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    Rubenerd

    rubenerd.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2011

    Personal blog by an Australian writer covering BSD systems, pkgsrc, ZFS, anime, and general tech and IT musings.

    Visit blogRSSHN submissions
    Open Source & LinuxSystems & PerformanceCulture & Society
    What HN says

    HN links it for BSD and pkgsrc posts, and the heavily discussed 'Weird Al had 100 gigs of RAM'. One commenter describes the author's range of topics.

    Stats for nerds
    44HN people shared it
    212linked in comments
    5.8Kstory points
    May 2026last shared
    2013people per year2026

    Top posts on HN

    1. 1
      Git ignores .gitignore with .gitignore in .gitignore
      1 person · 655 points · first shared 2022 · 231 comments on HN
    2. 2
      Boring tech is mature, not old
      2 people · 504 points · first shared 2025 · 299 comments on HN
    3. 3
      My essential Firefox fixes in 2022
      1 person · 461 points · first shared 2022 · 285 comments on HN
    4. 4
      We need physical audio kill switches
      1 person · 453 points · first shared 2020 · 433 comments on HN
    5. 5
      The "email is authentication" pattern
      1 person · 337 points · first shared 2024 · 452 comments on HN
    6. 6
      Weird Al had 100 gigs of RAM
      2 people · 301 points · first shared 2022 · 400 comments on HN
    7. 7
      A BSD person tries Alpine Linux
      1 person · 280 points · first shared 2024 · 253 comments on HN
    8. 8
      My New Sony NW-A55 Walkman
      1 person · 275 points · first shared 2022 · 265 comments on HN
    9. 9
      Mozilla's latest quagmire
      1 person · 237 points · first shared 2025 · 164 comments on HN
    10. 10
      Is stuff online worth saving?
      2 people · 161 points · first shared 2024 · 165 comments on HN

    What HN people wrote when they linked it

    • CRConradMay 2022

      [EDIT:] See https://rubenerd.com/about/#mascot and https://rubenerd.com/anime-restore-my-blog/ . Looks like a typical harmless Anime nerd to me. [/EDIT]

      Not just any schoolgirl, but a schoolgirl drawn in "Manga"[1] or "Anime"[2] style, AFAICS. Lots of people are Manga and/or Anime fans, and many of those perhaps to such an extent that they feel it's a major part of their identity, so they want to show it some way. And a lot of those Japanese comics and animated films just happen to have young people of both sexes as their protagonists, so of course there will be schoolgirls in them. And much of that is, as I've understood it, "perfectly ordinary" comics and animations, like any "Young Adult" literature in Western culture; no more (explicitly) sexualised than Harry Potter or Star Wars.

      So not necessarily "creepy", in the sense of sexualising schoolgirls... But yeah, from what (little) I understand of Japanese popular culture, sexualising schoolgirls is a pretty big part of current more-or-less accepted Japanese social mores, which is reflected in Manga and Anime too; see the whole phenomenon of "Hentai".[3] And I suppose there's a whole lot of Manga and Anime that is just titillating -- not quite explicitly, but borderline sexualised.

      I have no idea about the proportions between the categories: I read quite a lot of Marvel and DC comics (and, ahem, some porn -- but those were wildly different things back then) in my youth, but that's so long ago that it was before the rise…

    • rollcatMar 2025

      I've thrown "home server workloads" at my Mac mini. It stays on 24/7 anyway, because idle power draw is negligible.

      Syncthing is a great use case. Wherever I take my laptop, the files stay in sync between the two devices; I don't need a third device to act as a server, or iCloud, or any other cloud.

      Miniflux. I read my RSS feeds from three devices, so I want to track read status and save bookmarks. It provides a Google Reader-compatible API (yes it lives on), so I can plug NetNewsWire into it.

      It's an exit node for Tailscale. Did I mention Tailscale? It's like still being on the same LAN anywhere you go. It doesn't matter if your home server doesn't have a public IP.

      Grafana is cool for anything you can plot, as long as you can mash it into something vaguely resembling a time series. Sensor readings, data pulled from some API, CSV export from your bank, your chess ELO, etc. It's often combined with Prometheus. So you can also scrape anything that speaks enough HTTP (which is... many things, these days).

      I want to explore something like Navidrome or Jellyfin; for now I use Syncthing for my music library, but even if I could run it on iPhone, the whole collection wouldn't fit. Unfortunately it seems there are no decent apps.

      You're also free to explore uncharted territory. Rubenerd is hosting a "house-wide" SQL database: <https://rubenerd.com/our-personal-database/>

    • vermadenApr 2024

      I also liked how the '[ok]' moved to the right after GPU drivers have been loaded :)

      - https://rubenerd.com/files/2024/alpine-openrc.png

      Of course its OpenRC related and not Alpine.

      IMHO it would looked more 'nice' if the '[ok]' stayed where they were - at least till 'login:' prompt - but I know that its just implemented in a way that 'write [ok] after space from right side of the screen' and as resolution increased - it happened what happened.

      They could just move the '[ ok ]' or '[fail]' to the left - beginning of the message - that would 'solve' that problem also.

    • kristopolousApr 2013

      The libretto was a fine machine! I'd certainly be interested in a modern-hardware version of it with the same sturdy, rugged design. (Here's a size comparison from wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/EEEPC901_LIBRETTO100.JPG and here is one more: http://rubenerd.com/uploads/photo.libretto.jpg)

    • yakubinNov 2021

      A while ago there was a post on HN about pkgsrc[1][2][3], which works on Mac, among other platforms. I haven't tried it, but it may be worth a shot.

      [1]: <https://rubenerd.com/using-netbsds-pkgsrc-everywhere-i-can/>

      [2]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27293108>

      [3]: <http://www.pkgsrc.org/>

    • quicklimeSep 2020

      If you're browsing the site on a mobile phone like I was, you probably won't see the image of the mascot on the right-hand-side. Even if you click the "mascot" link, you'll just go to a text description of it.

      The image is here: https://rubenerd.com/rubi@1x.jpg

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