Hacker News Reader

anonomousenameon How Much Do Artists Make on Spotify (Case Studies)

The paid figures for half of the artists are wrong - commas and periods are mixed up, reducing the displayed payout by 1000x.

anonomousenameon NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

Life360 is very common in the area that I’m in to track/keep tabs on children. Go to Walmart, they might not know. Go to a highschool and I’ll bet every single one of them knows what it is. Crypto has nothing to do with this.

anonomousenameon Ask HN: What is a good gift for a mechanically oriented 8 year old

Lego has a Technic subfamily that is slightly more oriented for motion/movement as well. Its what came with the EV3/Mindstorms sets.

My first experiences programming and building were with the original Mindstorms/NXT, and they were great. It looks like the Mindstorms platform was discontinued in 2022 (still probably a very solid choice) and it’s closest competitor would now be Vex IQ. Mindstorms might be better for younger kids though.

anonomousenameon How do you browse Hacker News?

I assume the free version is meant to be used as a trial to evaluate the quality of the client. There is a “Share HN Link” option for each comment where you can comment on the webpage. After using it for free for a year or so, I paid because it’s one of my favorite clients on iOS.

anonomousenameon Free Git GUI for Mac and Windows

It’s a tab on the left side - no extensions required. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/sourcecontrol/overview

anonomousenameon Ask HN: What's the longest amount of time you wasted due to ChatGPT being wrong

As someone who feels like regex is magic, I trusted it to do some complicated regex matching for me. I should’ve known better, but I assumed it was right - it took me maybe 20 minutes before I decided to test it’s validity when other parts of my code were throwing errors.

anonomousenameon Smart ovens shouting out to servers in Russia and China

If your dishwasher is simply idle until you schedule it, a small UPS may be able to do the job, as during a power outage it would just be powering the electronics and not anything else.

Unrelated, but it sounds like scheduled power outages is a great use case for a backup inverter for your home.

anonomousenameon Tell HN: T-Mobile breach- double fuck up

It could also be changed to a copy of the official T-Mobile site, resulting in widespread phishing.

anonomousenameon The science of having ideas in the shower

That spot might be your navel.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/1-458-bac...

anonomousenameon “Nobody cares about your blog”

This looks like something that QuillBot wrote - it is pretty disjointed with odd word choices, but structurally very similar.

anonomousenameon Limiting Handbrake threads to prevent throttling on M2 MacBook Air

It ends up sending a lot of heat into the battery though, so probably isn’t the smartest idea unless you have some kind of external active cooling.

anonomousenameon Spotifyd

Does the team plan to have an official Windows release? I’m using an older version and with a few changes, was able to create a fork for windows. It works fine for my purposes but was wondering if it was ever considered.

anonomousenameon Hidden tech of the Nest Thermostat

If you’re willing to spend the money, I’d recommend getting a ZigBee or z wave thermostat(or an EcoBee, as it has local control through HomeKit) and then you can combine the temperature readings with your own humidity/temperature sensors - as mentioned above, ESPHome/Home Assistant may be overkill, but would work great for this kind of setup

anonomousenameon Hijacking infrared to make a dumb device smart

It depends - some units broadcast individual commands to turn up/down temp, so those would be easy. Some units broadcast the entire state every time you press the button though (normally remotes with an display on them), so recoding the remote would just give you a state to cycle through. You may be able to find just the individual temperature commands on remotecentral.com or other places online by searching “Pronto Code database” - those can be converted to whatever format you need.

anonomousenameon Accidental Google Pixel Lock Screen Bypass

And it doesn’t do a super great job at it - often times the underside of a table, or sofa cushions will trigger it

anonomousenameon Ask HN: Why is coil whine in electronics so prevalent?

If you’re planning on building a PC soon - GamersNexus has reviews of fans with measured dB ratings (some taken in an Anechoic chamber) and compares heatsinks with noise normalized performance. It may be very useful for you.

