Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#301

Post by samsquire » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 7:43 AM UTC

wiresurfer wrote: post #67

So, I was looking at some performance issues which seemed to be stemming from linux networking stack. We eBPF with docker/k8s a fair bit as a PaaS, and I ended up getting into the weeds with linux sys/procfs and kernel tracing. One thing led to another and after quickly dispatching the perf issue, I was supposed to be on a planned week long holiday which turned into a deep dive into linux kernel + networking. Interme…

Hi I would greatly enjoy talking to you.

I play with io_uring and multithreading. I am looking at event loops.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#302

Post by 2rsf » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 7:46 AM UTC

7thaccount wrote: post #205

Figure skating. It should be illegal to have so much fun. The feeling of gliding out there on the ice with nearly zero friction is amazing. It's a great community too. Not cheap, but a lot cheaper than many hobbies. Less than $1k will get you a nice pair of skates, plenty of group lessons, and access to the rink for a few months. It's fun for the family or single adults. There are always tons of people just starting.…

I totally agree, we are lucky here in Sweden to have free access to ice rinks, basic lessons are also rather cheap and usually operated but local not for profit organizations.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#303

Post by mtsolitary » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 7:48 AM UTC

birdfood wrote: post #105

Building a CRUD app. It's been a while since I've worked on a CRUD app so I'm finding the whole thing quite interesting. The purpose of the app is to solve a scheduling problem. I've written my own CDCL SAT solver (now just using google or tools), and on the app side I've jumped from Phoenix (elixir) -> Dream (ocaml) -> axum (rust) -> Django. I feel like Phoenix probably perfectly suits what I'd like to do with this…

Interesting, what’s the scheduling problem?

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#304

Post by stevekemp » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 7:56 AM UTC

A while back I wrote a game in assembly, for CP/M. Since I have a single-board Z80-based computer on which I can run it.

I later ported the game to the ZX Spectrum, because that was a fun challenge, and I only needed a few basic I/O operations - "write to screen", "read a line of input", etc, etc.

It occurred to me that I could reimplement the very few CP/M BIOS functions and combine those implementatiosn with a Z80 emulator to run it "natively". So I did that, then I wondered what it would take to run Zork and other games.

Slowly I've been reimplementing the necessary CP/M BDOS functions so that I can run more and more applications. I'm not going to go crazy, anything with sectors/disks is out of scope, but adding the file-based I/O functions takes me pretty far.

At the moment I've got an annoying bug where the Aztec C-compiler doesn't quite work under my emulator and I'm trying to track it down. The C-compiler produces an assembly file which is 100% identical to that produced on my real hardware, but for some reason the assembler output from compiling that file is broken - I suspect I've got something wrong with my file-based I/O, but I've not yet resolved the problem.

TLDR; writing a CP/M emulator in golang, and getting more and more software running on it - https://github.com/skx/cpmulator

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#305

Post by 2rsf » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 8:30 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #15

Been nerdsnipped and diving down the rabbit hole on a few topics in the past few months: Some history podcasts had me digging into the Napoleonic Wars and Israel/Palestine. Also a recent interest in human health and diseases has basically sent me down the path of self-study equivalent to a Kinesiology/Exercise Science/Sports Physiology degree.

> Israel/Palestine

This is more than a rabbit hole, it's a fractal that changes as you zoom in and out

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#306

Post by purple-leafy » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 8:30 AM UTC

Chrome extension build steps. Because the chrome manifest requires an actual file, you can’t rely on a dev server and hot module reloading. So I’ve hacked vites build command and watch command to constantly recompile chrome extension code as I develop it (typescript + frontend frameworks etc).

Add to the fact that you have to manually reload the unpacked chrome extension to apply your new changes, so I’ve hooked solution 1 up with a web socket server and a custom chrome extension that watches all your other extensions and talks to the web socket server to auto reload an unpacked extension anytime the build step completes

It’s a nightmare hack, but I may just be the worlds most productive chrome extension builder as a result! I’ve released 5 extensions in the last 5 months :)

About to release a big one, but it’s also probably the words most complicated chrome extension (LLM + Firebase store + Stripe + Auth + Serverless functions)

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#307

Post by farseer » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 8:30 AM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #35

So, I decided to install Linux on my formerly-Windows-only laptop, and thought it was cool enough to go full time and ditch Windows completely. The downside was the lack of access to top tier games. No problem though, my plan was to take a break from gaming, figuring that by the time Linux had caught up with compatibility, computers would also be much more powerful and I'd be able to resume gaming at some point in th…

A lot of the top tier games run fine on Linux using Steam/Proton Compatibly layer or just pure Wine. Do explore that.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#308

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 8:38 AM UTC

luisrudge wrote: post #101

user_7832 wrote: post #36

For me, it's DIY audio. The thing about diy'ing audio (primarily speakers but also amps, DACs etc) is that you can get top of the line performance for a fraction of the market price. A $50,000 speaker setup that would bring tears to your eyes could be made for perhaps $5000. A DIY $500 kit can perform similar to a $2-3000 set of speakers. Open source amps with gerber files on github are amazing. The biggest reason it…

All I want is a small stereo speaker to replace my awful monitor speakers. Like a small soundbar that doesn't suck. I might dive into this rabbit hole

"Small" and "decent audio response in bass" don't really go together. But you can go surprisingly far with a pair of "bookshelf" speakers.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#309

Post by jhanschoo » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 8:45 AM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #35

So, I decided to install Linux on my formerly-Windows-only laptop, and thought it was cool enough to go full time and ditch Windows completely. The downside was the lack of access to top tier games. No problem though, my plan was to take a break from gaming, figuring that by the time Linux had caught up with compatibility, computers would also be much more powerful and I'd be able to resume gaming at some point in th…

You'll have to do some research to figure out how to get a decent copy of the old, moddable GTA III, and not the remastered, ported ones.

Re: Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?

#310

Post by unrealp » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 8:49 AM UTC

I tried creative coding. Sonic Pi, Processing, p5js, there are so many frameworks built around creative coding that I didnt know even existed. It was really fun.