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Well done!

What’s up with the license? It doesn’t look friendly to do anything except build a personal project. It says you can’t redistribute it, unless I’ve misread it somehow?

Love this, would love to see this run locally and allow me to add notes and associate docs with it.

Also, a simple local API would be fantastic.


Hoarder is an option you can self host and has most of the same features as this tool plus more. The AI tagging feature and full page indexing is pretty handy. Hoarder.app


I am preparing the repo for open source, one good thing is it on golang so memory footprint is low compared to hoarder.app.


My understanding is that it is a large collection of traits and that a person might have no traits or possibly even 1 or 2 that are very minor and NOT be on the spectrum. Someone else might have 1 severe trait and be on the spectrum and someone else might need 5 traits to be diagnosed as on the spectrum. Don’t think of it as a continuous spectrum but more of a collection of traits that are of little or no severity to high severity where as was mentioned before, the person has little or no quality of life.


MCNE/MCSE here from the mid-90’s, agree it was obvious that Netware would likely fade. Windows NT 3.51 (even though it wasn’t as good at the time), was more user friendly and had the Windows interface, compatibility, etc etc However, it NT wasn’t remotely as stable as Netware at that time either. Then we got to watch as Novell slowly went insane competing and buying WordPerfect and doing all sorts of other crazy moves. I still wish that Novell had taken all of its money and bought VMware when they were just working on GSX/ESX (now vSphere). This would have changed the trajectory of both Novell and the market.


Besides the technical and functional weaknesses of NetWare, Novell also shot themselves in the foot by making the product hard to buy. As an end customer you generally couldn't buy it directly. Instead you had to go through an authorized reseller who would try to upsell you on a bunch of hardware and services. That made some sense in the early days of PC LANs when you had to plug hardware jumpers into network cards to configure interrupts but by the time Windows NT launched it was just stupid. Microsoft made NT easy and hassle free for anyone with money to buy and install, which tremendously accelerated early adoption.


The advantage of Microsoft being second is that they could watch what VARs were installing and make very sure that NT would work seamlessly with that. It didnt take much for them to realize that, say, the 3Com 3C905 or the NE2000 NIC were far and away the best selling NIC in Netware installations, and that therefore they should make very sure that they Just Worked on NT.

I worked in Token Ring at the time. It was...less fun.


NT 3.51 was rock solid, I had it on my desk and it never crashed once during the ~year I ran it. Which was a huge deal for MS in those days. Of course they chose performance over stability in 4.x moving display drivers in to the kernel. Thankfully it didn’t affect servers much since they could be run on vga/svga drivers.


i ran NT4 from right before 98 until about a year into win2k's release cycle. I remember it never crashing, i think power outages were the only thing that ruined my uptime during those years. I had XP for a little while after win2k because of directx, but as soon as x64 released i was on that, and then 7 x64. My timeline for windows left me moderately happy with my own experience - but i did a lot of "repair" for 95-vista for friends, family, customers, and businesses.

Windows Millennium Edition, everyone!


Stability was heavily dependent on your display card and driver >= 4.0 until the recent past. It could be fine or horrible depending on how well the manufacturer did their job.

My memory is that 3.X could restart graphics if a crash happened there.


could be, i never used 3.51


In addition, from what I vaguely recall, one of the big selling point of NT LAN Manager was the ability to deploy network server applications on the server.

Novell responded with Netware Loadable Modules, but they weren’t as versatile and needed specialised knowledge/tools.


Yep, Netware ran entirely in Ring 0. In linux terminology it was a kernel with no user space, and NLMs were kernel modules. Very fast for file serving, but any application could crash the system. Stability was largely a result of lots of updates. NT had userspace, protected memory, etc, and a GUI for setting up TCP/IP.


Netware existed and thrived before NT LAN Manager. NT LAN Manager seemed like the one MS product that couldn't make inroads against established competition. It simply wasn't as good as Netware.

The way I remember it NLMs were pretty stable. Anything on Windows was not stable, userspace or otherwise. Netware's TUI was just as good as NT's GUI for what it needed to do. It wasn't a liability. Netware's superior directory service was more important.

