"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

If you know more than others, that's great! but in that case please share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. Here, for example, it could be possible to add related facts about networking, other ways of connecting computers, obscure details, war stories, bits of history - who knows? All such things could make the discussion more interesting and fun.

(Edit: here's a great example of what I mean. This comment is currently at the top of the thread, which is what we want here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49506392.)

By contrast, dyspeptic supercilious putdowns do no good, other than perhaps providing a temporary internal status hit (at others' expense).

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

"It's possible to just connect two computers together with Ethernet" - on the front page of hackernews. Incredible. Ethernet over USB4 interdomain protocol at least had some novelty, but this...

Can you please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512349 and, in the future, share some of what you know instead of putting down others (including the community)?

HN has very little understanding of networking in general.

Can you please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512349 and, in the future, share some of what you know instead of putting down others (including the community)?

It does seem to be a surprisingly common blindspot of programmers in general. I strongly recommend programmers learn it, it can save a lot of headaches in system architecture.

Any recommendations on a good path to learn this — curious if you have any personal, opinionated thoughts on this.

Buy some cheap computer, pop in a few NICs, setup a FreeBSD or OpenBSD gateway, including DNS and some other goodies.

And by cheap, any $10 relic will do.

You’ll find their manuals very informative.

I'll add looking up the ipv4 and ipv6 specs on www.rfc-editor.org .

Especially since most machines will just WORK with auto-assigned magic weird IPs and you'll actually be able to share files directly via the OS if you do this, no need for Linux netcat tricks at all.

Now I still remember when target disk mode over ethernet was being talked about.

Programmers have very little understanding of computers, in general.

They'll think hard about a beautiful unrealistic idealisation of the problem, and/or treat a software abstraction as if it's the underlying reality, e.g. (of the latter) thinking networking starts with HTTP and languages start with JavaScript.

Can you please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512349 and, in the future, share some of what you know instead of putting down others?

Just read the contract from the other side! If focusing on idealistic software abstractions instead of the problem is bad, the implication is that focusing on the problem is good. If treating a software abstraction as the underlying reality is bad, the implication is that looking below it to the actual underlying reality is good.

Agreed, except IME this is "junior web developers" rather "(real) programmers" in general.

Mel wouldn't. But Mel isn't programmers.

HN has very little understanding of many things, especially if you are familiar with <specific thing>.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect

Back in the day you needed a modified cable for this with RX/TX swapped on one end but nowadays probably all nic chips have auto-detect so you can take a normal patch cable and do it.

Gigabit Ethernet sends and receive over the 4 pairs simultaneously using echo cancellation, so it doesn't need crossover cables.

Yeah, I remember those. When setting up an ad-hoc network, you were like; "where the eff is the crossover cable!" :D

it was the red one, right?

Mine was just a custom made gray one, but I have seen those red ones, yes :D

I bought bunch of ready made 10 meter cables for lan party dunno 15 or 20 years ago... Used with switch... Grey with nice paper label at end with "Cross over"...

Haven't had any issues with them ever in regular use... So pointless even back then...

If using a switch, there isn't any need for crossover cables, is it?

yes

(, except if you lack an additional power slot or have no switch available)

Mine were grey same as the normal patch cables but had red Hellerman sleeves at the ends.

Look at you with your fancy red Cat5 ;-)

Yeah so called crossover cables. But that's like decades ago.

Yeah it's been about 20 years since there was a risk this didn't work.

In fact you just need one of the two ends to be able to auto swap RX/TX.

When I hacked a USB2-GigE adapter into my old Toughbook CF-m34 to replace the stock 10/100 adapter, it wasn't for the speed. I didn't need the speed, and of course USB2 wouldn't let me use the whole gig anyway.

But GigE uses all four pairs, so the hardware has transceivers behind all four pairs, which means even when they're running at 10 or 100, the chipset can choose which pairs to transmit and receive on. Thus all GigE adapters are Auto-MDIX, and it meant I no longer needed to carry a crossover cable, no matter what other device I was talking to.

It's funny how 10/100 cards with Auto-MDIX capability were exotic and expensive, but once GigE had it by default, it became ubiquitous, cheap, and quickly forgotten.

Not really modified, you could buy them pre terminated or put on your own rj45 and just wire it as crossover.

There is always some young person or new to the field learning for the first time. Post like this are exactly how I learned.

If you're used to a "normal" network with a router, it's a revelation that you can go direct.

Exactly. No need to get cynical about this being news. Maybe not news to you (or me, I'm old) but it could be really interesting news to others. See also: https://xkcd.com/1053/

Some of my favorite content are those that are like “hey, there’s no magic here.” See also: all of Ben Eater’s videos.

On related news, you can talk point to point with just a pair of copper wires that physically connects with a device on the other side!

Wait there's more: a couple of simple plastic glasses joined with a string under tension also does the trick.

However more seriously, while being snarky about "obvious" things can be fun, we should all remember to acknowledge the xkcd's "Ten Thousand" effect as a very real law of life.

> xkcd's "Ten Thousand" effect

True in general, but Hacker News isn't a school for beginners to technology.