News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

yaky

Re:Minimal Phone 2 on Friday September 18, 2026 @04:48PM (#49760075)
Would love to have a physical keyboard on a degoogled Android, but disappointed that there is no cyrillic option for keys.
Re:It's a shame what's happened to radio on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @11:29PM (#49001502)
I am too young to know about US radio in the 80s or 90s, but I enjoy some of the local and independent stations. I even collected some of their streams after I gave up Spotify: https://yaky.dev/radio/
Re:It's a shame what's happened to radio on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @11:20PM (#49001442)
Discovered WITR not too long ago, their selection is right up my alley (although it is arguably "millenial radio" rather than "college radio")
Re:"Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?" on Friday June 12, 2026 @04:47PM (#48509252)
I don't see LLMs being able to replace translators for less-spoken languages.

I know a translator between two Eastern European languages, and some jobs require use of specialized dictionaries. Using LLMs in such cases would be very unreliable and would require even more effort to check and correct than doing it correctly in the first place. Plus, I really doubt that US tech firms are training LLMs on language spoken by "only" 6 million people.

As for entertainment, anyone who grew up in Eastern Europe with pirated movies with nasal monotone translations, or machine-translated video games knows how much those take away from the experience. Sure, "AI could do better", but could it be consistent and capture cultural nuances and idioms, etc?

Re:Show HN: Rip.so – a graveyard for dead internet things on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @09:26AM (#47948122)
Jabber / XMPP is still around and is pretty good for self-hosting a messenger.

Email, now with multiple validations and verifications.

Gopher protocol has a niche community (probably overlapping with newer Gemini).

Doom, still played and modded, and now a semi-meme benchmark for low-spec hardware.

Countless *nix tools that originated decades ago and evolved.

Re:What Does It Mean to "Write Like You Talk"? on Thursday April 09, 2026 @02:04PM (#47707164)
I prefer text (to audio or video) specifically because it can communicate complex ideas concisely, yet can be read at any speed.

This is what "write like you talk" looks like: https://yaky.dev/2026-04-01-ridiculous-reddit/reddit-601.jpg

Re:What Does It Mean to "Write Like You Talk"? on Thursday April 09, 2026 @01:21PM (#47706453)
As a non-native English speaker, it sometimes takes me some time to write things because I am trying to put my thoughts in a concise yet simple-to-understand form.
Re:Book Review: There Is No Antimemetics Division on Monday April 06, 2026 @05:38PM (#47667529)
Blindsight by Peter Watts explores interesting ideas about conscience and intelligence, but these ideas are wrapped in a mediocre action movie plot that becomes nonsensical by the end.
Re:Leaving Google has actively improved my life on Friday February 27, 2026 @04:21PM (#47185791)
Amazon Prime is the same way. Thanks for paying, please watch ads for first two season of The Boys. Also look at this catalog of movies you can rent for an additional fee.

The "low-cost airline" style of business.

This is creepily similar to Russia circa 10+ years ago with its "gay propaganda" and "child protection" laws, and strong government support for the church.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/russia-law-ban...

Re:Places to Telnet on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @02:23PM (#46785018)
> Rainmaker was pretty great, and it lasted at least as far as 2018. I don’t recall what happened to it.

WeatherUnderground shut its API down in 2018.

Re:PauseOS: Distraction-Free Phone OS on Tuesday January 13, 2026 @12:06AM (#46597481)
> NO TYPICAL APP STORE

> Instead of unrestricted app stores, we provide a curated selection of essential, distraction-free applications that align with our mission.

That's quite a big undertaking and a lot of control handed over to the manufacturer/maintainer. Phone is still a communication device, so it would be nice to see Signal, Conversations, Element (all of which are FOSS and could be easily rebranded), but then half of the world needs WhatsApp. Or is it distracting because you can contact businesses on it? (Like the Uber example on their page) Many people want banking apps too, do they plan to vet every single banking app?

Re:OpenSCAD is kinda neat on Sunday December 21, 2025 @11:03AM (#46345744)
If it's a one-time thing, Prusa Slicer (and some other slicers too, probably) allow adding and subtracting simple shapes. So if, for example, you need to add a hole for a screw, you can do it directly in the slicer without messing with (and breaking the mesh of) an STL.
Re:Smartphone Without a Battery (2022) on Friday December 12, 2025 @04:54PM (#46249467)
Looks like someone else posted this one though :)
To quote someone from Hackaday:

> We don't ask "why?", we ask "why not?"

Thanks!

Maemo Leste is still around, I just tried it on a PinePhone with a keyboard not too long ago.

It's not postmarketOS with a popular DE nor Android, but has a terminal, browser, media player, et.

It can't be used in a mobile way much anymore, with all 3G and many 2G shut down in the US.

The caps / supercaps are necessary to provide enough current during boot or more resource-intensive tasks.

I read about lithium-ion and LiFePO batteries on Adafruit a few years ago, and saw similar projects elsewhere. The bootloader stuff is on Maemo wiki, along with tools to flash the device (which is also a bit of dark magic arts to me).

TBH, I didn't / don't exactly have a path. I started with Raspberry Pi (and Linux for the second time) 10+ years ago, which led me to Arduino, which led me to low-voltage electronics in general. At the same time, I had an unreasonable dislike of google, which led me to flashing LineageOS on a test phone, which then became my main phone, which eventually led to PinePhone, which didn't work out, but was fun.

There was Neo900, abandoned in 2018. The site is still up though: https://neo900.org/#main
I looked, but TBH, not sure what to make of "genuine" and "OEM" claims for a battery for a 16–year-old device (or 10-year-old if you count compatible Lumias). Descriptions usually do not mention manufacture dates either.
Where's the fun in that?

Maemo wiki states that Maemo Leste should be run from SD card. I am actually surprised that the phone can use the SD slot at high enough speed.

Re:Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years on Friday December 05, 2025 @01:23PM (#46165153)
What issues did you have / still have?

When I started using Matrix, Riot.im did not get notifications in time, or was a battery hog. And Synapse took up a lot of memory, with occasional slowdowns. But then, circa 2022, Synapse improved and Element seems to have worked well and was consistent and reliable on all platforms.

Re:Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years on Friday December 05, 2025 @08:57AM (#46161335)
Author of the article here. Thanks for posting, I've only shared this on Fediverse, but there is a much larger discussion here, I see.
Re:Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years on Friday December 05, 2025 @07:47AM (#46160554)
Author of the article here. Similar happened to me, I had a lot of broken and empty rooms that appeared in some clients but not others, and I could not leave. This is what prompted me to write the room cleaner / admin panel.
Re:Running Unsupported iOS on Deprecated Devices on Thursday November 27, 2025 @09:28AM (#46069567)
It's Apple more than developers. Even if an app has an older supported version, you cannot install it outright on older iDevices. You have to "purchase" it first (even if it's free) using old iTunes version or a newer iDevice with the same account, and only then, when you "own" the app, the old iDevice will prompt you to install the older version, if it's supported.
Re:Show HN: Host a Website from an Old Phone on Tuesday November 25, 2025 @08:38PM (#46053159)
You could try to fake a battery instead: https://yaky.dev/2022-09-06-smartphone-without-battery/

(This is for a removable battery, but should be close for built-in ones too, I suppose)

It is definitely a single point, but that is who this post immediately made me think of.

And to be fair, investing does not apply to most people either.

HN is a very specific and privileged demographic, very far from an average citizen. (of the US at least)

Older »