As a general guide though - SSDs are silent, and be quiet! (bequiet.com) has PSUs, CPU coolers, cases and fans optimized for silence (including coil whine)

anonomousenameon Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

Now, you need an access code to do your homework. It costs more than the textbook, and cannot be shared, rented, copied, or sold when you’re done with it. The reason it is so expensive is because it comes with a “optimized” etextbook to help you when you’re stuck on homework. The average I’d say is around $120

Predatory practices all around.

anonomousenameon Meta lays off 11,000 people

Is there any evidence of this? Especially for people that use a password manager, this seems incredibly stupid on Facebooks side.

anonomousenameon SMS Multifactor Authentication in Antarctica

The TOTP URIs can be exported - I use this to export them into Bitwarden: https://gist.github.com/gboudreau/94bb0c11a6209c82418d01a59d...

anonomousenameon An ‘Army’ of Volunteer Sleuths Are Out Hunting for Your Stolen Car

VIN swaps can be done by taking the VIN of a totaled car, and using it on another vehicle and registering it as "rebuilt/salvage" - I'm sure they're other ways, but that's the most common afaik

anonomousenameon Sci-Hub Proves That Piracy Can Be Dangerously Useful

I’m not sure about other fields, but NIH Federally funded papers have a PMCID (along with a PMID) and are free

anonomousenameon Ask HN: Do you know HN-like sites outside IT?

Whenever I see the bodybuilding.com forum, I always think of this and crack up about it.

https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751

anonomousenameon $1.2B Metaverse Horrified by Report It Only Had 38 Active Users

“‘active users’ are defined as unique blockchain wallet addresses that interact with its system. As CoinDesk explains, that means users who simply log in to chat or interact with others aren't being counted … the [DappRadar] platform averages around 8,000 users on an average day”

anonomousenameon MSFT former VP of HR shares employees that are most likely to be laid off

Quoted from the article:

Who's most at risk during layoffs?

1. Event planning or benefits employees: Activities that are considered luxuries, like generous benefits and perks, are some of the first things that companies cut when times get tight — and people who provide such services are at a higher risk of layoffs.

2. Employees working on new initiatives: If the company recently decided to explore new lines of business or expand into new territories, these kinds of new initiatives are tenuous places to work, as they're often the first ones cut.

3. Contract workers: At the highest risk are contract employees, which companies use for this very contingency. They want to remain flexible in case of a downturn, and as such, contract employees are usually the first ones out.

anonomousenameon A Linux-powered microwave oven (2016)

The thermal sensor inside of the microwave seems like a neat idea, but I'd be very interested in a microwave that was capable of heating food evenly - I always end up with cold spots, and the only solution (that I've found) is to increase the cook time and decrease the power.

anonomousenameon Ask HN: How would you react if someone in real life asked if you've heard of HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30838788

As long as you seem articulate, it seems like people won’t call your BS.

anonomousenameon Blender has been “white listed” to be taught at schools in the U.S.

Not nearly every school used this. Also - at least for my highschool- teachers had unrestricted intetnet, and could grant it to students. For my highschool journalism class, students in the class were granted unrestricted internet for me example. I don't think letting blender through would be too hard.

anonomousenameon Ask HN: Entry to Hacking for a 5yo?

Snap Circuits was the one thing that got me understanding (intuitively) how electricity worked.

https://www.elenco.com/snap-circuits-2/

anonomousenameon LED mounted in a contact lens for possible VR/AR displays (2011)

Funny you say that - in another video, the creator talked about how this was one of the projects that got (or at least contributed to) his job at Google, working on Google Glass. Not too far off glasses mounted LEDs

anonomousenameon NASA's Webb telescope achieves near perfect focus

I was hoping they’d mention a Bahtinov mask - it works on the same principle, and is very common even in amateur astrophotography. The Wikipedia article for it has a more in-depth version of how it focuses itself.

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