Netware's demise was the transition from IPX to TCIP/IP and the explosion of the WWW. And from my perspective it wasn't really NT that knocked Netware down. It was Linux and Solaris. Novell kinda saw that coming and tried to figure out a future with SuSE. They just never got the combination of their directory server with Linux right in time. Microsoft stumbled around for some years, but they got their directory services figured out before Novell got their OS story straight in the new world.


Windows NT Server pretty much stomped Netware, so you seem very confused. Are you thinking of OS/2 LAN Manager?

NetWare was stable running vanilla file/print services (just don't load the AppleTalk module!), not so good with database services and so on.


LAN Manager is a whole family of programs. Don't confused LanMan the family with the one implementation in NT -- LanMan is quite a bit older than WinNT.

LanMan is an opened-up version of 3Com's proprietary DOS-based server OS, 3+Share. I installed many 3+Share boxes in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAN_Manager

3+Share used NetBEUI but LanMan was protocol-neutral, which was rare and exceptional back then. E.g. AppleShare only ran over AppleTalk, Netware only ran over IPX/SPX, and Unix spoke unto Unix -- and nothing but Unix -- over TCP/IP. (Addons to run TCP/IP on other OSes existed but most of them cost money. Often more money than the OS itself, in the case of DOS. And many had proprietary APIs: so for example Quarterdeck DESQview/X used TCP/IP but it couldn't talk to the free TCP/IP stacks Microsoft and IBM eventually distributed. (Two different TCP/IP stacks, natch.)

LanMan ran on OS/2 1.x, on various proprietary Unixes, and on DEC VMS, which DEC marketed as part of its PATHWORKS suite: file/print serving via LanMan, plus Email, terminal emulation, X11 servers for DOS and Windows... all over the DecNet protocol.


Of course, I think the guy I responded to edited his post.


Agreed. ;-)


> The way I remember it NLMs were pretty stable.

I think this depends on what NLMs you were running. An old job had a NetWare 3.12 server running btrieve/pervasive and it ABENDed enough that I learned how to use the debugger to get the console back and dismount volumes to avoid triggering VREPAIR on restart.


> NT had userspace, protected memory, etc, and a GUI for setting up TCP/IP.

That's because Microsoft hired Dave Cutler who previously worked on VMS and knew what he was doing. Microsoft even had their own Unix, but didn't know what to do with it.


Microsoft Xenix (never knew more about it than the name).

For small to medium sized businesses Netware had the advantage that with IPX networking there was nearly no configuration necessary. No subnetting, assigning of IP addresses to clients or running DHCP services.

The availability of software on the server was limited (i remember backup services, licensing software). But for central file service and printing it was rock solid, even in a bit larger (for the time, around 1995) environments without any issues. (IRC >200 clients on a single 486 CPU and 4 MB RAM)


> Microsoft Xenix (never knew more about it than the name).

For a year or two there, the only other commercial Unix workstation not made by Sun could be had from Radio Shack: the TRS-80 Model 16 running Xenix. Enough small businesses ran Xenix, with up to 3 simultaneous users on a single stock machine (console + 2 terminals) that Radio Shack kept supporting these things until the late 1980s; with up to an 8 MHz CPU, up to 7 MiB of RAM, and an actual (external) MMU, the Model 16 could handle more workload, theoretically more stably than an x86 machine running Xenix until about the time Xenix/386 came out.


Apollo made competitive workstations at the time until they got swallowed by HP. The Unix workstation market was bigger than Sun, but since they were the most successful nobody remembers how competitive that segment was. The model 16 was a footnote not a competitor


Apollo's Domain/OS (formerly AEGIS) was impressive, but did not gain a full POSIX layer until later in the 80s, as I understand it. So the Model 16 really was the only other commercial Unix workstation, besides Suns, in early 1983. This advantage wouldn't last long; by 1984 other Unix desktops like the HP Integral had emerged.


I believe Apollo had a proprietary OS with limited Unix compatibility. So maybe the grandparent poster is right about the Model 16 being the only other non-Sun desktop Unix for a while, as long as you define Unix tightly enough.


