_dan (u/_dan) - Readit News

_dan commented on Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/fleahunter

drnick1 · 16 days ago

This OSMC box looks interesting, but does it allow to run arbitrary programs like a plain Linux box? What I have in mind here are things such as VacuumTube (YoutubeTV front end), a Web browser to stream from various online sources, etc. I found KODI (as running on Linux) far too restrictive when it comes to streaming from the Internet, and the add ons to be terrible. (In particular the YouTube add-on requires an API key registered with Google, which makes it a far worse proposition than using VacuumTube anonymously.)

_dan · 15 days ago

Yeah that OSMC box is just running Debian with their stuff coming from its own package repo. You can get a root shell. I realise I could have built something myself (and have in the past) but it's absolutely worth the money to me to get everything in a tiny package and working perfectly from day one.

I wouldn't recommend Kodi for streaming, it kinda works but the experience isn't great. I use it exclusively for playing stuff from my server full of legally acquired public domain videos (ahem).

I do watch YouTube videos on it, but I use TubeArchivist (basically a fancy wrapper for yt-dlp) to pull them onto the server first, and a script to organise them into nicely-named directories.

_dan commented on Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/fleahunter

JayGuerette · 16 days ago

I'm confused. Every TV is a dumb TV if you don't give it your Wifi password.

_dan · 16 days ago

Yeah I have a couple of recent Samsung OLEDs and they're fine without an internet connection despite reports that they wouldn't be. If I press one of the annoying streaming service buttons on the remote it'll give me a setup popup which needs to be dismissed, otherwise they work fine, albeit without any built in streaming support.

I'd read reports that Q-Symphony (audio from the TV speakers and soundbar simultaneously) wouldn't work, but it does.

I stuck an OSMC (https://osmc.tv/) box to the back of both of them so they can play stuff from my NAS. They're not the cheapest solution and I realise Kodi/XBMC on which they're based isn't everyone's jam (I grew up with XBMC on an Xbox so it is very much mine) - but they play everything, have wifi, HDMI-CEC, integrated RF remote, and work out of the box.

Model numbers if anyone cares: Samsung QE65S95C, Samsung QE77S95F. I believe S95, S90 and S85 (at least up to F) are all very similar so they should all work but ofc ymmv.

_dan commented on Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act? · Posted by u/hodgesrm

gorgoiler · 22 days ago

You’ll need to have some plausible amount of non-ssh traffic otherwise your account will be automatically re-assigned as an Enterprise Infrastructure Account. It will be temporarily suspended while you apply for a license.

EIAs are £452.17/month (a statutory amount originally defined in The Online Safety Act’s 2027 update, subject to triple-lock inflation), licensed, and subject to inspection. There’s a four month waiting list for licensing due to backlogs at the local County Court.

The alternative is therefore to use up a strike and apply to have the account repurposed back to a Citizen User Account. CUAs must remain below a 50:1 down/up ratio and must have p90 non-https “control” traffic of 48kbps or less. They are expensive too but you get a 25% discount if you install your ISP’s mobileconfig / MDM profile though. With the profile discount the price is now only £64.99 a month.

(This assumes you run an Approved Platform capable of mobile device management. Anything else — Linux based, old versions of macOS, Windows <= 13 etc. — has to pay the full price and CUAs are limited to one Custom Access device per connection.)

You can get it down to £49.99 a month if you sign up for a 12-month trial of their home security system — cameras, door “e-locks”, that sort of thing. The devices are locked down but you can see the last 48h of events on their cloud portal. The devices have tamper detectors and the traffic is encrypted e2e but luckily that doesn’t count towards your CUA agreement’s limits on opaque traffic.

_dan · 22 days ago

Well that is ridiculous.

..but sadly within the margin of ridiculousness for our government's approach to the internet.

_dan commented on Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act? · Posted by u/hodgesrm

latexr · 22 days ago

> How many other people have done the same?

For your own personal sake, you may be selfishly wishing it’s as few people as possible. Eventually they’ll outlaw VPNs too and by then you’ll have little recourse. You can’t hide behind them forever, deeper change is needed.

