Ask HN: How to manage phones and PCs for elderly parents?
I have a friend whose parents are getting up in years. They're still functional enough that they want to be independent and surf the web, check their stocks, etc. He has some remote desktop software installed on their PCs, and antivirus installed and locked down. But they keep destroying their PCs with downloads, keep turning airplane mode on for their phones and can't figure out how to disable it, and recently his dad got in a cleaning mood and deleted a bunch of system files and bricked his machine. He's almost to the point of setting up an Intune tenant just to onboard and lock down his parents devices. Any suggestions on how to manage phones and PCs of the elderly to keep them functional but useful?
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40127400
Points: 99
# Comments: 139
Tue, 23 Apr 2024, 1:12 am
HN Flooded with Spam AI Girlfriend Comments
Hi everyone, I have noticed a ton of new comments on recent posts (within the last 10 minutes) that read roughly "hi are u lonely want ai gf?? $discord_link $password" from 2genders####. See https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=2genders31453. What is going on? Usually HN is so good at spam prevention, which is a huge reason I use this site over any other one. It feels like such a weird invasion over such a normally spam-free website
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40124648
Points: 62
# Comments: 4
Mon, 22 Apr 2024, 11:01 pm
Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?
You get nerd-sniped. Assigned a bug to squash. Some new tech or gadget arrived, to familiarize yourself with.
While researching / reading up / debugging, you stumble upon something interesting. Upon looking into that, yet another subject catches your attention.
You know how this goes. So... (see title). Bonus questions: what intermediate steps did you pass along the way? What stuck in your mind the most?
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119417
Points: 99
# Comments: 184
Mon, 22 Apr 2024, 8:10 pm
Ask HN: Outstanding Programmers
After reading today's post "Curl is just the hobby," I stumbled upon Ludvig Strigeus while researching Daniel Stenberg (connection: both have won the Polhem Prize). I'm somewhat astonished by his life's work so far. Here are some of his key creations:
μTorrent - a small footprint BitTorrent client for Microsoft Windows and OS X
ScummVM - an interpreter for adventure game engines, notably LucasArts's SCUMM
OpenTTD - a reverse-engineered game engine of Transport Tycoon, which led to numerous ports and improvements over the original
Ports of Dr. Mario and Kwirk for the TI-89 calculator
"The Idiot" - a card game for Windows
WebWorks - a text HTML editor
Spotify - a commercial music streaming service
Spotiamp - a lightweight Spotify Premium client for Windows, created as a tribute to Winamp
TunSafe - a VPN client for Windows using the WireGuard protocol
It's clear that some programmers have far-above-average productivity and a keen sense for solutions that the world still needs. Having success with one program might be luck or coincidence, but there seems to be a system to this series of successes. Any of the above programs could easily become the life's work for many developers.
What's the secret?
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40113488
Points: 67
# Comments: 85
Mon, 22 Apr 2024, 11:59 am
Show HN: I made a multiple runtime version manager that can be used on Windows
vfox is a cross-platform version manager(similar to nvm, fvm, sdkman, asdf-vm, etc.), extendable via plugins. It allows you to different versions for different projects, different versions for different shell. It also supports to lock runtime version for project or shell and support for existing config files .node-version, .nvmrc, .sdkmanrc for easy migration.
Available Plugins: https://vfox.lhan.me/plugins/available.html
Supported Shell: Powershell、Clink、Cmder、Bash、ZSH
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40112842
Points: 56
# Comments: 24
Mon, 22 Apr 2024, 10:04 am
Show HN: MonsterWriter – Write a thesis, post, or organize notes
Hello HN,
in 2017 I started a project that would become MonsterWriter. First envisioned as a semi-structured wiki it became a writing application specialized for scientific content. It is a perfect tool if you write your thesis. While it is focused on technical content, you can still see the knowledge management spirit in it.
One or two years ago, my wife joined me in my efforts and redesigned the whole project and we recently released it as MonsterWriter2.
To celebrate this milestone we are giving away free lifetime licenses for the Desktop version (till Apr 28). Just use the promo code "gu0ho4q" for a 100% discount. You can find detailed instructions here:
https://www.monsterwriter.app/promotion.html
You can also find a short introduction video to the app on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR8i-EY_UBk
We are happy to receive any kind of feedback!
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40112169
Points: 63
# Comments: 22
Mon, 22 Apr 2024, 7:41 am
Show HN: Volume rendering 3D data in Three.js and GLSL
I've been going through Cem Yuksel's "Introduction to Computer Graphics" course and thought that writing a volume renderer would be a good way to test my knowledge. It is a common technique used to render 3D medical data. Works by ray marching a specific step size, reading a 3D texture (e.g. MRI data), and calculating opacity values.
Code should be easy to get started with for anyone familiar with the JS ecosystem.
Questions for the HN community: I spent 20-25% of the entire time just setting up the project and fighting issues with the JavaScript ecosystem. This experience has made me consider learning Cpp, Metal, and XCode. Has anyone made the transition from WebGL/TS to Cpp or done it the other way around? What was your experience with it? And what about debugging? That's a big issue with WebGL.
As for now, I'm thinking about picking up WebGPU next because it has an up-and-coming debugger made by Brendan Duncan[0] that looks promising.
Edit: Anyone know why MRI data is sent via CDs and not the web? I started working on this project specifically because some people close to me got MRI scans and received CDs of their results. I know that some MRI data can be huge so downloading over the web doesn't make sense, but anything under 64MB should be sent over the web, no? For reference, I believe most MRI data can be under 250MB[1].
[0] https://github.com/brendan-duncan/webgpu_inspector
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-image-dimensions...
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107112
Points: 72
# Comments: 26
Sun, 21 Apr 2024, 4:40 pm