Hacker News Reader

Nekhrimahon Oregon gave homeless youth $1k/month with no strings

Oh look, it worked again.

Nekhrimahon IT workers struggling in New Zealand's tight job market

The framing of this story right from the start is disingenuous. The Microsoft job losses are explicitly reported as "part of a broader strategy to streamline operations and accelerate its AI initiatives." Immediately followed by reporting that Health NZ (rebranded from Te Whatu Ora) is cutting a third of its IT staff. The implication being that it's the same reason.

It's not. The current NZ government is working through the "Starve the Beast" strategy; intentionally underfunding ministries and services so they can be punished or sold off later for "underperforming".

RNZ's service to the right wing side of the political spectrum hasn't saved them though, they're having funding cut too [0].

[0] https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360698953/funding-cut-rnz-m...

Nekhrimahon Starship's Sixth Flight Test

It's explained further down the page that this launch time will facilitate the Indian Ocean landing in sunlight, for improved visual capture of that.

Nekhrimahon How Google Is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – and Why

The axiom: AI allows wealth to access skill, while denying skill access to wealth, ringing especially loud from this story.

Nekhrimahon The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

What's the bet that there was no single approved requirements document covering this design.

Nekhrimahon Half-Life: 25th Anniversary Documentary [video]

The follow up Episodes One and Two are fantastic.

And the leaked storyline for Episode Three looking really strong as well.

I hold out hope that the Crowbar Collective (the group that remade Half-Life with the Source engine and called it Black Mesa) have been secretly working on implementing the Episode Three storyline in Source. Though, now that Source2 is out who knows? This is all my speculation anyway.

Nekhrimahon What I learned getting acquired by Google

>TVC

Apologies, could someone de-acronym this one please.

Nekhrimahon Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002)

> If anyone has any stories that I should add, please send them my way!

https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/9si6r9/postmortem...

Worthy, but no where near as circulated!

Nekhrimahon Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

Threes! was literally the perfect game at launch.

Of course, the shitty free clone 2048 took the concept, made it worse, and somehow (because it was free) captured the majority of the market.

I still play Threes! regularly as well.

Nekhrimahon Hackers claim it only took a 10-minute phone call to shut down MGM Resorts

Have you caught these couple of Max Fosh videos?

I Broke Into The International Security Convention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM3imMiERdU

I Broke Into The U.S. Security Convention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmgLwxK8TvA

Nekhrimahon The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

> We very much do "look up" and have been for decades.

In case you didn't pick it up, Don't Look Up is a callout to a recent movie [1]. I imagine that in this context it's more of a comment on the appetite of the population at large to undergo the temporary inconvenience of proactively taking the power-grid, and thus the vulnerable transformers, offline prior to the arrival of the event. We know the scientists will be looking up; it's the convincing of the population at large via a capitalist captured media that's the hard part.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Look_Up

Nekhrimahon Knightmare: A DevOps Cautionary Tale (2014)

>whoever decided that reusing an old flag was a good idea.

My understanding is that in high frequency trading, minimizing the size of the transmission is paramount. Hence re-purposing an existing flag, rather than adding size to the packet makes some sense.

Nekhrimahon The longest word you can type on the first row

With those letters, not surprised!

Nekhrimahon The longest word you can type on the first row

Not sure about that third row, the "A" is in the second row.

Nekhrimahon Investors brace for a painful crash into America’s debt-ceiling

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

Basically looks like another exercise of legislating for the hell of it, rather than making lives better for Americans.

Nekhrimahon AMD’s 7950X3D: Zen 4 Gets VCache

> nearly done

With silicon based physical chips, I imagine this is true. I would guess, like some speculative science fiction, that the next leap in performance would be an entirely new concept. Who knows what is possible?

Nekhrimahon SpaceX Starship explodes during launch test

1) Horrible headline. Why can't we focus on the positive test objectives met. SpaceX made it clear that getting off the pad was the main goal, everything else was bonus.

2) This topic already exists as a post/thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35640002

Nekhrimahon NASA Names Astronauts to Next Moon Mission

While it may eventually deliver results, the primary goal of the SLS is a massive jobs programme, across the states of the politicians that support it.

Nekhrimahon Excel attachments caused T1 service outage in 2003 story (2018)

Thanks. That was my intent, but guess I mucked it up.

Nekhrimahon Excel attachments caused T1 service outage in 2003 story (2018)

Interesting IT war story on Reddit. It's mid-thread so maybe not widely read. Real 500 mile email stuff.

Nekhrimahon Apple Makes Major Progress on No-Prick Blood Glucose Tracking for Its Watch

> Profit.

Well yes, but also substantial life saving interventions become possible.

Nekhrimahon Why do modern pop songs have so many credited writers?

The movie Yesterday has a relevant plot point. Late in the film, when Jack is putting out another album of Beatles music he really wants it to be called Abbey Road, but the modern music publishers decide that it will be titled "One Man Only". Because of this exact phenomenon!

Nekhrimahon US still has the worst, most expensive health care of any high-income country

Fairly axiomatic since US health care is for-profit by design.

Nekhrimahon The longest ever flight was 64 days in a Cessna 172 (2021)

I think you have a typo at the start of your second paragraph. Fairly certain you're calling out the few planes that are inherently UNstable there :)

Nekhrimahon For many widows, the hardest part is mealtime (2019)

"Yes they're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone."

Billy Joel - The Pianoman.

Nekhrimahon Science fiction inspired by an HN thread (5 min read)

Just to be contrarian, I like the ending. Always be wary of over-explaining in stories, especially in science fiction.

Nekhrimahon “When we all have pocket telephones”

But the Matrix was specifically set at the time of "peak human civilization, 1999". I'm starting to wonder if they weren't wrong about that.

Nekhrimahon Man ends 20-year Llandegley airport sign joke that cost £25k

Reminds me a little of the "Welcome to Luton" prank from earlier this year by Max Fosh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya_LluCl16k

Nekhrimahon Accidental Google Pixel Lock Screen Bypass

This is correct. For example, when I connect my iPhone to my provided work wi-fi, and I get a Tinder notification. I can partially see the message on the lock screen (once Face ID authenticates), but as Tinder is blocked on the wi-fi if I want to read and respond in the app I have to pop to cellular.

Nekhrimahon New asteroid strike images show impact 'a lot bigger than expected'

> effected.

Just FYI, this should be affected.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/affect-vs-effe...