Hacker News: yaky

New comment by yaky in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

yaky — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 03:29:07 +0000

I am too young to know about US radio in the 80s or 90s, but I enjoy some of the local and independent stations. I even collected some of their streams after I gave up Spotify: https://yaky.dev/radio/

New comment by yaky in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

yaky — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 03:20:34 +0000

Discovered WITR not too long ago, their selection is right up my alley (although it is arguably "millenial radio" rather than "college radio")

New comment by yaky in ""Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?""

yaky — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 20:47:02 +0000

I don't see LLMs being able to replace translators for less-spoken languages.

I know a translator between two Eastern European languages, and some jobs require use of specialized dictionaries. Using LLMs in such cases would be very unreliable and would require even more effort to check and correct than doing it correctly in the first place. Plus, I really doubt that US tech firms are training LLMs on language spoken by "only" 6 million people.

As for entertainment, anyone who grew up in Eastern Europe with pirated movies with nasal monotone translations, or machine-translated video games knows how much those take away from the experience. Sure, "AI could do better", but could it be consistent and capture cultural nuances and idioms, etc?

New comment by yaky in "Show HN: Rip.so – a graveyard for dead internet things"

yaky — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:26:49 +0000

Jabber / XMPP is still around and is pretty good for self-hosting a messenger.

Email, now with multiple validations and verifications.

Gopher protocol has a niche community (probably overlapping with newer Gemini).

Doom, still played and modded, and now a semi-meme benchmark for low-spec hardware.

Countless *nix tools that originated decades ago and evolved.

New comment by yaky in "What does it mean to “write like you talk”?"

yaky — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:04:17 +0000

I prefer text (to audio or video) specifically because it can communicate complex ideas concisely, yet can be read at any speed.

This is what "write like you talk" looks like: https://yaky.dev/2026-04-01-ridiculous-reddit/reddit-601.jpg

New comment by yaky in "What does it mean to “write like you talk”?"

yaky — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:21:27 +0000

As a non-native English speaker, it sometimes takes me some time to write things because I am trying to put my thoughts in a concise yet simple-to-understand form.

New comment by yaky in "Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division"

yaky — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:38:40 +0000

Blindsight by Peter Watts explores interesting ideas about conscience and intelligence, but these ideas are wrapped in a mediocre action movie plot that becomes nonsensical by the end.

New comment by yaky in "Leaving Google has actively improved my life"

yaky — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:21:40 +0000

Amazon Prime is the same way. Thanks for paying, please watch ads for first two season of The Boys. Also look at this catalog of movies you can rent for an additional fee.

The "low-cost airline" style of business.

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

yaky — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:33:25 +0000

This is creepily similar to Russia circa 10+ years ago with its "gay propaganda" and "child protection" laws, and strong government support for the church.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/russia-law-ban...

New comment by yaky in "A list of fun destinations for telnet"

yaky — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 19:23:19 +0000

> Rainmaker was pretty great, and it lasted at least as far as 2018. I don’t recall what happened to it.

WeatherUnderground shut its API down in 2018.

New comment by yaky in "PauseOS: Distraction-Free Phone OS"

yaky — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 05:06:26 +0000

> NO TYPICAL APP STORE

> Instead of unrestricted app stores, we provide a curated selection of essential, distraction-free applications that align with our mission.

That's quite a big undertaking and a lot of control handed over to the manufacturer/maintainer. Phone is still a communication device, so it would be nice to see Signal, Conversations, Element (all of which are FOSS and could be easily rebranded), but then half of the world needs WhatsApp. Or is it distracting because you can contact businesses on it? (Like the Uber example on their page) Many people want banking apps too, do they plan to vet every single banking app?

New comment by yaky in "OpenSCAD is kinda neat"

yaky — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 16:03:41 +0000

If it's a one-time thing, Prusa Slicer (and some other slicers too, probably) allow adding and subtracting simple shapes. So if, for example, you need to add a hole for a screw, you can do it directly in the slicer without messing with (and breaking the mesh of) an STL.

New comment by yaky in "Smartphone without a battery (2022)"

yaky — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 21:54:20 +0000

Looks like someone else posted this one though :)

New comment by yaky in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

yaky — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 19:20:24 +0000

To quote someone from Hackaday:

> We don't ask "why?", we ask "why not?"

New comment by yaky in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

yaky — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:27:14 +0000

Thanks!

Maemo Leste is still around, I just tried it on a PinePhone with a keyboard not too long ago.

It's not postmarketOS with a popular DE nor Android, but has a terminal, browser, media player, et.

New comment by yaky in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

yaky — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:51:44 +0000

It can't be used in a mobile way much anymore, with all 3G and many 2G shut down in the US.

The caps / supercaps are necessary to provide enough current during boot or more resource-intensive tasks.

New comment by yaky in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

yaky — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:54:00 +0000

I read about lithium-ion and LiFePO batteries on Adafruit a few years ago, and saw similar projects elsewhere. The bootloader stuff is on Maemo wiki, along with tools to flash the device (which is also a bit of dark magic arts to me).

TBH, I didn't / don't exactly have a path. I started with Raspberry Pi (and Linux for the second time) 10+ years ago, which led me to Arduino, which led me to low-voltage electronics in general. At the same time, I had an unreasonable dislike of google, which led me to flashing LineageOS on a test phone, which then became my main phone, which eventually led to PinePhone, which didn't work out, but was fun.

New comment by yaky in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

yaky — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 04:41:34 +0000

I've only heard of doing so for 2G: https://hackaday.com/2025/10/06/2g-gone-bring-it-back-yourse...

New comment by yaky in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

yaky — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 03:09:08 +0000

There was Neo900, abandoned in 2018. The site is still up though: https://neo900.org/#main

New comment by yaky in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

yaky — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 02:15:53 +0000

I looked, but TBH, not sure what to make of "genuine" and "OEM" claims for a battery for a 16–year-old device (or 10-year-old if you count compatible Lumias). Descriptions usually do not mention manufacture dates either.