Hacker News Reader

chillycurveon As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness, and help spot demonic possession (2016)

This exact career is that of the protagonist in Evil, my wife and I's favorite show. The show is led by a Catholic priest and an atheist psychiatrist (possibly a -gist in the show) tasked with investigating demon possessions.

Highly recommend it. It is written by a married couple, one Catholic and one atheist. It takes the supernatural seriously without getting hokey or dismissive.

chillycurveon Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

Slightly off-topic: has PayPal become unusable in the browser for anyone else? When using Firefox, no VPN, no ad blocking, I get some nondescript error that bounces me from the login screen. My IP must be on some list, but it is really annoying.

chillycurveon [dead]

Edit: The status page and home page were down for me for about 15 minutes (checked on multiple devices and networks). Now they load about half of the time, but are very slow. Might be a load issue in this region of their CDN or something. My hosted services are fine, as far as I can tell.

chillycurveon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://blakeashleyjr.com

New to blogging but interested in DevOps, WordPress, and Go, along with normal techy things.

chillycurveon US Air Force colonel ‘misspoke’ about drone killing pilot

This is a full retraction of the previously discussed story:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230602014646/https://www.thegu...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36159866

Seems like a big story to publish on the word of a single person (relayed through a blog post) with no other corroboration.

Shame on The Guardian for not mentioning the retraction/edits and simply reusing the same URL.

chillycurveon US military drone controlled by AI "killed" its operator during simulated test

This has been fully retracted: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/02/us-air-force...

Original story: https://web.archive.org/web/20230602014646/https://www.thegu...

Shame on The Guardian for not mentioning the retraction.

chillycurveon Amazon in talks to offer low-cost or free mobile service to Prime customers

I wonder how the current cell carriers have to charge $50+ to be profitable in a hyper-competitive space, but Amazon has the margins to consider throwing it in for free?

chillycurveon Ask HN: Insurance Against Patent Trolls

Directors and Officers insurance would provide some measure of comfort. What you need is an insurance broker who can advise you on what coverages will protect you best.

Edit: Looks like Intellectual Property Insurance is exactly what you are looking for.

chillycurveon Ask HN: What's the best book on religion?

My recommendation, as well.

chillycurveon SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

Already mentioned in another comment, but they just released an Apple Silicon version: https://support.aspyr.com/hc/en-us/articles/12168615035405-H...

chillycurveon Ask HN: Overwhelmed with Non-Actionable Email

Dedicate a full day to the following:

1. Buy a domain that looks like a knock-off email provider (to avoid some scrutiny later). Something like emailco.biz, etc.

2. Setup simplelogin for that domain.

3. Go through all your existing accounts and change the email to [service]@emailco.biz.

4. Use that technique to sign up for all future services. If you start getting unwanted email to a simpelogin alias, simply turn it off in the app or browser extension.

5. Click unsubscribe on every email you don't want. The first day it will be a lot, the second day less, the third day even less, etc.

6. Ruthlessly click spam on anything you didn't ask for.

Soon, you'll have it under control.

chillycurveon Fosstodon

The local feed on Fosstodon has been a breath of fresh air in a world of algorithms and clickbait competing for my attention. Feels like a community from a bygone era (in a good way.)

chillycurveon Why Don't We Shoot Nuclear Waste into Space? – Kurzgesagt [video]

A rocket failure on launch would not be the best PR!

chillycurveon Tucker’s Message Fiasco Is the Wakeup Call You Need to Auto-Delete Your Messages

If you can't trust the other party, you have already lost.

chillycurveon Tucker’s Message Fiasco Is the Wakeup Call You Need to Auto-Delete Your Messages

The small political portion of this post is almost irrelevant to the message.

chillycurveon Digital Security Tips to Prevent the Cops from Ruining Your Trip Abroad

You may not be denied entry BUT:

- You can be substantially annoyed. - You can be significantly delayed. - Your possessions can be searched and potentially seized.

https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017#when-a...

chillycurveon Digital Security Tips to Prevent the Cops from Ruining Your Trip Abroad

Depending on your threat model, if the hardware is sufficiently compromised, no amount of software gymnastics will keep you safe.

chillycurveon Help make mass surveillance of entire populations uneconomical

For a better and more up-to-date list of alternatives, see https://www.privacyguides.org/en/

chillycurveon John Wick’s Bulletproof Suit Makes the Series More Believable, Not Less

Excellent points.

