"If only there was some kind of..."

Besides Why, in my day..., the other Slashdot meme from yesteryear that never failed to amuse is "If only there was|were some kind of..."

However, Google, Kagi, and even Slashdot's own site search were all coming up empty. To satisfy nostalgia, cobbled together these stylized versions with Claude Opus 4.6:

If only there were some kind of enormous, interconnected network of computers, perhaps spanning the entire globe, upon which someone had built a system for indexing and retrieving information using simple keyword queries. Alas, we can but dream.
What we really need is some sort of "engine" if you will, specifically designed for "searching". We could type words into a box and it would locate relevant documents from across the world's collected knowledge in mere fractions of a second.

These were the platonic ideal of what memory served up, but the desire for pure, unadulterated, human-crafted wit remained. Went in search of a Slashdot archive and hit paydirt with Sketch the Cow's Slashdot Story Archive (HTML Format), which spans 1998 to 2019. Spelunked like so:

% du -sh stories.7z | awk '{print $1}'
8.6G
% time ugrep -z -E "if only there (was|were) some kind" stories.7z > results.txt
...6:35.92 total

Two gems from the diggings:

Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12, 2007:

"[I]f only there was some kind of searching engine one could use, or some kind of encyclopedia in the form of a wiki where one could look up this information... Maybe some day."
gosand on Monday October 06, 2003:

"[I]f only there was some kind of searchable, massive collection of computers that were all hooked together somehow, and contained this kind of information."

❧ 2026-08-01

Site search migrated from Algolia to Pagefind

Site search on tinyapps.org has been powered by a number of services and scripts over the years:

After a quarter century in the wilderness, the caravan has gratefully pitched its tent beneath the shady palms of Pagefind. At last, everything is indexed and searchable.

The JavaScript dependency (like Algolia's) is unfortunate, but a small concession for search that's self-hosted, static, and complete. Pagefind is open source and a snap to set up and use.

❧ 2026-07-08

Hide junk-brand Amazon listings with a browser extension

Knockoff "filters the trademark-squat pseudo-brands (the SZHLUXes and HORUSDYs) out of your search results, so what's left is brands with a reputation to lose."

❧ 2026-07-08

iODD-like optical drive emulation with a Raspberry Pi

and USBODE (USB Optical Drive Emulator):

"Ever wanted a GoTek for CDs? If you have a Raspberry Pi Zero W or 2 W, USBODE turns it into a virtual optical drive. It allows you to store many disk images on a MicroSD card and mount them through a web interface."

Demo: Finally a cheap CD-ROM emulator for DOS and Windows 98!

Known-supported models: Raspberry Pi Zero (2015), Raspberry Pi Zero W (2017), Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W / WH (2021), Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ (2018), Raspberry Pi 4 (2019)/4B (2019).

❧ 2026-06-24

List or extract Linux ISO contents in macOS

DiskImageMounter.app silently fails to mount Linux ISOs in macOS and hdiutil attach linux.iso returns "attach failed - Resource temporarily unavailable". However, the built-in tar (bsdtar 3.5.3 in Tahoe) command can list contents:

tar tf /path/to/linux.iso

and extract files:

tar xf /path/to/linux.iso -C ~/extracted/

See also anylinuxfs ("mount any linux-supported filesystem read/write using NFS and a microVM") mentioned earlier this year.

❧ 2026-06-24

grep not returning text known to be in file

Symptom

cat displays text, but grep can't find it:

% cat foo.txt
The world is overcome--aye! even here!
By such as fix their faith on Unity.
% grep fix foo.txt
%

Cause

The file is UTF-16, not UTF-8/ASCII. file may correctly identify it as such:

file foo.txt
foo.txt: Little-endian UTF-16 Unicode text

unless the byte-order mark (BOM) is missing, in which case file may report just data, suggesting a hex dump is in order:

xxd -g 1 -l 16 foo.txt
00000000: 54 00 68 00 65 00 20 00 77 00 6f 00 72 00 6c 00  T.h.e. .w.o.r.l.

The alternating character/NUL pattern is UTF-16LE (UTF-16BE is the reverse, 00 54 00 68 ...). So fix is stored as 66 00 69 00 78 00, and grep fix fails to match the ASCII/UTF-8 bytes 66 69 78. cat output looks normal because terminals typically don't render the NUL bytes.

Solution

Convert to UTF-8 before grepping:

iconv -f UTF-16LE -t UTF-8 foo.txt | grep fix
By such as fix their faith on Unity.

Use UTF-16BE instead if the byte pattern is big-endian.

Why UTF-16LE and not plain UTF-16?

With a BOM, plain UTF-16 works everywhere: iconv reads the BOM and picks the byte order automatically.

Without a BOM, iconv's behavior is implementation-dependent. Common GNU/Linux and macOS iconv implementations differ: little-endian on GNU iconv, big-endian on macOS. The same file can convert on one platform but fail on another:

iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8 foo.txt | grep fix     # not portable for BOM-less input
iconv -f UTF-16LE -t UTF-8 foo.txt | grep fix   # explicit byte order

For BOM-less UTF-16, use UTF-16LE or UTF-16BE, not plain UTF-16.