Sun gets the crown because prior to the sun/1 there wasnt really any such thing as a UNIX workstation. You had a terminal connected into a host running UNIX (or VMS) and that was that. My pet theory is that Sun succeeded against Apollo because Sun decided to sell to Wall St quants for their day job number crunching whereas Apollo (and later HPE) sold to engineers doing simulations and CAD. Naturally the quants told their colleagues and the stock went brrr.

Later entrants like SGI targeted their workstations at media creatives (helpfully, Apple were in crisis by this time so A/UX wasnt remotely a problem). IBM and DEC just produced me-too workstations but there was nothing special about AIX or Ultrix unless you were already a customer.

The UNIX wars of the 90s were basically the UNIX vendors trying to take over the whole market and not just their classic turf.


This may be a bit unrelated, but it is actually possible to run Xenix in a browser: https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sys/unix/ibm/xenix/1.0/


I learnt UNIX on Xenix.

It was so expensive, that we shared a PC tower with the whole class.

Not timesharing, rather we would prepare our C applications on MS-DOS 3.3 with Turbo C 2.0, using with mocks for UNIX APIs, and then take turns of 15 minutes per group, trying to make it work on the Xenix tower.


> But for central file service and printing it was rock solid

That's not really correct.

I mean, yes, it was rock solid, true.

But it was not a file server, or even a file and print server. It wasn't a "server" as such at all (although it could be one if you wanted.)

A "server" is a concept from client/server computing:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/client...

In other words you have a network, with lots of small computers (clients) talking to one or more big computers (servers).

That is so pervasive since the 1990s that you seem to assume it's how everything worked. It is not. Xenix was strong in the earlier era of host based computing.

The core concept is that you only have 1 computer, the host. It's kept in a special server room somewhere and carefully managed. On users' desks they have just terminals, which are not computers. They are just screens and keyboards, with no "brains". Keystrokes go over the wire to the host, and the host sends back text that the terminal displays.

No network, no computers in front of users.

In the '70s and early '80s this was the dominant model because computers were so expensive. Before microprocessors host machines cost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of $/£ and companies could only afford 1 of them.

Most were proprietary: proprietary processors running proprietary OSes with proprietary apps in proprietary languages.

Some companies adapted this in the microprocessor era. For instance Alpha Micro sold 680x0 hosts running a clone of a DEC PDP OS called AMOS: Alpha Micro OS. It sold its own terminals etc. It was cheaper and it used VHS videocassettes as removable media, instead of disks.

Unix replaced a lot of this: proprietary versions of the same basic OS, on those proprietary processors, but with open standards languages, open standard terminals, etc.

Xenix was the dominant Unix for x86 hosts. It let you turn an 80386 (or at a push a 286) PC into a host for a fleet of dumb terminals.

Xenix as stock came with no networking, no C compiler, no X11, no graphics, no GUI, nothing. Each box was standalone and completely isolated.

But a 386 with 4MB of RAM could control 10 or 20 terminals and provide computing to a whole small business.

No Ethernet, no TCP/IP, no client/server stuff.

Client server is what killed Xenix's market. When PCs became so cheap that you could replace a sub-$1000 terminal with a sub-$1000 PC, which was way more flexible and capable, then Xenix boxes with dumb terminals were ripped out and replaced with a PC on every desk.


Not even the articles from the webpage you've linked talks about "...big computers (servers) [...] with dumb terminals" nor that the concept of client/server is > The core concept is that you only have 1 computer, the host. [...] On users' desks they have just terminals, which are not computers

Opposite of what you write the linked page starts with

"In a client-server system, a large number of personal computers communicate with shared servers on a local area network" and later explicitly lists continues with references to Microsoft (N)OS. And then the refecence from NOS leeds us to "There are only a few popular choices – Novell, UNIX, Linux, and Windows. The complexity of NOS forces a simple overview of the features and benefits."

So I don't really understand what you point that Netware neither was a file-- nor a print-server.


XENIX was neither a file nor print server. Not Netware.

Netware 1/2/3 was nothing but a file and print server, and Netware >=4 was a notably poor app server.


The issue with UNIX on PCs was the $1000 or whatever licensing cost.

