Hacker News Reader

Spare_accounton Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

I'm not the same guy but I can verify that the advert for the impossible micro-evaporative cooler quoted impossible performance capabilities.

YouTube adverts frequently contain fraudulent, misleading information. It appears that no law is being broken.

Spare_accounton Show HN: Scroll through all 43252003274489856000 Rubik's Cube states

Here is another way of looking at the same question:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49252106

Spare_accounton London’s most equidistant pub

>Logically, no, as they all neighbour non-pub locations.

I don't understand this response, so I am wondering if I phrased my question badly.

The linked article established that there is no pub in London that can be reached within 60 minutes travel time by anyone starting from any home in any London borough.

I was wondering if there is any other location, be it a coffee shop, a park or even just a point in the middle of a road somewhere, that can be reached within 60 minutes by anyone who lives anywhere in London.

Spare_accounton London’s most equidistant pub

Is there any (non-pub) location in London that could satisfy the 60 minute requirement?

Spare_accounton The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

I have about a dozen email aliases associated with my Microsoft account. On the "Your info" page, under "Account info", one of them is described as "The email address you use to sign in to your Microsoft Account".

However, I can use any of them to initiate a login attempt. I have my account set to passwordless, I don't know if that is relevant (every login attempt triggers an MFA prompt).

If I click on "Edit account info" I am taken to a page where I can choose which address in the "Primary", but given that ANY of the aliases can be used to intiate a sign-in, I don't see any benefit in changing that.

EDIT: I wasn't being adventurous enough. The option to change which aliases can be used to sign in is under (surprisingly) "Sign-in preferences".

In my defence, that page wasn't loading properly in Firefox with all my privacy add-ons enabled. I was able to access it in Edge.

EDIT2: I've changed my primary alias to a newly created one. If I am still able to sign in OK in a couple of days, I will disable the old primary for sign-in. I hope I don't live to regret this!

Spare_accounton A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

>it completely solves the issue on any site

It doesn't solve the problem with Instagram links, which in my experience do the following:

1) Open a new browser tab, with no history. 2) Close the original tab, so I can't easily get back to where I was.

Spare_accounton YouTube locked my accounts and I can't cancel my subscription

As an additional data point, in the UK I can just login to my banking app and remove the authorisation for a particular vendor (or, for people who don't use online banking, I could phone up to do the same thing).

Spare_accounton Postal Arbitrage

From the link I shared: "Today, the USPS receives no direct government or taxpayer funding."

Spare_accounton Postal Arbitrage

https://www.britannica.com/question/How-is-the-USPS-funded

>the USPS faced financial difficulties, posting losses of $6.5 billion in fiscal 2023 and $8 billion in fiscal 2024, leading to a request for $14 billion in government assistance.

It would appear that the USPS operates at a loss at these prices

Spare_accounton Tell HN: Merry Christmas

You're not expected to know the answers without doing research. https://britbrief.co.uk/education/schools/king-williams-coll...

>The paper carries a telling Latin motto: "Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est" – "To know where you can find something is, after all, the greatest part of learning."

In the modern era it is acknowledged that people will use online search engines to find the answers but hopefully we all learn something on the way

Spare_accounton Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

The mods are active (and have even commented in this thread) and have a clearly stated set of objectives:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46309399

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

Spare_accounton Show HN: I built a system for active note-taking in regular meetings like 1-1s

Sorry, I should have said, I'm on Android 16, Firefox 145.0.2 (Build #2016128151)

Spare_accounton Show HN: I built a system for active note-taking in regular meetings like 1-1s

For some reason I can't paste my email address into the email address field when I try to sign up

Spare_accounton How I block all online ads

Thank you. I already had that setting enabled, but your comment inspired me to review all the settings again and I have been successful in hiding Shorts from view (for now, until Google changes something again no doubt).

Spare_accounton How I block all online ads

To be clear, I have revanced and use it daily. I'm just too stupid to be able to figure out how to hide Shorts

Spare_accounton How I block all online ads

How do you hide Shorts? I can't figure out how to do it.

Spare_accounton FileZilla Pro "Perpetual License" – A Warning to All Users

I have installation media for MS Office 2010 in my desk drawer. If I lose the disc, I wouldn't expect Microsoft to replace it for me.

