<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: zzo38computer</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zzo38computer</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2026 09:18:42 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=zzo38computer" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Apple Music 404 Not Found"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, and I prefer to use a keyboard. (For television and something else where there isn't a full keyboard, you can use numbers. I intended to invent Movie Decimal for this purpose, and have implemented a subset of Movie Decimal (the subset involving titles, although the full Movie Decimal is supposed to allow many other search criteria as well such as year, genre, who assigned the ID (similar to OID), etc) and already found it useful. It can allow quick entry for someone who is used to Movie Decimal, and slow but understandable if you are not used to it (since the display will tell you what numbers to push next, making it easy to understand).)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2026 03:00:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227866</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227866</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227866</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Small Programs and Languages"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have written some useful small programs in uxn, such as: hex decoder in 39 bytes (which handles optional spaces and line breaks, uppercase and lowercase, etc), a program to convert JSON to NDJSON in 125 bytes, a program to convert DER to a subset of TER in 220 bytes, BLAKE2s in 1024 bytes (although some of it is padding for alignment, which is why it comes out to exactly 1024), a card game (including graphics, sound effects, fonts, scoring, etc) in 1853 bytes, etc. (These do not always check for errors (although the card game does check that you had made a valid move), which is one of the things that makes them short; since you might want such things sometimes that makes other programs longer, and this is not specific to uxn or to programs I wrote.) Other people might have also done.<p>The description of uxn and varvara are also small and might need only two pages (I did not write it).<p>I also remember reading in a book that someone made a game on Atari in 2 kilobytes, and described how they could make it fit (by making the map symmetric, etc), which was rejected because they had 4 kilobyte cartridges by then. (The article in this submission also links to a different game that (probably) someone else made in 2 kilobytes, but this time with JavaScript and HTML. Atari and uxn/varvara are much simpler systems than HTML/JavaScript, though.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2026 02:35:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227735</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227735</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227735</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "We should be more ambitious with the software we build"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think the CSS they use (which isn't much) is good enough (and "img{max-width:100%}" really ought to be the default setting even if the user disables CSS).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2026 02:16:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227627</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227627</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227627</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think 100 W incandescent are too bright; I use 5 W incandescent lights (usually only one at a time, sometimes two if one is insufficient). I also find LED lighting (and flurescent) to be irritating (and they actually use a bit more power, the LED lighting that they installed (but I removed) uses 8 W instead of the 5 W that the incandescent light uses), so I don't use them.<p>However, I think that often you should not need to be overly reliant on electric power. If you have enough windows then you should not need electric light in the day time, if the incandescent light in the winter time also provides heat, if you have candles when needed, moon light (depending on the phase of the moon), etc, and I can write by hand and many things can be done without a computer (including, walk to where you need to go; I do not have a car so I walk if it is close enough or car pooling with someone else if far away), there is sweater and blankets and candles (which also provide light) in case you are cold in the winter time, etc. If you learn to work things without electric power too then it avoids some of the overly reliance on it.<p>Getting rid of the roads for cars (and the cars) would also have some advantages (it would need more walking and others but those things can help, anyways).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2026 02:08:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227567</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227567</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227567</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "AI is mass decompiling games. That's both awesome and scary"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You can duplicate the functionality of computer games (and other computer programs) without decompiling them, in some cases. However, this can require a lot of testing to figure out the working. Having a reimplementation (whether due to decompilation or due to figuring out the behaviour without decompiling it) can be helpful to explain the game rules better too, which many computer games don't explain very well in their documentation, so this means it is possible to write a better documentation (one example where this is helpful is Pokemon). (I have figured out the working of Hero Hearts without decompilation, and making it (at least in my opinion) better than the original, without needing any LLM/generative-AI to do this. Some people (including myself but mostly others) have guessed at (and tested) some behaviours of ZZT, both by testing and by partial decompilation, but eventually someone did rewrite the source code which produces the same executable file than the original, so it is known that it is the correct implementation.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:28:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50099156</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50099156</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50099156</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Beauty in DVD Menus"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree that there are advantages of the usability of VHS; the menus should not be needed (even if they are helpful on some DVDs, they shouldn't be required). There are disadvantages as well, such as being slow (to rewind back to the beginning) and being damaged (although DVDs can be damaged too). Index searching is possible with VHS but I think it is mostly only used when recording TV shows and is not used with movies, even though I think can sometimes be helpful with movies.