Just as some trivia, Novell bought UNIX System V R4 from AT&T and planned to merge it with Netware to create "SuperNOS", which would have been a direct competitor to NT. But they never got it out the door and spun-off UNIX to (old) SCO.


Legend says, had it not been for the unexpected MS-DOS success, they would keep being a UNIX shop.


In NetWare 4.x (and even more so in 5.x), you could give NLMs their own address space. But by then, it was probably lost anyway.


Around 2006/2007, I was playing around with NetWare 6.5 at work. We had heaps of it but lots of talk about replacing NetWare/eDir/GroupWise with Windows/AD/Exchange (which I think finally did happen after I left the place). My recollection was it was quite unstable - because, having come from Linux, I was playing with bash and SSH. bash would crash a lot (something that very rarely happens on Linux) but it wouldn’t bring down the whole server (which was a dev/test NetWare server anyway). I don’t remember what exactly I was trying to do: I had some work-related justification, which I forget now - something something identity management - but my real reason was just to explore the system. The instability of it convinced me to not take any ideas I had any further.


> Netware ran entirely in Ring 0

Netware 3.x did.

Netware 4.x let you demote NLMs into ring 1/2/3 for slightly greater stability.

See: http://dune.pol.lublin.pl/pub/pc/novell/NetWare/ch07/ch07.ht...

Look for the section "Using New NLMs in NetWare 4.x"


> Netware ran entirely in Ring 0

NetWare was TempleOS with networking...


1. This was normal for the time.

2. See my earlier comment: it's only true for 3.x and not for >=4.x.


The software I was working on in the late '80s made use of Btrieve, a ISAM database server running on Netware. IIRC there was also a SQL server of some sort that we used with it, mostly for reporting.


I used Btrieve a lot in several jobs in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s. It was fast and easy to work with, mostly

I used the stand alone version, not the later NLM on the server



That could be signs of something else too.


Now if we could solve this for the rest of the lawn equipment, especially mowers and string trimmers.


The switch to electric will help a lot in this situation. Unfortunately I don't think the equipment is good enough contractors yet.


It's probably getting there given what Ego has on offer, but I think until it is downright better in at least some dimensions, it's going to be a hard sell. Right now it seems like it's more expensive, at best similarly powerful, and obviously batteries take time to recharge. I think it's gotta be niche for contractors.

That said, given how bad gas lawn equipment is for the air in a locality, maybe regulatory nudges are in order. I suspect if the incentives were right the rest of the problems would solve themselves.


As someone who went all in on Ego about 3-4 years ago, let me tell you, the technology is nowhere close to capable enough for even small-time contractors yet.

You would need at least 3 batteries per piece of equipment in use at one time in order to not have to spend time idle while a battery recharges ($700-$1000 upfront investment in batteries per piece). The lifespan of those batteries under constant usage would be atrocious.

Even if you could solve the battery problem, the power of the equipment doesn't come close to gas. My Ego leaf blower doesn't even compare to the plug-in electric one I had prior to acquiring it, and I still have to revert for some harder jobs. An example of this: if there is a clump of wet grass on concrete, like something left behind from a mower wheel, the Ego struggles to move it while the plug-in has no problem. Or if a pile of leaves is damp, forget about it.

The mowing quality is terrible, leaving long patches everywhere (despite a sharp blade and slow progression). The form factor of the mower deck makes corners and edges much more difficult than other machines. And because the power is limited, the mulching capabilities are almost nil. It shuts down quickly if you hit a particularly tough piece of lawn to avoid overloading its motor.


Reading through the comments here I feel like I live in a parallel universe.

I have Ego products and don't see any problems with them whatsoever. I've used and have gas and corded equipment, and by far prefer Ego. I haven't noticed any functional difference in how they perform, and if anything I get annoyed by gas models because they're heavier and more annoying to start and stop. Sure they're more powerful sometimes but I've never needed the extra power they provide. It's not like I'm going to chop up a log using my lawnmower. I've never had problems mulching anything or mowing well, and it works perfectly. And I live on a fairly wooded property so we get tons of leaves. The batteries last plenty long and charge really fast.

