Hacker News Reader

OwlsParlayon Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

"audiences are so sophisticated now in their knowledge of computers"

It's funny they say this back in 1993. It feels like we've gone from computers being a niche but beloved piece of tech to a ubiquitous and reviled piece of tech.

OwlsParlayon The buns in McDonald's Japan's burger photos are all slightly askew

Is it me or are those prices dead cheap compared to UK / US?

OwlsParlayon Iran threatens OpenAI's Stargate data center in Abu Dhabi

Trump has avoided a ground invasion up to this point for this exact reason, even trying to take one of outerlying islands would have heavy casualties due to drone warfare. There's speculation that the mess over the weekend was the result of a SOF mission gone wrong.

OwlsParlayon Suburban school district uses license plate readers to verify student residency

Interestingly US-based newsrooms are still geo-blocking EU users. Not even bothering to ask for cookies.

OwlsParlayon Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

This is a country of 90 million, compared to Gaza which was 2million

OwlsParlayon I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

For people invested in AI it is becoming something like Maslow's Hammer - "it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail"

OwlsParlayon Police Break Up Lego Theft Ring

At this rate that's a couple of large LEGO sets.

OwlsParlayon The $25k car is going extinct?

That's a big part of it for you perhaps, but not for everyone?

OwlsParlayon The origin of the cargo cult metaphor

The biggest problem comes when this type of language policing is seen as the primary way of changing behaviours.

It's correct to be anti-racist / anti-sexist / etc. but that doesn't come from just changing your language while still operating the same as before. It reminds me of the whole fuss over using "homeless" vs "unhoused" - while actual policies to help homeless people get ignored or defunded.

OwlsParlayon I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

The sad fact is that this is more expensive than my 1-bed flat was 15 years ago. Rent really is insane if this is preferable now.

OwlsParlayon “Wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement

I dropped the two BBC podcasts i'd been interested in (News Cast and In Our Time) for this reason, it's such a weird tack to take in order to chase views.

OwlsParlayon Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

I wonder if any of the commentators from 2007-2013 can share what they've learned in 10 years

OwlsParlayon Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

I'm always surprised Discourse was never integrated into SO.

OwlsParlayon The great Polish Sea or We forgot Poland (2006)

New Zealand has a similar problem

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/

OwlsParlayon How Russia Went from Ally to Adversary

Why would the US want to do a Marshall plan? It was in full asset stripping mode in the USA itself in the mid 90s

OwlsParlayon Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news

This, I find even trying to ignore news sources doesn't work. I continually try to prune the more tabloid papers like Daily Mail / Express / Sun but no avail.

OwlsParlayon Google search for a local restaurant returns scammer’s ad as top result

This is something some delivery apps have been accused of doing though.

https://www.eater.com/2020/1/29/21113416/grubhub-seamless-ki...

OwlsParlayon Is Discord a Spyware?

These days? Yeah, pretty much.

Don't trust anything that isn't E2E encrypted and is on a centralised server.

OwlsParlayon YouTube Addiction

AS someone who watches a lot of YouTube, like the Let's Play content mentioned, I recognise and sympathise with the OP. But I think the problem isn't necessarily YouTube - thats just the drug of choice. It could be Twitch, it could be podcasts, or television, or any other form of entertainment offering a parasocial relationship. One that fill the gaping lonely hole in so many people's lives.

OwlsParlayon How do I draw a pair of buttocks? (2014)

I don't think it was that different on the internet per se, but SE itself was relatively young at that point and more lax with its own rules. This early period is when you also had funny answers for bad questions, like using RegEx to parse HTML.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open...

OwlsParlayon MIRC ended its lifetime license agreement with all who purchased it 10 years out

https://xkcd.com/1782/

OwlsParlayon Can Lego City Powered Up trains be automated?

If you know the answer and it's a valid question (i.e. it's not trivial or easily googled already), it's fine to do. The point is less to reputation farm as it is to share knowledge.

OwlsParlayon YouTube confirms that it has removed the “sort by oldest/newest” option

> What kind of lunatic watches someone's uploads out of chronological order?

Welcome to the TikTok algorithmic feed. Viewing videos in order and with context is so passe.

That said, I rarely do this as well. If I've found somebody's content I like, I'll tend to then go see what playlists they've made for similar topics. Some channels will have over 500 videos dating back a decade at this point - I'm not going to watch that in order, but I'll at least browse by playlist.

OwlsParlayon Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/05/14/shanghai-covid-r...

Not exactly ignored. CNN has regular reports on China's Covid-19 response.

OwlsParlayon Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

95% of the country is basically fine. I have a few friends in cities like Chongqing and Nanjing and their only issues are travel restrictions between regions.

OwlsParlayon Microsoft 3D Movie Maker Source Code

You'd still start off with requirements - documentation - code, it's just on the understanding that any of these can change.

OwlsParlayon Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

> Whites were 80-90% of the population during that time, assigning a vague notion of "privilege" to an entire race of people as a basis for reverse racism is not only useless, but misleading, because these "privileged" people were still in competition with other whites (and non-redlined minorities). The implication is that they collectively derived benefit from unfair rules against blacks, but frankly this is a dishonest assertion.

They absolutlely did derive a collective benefit, i'm astounded anyone can deny this. Are you just ignorant of just how badly treated black people were compared to white people in that period?

OwlsParlayon Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

Do you think white people who lived during the time of segregation or redlining had white privilege? Because there's plenty of those people still living today. The kids shouting slurs at Ruby Bridges are still alive.

Now yes, obviously white privilege is not the only axis of oppression and both in the UK and US class privilege is overlooked to a massive degree but pretending white privilege is a racist term is stupid.

OwlsParlayon Missing wheat from the war is less than 1% of global wheat crop

They do, but their population has also ballooned far past what their own agriculture can supply.

OwlsParlayon BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen

Getting rid of the licence fee is long overdue, but strangling the BBC as part of cutbacks is just sad.