I'm afraid I don't really understand what the author is angry about here.

Spare_accounton Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

Yes, my understanding is that the 600 year figure was arrived at assuming that there is iterative progress in propulsion technology throughout the intervening years. But at the end of the day, it is just some number that some dude on YouTube said one time (although Fraser Cain is in fact not just some dude, he's a reliable space journalist (and you can take that from me, some dude on the Internet))

Spare_accounton Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth

For anyone interested, this is approximately the wait/walk dilemma, specifically the interstellar travel subset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait/walk_dilemma#Interstellar...

I was listening to an old edition of the Fraser Cain weekly question/answer podcast earlier where he described this exact thing. I think he said that someone has run the numbers in the context of human survivable travel to nearby stars and on how long we should wait and the conclusion was that we should wait about 600 years.

Any craft for human transport to a nearby star system that we launch within the next 600 years will probably be overtaken before arrival at the target star system by ships launched after them.

Spare_accounton I was right about dishwasher pods and now I can prove it [video]

I'm fascinated at the number of people on an ostensibly techincal website who don't learn how their equipment works. You've summed up in a few sentences exactly how mine works, but there are dozens of commenters in this thread who appear to be unaware of the basic funcationality of their dishwasher.

All I would add to what you've said is that when my Bosch does include a pre-wash in a cycle, it checks how dirty the water is and only drains the pre-wash water if is dirty. If the dishes haven't caused the water to become dirty, it keeps the same water for the main wash cycle.

Also, I want to expand upon my first paragraph a little: I'm not having a dig at anyone who doesn't understand their dishwasher. I am just venting/observing that the world is filled with all kinds of different people and reminding myself that I shouldn't make assumptions about people as often as I do.

I've had this realisation many times, but it doesn't hurt to have it again. Communicating with people is lot quicker and easier when I remember that.

Spare_accounton I was right about dishwasher pods and now I can prove it [video]

Does the Samsung use the same drying method as the LG did?

Older dryers (that needed a vent) were inefficient, but faster at drying. They constantly pumped damp, heated air out of the vent.

Modern condensing dryers keep the heat in the system for a more energy efficient drying cycle but the condensing process is slower.

Spare_accounton 60k kids have avoided peanut allergies due to 2015 advice, study finds

It was implicit, at least to my eye, that other explanation which was being offered a counterpoint was the grandfather comment.

For clarity, I will include both here:

The two explanations for increased adult fragility are:

forgotoldacc> Parents shelter their children too much and have created adults that have additional allergies as a result of lack of childhood exposure

rocqua> Increased sheltering of children has allowed more of the fragile ones to survive to adulthood, increasing the number of fragile adults we observe today.

Spare_accounton Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

How can we discuss <any given topic> if we are talking about different things?

Spare_accounton Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

Were these pilots undertrained?

Spare_accounton Decoding Netflix's AV1 Streams

Why don't you use an adblocker?

Spare_accounton Decoding Netflix's AV1 Streams

Why aren't you using an adblocker?

Spare_accounton No adblocker detected

I have a Chromecast with Google TV, and it allows sideloading of APKs. I installed SmartTube which is a YouTube client that incorporates Adblocking and also SponsorBlock.

It periodically has issues loading videos when Google change something, but the app gets updated every time within a day.

Spare_accounton Next month, saved passwords will no longer be in Microsoft’s Authenticator app

Does the Passkey-enabled account support multiple passkeys?

I'm pretty sure I have my Android phone setup with a passkey for my Google account and also my Windows laptop.

Presuambly the same logic applies for a service that permits multiple passkeys. Each person would register a passkey on their device using the shared credential.

Spare_accounton Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs

Strong recommend for Android, Firefox and uBlock Origin

I also have these Extensions:

  ClearURLs

  Decentraleyes

  Privacy Badger

  I still don't care about cookies

Spare_accounton Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs

Genuine question, if you're willing to indulge me: Why aren't you using ad-blocking of one type or another?

(Assumption: You're tech literate, given the audience of this website. So I tend to assume it must be a conscious decision not to use adblocking)

I don't browse without it these days.