ThinkingGuy

1,138 karma · joined April 1, 2014

Computer geek in Atlanta, US https://www.ThinkingGuy.com

I only upvote submissions that I read, which means I don't upvote paywalled articles.

I will upvote comments that are insightful, thought-provoking and well-reasoned, even if I disagree with them.

I will downvote comments that are incoherent, off-topic and immature, even if I agree with them.

meet.hn/city/34.0028569,-84.1441046/Duluth

Socials: - mastodon:social.thinkingguy.com/@glane4 ---

ThinkingGuyon What's the best way to learn a new language?

The focus on a small set of core vocabulary is one of the main principles of the Pimsleur method, along with a strict spaced repetition format. When I travel to a new country I always spend about 15-20 hours beforehand doing the 30-minute Pimsleur lessons, just to pick up basic survival vocabulary. I've always been satisfied with the results.

ThinkingGuyon Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition

I was hoping someone would mention CoyoteLinux. It was my residential router for several years in the early 2000s. My 'disaster recovery plan' consisted of a second floppy disk (which fortunately I never had to use).

ThinkingGuyon Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

Sorry, I meant to type "Alphabet"

ThinkingGuyon Ask HN: Books to learn 6502 ASM and the Apple II

This one worked for me: Apple II 6502 Assembly Language Tutor (1983) Richard E Haskell

ThinkingGuyon Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

Google AI (owned by Meta) favoring YouTube (also owned by Meta) should be unsurprising.

ThinkingGuyon Influencers and OnlyFans models are dominating U.S. O-1 visa requests

E-1, according to Snopes, citing the Washington Post:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/07/02/melania-trump-einstei...

ThinkingGuyon Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

Presumably under the War Powers Resolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution#Provisio...

ThinkingGuyon Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

If you're not already familiar, you sound like you may enjoy the works of Douglas Rushkoff:

https://rushkoff.com/

https://teamhuman.fm

ThinkingGuyon Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?

I reread “The Screwtape Letters” by CS Lewis for the first time since high school and appreciated it even more. Although it’s written from a Christian point of view, the principles are applicable to any moral framework.

ThinkingGuyon Fedora: Open-source repository for long-term digital preservation

Are there any images (or actual demos) of the actual user interface? Every variant of search for "Fedora repository screen shot" just brings back instructions for taking a desktop screen shot on the Fedora operating system.

ThinkingGuyon Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

Supposedly this "trick" works on airline flights, too.

ThinkingGuyon Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

CGP Grey has an informative video on the City of London:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

ThinkingGuyon Downloadable movie posters from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s

You might try posting this question on https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/

They specialize in finding and identifying obscure childhood memories like this. Good luck!

ThinkingGuyon Haiku Validator

Authentic haiku

need a season word (kigo).

It's true; look it up.

ThinkingGuyon Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

Mine, too. 1. Wikipedia for general knowledge questions ("What languages are spoken in Nigeria?") 2. Wolfram Alpha for time/date/number questions ("How many days until 2026-07-01?") 3. Mapquest for driving directions 4. DuckDuckGo for everything else

ThinkingGuyon FFmpeg 8.0 adds Whisper support

Also relevant: The Two Ronnies - "Four Candles"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi_6SaqVQSw

ThinkingGuyon The BLS can't be replaced by the private sector

See also: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

ThinkingGuyon Face it: you're a crazy person

When I started college I thought I wanted to work in television production. One semester of interning at a local TV station cured me of that.

ThinkingGuyon The Plot of the Phantom, a text adventure that took 40 years to finish

I would be, if they weren't so embarrassingly bad!

ThinkingGuyon The Plot of the Phantom, a text adventure that took 40 years to finish

I was there in the 1980s; writing your own Infocom-style text adventure games was a common project among my peers. There are probably lots of unfinished (or even finished-but-unshared) games out there on old floppy disks in closets.

I have a couple of my own, now archived on my home server.

ThinkingGuyon Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

My initial thought was: ambiguous regulatory environment.

Not being physically located the US, the EU, or any other sovereign territory, they could plausably claim exemption from pretty much any national regulations.

ThinkingGuyon My Cord-Cutting Adventure (2020)

I've been very happy with Kaffeine, installed on my regular desktop PC, for recording shows.

https://apps.kde.org/kaffeine/

ThinkingGuyon The metre originated in the French Revolution

Don't forget prescription drugs (mg).

ThinkingGuyon A memory of the nineteen nineties (1997)

For more background, see this Esquire Magazine interview with Teller from 2010

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a15810/tell...

(Scroll down to the paragraph that begins "When Teller was in high school")

ThinkingGuyon Corporation for Public Broadcasting Statement Regarding Executive Order

The largest item on their revenue chart seems to be "corporate sponsorships." You know, the companies in all those totally-not-commercials you hear on your local non-commercial stations.

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

ThinkingGuyon Just redesigned my personal site with a TTY-style interface

Ironically, it doesn't work on a text-only browser. All you get in ELinks is:

  Link: preload
  Link: preload

ThinkingGuyon Internet in a Box

More like 54TB

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_disk_usage

ThinkingGuyon Wikipedia: Database Download

There's already a project to serve the use case you're describing (school in a disconnected village): Internet in a Box

https://internet-in-a-box.org/

They provide offline access to Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Project Gutenberg, and many other resources.

ThinkingGuyon Librarians are dangerous

This is consistent with my experience. One of the most impressive and inspiring presentations I saw at last year's HOPE conference [1] was from members of the Library Freedom Project [2].

1. https://hope.net

2. https://libraryfreedom.org

ThinkingGuyon BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

Remember during the switch to digital TV, when marketers convinced half the population that they needed to buy a new "digital antenna" to keep viewing the same channels?