Show HN: Procinsh – A 3D Linux process inspector
github.com/akawashiro
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this looks something pulled straight from a hacker tv show that I would have thought fake as hell
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These visualizations appear to so similar to the ones in the movie Hackers 1995.
Is there a pool at the rooftop? :)
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now I can finally live my dream of saying "it's a unix system I know this" in front of my family and non-technical friends while pulling this thing up and inspecting my bloated tmux processes running 20 claude code instances
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You could do that before, because that scene was actually a file manager written for UNIX called fsn. But there have been ports / reimplementations of it since such as fsv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer
It’s probably the only time in cinema history that a “hacker” visual effect was actually UNIX.
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Over 20 years ago we had a doom in which your processes were represented by monsters and killing them sent the kill signal. :)
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Did a procfs scraper once, handling pids vanishing mid-read took me ages.
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Obligatory reference to psDoom [1]. There’s something quite fun about killing the monster labeled “init” and poof! Your whole system is now dead.
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Look at that FPS!! Now we need another inspector to monitor Procinsh.
a_kawashiro[12 comments hidden]
It visualizes running processes and their relationships in a 3D UI. Process activity, memory maps, file I/O, and socket communication are reflected in real time.
The backend is written in Rust and uses procfs, eBPF, ptrace, and process_vm_readv to collect information from the system.
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rnWvN8ej2A
More details about the motivation and implementation: https://akawashiro.com/articles/procinsh-en
tikimcfee[2 comments hidden]
a_kawashiro[hidden]
I just created a Discord server: https://discord.gg/aQuNSczpw
> I'm curious if you've played with rendering memory at all - textual bits, that is.
This is a very interesting idea. I actually considered visualizing memory contents, but for now I decided not to render all memory contents and access because of the amount of data that would need to be transferred from the backend to the browser.
That said, it is definitely something I would like to explore. Your 3D text renderer sounds especially interesting for visualizing memory contents inside the process towers.
I'd be very happy to discuss this more on Discord!
adfm[2 comments hidden]
https://youtu.be/dFUlAQZB9Ng
dddw[hidden]
bigstrat2003[7 comments hidden]
You didn't build a thing, dude. You had a machine build it for you.
qarl[6 comments hidden]
But when agents hack another company, it's not the LLM that did it but the guy who asked it to.
Strange contradiction.
hexapus[5 comments hidden]
LLM companies set their bots loose on a task and failed to secure the environment. I haven't met anyone who suggests they are brilliant hackers that put Kevin Mitnick to shame. I have heard (and happen to agree with) arguments that they created conditions, either willfully or unwittingly, in which their systems breeched others. The argument is that they acted with gross negligence when using a dangerous tool, and may or may not be liable for such. If the US ever makes crime illegal again, the courts will decide.
qarl[4 comments hidden]
I hear an endless stream of anti-AI nonsense daily - and this appears to be yet another example of it.
hexapus[3 comments hidden]
But if you're not capable of moving beyond a superficial reading of a statement, I can see how you might easily dismiss as "nonsense" the very real environmental, economic, technical, ethical, social, and cognitive issues introduced by the way LLMs have been forced into our lives.
qarl[hidden]
Anyone who hasn't had his head in the sand has seen this coming for the last 60 years. Why do you think Turing created his test?
At this point the stubborn refusal to see it has become laughable.
> The "apparent" hypocrisy dissappears the moment you think about it at all though, as I explained above.
Yeah... I think we'll just need to agree to disagree, friend.
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