_dan · 22 days ago

I mean good luck banning ssh connections.

_dan commented on C100 Developer Terminal caligra.com/... · Posted by u/matthewsinclair

danpalmer · a month ago

Who is this for?

Because it's not for the developers I know – they either want a Macbook or an infinitely configurable (hardware and software) workstation, whereas this has the configurability of a Macbook with the ease of use of the workstation, clearly not a combination people want.

I can only assume this is for mechanical keyboard collectors. Developer-adjacent tech enthusiasts who like the idea of Linux, without an actual professional need for it. People who like well built devices, but don't really care about swapping out hardware. People who have a lot of disposable income and want to buy cool things.

If that's the target market, that's fine. I guess the problem is that market only buys it if you claim its for a different market, developers/etc. As a result it's going to rile up developers every time as they always feel the need to push back with "this isn't what I want".

_dan · a month ago

The uniform stagger is likely to make most keyboard nerds turn their noses up too.

_dan commented on What Killed Perl? entropicthoughts.com/what... · Posted by u/speckx

_dan · a month ago

My experience of working with Perl as a primary language from late 90s to today: Perl was dead long before Perl 6/Raku was a real thing. By the time that happened it had already lost massive ground to PHP, Python, Java, etc.

PHP had replaced CGI as the easiest way to get code on a webserver, Python and Java were easier to read and understand, easier to structure large systems with, and generally easier to use. Ruby came along and MVC frameworks became the thing for complex web platforms.

Meanwhile Perl was sorta keeping up, the "Modern Perl" movement helped dispel myths about "write only" code, things like Moose, DBIC, Catalyst, Mojolicious, etc meant you could write pretty modern stuff with it. But the community was smaller, fractured by Perl 6 and dominated by some ahem divisive characters which made it intimidating for newcomers, and it just slowly died from there.

By the time Stack Overflow came along it was easy to see that other languages had vibrant communities surrounding them and for me it never really recovered.

_dan commented on The Guardian flourishes without a paywall nymag.com/intelligencer/a... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

Havoc · 9 months ago

They have an Ad-lite option. Literally give us money monthly and we’ll still show you ads (just not personalised)

Quite possibly the most obnoxious route to take

_dan · 9 months ago

That seems to be the approach most UK newspapers are taking. Consent or pay.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...

_dan commented on Visual guide to SSH tunneling and port forwarding (2023) ittavern.com/visual-guide... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

atoav · a year ago

If you let me ssh on that server and I am allowed to ssh from there elsewhere that is not bypassing anything. You allowed me to do that unless it says somewhere that tunnels are not allowed. The question is mainly for which purposes you allowed me to use these things and whether I comply with that. E.g. if I was given a ssh route to reach the some internal LDAP system for software development reasons and I abuse it to stream cat videos on youtube that is on me. But if I use it to reach another internal server that I use for software development, then it is on them.

The alternative would be asking a babysitter for each connection you are making. Sounds like a good way to never get work done.

Also: A good sysadmin will have lines in their /etc/ssh/sshd_config that prevent me from tunneling if they don't want me to do it.

_dan · a year ago

This is the approach I take too. If I need it and I can do it then I'm going to. If you don't want me to then block me.

I must say I've had some raised eyebrows over that approach but if the alternative is not getting my shit done then I'm gonna do it unless explicitly forbidden.

_dan commented on Visual guide to SSH tunneling and port forwarding (2023) ittavern.com/visual-guide... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

_dan · a year ago

SSH tunnelling is an utter necessity in the ridiculous corporate environment I work in. Incredible amounts of bureaucracy and sometimes weeks of waiting to get access to stuff, get ports opened, get some exception in their firewalls and vpn so someone can access a thing they need to do their job.

This guide mentions -D but doesn't really articulate quite how powerful it is if you don't know what it does.

ssh -D 8888 someserver, set your browser's SOCKS proxy to localhost:8888 (firefox still lets you set this without altering system defaults). Now all your browser's traffic is routed via someserver.

I find that to be incredibly useful.