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 09 Oct 2026 20:35:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50026254</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50026254</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50026254</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Beauty in DVD Menus"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Where a menu might help is a list of the titles and chapters, although such things can also be printed on the box and selected directly by numeric entry (in which case the menu is not needed, but can be helpful in case you do not have the box). Subtitles, audio, etc can usually be selected by other functions in the DVD player. (Sometimes there are other functions as well, but mostly it should be good enough to just select titles and chapters by numeric entry. DVD players ought to have the option that you can disable unwanted functions in order to just play the selected title directly.) VHS also has index marks but those are mostly used for making your own recording rather than movies.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:59:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50007475</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50007475</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50007475</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "What even is an OS now?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think that it should not need to be mutually exclusive. You can make it you can enter the programs yourself (if you prefer to do for whatever reason, including, it does not work well (like you mention), or because of Dijkstra objection or other objections to the use of AI for programming the computer or AI in general), but that AI can also be possible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2026 04:41:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49853263</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49853263</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49853263</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "What even is an OS now?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> At home, I use software that is well-crafted to do some thing. Or I write a series of scripts to do narrow things that for some reason aren't in Aptitude or Snap, for example "copy all the photos off my iPhone and rename them and sort them by date in my filesystem".<p>> Perhaps I have no imagination, but I don't feel like having an LLM make applications on my phone. I want good software that someone that I trust wrote.<p>I do not use LLM either, and do not intend to do. I can write my own programs. Even if someone does want to use LLM, it should neither be required nor expected nor the default (and there are also reasons why I think that it should be discouraged to use LLM too much); you should be able to write the scripts and programs by yourself if you want to do it that way (and the computer made to make this possible to do without LLM), even if some people can make LLM to do it at their option, but it should not to require LLM and AI.<p>I also think that the computer that can start with a programming language such as BASIC or Forth (without first needing menus and GUI to access all of the programs) is useful, and that it is not as good that many modern computers do not do like that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2026 01:10:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852127</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852127</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852127</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "2DWillNeverDie"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think that 2D graphics and games is not bad. For some things, 3D graphics might be helpful, especially if there is also 3D physics, but many games should not need 3D.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:44:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49851984</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49851984</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49851984</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have different ideas about the UI. We don't need the AI and fancy graphics (animations can be limited to showing where an object is moving to, and a setting can be added to control the animation speed including to disable it entirely). Being able to use programs and data together is helpful (something mentioned in the article), and then to be able to use Command, Automation, and Query Language to do queries and batch operations with them as well. You could put multiple data in one file, and include one kind of data in the other one, etc; it is not plain text but is many types of data. I made a repository with some of my ideas about computer and operating system design (this would be a part of improving it, since the existing systems have limits) and would write more in future. UI and UX is not the only issue, but also security and many other things.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:26:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833968</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833968</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833968</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Prompts aren’t Real"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If the interface is documented and can also be used without AI, and you can write your own software instead if wanted, then that will be more helpful, I think. (Someone who does want to use it with the AI can still do so, without forcing everyone else to also do.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 20 Sep 2026 21:32:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49780290</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49780290</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49780290</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Prompts aren’t Real"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You shouldn't need LLM and AI to do such things. Even if such things might be useful to some people, I might want to use the API without LLM/AI and just to read the API documentation and then to make my own, and some other people might want to do similarly. In the specific case of e-commerce, I had been making my own specification of a file format for e-commerce (which is independent of the protocol), which is not intended to use with LLM/AI, but instead is intended to avoid many kind of dishonest business while also being flexible and that you could make and use your own software or some other implementaiton instead of being forced to use their UI/UX.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 20 Sep 2026 21:28:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49780258</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49780258</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49780258</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Keys Not Included: recovering the signing keys for US driver's license barcodes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> namely both "private" and "public" key are the same thing; the labeling "public" vs. "private" reflects your arbitrary choice of which of one you give away, and which one you keep for yourself.