For what it's worth, they do make batteries in different Ah capacities. I don't even remember which ones we have but maybe we have the higher capacity ones?

I can see why contractors might have issues with constant use of cordless equipment. But I'm not a contractor, and my guess is they'd have more problems with battery lifespan than charging in practice if they timed the charging well.

I also understand why people wouldn't like the sound of leaf blowers but to me I don't understand the level of animosity about them, in the sense that there's other things that are much louder that I don't hear laws being passed about and so forth. To me it feels a bit like they're being singled out for some reason, I assume because people believe they're unnecessary? Either that or I'm just not bothered as much by that particular noise.


Like I said in another comment, perhaps some of the more recent models of ego mowers have better power but my model from 3 years ago is no where the quality of a cut that a cheap gas mower would provide. I still love my ego mower though.

1) You have to buy special blades because of weight.

2) The lift on these blades are not as great, you can definitely bag but its maybe 50% the lift a gas mower can provide.

3) This also impacts things like mulching where your not getting enough lift to chop up the grass enough.

4) It can bog down a lot quicker than a gas mower.

Still love my mower but at least the prior generation was under powered in the motor department.


I have all electric lawn equipment as well, though my mower is a Toro. No disagreements that a 13A blower connected to AC will beat the shit out of a battery-powered leaf blower, but I'm sure you do and hopefully did realize that, the math just doesn't work out. The one place the Ego does excel at is stuff like edging and string trimming, where there's not nearly as much power needed. They definitely struggle a bit on things like chainsaws and blowers where more power is just generally better.

The place where it is weakest is probably snow blowing. They now have a 2-stage electric blower, but I am pretty sure it's just nowhere near gas. I live in the midwest in an area where the 1-stage Ego electric blower is already kind of overkill, so that's what I'm running. It has its negatives and positives: it always starts without having to worry about the fuel sitting over the seasons, it's quiet during operation and doesn't pollute, the batteries are always ready since they are on the charge when not in use, and I have enough battery to run it for much longer than needed. That said: the batteries are, indeed, simply too expensive.

I'm surprised the mower sucks, this Toro electric mower feels reasonable compared to anything else I've ever used (granted, I do not have much lawn and have never used any serious mowers. Just your average lawn mowers). I wonder if it's true that all electric mowers suck or maybe it's just that Ego isn't/wasn't doing a good job on mower design.


I have no real problem with the blower being underpowered compared to a plug-in, but for commercial use, it would be a deal breaker.

The Ego leaf blower and even the chain saw are good tools for 90% of my average home usage, and the convenience of not having to deal with cords or trying to start a small gas engine makes them worth it to me. I have not had to go to my old string trimmer once and should probably sell it. Living more north of you, I haven't dared try the snow blower. The gas blower I have struggles with some of our snows up here.

The mower on the other hand, I wanted to return after the very first mow but convinced myself that even with a poor cut the trade off was worth it. 4 years later and with batteries dying I'm considering other options (including the Toro electric, but many reviews made similar remarks to the Ego).


> I have no real problem with the blower being underpowered compared to a plug-in, but for commercial use, it would be a deal breaker.

Yeah, exactly. That was my thought, too.

I don't think they're that far behind, but improvements in battery technology might be necessary for commercial usage to become viable without being subsidized or regulated.

> The mower on the other hand, I wanted to return after the very first mow but convinced myself that even with a poor cut the trade off was worth it. 4 years later and with batteries dying I'm considering other options (including the Toro electric, but many reviews made similar remarks to the Ego).

Yeah, I suspect you really do need the power of gas for your mowing. That does make me wonder why some people clearly do and some people clearly don't, but it's probably not worth wasting too much time pondering.


I love my ego but agree will all of your problems. It just does not have the power that gas mowers have. Suction can be a real problem on them, they use proprietary blades that have to be light weight because of the electric motor.

I do think their more recent models fix a lot of these issues but I don't think its ready for commercial use. Just having to have a large number of batteries to sustain your day of work is limiting.


If governments want to help the adoption of electric tools, they should mandate the use of standard batteries.


