the option of a paid-for version?

It's not a binary choice. I prefer the developers releasing the software under a permissive license. I agree that relying on freemium maintenance is naive. The community source lives on, perhaps the community should fork and run with it for the common good absorbing the real costs of maintenance.

New comment by ufocia in "MinIO repository is no longer maintained"

ufocia — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 13:49:14 +0000

Yes the software is under AGPL. Go forth and forkify.

The choice of AGPL tells you that they wanted to be the only commercial source of the software from the beginning.

New comment by ufocia in "Guinea worm on track to be 2nd eradicated human disease; only 10 cases in 2025"

ufocia — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 05:15:12 +0000

Kudos, but it seems that "eradicated" is a bit too strong of a word, since it appears that the worm will still be capable of infecting new patients.

New comment by ufocia in "Tractor"

ufocia — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 04:47:12 +0000

Hacker News is turning into Hackaday. Sad.

New comment by ufocia in "Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need"

ufocia — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 22:51:46 +0000

What about Ardour?

New comment by ufocia in "NTP at NIST Boulder Has Lost Power"

ufocia — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 15:57:53 +0000

Your probably meant trilaterate.

New comment by ufocia in "Mechanical power generation using Earth's ambient radiation"

ufocia — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:38:52 +0000

Air bearings always run dry without problems.

New comment by ufocia in "I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla"

ufocia — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 15:13:17 +0000

I prefer opt-in vs. opt-out. Opt-out is pretentious and patronizing.

New comment by ufocia in "I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla"

ufocia — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 15:09:41 +0000

Thank you for sharing your perspective. I'm not sure I want AI in my browser, whatever that may mean, but I don't think everyone shares my view. To think otherwise is IMHO delusional.