Handling conversion errors

If iconv stops with illegal input sequence, -c can skip invalid input:

iconv -c -f UTF-16LE -t UTF-8 foo.txt | grep fix

Sources

Cannot grep UTF-16 Unicode files
grep UTF-16
Ken Thomases' comment on Difference between Mac and Linux iconv UTF16 to UTF8
Endianness

Update

Grep not finding text that I know is in file

❧ 2026-06-24

Fix photo orientation/rotation on Apple TV

Issue

Some JPGs in iCloud Photos display with the correct orientation on Macs, iPhones, and iPads, but appear rotated or sideways on Apple TV:

Photos displayed sideways
Apple TV: Photo landscape instead of portret (sic)
Photos from iPhone are wrong orientation on Apple TV using Airplay
tv4k sideways
Apple TV rotates screen saver photos
Orientation of Photos-Apple TV (jsnod replied in part, "This is a known issue, and Apple has a fix posted here http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305236 HOWEVER, that fix is Mac/iPhoto specific." Sadly, the link is dead and does not appear to be archived by the Wayback Machine.)

Resolution

Export affected photos from Photos.app to Finder (e.g., ~/Desktop/sideways/)
Install jhead (GH | brew | MacPorts)
cd ~/Desktop/sideways/
jhead -autorot *
Replace the affected photos in Photos.app with the corrected files from ~/Desktop/sideways/.

exiftran, ImageMagick, and other options are covered in How to rotate images automatically, based on exif data
From the "Organize photos" section of Keyboard shortcuts and gestures in Photos on Mac:
- Command-Delete: Delete a photo or item from the library
- Delete: Remove a photo from an album (but not from the library)
Renaming and Filing Photos and Videos in the HEIC/HEIF era

❧ 2026-06-19

Creating offline website mirrors with kage

kage, recently discussed on HN, "shadow[s] any website for offline viewing, with the JavaScript stripped out". Set up in a new Ubuntu 26.04 ARM64 VM:

Install Chromium via App Center

Install a compatible Go version

wget https://go.dev/dl/go1.26.4.linux-arm64.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.26.4.linux-arm64.tar.gz
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin:$HOME/go/bin' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc

Install kage

go install github.com/tamnd/kage/cmd/kage@latest
Clone the desired site

kage clone example.com --chrome /snap/bin/chromium
Browse the archive

kage includes a serve command, but any HTTP server will do:
```
cd ~/data/kage/example.com
python3 -m http.server
```
Then open http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser.

❧ 2026-06-18

External boot no longer working after wiping internal drive

Booted a Dell OptiPlex 7090 Micro from Windows 10 and 11 ISOs via an iodd Mini PRO without issue. Changed SATA Operation from RAID / Intel RST to AHCI^* to expose the internal NVMe SSD; external boot still worked. Copied data off the internal drive, then wiped it with diskpart's clean command.

Post-wipe, external boot attempts failed: selecting the device in the Dell boot menu and pressing a key at the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD..." prompt led to a Dell SupportAssist "No bootable devices found" screen, with just a Continue button which rebooted the machine.

Fix: Disabling Secure Boot restored external booting. After installing Windows, re-enabled Secure Boot without issue.

Likely cause: Appears to be a Dell firmware bug rather than genuine signature rejection, since the firmware successfully ran the external media's first-stage loader (which displays the "Press any key" prompt) yet with Secure Boot enabled apparently failed the hand-off to the second-stage Windows Boot Manager; other Dell users have reported similar behavior.

Footnote

^* Otherwise download Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST) Driver version 18.7.6.1010.3 (SHA256: A2B2E20D6D8100E9EE344746F80849524C64490B90686A13C09268CADB976B37) and extract the driver files via SetupRST.exe -extractdrivers SetupRST_extracted. When "Select location to install Windows 11" appears, click Load Driver and browse to SetupRST_extracted\production\Windows10-x64\15063\Drivers\VMD\, which contains the Intel VMD controller driver (iaStorVD.sys) needed for Windows to detect drives behind Intel RST. Here is the full extracted directory structure for reference:

SetupRST_extracted\production\Windows10-x64\15063\Drivers\

AHCI\
  iaAHCIC.cat
  iaAHCIC.inf
  iaStorAC.sys
  RstMwEventLogMsg.dll
  RstMwService.exe
HsaComponent\
  iaStorHsaComponent.cat
  iaStorHsaComponent.inf
HsaExtension\
  iaStorHsa_Ext.cat
  iaStorHsa_Ext.inf
PinningComponent\
  iaStorAfsServiceApi.dll
  iaStorPinningComponent.cat
  iaStorPinningComponent.inf
  OptaneShellExt.dll
  PinningServiceApi.dll
  SharpShell.dll
  SharpShellLicense.txt
RAID\
  HfcDisableService.exe
  iaStorAC.cat
  iaStorAC.inf
  iaStorAC.sys
  iaStorAfs.sys
  iaStorAfsNative.exe
  iaStorAfsService.exe
  Optane.dll
  OptaneEventLogMsg.dll
  RstMwEventLogMsg.dll
  RstMwService.exe
VMD\    
  iaStorAfs.sys
  iaStorAfsNative.exe
  iaStorAfsService.exe
  iaStorVD.cat
  iaStorVD.inf
  iaStorVD.sys
  Optane.dll
  OptaneEventLogMsg.dll
  RstMwEventLogMsg.dll
  RstMwService.exe

❧ 2026-06-07

Database of AI hallucinations in legal filings

Damien Charlotin maintains a searchable, actively updated database (1,545 legal cases so far) tracking instances where generative AI produced hallucinated content in court filings worldwide. The full database is freely available in CSV format.

Damien also offers Pelaikan, an automated reference checker designed to catch hallucinations before they hit a docket (free tier includes 3 documents per month; paid plans available but pricing link is currently broken).

❧ 2026-06-04

Symptom

Cause

Solution

Why UTF-16LE and not plain UTF-16?

Handling conversion errors

Sources

See also

Update

Issue

Resolution

Related

Footnote