NeoSmart Blog

neosmart.net · Company blog · on HN since 2008

NeoSmart Technologies' company blog, covering programming, Rust and C++, web infrastructure, and occasional political and news commentary.

What HN saysHN commenters mostly link it for its Namecheap domain takedown article; other links point to the company's job posting, so there is little stated opinion.
46HN people shared it
21linked it in comments
124stories submitted
1.7Kstory points
6 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026

Most-shared posts

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    Decoding Base64 attachments in Epstein files
    4 people · 5 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
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    Let’s stop punishing IoT devices that embrace HTTPS
    3 people · 34 points · first shared 2017 · 19 comments on HN
  5. 5
    Modern C++ isn't memory safe, either
    3 people · 18 points · first shared 2018 · 3 comments on HN
  6. 6
    Recreating Epstein PDFs from raw encoded attachments
    3 people · 11 points · first shared 2026 · 2 comments on HN
  7. 7
    Firefox 3 is Still a Memory Hog
    3 people · 9 points · first shared 2008 · 13 comments on HN
  8. 8
  9. 9
    An Overview of the BIOS/MBR Boot Process
    3 people · 3 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
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  11. 11
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  13. 13
    Show HN: Windows 10 window switching (macOS style)
    2 people · 11 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
  14. 14
    Implementing truly safe semaphores in rust
    2 people · 10 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
  15. 15

