Top all-time · #11534
Ryan Finnie
Personal blog · finnie.orghardwareprogramming
Ryan Finnie's personal blog at finnie.org covers hardware and programming. Since 2015, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 7 times. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ryan Finnie's posts as references on practical tech topics: a Perl implementation of the twuewand random-number approach, AirPrint and IPP printing on Linux, and printer test sheets.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Personal blog for Ryan Finnie
What Hacker News says?
There’s: • 2ping < https://www.finnie.org/software/2ping/ > • fping < https://www.fping.org/ > • hping < http://www.hping.org/ > • nping < https://nmap.org/ > • oping < https://noping.cc/documentation/oping/ > There’s also qping, tping and rping, but they are not implementing ping functionality, but are tools for checking the status of specific remote services.
Comment linking /software/2ping/
on “Nping – ping, but with a graph or table view”Submitted Raspberry Pi 2 update – (unofficial) Ubuntu 14.04 image available – Ryan Finnie as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA little of column A, a little of column B. Generally a key generator does not itself watch for mouse-movements, it just gets random noise from the OS. But the OS gets its random noise from a random number generator, and the random number generator needs to be seeded with genuine randomness. Some CPUs provide a hardware RNG, but older CPUs do not, and some OSs do not trust a hardware RNG implemented in opaque, un-au…
Comment linking /software/twuewand/
on “Lemonade Stand”This might help: https://www.finnie.org/2012/08/14/twuewand-2-0-released/
Comment linking /2012/08/14/twuewand-2-0-released/
on “RTL-entropy: Uses RTL-SDR to turn a DVB-T dongle into an entropy source”Set up automatic periodic printing (every 2 weeks or so). With something like this, for example: https://www.finnie.org/2018/10/24/cmyk-printer-line-test-she...
Comment linking /2018/10/24/cmyk-printer-line-test-sheet/
on “HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies”It has been able on Linux for over 10 years now too. e.g. from 2010: https://www.finnie.org/2010/11/13/airprint-and-linux/ IPP is standard in (most?) linux, and Airprint is basically IPP+Avahi+some proprietary-bits.
Comment linking /2010/11/13/airprint-and-linux/
on “Microsoft's latest Windows 10 updates come with nasty printer bugs”This looks to be the same technique as Dan Kaminsky's DakaRand, including the debiasing: https://dankaminsky.com/2012/08/15/dakarand/ See also Kaminsky's implementation of the same approach in pure JS: https://gist.github.com/PaulCapestany/6148566 and Ryan Finnie's implementation in Perl: http://www.finnie.org/2012/08/14/twuewand-2-0-released/ The big concern I have is how reliable this is on virtual machines. Just…
Comment linking /2012/08/14/twuewand-2-0-released/
on “Show HN: True-Random – Generate “truly” random numbers”