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

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

#341

Post by bustercheeks »

JeremyNT wrote: post #268

Ham radio! I got into it through wanting some cheap radios to keep in my house, so I wouldn't have to go all the way upstairs when I needed to communicate with my daughter. Well let me tell you Baofeng radios are extremely cheap but really flexible. I got these things for the simplest possible use case but after realizing their potential I just had to learn more about the space. You can adjust their configuration wit…

If you want to transmit with your Baofeng before getting a HAM license you can always get a GMRS license. There's no test, and the license is a household license that lasts 10 years. IIRC the license costs about $30, you can get one on the FCC website (https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/support/knowledge-base/universa...).

If you have a repeater in your area there may be a net where other licensed operators check in every week. I've heard people check in from over 60 miles before. You can check this website for repeaters in your area: https://mygmrs.com/repeaters. Good luck on your technician test!

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

#343

Post by incomingpain »

My project uses a library, which in turn uses a WSGI library. During a vulnerability scan, my web UI would crash, but I had no error messages. The rabbit hole!

Despite leaving a bug ticket with my library, I received no response after a month. I struggled to debug this library within a library. One day I realized the rabbit hole I was in and switched over to Tornado and no problems since.

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

#344

Post by nicbou »

TheBozzCL wrote: post #279

I deep-dove into the identity of a spammer. They were sending me the crappiest, absolutely lowest-denominator hodge-podge of spam. Fly repellent, ultrasonic dog whistles, knives. It all seemed like legit businesses, so it was just some marketing firm that bought an email list somewhere. Whenever I get spammed, I check the email headers. Turns out they were using an email with the owner’s initials in the unsubscribe h…

What about absurdly targeted spam just to mess with them?

https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...

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

#345

Post by sgarland »

tharkun__ wrote: post #133
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…

This is the one! Same here. Life happened. What I told my dad would never happen (not using Linux From Scratch or Gentoo - like how can he use Windows and like just get things done instead of digging deep and solving problems all the time?) did happen. I now use Debian derived but more up-to-date and easy to use for mainstream people distros (like shudder Ubuntu) and they're relegated to server and TV duty and I hope…

I think the ??? --> Gentoo --> Something Stable pipeline is a defining characteristic of 90s/00s nerds.

I _think_ the first Linux distro I ever installed was Slackware, but ashamedly, I can't remember. In my defense, I would've been about 10 years old at the time. I played around with a ton of others (I'm fairly certain I tried Debian Woody), but settled on Gentoo, because of course. Forget just tying up the phone line for dial-up, I tied up both of the family computers with distcc.

After a career break wherein I did relatively little with computers for a decade, I got back into Linux and quickly realized I did not care about -funroll-loops. I've been running Debian non-stop since Jessie, on everything from repurposed laptops, to ancient tower servers, to slightly-less-ancient racks.

> But I think it's important to have gone through the "rabbit hole" in the middle.

This right here. There is an endless stream of "how do I learn Linux?" questions on Reddit, and the answers are always some variation of "read this book," "take this course," etc. Perhaps there is value there, but I learned it by trying to do stuff. Like getting an HP PSC 2610 to talk to hplip and CUPS over LAN. Or getting a Chaintech AV-710's (an obscure sound card that happened to use an excellent DAC for 2-channel output) to work under ALSA. Doing these kinds of things forced you to read man pages, forums, newsgroups, etc. And when you succeeded, you could write up a HOWTO, and the three other people in the world who also needed this particular combination would give thanks.

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

#346

Post by nubinetwork »

This is pretty fitting for HN, especially considering I've tried to ignore it this whole time... but AI.

Watched a couple videos on making AI to play video games, looked into localai and gptpilot, failed to get it to write a QT application. Played around with tts and stt, and now I'm stuck in prompt hell with diffusers/dreamshaper.

(It's mostly there, but I feel like it's screwing with me because it always finds a way to screw up the picture.)

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

#347

Post by nicbou »

I'm slowly simplifying all of my projects. I'm constantly aiming for simpler, lighter, lower maintenance. Nginx for caddy, PostgreSQL for SQLite, shorter configs, static site generators.

It's fun to reach a point where things just run forever at zero expense.

In parallel, I work hard on developer experience just for myself. I finally get the greybears and their keyboard incantations. No UI can beat scripts and muscle reflex.

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

#348

Post by TheBozzCL »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #294
TheBozzCL wrote: post #282

Ooh, another one I have: I cosplay as a sysadmin. A while back I had bought a domain for my email, and I thought “I should write a blog about creating a blog”. At first I hosted it in GitHub Pages, but then I realized I have a perfectly good Raspberry Pi. It’s not like I’m ever gonna get a lot of traffic… so why not self-host? That sent me into a very deep rabbit hole. How do I make sure my website doesn’t go down if…

What's your stance on using something like cloudflare to proxy your pie fleet? Cloudflare tunnel would solve the issue of static IPs and you also get DDoS mitigation and caching. Caching on the edge would be especially beneficial for something like a blog which is likely to be fully static or SSG at most. Although it won't help you with the writing part (;

I’ve never even considered, really… I wanted to stick to self-hosting and FOSS as much as I could, and it all gets very little traffic.

You’re right that it’s a good idea, though. I’ll look into it!

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

#349

Post by [deleted] »

2rsf wrote: post #302
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.

[deleted]

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

#350

Post by sumeruchat »

mmh0000 wrote: post #220
pictureofabear wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a big moment for me too when I realized that the real world has infinitely many interesting things to do and explore. The real world is incredibly detailed.

Hard disagree. The real world only has pain and suffering. Endless trials and never a payout. Games on the other hand and very detailed and have a well defined path to success.

Yes but isnt the suffering and occasional ecstatic wins the whole point. Learn to enjoy this journey.
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