Top all-time · #18641
Nathan Henrie
Personal blog · n8henrie.com · on HN as n8henrieprogrammingsystems
Nathan Henrie's personal blog at n8henrie.com covers programming and systems. Since 2015, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times, most often “Guix System VM on an M1 Mac”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for a post demonstrating how Chrome scans files on a user's computer, with working code. The only comment tests that code in Firefox and reports it fails there.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Technology, medicine, science, superstition... and having fun. Brought to you by Nathan Henrie.
Most-linked posts?
- Guix System VM on an M1 Mac2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-03
What Hacker News says?
https://n8henrie.com Pretty simple Jekyll / GH Pages site whose layout and style survived its former Wordpress days. Intended to do more writing about medical topics, but is almost exclusively hobbyist-level tech stuff. Have tried and failed to migrate to Hugo like 3 times now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Guix System VM on an M1 Mac as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI didn't realize UTM was open source, so I followed a few guides for setting up VMs directly with libvirt: https://n8henrie.com/2022/09/linux-vms-on-my-m1-mac/ Having since learned that they are open source I think I'll look into UTM again, but even as a novice I didn't find it too difficult to use libvirt.
Comment linking /2022/09/linux-vms-on-my-m1-mac/
on “Running GUI Linux in a virtual machine on a Mac”Submitted Decrypt Chrome Cookies with Python as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI tried to write a POC Firefox extension in pyscript but ended up having to fall back to pyodide. Was a fun experiment anyway. https://n8henrie.com/2023/06/write-a-firefox-extension-in-py...
Comment linking /2023/06/write-a-firefox-extension-in-python/
on “PyScript: An open source platform for Python in the browser”Submitted Compiling Rust for the ESP32 with Nix as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNo, not smart enough to "port" exactly, was just trying to get the aarch64 binary to run (no luck), and eventually got it working in a VM: https://n8henrie.com/2022/10/guix-system-guixsd-vm-on-an-m1-...
Comment linking /2022/10/guix-system-guixsd-vm-on-an-m1-mac/
on “Zero to Nix, an unofficial, opinionated, gentle introduction to Nix”[The following Firefox tests were on Windows 7] As fyi... I copied your code and it does not work in Firefox 68.0.2. The browser does nothing. I also made sure of the settings[0] in about:config and browser.urlbar.filter.javascript=false -- and it still doesn't work. As a lark, I also tried it on an older 57.0.1 and it works fine there. (Dialog popup appears to let you enter a number.) To add to the strangeness, it…
Comment linking /2017/11/how-to-open-javascript-bookmarklets-from-the-firefox-quantum-url-bar/
on “Chrome Is Scanning Files on Your Computer (2018)”Similar trick to bundle a python script with self-contained dependencies (with some limitations, and doesn't include python itself): https://n8henrie.com/2022/08/easily-create-almost-standalone...
Comment linking /2022/08/easily-create-almost-standalone-python-executables-with-the-builtin-zipapp-module/
on “Show HN: People forget that you can stick any data at the end of a bash script”As a nutrition student learning to convince water-restricted patients that caffeinated beverages count the same as other beverages toward daily water intake, I put together a few abstracts on this subject a good while ago: https://n8henrie.com/2009/09/caffeine-as-diuretic/
Comment linking /2009/09/caffeine-as-diuretic/
on “No Evidence of Dehydration with Moderate Daily Coffee Intake”