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dano

1,035 karma · joined June 25, 2010

dano@northpb.com
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dano··on The Soul of an Old Machine
Honestly, when I read this book in 1982 or so it changed the trajectory of my life and career. It is an story of a bet-the-business project that occurred in real life. After reading I though I was late to the tech party, missed out on so much, and yet, here we are, 45 years later with incredible advancements and a career I couldn't have imagined. Tracy Kidder was a gem of an individual, just a wonderful person who was truly interested in others. I hope you'll read the book soon.
dano··on 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex
During a trip to Venice I had the good fortune of touring http://www.giuman.it/ and it was highly educational. Bringing the furnaces up to temperature takes time and turning them off each day isn't a good option. Gas comes primarily from Russia and price spikes have really hurt the business.
dano··on HP1345A (and wargames) (2017)
One should note the officers in the missile silo at the opening of the film:

Michael Madsen of Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, and John Spencer of L.A. Law and of course, The West Wing.

dano··on Farewell friends
Second this. My father passed suddenly and the recordings we made a year before while looking at newly digitized family movies are a treasure. I get to hear his voice. Mom passed 30 years ago and I have some speeches she gave recorded, but it isn't the same.

Here's a conversation outline from StoryCorps https://storycorps.org/participate/tips-for-a-great-conversa...

dano··on New bill would give Marco Rubio 'thought police' power to revoke US passports
I think this the text of the as yet unnumbered HR. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA00/20250917/118618/BILL...
dano··on Protobuffers Are Wrong (2018)
It is a 7 year old article without specifying alternatives to an "already solved problem."

So HN, what are the best alternatives available today and why?

dano··on US to review all 55M visas to check if holders broke rules
They want leverage
dano··on EdgeDB is now Gel and Postgres is the future
Yep. I converted a business from to Postgres in 2004 and never looked back. Stable, reliable, no surprises. Postgres is the answer until proven otherwise.
dano··on Lessons in creating family photos that people want to keep (2018)
There was a similar journey for our family after our parents passed and indeed, the photos with people doing ordinary things are the ones we share and enjoy. The Grand Canyon has a way of looking the same now as it did in 1955 and so those photos were discarded. Five boxes of photo albums were examined and the photos to keep were cut out and sent to be digitized organized by year and topic. I am glad someone wrote about their experience and the tips that come from having spent examining a life well photographed.
dano··on The case for letting Malibu burn (1995)
Here is a screenshot of Pacific Palisades property taxes https://imgur.com/a/1G6pLap

More exploration can be done here https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#34.04626347956...

dano··on Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
I'd recommend Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It covers the trials and tribulations as well as the brilliance and ruthless tactics taken to build Standard Oil.
dano··on 1972 Mercedes-Benz 600 Kompressor [video]
"Why yes, I am a third world dictator."
dano··on 60 Years of Spaceflight Patches
Had to dig around to find this https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1197/1
dano··on ASML Twinscan EXE:5000 Lego Set
Ha ha, too funny.
dano··on NASA reconnected with Voyager 1 after a brief pause
My sunbeam automatic toaster is working just fine thank you very much. :-)
dano··on Appalachian Trail Hiker Photo Archive
Thanks for the story about your friend Geof. It was touching and made this archive just that much more valuable. Hope you have a few more good memories today.
dano··on Show HN: High school robotics code/CAD/design binder release
If you have an interest in FRC, consider becoming a mentor at a local program in your area. I've mentored Team 812 in La Jolla California for about 14 years. It's incredibly rewarding.

https://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/volunteer/men...

dano··on Doing vibes-based engineering right
https://web.archive.org/web/20240817060005/https://forestfri...
dano··on Slow is smooth, smooth is fast: Navy SEALs' efficiency secret
Thank you! I love the history of this phrase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente
dano··on The 1986 Oldsmobile Incas Dashboard (2020)
I suspect designers rather than engineers. General Motors has always been the bigger fins are better company.
dano··on [dead]
Just to confirm my understanding, if I set up a BIMI TXT record with an svg image path, but without a VMC gmail will mark the inbound message as spam even if DMARC is set up correctly? tl;dr, is Gmail requiring VMC's now?
dano··on The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer
My father, an attorney, made extensive use of the magcard selectric. He did wills and trusts which required revision based on client feedback or life changes. The ability to edit the document from a saved copy was revolutionary in the early 70's. It also supported stop codes so that the system would print, stop, allow for manual entry of a name or other text, and continue. The client would receive a correction free typed document (no whiteout). All these capabilities are normal after the advent of Wordstar, WordPerfect, Word and others. Having typed school papers on this system helped me understand computers early on.
dano··on Federal judge partially blocks U.S. ban on noncompetes
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/shopping-for-the-j...
dano··on A bunch of programming advice I'd give to myself 15 years ago
Yeah, I totally agree. Those other factors are internal optimizations. What gets me is when a team wants to switch horses to new tech and do a forklift upgrade just to implement something using the new hotness.
dano··on A bunch of programming advice I'd give to myself 15 years ago
* This * - The users don't care about the tech. They care about the result.
dano··on Framework Laptop 16, six months later
Concur. I've been a Mac laptop person since 2009 because it works as expected all the time. That said, I do a good deal of work via the terminal or IDE's that run on both MacOS, Linux, and Windows. That the laptop is a Mac is neither here nor there for me, it's a stable, well built, reliable platform where I can get things done.
dano··on Ask HN: What's the oldest file on your computer?
1983-01-27 dec20/misc/stdio.h
dano··on Eating cheese plays a role in healthy, happy aging – who are we to argue?
Try this recipe https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/276526/steakhouse-potatoes...
dano··on French court orders Google, Cloudflare, Cisco to poison DNS to stop piracy
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound/
dano··on The Costco of Housing is Costco? The retailer's plan to use CA housing laws
They changed the return policy on some items to 90 days. Electronics comes to mind.
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