ellisd (u/ellisd) - Readit News

ellisd commented on Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org giuliomagnifico.blog/post... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico

ellisd · 9 days ago

Anyone using a half-Gmail / half-personal IMAP server to handle the reality that keeping 20+ years or email in Gmail will bump into the storage quota? I'm around 99.5% usage and just slowly deleting ancient emails with large attachments to make it another month.

Dovecot in my homelab seem doable to have an IMAP server to transfer the Gmail based emails to and maintain them indefinitely but would this be a maintenance headache? I've never operated it before and am curious.

ellisd commented on Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser github.com/nxtscape/nxtsc... · Posted by u/felarof

felarof · 2 months ago

Not on purpose, just got compressed during production build through webpack. will get that fixed.

ellisd · 2 months ago

Thank you for the clarification!

While reviewing the prompt's capabilities, I had an idea: implementing a Greasemonkey/Userscript-style system, where users could inject custom JavaScript or prompts based on URLs, could be a powerful way to enhance website interactions.

For instance, consider a banking website with a cumbersome data export process that requires extra steps to make the data usable. Imagine being able to add a custom button to their UI (or define a custom MCP function) specifically for that URL, which could automatically pull and format the data into a more convenient format for plain text accounting.

ellisd commented on Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser github.com/nxtscape/nxtsc... · Posted by u/felarof

ellisd · 2 months ago

Why obfuscate the LLM system prompt in your Github repo when it's going to be completely visible in the network inspector?

ellisd commented on Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom cnbc.com/2025/05/15/coinb... · Posted by u/gpi

VectorLock · 4 months ago

I just switched to iPhone from a pixel device and I’m shook by all the spam calls. How do iPhone users deal with this?

ellisd · 4 months ago

Unfortunately blocking all unknown calls is the only way to sanity. Otherwise we're talking 6-9 calls coming in ALL DAY, EVERY DAY.

The calls are coming from new numbers, across multiple area codes. A few months ago I would have advised using Begone (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/begone-spam-call-blocker/id159...) to block but that only worked since these calls were isolated to blocks of area codes that were pretty safe to block like 888-XXX-XXXX, but now ZERO of these calls are using a fixed area code that would be relative safe to block.

ellisd commented on The XB-70 (2019) codex99.com/photography/t... · Posted by u/rbanffy

ellisd · 6 months ago

The ejection capsule design for the XB-70 is some next level engineering. Your seat would move backward into a capsule before ejection to survive the cruising altitudes of 70k feet / Mach 3.

https://www.generalstaff.org/CDA/Air/B-70/XB-70_Escape_Syste...

ellisd commented on Xerox Alto Source Code (2014) computerhistory.org/blog/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

ellisd · 7 months ago

RIP to the Living Computers: Museum in Seattle… the last place I was ever able to use one of these machines in the flesh.

ellisd commented on Lessons in creating family photos that people want to keep (2018) estherschindler.medium.co... · Posted by u/mooreds

DanielBMarkham · 7 months ago

I lost all of my photos (along with everything else) when growing up, so taking pictures and videos was important to me as I became an adult.

I'm 59 now. In the 1990s I started taking VHS videos of family events. Sometimes I would walk around "interviewing", sometimes I would walk around and try to normally talk to people while holding that huge recorder. (That didn't work). I even set it up on a tripod and just let the recorder run while my parents and others visited.

This past year I've ripped a couple of dozen DVDs out of all of those tapes. In the past two weeks I've then ffmpeg'ed them to mp4s and loaded on an SD drive and put in a e-picture frame.

Now we have 30-40 hours of "family memory TV" playing constantly in our living room. It is one of the most amazing things I've done with technology. I can't describe the feeling of looking back 30+ years to see folks who are long gone -- or now adults with their own kids!

God I'm glad I didn't record all of this on a cell phone or use social media. It would have been impossible to have the patience and time to scale all of those walled gardens for this project.

Best videos? The "family interview show", where I ask questions and everybody performs some kind of art. Wish I'd done one of those every year. Second best? Just setting the cam up and letting it run. Third place are videos of family members doing things that'll never happen again, like watching a sonogram of a new baby on the way.

Worst videos? As I know (and knew at the time!), a bunch of videos and pictures of things we were looking at that were interesting to us at the time but stuff you could find online in a couple of seconds. Unless it has audio commentary, it was a pointless exercise.

ellisd · 7 months ago

I'm fascinated by the "family memory TV" idea. Losing cherished memories—photos, videos, or writings—is a recurring fear of mine and a big reason I’ve embraced digital hoarding. Having a place to share this with yourself and others is really powerful.

Could you share more details about your setup? Do videos play continuously in your living room, or are they triggered by presence? Is sound muted or do you just have it at a lower level?

ellisd commented on Hacking Subaru: Tracking and controlling cars via the admin panel samcurry.net/hacking-suba... · Posted by u/ramimac

duxup · 7 months ago

I love my Subaru as far as reliability, all wheel drive performance in snow and ice, and such.

But OMG it's consumer tech was dated when I bough it, and it's just full of inexplicable issues and caveats and such. Even just the limitations and the UX issues are so obvious that it sends a message that if they tried to fix them they would introduce just as many new issues. I'm at the point where despite the car being good, I'm not interested in a new one from Subaru.

I just want carplay or android auto whatever similar services a given mobile OS provides to do similar things. That's it, every time it's something else (even when offering car play) from a car maker it is so bad and so naively built that it makes me less confidant in that company.

I know, they want my data and all and that's the motivation, but man it's just such a downer with every system.... and here I am with a good car in most respects and I'm not planning on buying from them again.

ellisd · 7 months ago

Subaru's in-vehicle entertainment technology has long been criticized, even before features like CarPlay became standard. Take my 2012 WRX, for example—its Bluetooth reception was the worst I've ever experienced in a Bluetooth-equipped vehicle. Audio feeds would randomly pop and drop out during podcasts, even when the phone was within a two-foot radius of the deck.

Over the years, I tried multiple iOS and Android phones, but nothing improved the situation. Ultimately, the only solution was a complete deck replacement. Now, I’m using a "Joying" Android head unit with a rip-off version of CarPlay, which has finally resolved these issues.

ellisd commented on Starlink is now cheaper than leading internet provider in some African countries restofworld.org/2025/star... · Posted by u/impish9208

ellisd · 8 months ago

This talk had some very interesting slides from the ITU on internet price due to data scarcity and lack of options.

"38C3 - Net Neutrality: Why It Still Matters (More Than Ever!)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_gqhpLSc_8

ellisd commented on Uncut Currency usmint.gov/paper-currency... · Posted by u/nxobject

danielodievich · 8 months ago

I tip exclusively with $2 bills because bartenders/event staff/doormen/shuttle people then always remember me. I get them from the bank and they are invariably crisp and never been folded. They kind of stick together because of this, too.

ellisd · 8 months ago

Same! Nothing speaks louder than having a wallet that's barely able to fold because it's full of $2 bills, and being 'that person' who pays exclusively with them. It immediately gives you a unique flair.

Also, I've noticed that requesting $2 bills is an interesting test of your bank's ability to perform its job as a member bank of the Federal Reserve. I've had so many tellers tell me that $2 bills no longer exist, only to have their managers offer to call me when they arrive in about a week's time.