> It even hurts a pivotal scene in JW4 where a mid-boss dies by falling two stories directly onto his head - when I saw it in theaters, I could unfortunately sense the audience expecting the mid-boss to get back up like John Wick. Because of the non-lethal fall in JW3, they didn’t really buy that this boss had actually died.

Especially when JW took a similar fall only a few moments earlier and gets right back up.

chillycurveon John Wick’s Bulletproof Suit Makes the Series More Believable, Not Less

They do. John has to get creative to get those guys.

chillycurveon John Wick’s Bulletproof Suit Makes the Series More Believable, Not Less

Love that video! Linked to it in the footnotes because it partially inspired the post.

chillycurveon John Wick’s Bulletproof Suit Makes the Series More Believable, Not Less

They do eventually send helmeted foes that have to be creatively dispatched at the end of three and throughout 4.

chillycurveon John Wick’s Bulletproof Suit Makes the Series More Believable, Not Less

In the 2nd movie (and perhaps other places), he gets shot repeatedly with rifles. Even if the shots don't penetrate, the repeated impact alone would break ribs and leave him incapacitated.

chillycurveon John Wick’s Bulletproof Suit Makes the Series More Believable, Not Less

Of course, I didn't like this move either. The magic is that John is human, and they sully that notion by making him survive a 5-story fall.

chillycurveon John Wick’s Bulletproof Suit Makes the Series More Believable, Not Less

I think there is a difference between "realism" and "believability". Even the hardest fantasy and sci-fi needs to be believable, even if it is completely unrealistic.

And by that I mean, it needs to follow a predictable and understandable set of rules that make sense. I think John Wick does that (besides falling off the occasional building.)

chillycurveon PlanetScale increases plans to include billions of reads

Database reads/writes are really hard (read: impossible) to predict unless you are already in production. Leading to thoughts like: "1 Billion reads!! I'll never use that much..." Once you cross the line, the overages kick in.

That being said, this does appear to be absurdly cheap compared to competitors. Amazon Aurora appears to be sitting at around $200 a month for 1 billion reads, excluding writes/transfer/storage/etc.

CockroachDB Serverless includes 250M "request units" (request units include reads and writes and individual requests can costs multiple units depending on size). They charge an extra $1 per month per 10M "request units," so $75 to get to 1B reads at least.

Am I missing something? What's the catch?

chillycurveon Free software licenses explained: MIT

This was very helpful, thanks. There are so many open source licenses these days. Concise explanations save a lot of headache.

chillycurveon NYC bill would ban grocery apps from advertising 15-minute delivery times

As a biker in NYC, there are a ton of bikes and a ton of bad, careless drivers around. I wonder if the risk comes more from the nature of biking in NYC rather than trying to get to a residence in 15 minutes. E-bikes do go a lot faster than normal bikes, to be fair, but the city was already saturated with them before these services popped up. I believe they may even be illegal in the city as it is.

Also, as an avid user of 15 minute delivery services. They really are magical. I have a super expensive mini-grocery store at the end of my block, but for the same cost, I could have the same item delivered to me in about 5 minutes on average. I also wonder if the market/legal system already has corrections for any negligence on the part of the business. If they know that it's dangerous to, say, extend their "15 minute" border too far, forcing delivery people to push it and someone dies, that seems ripe for a massive liability issue.

If I am these delivery companies, I would be working over time to ensure everyone that this is a legitimate, good-producing service. It's a similar struggle Uber/Lyft have been dealing with. Clearly the right direction, but the execution might require some polish.

chillycurveon A career ending mistake

On a side note:

I am new to Go and programming in general and have found John's work to be instrumental to my educational journey. I highly recommend everything he has produced.

Perhaps the most underrated resource, his Youtube channel is full of educational gems like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSgIEDMekSg

Please keep up the good work John!

chillycurveon Be anonymous

I use NextDNS and love it. It provides fine control over what is allowed, what's logged, etc.

If I was ultra-privacy focused, I'd probably go with the DNS provided by my VPN or a self-hosted resolver like unbound+pihole.