Top all-time · #16308
Sam Khawase
Personal blog · samkhawase.com/blog · on HN as FlyingSnakeprogrammingsystems
Sam Khawase writes Ryze, a personal blog at samkhawase.com about programming and systems. Since 2020, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 21 times, most often “Email Is Crazy”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-09, and you can follow it by feed.
I design products, fine-tune strategies, build teams, and create rock solid software.
Most-linked posts?
- Email Is Crazy3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-04-27
- Cross compiling Zig on an old Kindle2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-06-07
What Hacker News says?
Wonderful story! We don’t give enough credit to Apple for keeping these old devices alive and kicking. I have a similar story wherein I repurposed my ancient OG iPhone SE and gave it a new life. https://samkhawase.com/blog/dumb-smartphone/
Comment linking /blog/dumb-smartphone/
on “My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server”Submitted It's School time: Adventures in hacking an old Kindle as a story · 176 points
HN discussionI hacked my old kindle and turned it into a eink dashboard for my daughter’s school! Now planning to enahace it a bit further and make it easy to customise. Here’s a a detailed write up of the process: https://samkhawase.com/blog/hacking-kindle/
Comment linking /blog/hacking-kindle/
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)”Submitted When remote work doesn't cut it as a story · 64 points
HN discussionMany folks are great writers, but bad editors and the meandering intro is what kills most blog posts for me. Too bad because we really need more personal stories. I start with the conclusion in the first paragraph[1], and the user can decide if it’s worth their time or not. Unless you’re Gabriel Garcia Marquez, no one’s going to read your rambling. [1] https://samkhawase.com/blog/email-is-crazy/
Comment linking /blog/email-is-crazy/
on “Anti-patterns in software blogging”Submitted Cross compiling Zig on an old Kindle as a story · 17 points
HN discussionKindles are amazing devices for hacking and turning into cute little dashboards. The kindle modding community is wonderful and full of people experimenting with it. If you have an old kindle, give it a new lease! Shameless plug: I wrote about my experience here https://samkhawase.com/blog/hacking-kindle/ Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43822251
Comment linking /blog/hacking-kindle/
on “Let's put Tailscale on a jailbroken Kindle”Submitted Email Is Crazy as a story · 10 points
HN discussionUsing a database as a backend comes up time and again and developers are sharpely divided over this concept. I feel that developers who started their careers before the advent of NoSQL DBs/MEAN stack/etc had to go through the rigor of fine tuning their SQL queries and witness the powers (and quirks) of a performant SQL DB. These devs are usually a fan of using DB-as-a-backend. Personally, I am a big fan of PostgREST…
Comment linking /blog/postgrest/postgrest_introduction/
on “Stored Procedures as a Back End”Submitted Bug Archeology: Solving a decade-old Swift/C++ mystery with LLMs as a story · 9 points
HN discussionMy favourite tree is the Neem tree. It’s scientific name Azadirachta Indica means the “free spirited tree of India” and it comes from the Farsi word “Azaad Dirakht-e-hind”. A gem among trees. I love the slow web and once in a while I try to write something non-technical about things that catch my eye. Each of us has got a unique perspective and it’s refreshing to read about them. My attempt and shameless plug: https…
Comment linking /blog/an-ode-to-the-tiger/
on “Tell me about your favorite tree (a slow-web proposal)”Submitted Voxlocal: A minimal voice agent written in Rust as a story · 8 points
HN discussionGreat article. Hacking old kindles is fun! I encourage everyone to give it a try. The retro feel of eink makes it special for me. I wrote about my experience in cross compiling zig on an old kindle some time ago. https://samkhawase.com/blog/zig-kindle-gdb/
Comment linking /blog/zig-kindle-gdb/
on “Rust (and Slint) on a Jailbroken Kindle”Submitted The Quest For A Minimal Phone (for my kid) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionKindles are fun devices to hack and play with. I can grab an old kindle for €15-20 on eBay. I did the same last year and had lots of fun in the process. https://samkhawase.com/blog/hacking-kindle/
Comment linking /blog/hacking-kindle/
on “Hacking an old Kindle to display bus arrival times”Submitted In Codd, we trust: An Introduction to PostgREST as a story · 6 points
HN discussionShameless plug: I once went down the PostgREST rabbit hole and loved it. I wrote a series of articles on how to use it to create a full fledged mobile app. I hope this helps someone trying to wet their feet in Postgrest. https://samkhawase.com/blog/postgrest/
Comment linking /blog/postgrest/
on “PostgREST – Serve a RESTful API from Any Postgres Database”Submitted Cross-compiling Zig on an old Kindle as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted JavaScript and the English Language as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Email Is Crazy as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Email Is Crazy as a story · 1 points
HN discussion