<p>It is not quite arbitrary. With RSA, you could potentially store only the modulus and the exponents, publishing one exponent and keeping the other one private (or making each privately known to different people, with both having the modulus). However, the way it is commonly stored is with the private key file includes both exponents and several other numbers, and the public exponent is usually 65537 which makes it easy to guess so you cannot effectively keep it secret. With some other kinds of cryptography (other than RSA), you can figure out the public key from the private key even without doing things like this.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2026 17:28:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49743896</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49743896</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49743896</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce""]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In some programming languages with RPN you can avoid this problem, because it makes sense to put it in the stack as the initial value, and then you can as easily have multiple initial values; and then the callback function can read that from the stack that you had put there, like anything else you will push into the stack to read it back later. For example, in PostScript you can write something like:<p><pre><code>  0 exch {add} forall
</code></pre>
However, this is not as good if you want to use the first element as the initial value instead, but still it can be done but it is then not as simple (unlike in programming languages that do not use RPN but instead with function call with arguments, in which case it might be simpler).<p>I guess names as SELECT and WHERE are like SQL (although SQL works differently than other programming langauges).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2026 04:56:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736568</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736568</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736568</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Things That Annoy Me About Cars"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Something that bothers me (even though I do not drive a car and do not intend to, but sometimes am a passenger) is windows that require electric controls to operate and cannot be operated manually.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Sep 2026 20:22:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703379</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703379</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703379</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Iranian banks' SSL certificates are being revoked due to OFAC sanctions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It doesn't load for me, but I have read the other comments.<p>There is the problem of TLS and X.509 being used with centralized authorities like this, even though it is not inherent to TLS nor to X.509 (although they were designed to be used in this way). In some circumstances, you can get a copy of the certificate (which might be self-signed) from somewhere else and then check that it matches in this circumstances. In other circumstances there are other things that can be done (e.g. TOFU, which has a different set of problems, but also has advantages in a different set of circumstances). What the security requirements are will depend on the circumstances, which can also depend on the user's intentions; they should not have to depend on a centralized authority.<p>(There is the issue that a single X.509 certificate cannot have multiple issuers, though. There is also the issue that X.509 certificates cannot contain unsigned extensions (they could be added after the signature, but an implementation might check for additional fields after the signature and reject a certificate that has any). Although an alternative schema can be made (I have done so), it would not work with the existing protocols.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Sep 2026 20:17:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703313</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703313</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703313</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Iranian banks' SSL certificates are being revoked due to OFAC sanctions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think it would be a good idea. TLS and X.509 would work better that way. Actually, both sides should have a certificate (the bank might issue a certificate to the customer).<p>It won't do for all circumstances (as some other comments mention), but when it is possible, it would be a good idea.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Sep 2026 20:00:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703066</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703066</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703066</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "Iranian banks' SSL certificates are being revoked due to OFAC sanctions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One possible alternative might be to add the ability for user configuration to substitute one certificate for another one (both will need the same public key and subject name, but the substitute will not be self-signed (since you do not have the private key)), and to use the data in the substitute certificate instead of the original. If the name constraints extension is implemented, then it would make this and other things possible. Since the substitute certificate will be considered trusted, it is not necessary for the substitute certificate to have a signature (if it does (e.g. because you got it from somewhere else instead of making it yourself), then the signature can be ignored), nor is it necessary for the substitute certificate to be issued by anyone (this applies even if it is the end certificate being substituted).<p>I think some servers do not send a copy of the root certificate to the client. In this case, what I described above might already be possible even if that feature has not already been added to existing implementations, as long as it does not require the installed certificate to be self-signed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:57:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703016</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703016</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703016</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zzo38computer in "AI Robots – When will they be in our homes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I also don't like the idea of putting cameras all over my house and having ad companies surveil my intimate space, and I also don't like to add further things that require electrical power, and/or that make noise, etc. This is in addition to the security ramifications that you describe and that you don't describe, and other issues.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Sep 2026 04:36:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692049</link><dc:creator>zzo38computer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692049</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692049</guid></item></channel></rss>