Hacker News: vzaliva

New comment by vzaliva in "Hister – A private, full content search index that you control"

vzaliva — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 21:40:40 +0000

I was thinking about making a "personal data search engine". I have almost 30GB of email archives and a bunch of Google Drive and offline files. I am thinking about downloading it all from the cloud and storing it on a large RAID array, with an indexing and search interface (and possibly a local MCP server).

Would Hister be suitable for this? Can it index mbox files? Would it handle this amount of data? Does it have a search API so I can build an MCP server?

New comment by vzaliva in "Cursor Origin"

vzaliva — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:21:48 +0000

I’ve finally cancelled my Cursor subscription. It was an interesting product, but the fact that most interesting features only work with per-token pricing, not Cursor and Codex subscriptions, is a bummer. As to their Composer models, they were good for simpler coding tasks, but after the company purchase, they will probably end up merged with Grok, and I do not want to pay nor contribute to Elon Musk’s businesses.

New comment by vzaliva in "License plate reader searches should require a warrant"

vzaliva — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 23:20:35 +0000

Imagine all licence plates being small screens and periodically showing numbers derived from a private key issued by the DMV. As they change, vehicles could not be tracked without knowing the private key, yet the DMV can verify the ownership because they know one. I am not a crypto expert, and the actual scheme may be a bit more sophisticated, but you’ve got the idea.

New comment by vzaliva in "Production Imminent: 40 Solar-Charging Aptera EVs Coming Soon"

vzaliva — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 19:08:36 +0000

You nailed it: there is a conflict between surface area (wanting more for solar charging) and efficiency (you want it to be aerodynamic and light, hence less area for solar charging).

I also think an extendable canopy (for a car, not a bike) should be a better approach. I wonder if anyone tried it.

New comment by vzaliva in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

vzaliva — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 18:19:57 +0000

I do not know any EU-only, but ProtonMail is in Switzerland.

New comment by vzaliva in "Building on ATProto"

vzaliva — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:17:05 +0000

The intention is good. I like the reviews idea. Since the author has hit the limitations of ATProto, could ActivityPub be an answer?

New comment by vzaliva in "FreeInk: Open ecosystem for e-readers"

vzaliva — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:30:12 +0000

The missing integration point is reading progress. The killer feature (for me) of Kindle is that I can have several devices and continue reading on any of them with my position in the book synced. I want that across different readers.

For example, if I buy now Xtelink X4 for reading ‘on the go’, there is no easy way to switch back to a larger device for more comfortable reading at home.

New comment by vzaliva in "Phosh 0.56.0"

vzaliva — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 16:31:08 +0000

This is a good example of a poor web site design. If you, like me, do not know what Phosh is and go to their website, it will tell you not much beyond "A user interface for your mobile phone," which could mean pretty much anything. Is it a UI level on top of Android? Is it an idependent mobile OS? How it is better that competition? What are key features and design goals?

New comment by vzaliva in "Choosing a Public DNS Resolver"

vzaliva — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 21:45:01 +0000

Comcast + Netflix. My personal experience few years ago: switched to 8.8.8.8 DNS at home and my Netflix streaming become extrelemly slow.

New comment by vzaliva in "Choosing a Public DNS Resolver"

vzaliva — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 02:27:00 +0000

unfortunately many DNS resolvers are integrated with CDNs. I do want privacy of an independent non-tracking DNS but I also want my video streaming work fast. :(

New comment by vzaliva in "FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model"

vzaliva — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:05 +0000

what languages it support? They only mention "language-agnostic".

New comment by vzaliva in "Fidonet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History (1993)"

vzaliva — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:41:14 +0000

2:463/80

New comment by vzaliva in "The quadratic sandwich"

vzaliva — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:47:51 +0000

Kudos for beatiful formulae rendering.

New comment by vzaliva in "Starship V3"

vzaliva — Wed, 13 May 2026 02:42:55 +0000

Reading reports of people objecting datacenters build in their states I wonder how Florida residents feel about the Spaceport ? It will certainly be more distruptive than datacenters.

New comment by vzaliva in "I let AI build a tool to help me figure out what was waking me up at night"

vzaliva — Mon, 11 May 2026 22:24:30 +0000

We may be entering the age of "disposable software" (some people politely call it "on-demand software"). Until recently, coding was a highly specialised skill and was relatively expensive. So writing custom code for personal whimsy was a luxury only software developers could afford. Not anymore.

New comment by vzaliva in "Nobody Reviews Compiler Output"

vzaliva — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:13:46 +0000

There are formally compilers (e.g. CompCert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompCert ) which are formally proven correct. I think eventually all production compilers will be formally verified.

New comment by vzaliva in "Tesla owner won $10k in court for Tesla's FSD lies. Tesla is still fighting him"

vzaliva — Sun, 03 May 2026 02:50:53 +0000

He should publish a "bring Tesla to small court" kit, with all documents other people in the similar situation can use to sue them.

New comment by vzaliva in "SFO Gate Explorer"

vzaliva — Sat, 02 May 2026 15:41:54 +0000

It should be a benefit of TSA Precheck program that TSA Pre members would not need an extra step of applying for Gate Explorer.

New comment by vzaliva in "Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables"

vzaliva — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:37:13 +0000

I do not use KDE and wanted just command-line version of it without any Qt dependencies, so I've burned some tokens and produced just that:

https://github.com/vzaliva/whatcable-linux-cli

New comment by vzaliva in "Kefir C17/C23 Compiler"

vzaliva — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:43:00 +0000

I think it is fantastic to have more compiler implementations. It was probably also a fun project to code. What I find lacking in web pages is a motivation. What makes it different from popular compilers? Where is this project heading? What would be potential benefits/use-cases for using this compiler vs others, lessons learned, etc.?