Hacker News Reader

TheGrassyKnollon Tell HN: Bob Cringely has died

https://www.cringely.com/bout-bob/

  On How You Can Reach Him to Tell Him He’s a Dipstick
  Robert X. Cringely
  (707) 525-9519
  (707) 525-9517 (fax)
  bob@cringely.com

  Bob, bob, bob...you freeeeking dipstick.
  You're not supposed to die that young. That wasn't part of the deal.

TheGrassyKnollon Show HN: Quasicrystals Animation Playground with WebXR

Freeeking terrific. I'm gonna 'waste' a lot of time playing with this...

TheGrassyKnollon The price of a Costco hot dog has gone up

I got a slice of pizza a couple of weeks ago and they wanted to see my card. I can't remember ever having to show my card for the food. (in southern California)

TheGrassyKnollon Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

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

TheGrassyKnollon Fox to buy Roku

Fox owning Roku is alienating to me.

TheGrassyKnollon Fox to buy Roku

Yes. If this goes through, my Roku is going to the Goodwill.

TheGrassyKnollon The IsUpMap lets you check the status of over 100 major sites at once

Wtf, no porn category ?

TheGrassyKnollon DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

DoubleClick (2008, according to Wikipedia)

TheGrassyKnollon Memory has grown to nearly two-thirds of AI chip component costs

I wish I had figured that out a year ago. MU up ~10x, SNDK up ~37x. My crystal ball is woefully under performing.

TheGrassyKnollon I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

The shovel sellers are ringing the cash register.

TheGrassyKnollon Ted Turner has died

Our illustrious president doesn't want any bison.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/us/politics/trump-buffalo...

TheGrassyKnollon The Los Angeles Aqueduct Is Wild

Some say the LA aqueduct saved Owens Valley from development. (I’m sure the old timers out there would have a different opinion)

TheGrassyKnollon I trapped an AI model inside an art installation (2025) [video]

If an AI model thinks it's alive, isn't it just another hallucination ?

TheGrassyKnollon Proof of Corn

> "...a vastly understated feature of AI: It makes people confident."

  Good point. AI is already making regular Joes into software engineers.

Management is so confident in this, they are axing developers/not hiring new ones.

TheGrassyKnollon When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

Reminds me of the Starboard/Larboard nautical terminology. That must have created many disasters over the years. It took the British navy hundreds of years to rectify that one.

TheGrassyKnollon Boltzmann brain

Eternity is a LOT of time...

TheGrassyKnollon Ask HN: Next best to incorporate other than Delaware?

It was significantly larger than a mere $billion. That's pocket change for Elon.

TheGrassyKnollon History of rat control in Alberta

It was probably poisoned & couldn't give a damn about anything else.

TheGrassyKnollon Resolving a mysterious problem with find

I recommend giving ripgrep a try. (it's been around awhile now) https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

TheGrassyKnollon A life that added up to something (Obituary of Paul Erdòs)

N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdös (1993)

  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125425/

TheGrassyKnollon Emacs Speaks Statistics

Lol. Geez, we gotta do something about key sequences getting 'molested'...

TheGrassyKnollon New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

Don't forget the OPM hack (2015)

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

TheGrassyKnollon The story in pictures of the Hughes H-4 Hercules, 1945-1947

Hoover Dam 1931-1936 $49 million

Golden Gate Bridge 1933-1937 $35 million

Spruce Goose 1942-1947 $23 million

TheGrassyKnollon Gordon Moore has died

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

TheGrassyKnollon Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

Mike Tyson, the epitome of sound fiscal management. ($300 million lifetime earnings, had to declare bankruptcy)

TheGrassyKnollon 🥺: the best sudo replacement

I had to:

  $sudo apt-get install -y systemd-container

to get machinectl

TheGrassyKnollon Notes against note-taking systems

I've got an 80,000 line text file full of notes (probably half blank lines). Would never work without the Emacs 'occur' command.

TheGrassyKnollon Ask HN: In what ways is programming more difficult today than it was years ago?

Turbo Pascal was a GREAT tool; it was like a breath of fresh air. It was 'fast' even on an 8086.

TheGrassyKnollon Why Rust strings seem hard

COW == Copy on Write

  Its interesting that certain file systems use COW schemes:

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

TheGrassyKnollon Why Rust strings seem hard

Thanks for the code snippet, however (kind of a Rust newbie here)

  $ cargo install unicode_segmentation (chokes)

  $ cargo install unicode-segmentation (seems to work)

  and in Cargo.toml
  [dependencies]
  unicode-segmentation = "1.7.1" (seems to work)

  yet in the code, its:
  use unicode_segmentation::UnicodeSegmentation;

  Why couldn't they be consistent using a dash vs. an underscore ?