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Nelson's log
Personal blog · nelsonslog.wordpress.comprogrammingsystems
Nelson's log is a personal blog at nelsonslog.wordpress.com about programming and systems. Since 2014, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “Facial Recognition for the Public: Yandex”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked posts cover ad-heavy news sites, facial recognition search (Yandex, Clearview), WSL access to Linux files via the Plan 9 filesystem, Mavericks and Samba, and Starlink. Commenters cite them as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A personal work journal
Most-linked posts?
- Facial Recognition for the Public: Yandex4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-01-15
- Proportional Fonts and Yapf vs. Black2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-10-03
- Plan 9 rides again; WSL file access2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-06-01
- /2019/06/01/wsl-access-to-linux-files-via-plan-9/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-11
- Things I learned about systemd2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-04-30
- LA Times and ads2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-25
What Hacker News says?
The problem is that so many sites have absolutely no shame about how many or what kind of ads they will jam into a page. LA Times is a great example - https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/la-times-and-ads... If a site is willing to treat their consumers that badly then fuck them. I have no respect and will not feel bad about using an ad blocker there. On the flip side, a number of sites have started asking to…
Comment linking /2017/03/25/la-times-and-ads/
on “Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser”Submitted LA Times and ads as a story · 434 points
HN discussionYandex Image Search already uses facial recognition and is available to the public. See: https://yandex.com/images https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2020/01/07/facial-recogniti... https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2019/12/26/guid...
Comment linking /2020/01/07/facial-recognition-for-the-public-yandex/
on “I got my file from Clearview AI”Submitted Hugo theme from scratch: the absolute minimum as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI'm typing this message from Starlink. For me it's absolutely transformative; 10x the bandwidth I can get from any other source and very reliable. Except for outages related to obstructions. That's a real problem and the author's situation is not good. There's ways to work around it on your property; a taller mount, a tree install, cutting some trees. But ultimately Dishy needs a clear view to the north and there's…
Comment linking /2021/07/20/starlink-improvements/
on “Starlink review, four months in”Submitted Things I learned about systemd as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-version... > We recommend against working across operating systems with your files https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/wsl-access-to-li...
Comment linking /2019/06/01/wsl-access-to-linux-files-via-plan-9/
on “eBPF on Windows”Submitted Running My Own LLM as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI feel like all that's ever talked about here as bad about search is privacy. But what about good results? Google search results have an extremely heavy commercial bias. What would the internet look like without that? I would really like to have a say in how the ranking algorithm works. If I could, for example, exclude results from the Alexa Top 100k with a toggle, I bet I'd find interesting content a lot easier. Mo…
Comment linking /2020/01/07/facial-recognition-for-the-public-yandex/
on “Google Alternatives”Submitted Vibe coding a Mastodon thread unroller as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhere's an old post of mine about it. this was a year ago, maybe it's improved but given they were willing to ship this I am not optimistic. https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2023/11/19/ubiquiti-routers...
Comment linking /2023/11/19/ubiquiti-routers-garbage-bandwidth-stats/
on “Sniffnet – monitor your Internet traffic”Submitted Syncthing and WSL 2: running in the background as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor the uninitiated, Plan 9 lives on as the filesystem network interface that allows Windows and Windows Subsystem for Linux cross-platform access to your C drive. Via " https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/wsl-access-to-li... ": Plan 9’s filesystem is a very simple network filesystem protocol to share files between systems. They are specifically using 9P2000.L. They considered using Samba and SMB instead but…
Comment linking /2019/06/01/wsl-access-to-linux-files-via-plan-9/
on “Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system”Submitted Proportional Fonts and Yapf vs. Black as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've been dealing with Apple for months trying to get them to fix Mail in OS X Mavericks 10.9.2, which crashes on me about every 30 minutes, or sometimes more frequently. Their answer, which they refuse to put in writing, is that engineering is "aware of the problem." Also, Mavericks broke Samba support completely. Apparently 10.9.3 doesn't fix it. http://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/mavericks-broke-s... I ag…
Comment linking /2014/01/15/mavericks-broke-smb/
on “OS X 10.9.3 Is Toxic”Submitted Nicer text with an AxiDraw pen plotter as a story · 2 points
HN discussioni agree with you in principle, but i am not sure that this is simply a technical limitation. it feels to me more than just a preference. i can't explain it, but looking at the apple systems font example in this article: https://storck.io/posts/proportional-programming-code-fonts/ i find it much harder to parse (visually scanning the structure) than the monospace one below. perhaps it is simply what i am used to. but…
Comment linking /2021/09/12/proportional-fonts-and-yapf-vs-black/
on “The Tabs vs. Spaces war is over, and spaces have emerged victorious”Submitted Plan 9 rides again; WSL file access as a story · 2 points
HN discussion9front has been adopted by WSL as the filesystem protocol, so there is that. https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/plan-9-rides-aga...
Comment linking /2019/02/16/plan-9-rides-again-wsl-file-access/
on “Comparison of Operating System Complexity (2020) [pdf]”Submitted Facial Recognition for the Public: Yandex as a story · 2 points
HN discussionChromeOS firmware has a bunch of this built in - it's super cool. https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/chromebooks-iden... and https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1pyojjd/comme... and https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA... is where I found out about it. A lot of the clever capabilities rely on the firmware that you have. Source - having spent a while a few weeks back gettin…
Comment linking /2026/01/05/chromebooks-identify-usb-c-details/
on “WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do”Submitted Things I learned about systemd as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAppreciate this update, I've been wondering what's going on. FWIW in 2020 Yandex image search had a "match photo by face" feature which would effectively let you find names for people easily. They've since changed image search to not do that anymore. I wrote about it at the time: https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2020/01/07/facial-recogniti...
Comment linking /2020/01/07/facial-recognition-for-the-public-yandex/
on “The Technology Facebook and Google Didn’t Dare Release”Submitted The sqlite3 test suite as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted League of Legends rank distribution over time as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