Maybe it's just a UK thing but I can't think of the last time I even saw a non-electric lawn mower. Even going as far back as the 80s they were the standard, just don't mow over the cable!


Depends on where you live and the size of the yard. Electric are great when the size isn't that big. Once you go larger, it becomes very hard to do practically with electricity.


Isn't it the opposite? Doing it the manual way with gas is super hard compared to just buying an electric robot mower, especially in large yards.


There are different types of mowers - push (usually 4cycle), push+self propelled, riding one(s), then 2cycle scythe types, and then trimmers and brushcutters (spinning blades). Those options (more or less) are available battery powered, too. Battery powered ones have shorter use per charger but they are lighter (and usually less powerful).

However, if you can use a robot one (or few of them), it tends to be an easier setup - it does require flatter lawn and what not, though. However they are insufficient in cases where one really needs a riding mower.

Personally, I have/use a robot, a battery powered strimmer, gas powered brushcutter, and a push behind mower. The main job is done by the little robot, but the rest have their uses as well.


> Maybe it's just a UK thing but I can't think of the last time I even saw a non-electric lawn mower

UK here. I've been using a petrol mower for the last 25 years. My lawn is 40m long. I do own a 50m extension cable but it would be a real hassle for grass cutting. My three adjacent neighbours also have petrol mowers.


Small gardens


It will get there I suspect, the tools and batteries can charge in the truck en route. Easier to just fuel up the truck once instead of filling up little gas tanks all the time.


Charging using the truck would require running the truck all day -- probably not an acceptable alternative. Consuming 2-10 Kw from a 200 Kw engine would be so inefficient that it'd be too expensive anyways. Instead you'd need to run a generator all day charging batteries.

A fast charging, high capacity tool battery takes at least 60 minutes to charge. In high power applications (lawn mower, leaf blower, chainsaw, etc) those batteries might be emptied in a little as 15 minutes.

A better alternative might be corded 240v tools running directly off the generator for high-power applications. 120v tools are limited to 2-3HP which doesn't compare well to gas engines.


This is nuts!

Instead buy 120-volt and 240-volt leaf blowers. BTW 2-3 horsepower is plenty (probably too much) for one man.

We use water hoses w/o bitching too much. We could used corded leafblowers tomorrow. Or butch up, get rakes and get in shape: cleaner air, more exercise and longer hours for the lawn laborers.


Hybrid truck?


If you had a serial plug-in hybrid with a 20+Kwh battery which also supported exporting 120vac, that would work. AFAIK such a vehicle doesn't exist in North America yet and might not exist anywhere globally.

You start stacking energy efficiency losses (engine -> charger -> battery -> inverter -> charger -> battery -> motor) and economic losses (expensive serial hybrid, higher than expected vehicle battery cycles, still need a large number of tool batteries which wear out in about a year, etc.) though.


The Mitsubishi Outlander is not exactly a truck but it's close.

120 VAC:

https://youtu.be/dIZsACfqB-E?t=46

and it has 20kWh battery:

https://carbuzz.com/news/2023-mitsubishi-outlander-phev-has-...

I feel cars have been stuck in boring mode for 2 decades, but now with zany stuff like power outlets and such, they are getting more interesting.


I am sure it will, its just no where close yet imo. Truck charging is not as practical; if the crew is running a tight ship, they should not be far between jobs. So you would basically need a lot of batteries to sustain a day full of jobs.


I love my battery powered mower and trimmer (wow there's so many names for that)! I can mow the lawn and come back in and relax with a quiet show or game!


Lawn mower robots do the trick quite nicely actually.


We have a 1 acre garden. Electric gardening tools are just toys for this size. I'd love to use electric but nothing comes close to gas.


Or go for 33% of your salary or even better, live on 1% of your salary… at some point you simply can’t make it work unless you are making 7 or more figures. Which then it really doesn’t matter anyway. :-/


100% they do


What happens when the “few bad apples” get all of the traction and all of their news spreads vs good journalists who get very small readership? You end up with all perceived journalism being bad and the good being so diluted by the bad that their impact isn’t ever felt. I believe this is where we are headed if we aren’t already there now.


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