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_tom_on The last person standing in the floppy disk business

The books are probably just inflation. People think a dollar per book is cheap, now. But cover prices in the fifties for paperbacks look to be 25 to 50 cents. (Source: A quick google).

Books with actual increases in value won't be at a thrift store, typically.

_tom_on The last person standing in the floppy disk business

3.5" external usb drives are easy to find on amazon, etc. If anyone knows of a 5.25 (5 1/4) external usb drive, please tell me!

I still have thousands of old 5.25 floppies. I've transferred or tossed most of the 3.5, since I was able to get a drive for that.

_tom_on Most books don't sell only a dozen copies

My goal is to sell one to someone I don't know. Friends don't count.

_tom_on Most books don't sell only a dozen copies

You don't write tech books for the royalties, you write them for the consulting opportunities they lead to.

_tom_on How should we handle an over-productive employee?

Reddit has been overrun with cleverly constructed fictional posts. Let's not let this happen with hacker news.

_tom_on TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

There are apps for turning old phones into dashcams and security cams, too.

Why waste an old phone?

_tom_on All the Personal-Finance Books Are Wrong

Pure clickbait title.

_tom_on The forty-year programmer

I don't think I would study, if I knew I would die tomorrow.

_tom_on Ask HN: Seriously, how do you TDD?

It's frequently faster. Half-assed designs will cost you time forever.

_tom_on I tricked myself into working out 3 times per week

I have switched from thinking "what should I do" to "what nice thing can I do for future me".

It's not an instant fix, but it's a definite uptick in execution. For me. Your mileage may vary.

_tom_on Don’t think to write, write to think

Same concept as rubber duck debugging.

_tom_on Good conversations have lots of doorknobs

Another good article on differing communication styles is the ask vs guess post.

https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-bet...

_tom_on Ask HN: Why don't web browsers discourage words that not everyone will know?

You think you are joking.

_tom_on I wish I could organize my thoughts

I'm not sure I'd describe that as organizing your thoughts. It sounds like more "give me a way to record everything without organizing it"

The benefit of writing things down is it forces you to organize and clarify.

What would be the benefit of this collection of random musings?

_tom_on Why aren't smart people happier?

Because IQ is not emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence does lead to being happier.

_tom_on Wizard with a Time Machine

I also have a few daguerreotypes to scan. Hard to find a scanner that supports them!

_tom_on Wizard with a Time Machine

I have a similar situation, but no Pentax. I've been trying to figure out how to scan thousands of my grandfathers slides. Too expensive to send out for processing, I think. But there don't seem to be any good auto-feed scanners and the thought of scanning 5000 slides five at a time is daunting! It's annoying that the slides are all in trays for automated playback with a slide project, but there are no scanners that feed from trays!

I'm thinking of setting up a slide projector on auto play and recording that output. At least that would batch by fifty.

Any suggestions?

_tom_on Helium

Can we not get decent titles on things? At least enough to know whether a post is about an element, a crypto tool, software for amazon, etc.

And maybe a hint of what about helium people the post addresses?

_tom_on Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

Yes, a lot of gluten free is just hype. But I have friends that may die if they get gluten. Celiac is not a joke and can kill.

_tom_on Please Stop Citing Tiobe

https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2022/1

No Delphi in top 50.

_tom_on Intermittent fasting 2 days vs. 1 day per week

My annoyance with all of these numbers is they are meaningless without some measure of size.

I'm literally twice the size of my friend, at the same BMI (more than a foot taller). So should I be eating 3400? Or should they be eating 850?

_tom_on Please Stop Citing Tiobe

What do you mean "won't count Delphi"? It's obviously severely over counting Delphi.

A quick check of indeed shows one job with Delphi as a nice to have within 100 miles of San Jose. For python, 11000. Ruby, 559.

"Delphi programming" on google, the string that the delphi has been trying to push, gets 127,000 hits on google, "python programming" gets 17,100,000

In computer science, Amazon shows 600 delphi books, with the top book having a sales rank (lower is better) of 1,600,000. Python, too many to count (says over 10000) top sales rank 1000. Ruby, just below Delphi in Tiobe, over 10000, sales rank 800,000

So, basically: no google hits, no book sales and no jobs. How is that number 16?

_tom_on Please Stop Citing Tiobe

Redmonk doesn't mention Delphi!

_tom_on Please Stop Citing Tiobe

The inclusion of Delphi, a basically dead language, always made it obvious that Tiobe was terribly inaccurate.

I actually checked indeed for jobs and found around three, nationwide.

There are tons of references to Delphi on google and indeed, but they are almost all for other companies named Delphi, like the auto parts maker. Hardly any for the language.

Tiobe isn't even trying.

_tom_on Show HN: Property Trends Scraped from Zillow

Or just get an injunction.

_tom_on How a cooling vest invented by a furry made it's way into the US military (2019)

Inflatable costumes are common now. They have the advantage of being lighter than a lot of other approaches, and they are filled by a constantly running fan, so they are much more plea to to wear.

It's a bit like the "dancing man" inflatable you see outside of car dealerships. It's not airtight, but the fan keeps air coming in at the rate it flows out.

_tom_on The disintegrating cube

Because promoting one's activities by referencing more interesting/popular activities is a common marketing strategy.

You likely wouldn't have read the blog post, if it was more accurately headlined "some musings on life".

Related: his most popular post of all time is about George R R Martin. Kind of proves my point.

_tom_on A complete guide to creating actually useful courses

Wow. That just looks completely scammy. I am not judging your ethics, just the appearance. I wouldn't touch that site with a ten foot pole. Everything about the design looks like your average scam site.

It's a topic I'm very interested in, and I couldn't make it past the beginning.

_tom_on Why the Windows Registry sucks technically (2010)

Why?

The windows registry is a disaster.

The whole idea is wrong. You want to keep configuration with the thing being configured.

Most Mac installs are "drag the folder on to your disk". You are done.

_tom_on I remember feeling derisive about marketing as a young techie

And convincing people to sign up for a subscription when that is objectively terrible for the consumer is marketing.