What HN people wrote when they linked it

ComputerGuru · 2016-12-01
NeoSmart Technologies | https://neosmart.net/ | Technical Writer | REMOTE, PART-TIME Do you love to write and love open source? We're looking for someone to help us take our open source libraries and software to the next level. We need help publishing documentation for our open source libraries, currently hosted at GitHub and elsewhere. Applicants must be familiar with C++ and C# syntax, understand object-oriented programming, and have a love for both open source and writing. Excellent English is a must, we also have a number of white papers, articles, and blog posts we are looking to publish based off OSS and more. Email applications to [email protected] Cheers!
wqz · 2021-12-15
When running X on a previous Debian version, it was possible to edit the synaptic settings to prevent accidental touchpad touches when typing (along with a lot of other settings to make the user experience excellent). Now running Wayland on Debian 11/Bullseye (with Gnome), there are only a few possible simple settings (that I can find), and so I have continual issues with window de-focussing due to accidentally touching the touchpad. Is there anything that I can do now to fix this issue? (I took a look at the blog post and also the https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/ link, but still don't understand the state of things and if my problem is solved by installing any of these new packages.) edit> The libinput webpage says this: "How do I configure my device on Wayland? See Where is the configuration stored? Use the configuration tool provided by your desktop environment (e.g. gnome-control-center) or direct access to your desktop environment’s configuration storage (e.g. gsettings)." https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/faqs.html#how-do-i… Does this mean that it is not possible to set anything that isn't included in Gnome's minimal settings of libinput?
zbentley · 2018-02-26
The Arch wiki in the sibling comment is a good resource for learning a lot. I'll try to (over)simplify the short version here: With the old BIOS-based boot process, the computer (the hardware/motherboard; not the operating system you ran on it) would, when it started up, look around for installed operating systems to boot. It wouldn't look too hard: on each hard disk, it would look in one (or, if you were lucky, four) places for a specially-prepared segment outside of the data installed by the operating system. This segment isn't a file or something that you can browse to normally on the drive (though some things shimmed it so it appeared thus); it's a non-file special segment outside of the OS's normal data/files. That segment (well, segments, but still) had to be set up just so otherwise the computer (BIOS) wouldn't find your OS to boot it. Doing this was often tricky, even more so when you needed multiple operating systems to be bootable. Doing this was also pretty inelegant, since if you wanted to stick an operating system on a sub-partition of a disk, as part of the installation process you had to mess with data that affected everything on that disk, not just what was in the sub-partition. It worked, and was simple, but it was the equivalent of being forced to modify a single central global variable in a software project every time one sub-part (file, function, whatever) of that project wanted to use a new library. For an excellent writeup of the gritty details of the…
HotGarbage · 2026-04-26
nerfbatplz · 2026-01-01
https://neosmart.net/blog/namecheap-com-revokes-domain-hosting-video-a… It’s especially egregious that they didn’t give a chance for the domain to be transferred, they terminated the domain without due notice. This website had been cited by journalists, academics and even at the International Court of Justice.
masklinn · 2024-07-05
No, Rust doesn't have semaphores in the stdlib[0] because it was not clear what precise semantics should be supported, or what purpose they would serve since by definition they can't mitigate exclusive and thus write access to a resource and mitigating access to code isn't much of a rust convention. And nobody has really championed their addition since. Furthermore, they still present a fair amount of design challenges in the specific context of Rust: https://neosmart.net/blog/implementing-truly-safe-semaphores-in-rust/ [0] technically they were there, added in 0.4, never stabilised, deprecated in 1.7, and removed in 1.8
Beltalowda · 2022-08-04
> Came here to say the same. The problem is they seem to be hiding information (for some reason): Back when I worked at a computer shop I've had customers come to the shop with a hand-written report of the Windows XP BSOD message; like, all of this.[1] They were always very nice people by the way. Also, all the text is boilerplate and 100% irrelevant to the actual error (UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME). It's not going to be fixed by a Windows update (which you can't install since you can't boot the thing) or disabling "caching" BIOS options. Not showing any text instead of that is probably better. It wouldn't be too hard to make a error message → useful description map for common problems like this, but good error messages/help was never Windows' strong point... [1]: https://neosmart.net/wiki/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/08/unmountab…
frizzlebox · 2021-09-25
Funny enough, I was looking for an app that did the opposite! I want macOS-style alt-tab and alt-` in Windows. I found a program that seems to (mostly) work. I wish there were others like it: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/easy-window-switcher/
efreak · 2020-09-27
There's ways to have the windows boot loader do it, but unless something's changed that really means the windows boot loader reboots the computer. EasyBCD[0] can do this, but only on an mbr partition with bios boot, not on gpt/UEFI boot. Loading the windows boot loader from grub works better. 0: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
astronautjones · 2020-03-18
I had a similar issue and clearing the disk (clean) in DISKPART allowed me to re-format through windows. https://neosmart.net/wiki/diskpart/
dchest · 2017-06-22
BLAKE2b mentioned above would be more than twice faster on 64-bit CPUs. But I think we'll soon see SHA-256 CPU instructions on most processors (ARM and lower-cost Intel and latest AMD already ship them -https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/will-amds-ryzen-finally-bring-sha-exten… so I guess it's not important. For numbers, see blake2.net or bench.cr.yp.to. For IoT devices, hashes that work on 32-bit words, like SHA-256, actually make more sense and will be faster, so BLAKE2s would work well. What I'd like to hear from the above commenter is about a faster replacement for buzhash, which I'm also interested in.
elchief · 2015-09-18
1. This is mostly MySQL's fault for default silently truncating values longer than the requested length. Postgres and SQL Server don't do this, but that's all I tested 2. Lack of email validation by Bugzilla. Emails are max length 254, though this might not have been official when the code was written. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/386294/what-is-the-maximum-length-… 3. Consider using an HMAC'd URL for registration email links instead of putting a token in the database, as per https://neosmart.net/blog/2015/using-hmac-signatures-to-avoid-database…
TheDong · 2015-07-27
If you're saving a token in the database to delete, you're doing it wrong anyways. The right way to do that is to HMAC a string... see this blog post https://neosmart.net/blog/2015/using-hmac-signatures-to-avoid-database… You can get expiration and many other nice things without having to worry about a whole class of other issues. To make a password reset all previous reset tokens, simply include an autincrementing number for "passwordVersion" and stick that sucker in the HMAC as well.
DanBC · 2011-12-06
While you're here: The gallery link appears to 404: (http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/gallery/album/view/neosmart/EasyBCD/EasyBC…
aw3c2 · 2009-11-08
If possible please make it use no proprietary GreaseMonkey stuff so Opera users can use it as userscript. :) edit: Hey, there is http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/youtube5.user.js
NathanKP · 2009-11-08
It looks really nice. I'm giving it a try right now and it doesn't seem to be downloading the video though. I'm using the latest version of Safari on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I tried Firefox too and still no download. Activity Monitor shows no network activity that would be indicative of it downloading. I tried pressing play to get it started, still nothing. The video that I was attempting to watch: http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/index.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.co…
paul · 2008-06-23
His screenshot clearly shows that he's accessing Gmail over HTTP http://neosmart.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/gmailsecurityleak.png
solardev · 2022-07-09
A lot of Windows tweaks are turned into GUIs. You CAN edit the registry yourself, or tweak Group Policy, but honestly sometimes it's easier just to get the tools that do it for you with a checkbox. Some useful tools: -Chocolatey is like yum/homebrew for Windows: https://chocolatey.org/ -Start11 (and other Stardock tools): https://www.stardock.com/products/start11/ let you once again customize W11's butchered start menu & taskbar -Software controls for your monitor's backlight: https://twinkletray.com/ -Easy Window Switcher so you can use alt-` to switch between windows of the same app, like macOS and I think some Linux desktops: https://neosmart.net/EasySwitch/ -Microsoft PowerToys for various tweaks: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ -Nevermind the install footprint... not worth it when you start running into update issues. Yes, there are tools out there, but why bother when you can just buy a bigger SSD? -Windows key --> Startup Apps to disable all the useless start apps (like Adobe or Cortana) -Windows key --> diskmgmt.msc to manage volumes -Turn on BitLocker if you want full disk encryption -Taking screenshots is a PITA; use Windows-Shift-S for the newest version (snipping tool), but the old print-screen /alt-printscreen shortcuts work too. Also Windows-Alt-R to record a video of the current window. For some reason that is tied into the Xbox app. -Use 1password (or your browser if you're lazy) to sync passwords between platforms. Also…

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