Hacker News Reader

exhilarationon We identified a North Korean hacker who tried to get a job

Yeah after a disastrous remote hire I started requiring in-person 2nd round interviews. Company policy is that all future hires are hybrid only (not that we or anyone else is hiring these days...) so it just makes sense.

For developers I share my screen on MS Teams so everyone can watch, then hand them my laptop with Visual Studio. They've got 90 minutes to complete a small assignment while we look at them code - Google is allowed, so is copying and pasting from Stack Overflow, and we'll probably allow Copilot as well. The code needs to run and return the expected results. One candidate said, "this was great, it felt like real work".

For cloud admins, our Devops lead creates a new resource group, hands over his laptop, and we ask them to create a few resources and do the network and authentication to make them talk to each other. Most candidates can't do that anymore - we're finding they've become Terraform operators that don't know how the underlying technology works.

exhilarationon Linkwarden: FOSS self-hostable bookmarking with AI-tagging and page archival

I've never heard of raindrop and it looks cool but I see the .ru in one of their screenshots -- are they based in Russia? Any concerns with doing business with a Russian company, in the context of sanctions etc.?

exhilarationon A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

It's actually not required for EVs - Tesla has started to drop it from recent models. I bet these guys would omit it as well to save money.

exhilarationon Assignment 5: Cars and Key Fobs (2022)

GPS jammers are less than $30 on Alibaba, truck drivers have been using them for over 10 years [1] to defeat their bosses tracking devices.

Multi-Band Jammers are $1000, burglary rings are using those to block all Wi-Fi, cell, GPS signals - check out this arrest report from last week in Pennsylvania [2]. If I was a high-end car thief, like in Gone in 60 Seconds, that's what I would use.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/12/feds_arrest_rogue_tru...

[2] https://dauphin.crimewatchpa.com/lowerpaxtonpd/3730/cases/or...

exhilarationon Which year: guess which year each photo was taken

Thanks!!!

exhilarationon In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

Gift link: https://nyti.ms/421I5Ox

exhilarationon Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026

Nah, Microsoft makes good money from Visio licenses - I'm sure it more than pays for itself and helps keep the megacorps locked in. All of our org's corporate laptops come with Office but you can request Visio if you need it - the license cost gets charged back to your department.

exhilarationon I tasted Honda’s spicy rodent-repelling tape and I will do it again (2021)

Thank you for both links. I only read the linked article after following your links!

exhilarationon Daily omega-3 fatty acids may help human organs stay young

Just eat the right kind of salmon: "All species of Alaska wild salmon have very low levels of mercury."

From: https://health.alaska.gov/dph/Epi/eph/Pages/fish/default.asp...

exhilarationon Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)

My understanding is that Anki is pretty much used by every single medical student, at least in the U.S. It's the perfect applications for retaining massive amounts of information just long enough to pass med school and board exams. Look at this: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/ -- 166k followers.

exhilarationon People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

What does A2 milk have to do with lactose? I don't see lactose mentioned in your link.

exhilarationon Couriers mystified by the algorithms that control their jobs

I thought you were covered by Uber's car insurance when you were on their clock?

exhilarationon Garmin's –$40B Pivot

It's kind of a sloppy solution, but what about using a Bluetooth to aux adapter? You would lose the dashboard audio controls but at least you can listen to your stuff.

exhilarationon Homes Withstood the LA Fires. Architects Explain Why

NY Times did a big article on this: http://bit.ly/3E9mA5U

Far fewer resources for those whose homes weren't destroyed but insurance should still cover the smoke damage remediation.

exhilarationon How did they make cars fall apart in old movies (2017)

Wow, those stunts are incredible - it's hard to believe he died of old age and not of these super risky stunts.

exhilarationon Celebrating the timeless allure of Tintin's aesthetics

Thanks to a Hacker News comment, my kids, ages 7-13. Have been watching an episode of Tintin from the internet archive every week, and they love it. Link: https://archive.org/details/tintinseries43

exhilarationon Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease attributable to sugar beverages

So taking myself as an example: I drink 12 oz of coffee daily (7 days per week), and I add exactly 12 grams of table sugar to my coffee each day (equivalent to 3 sugar packets), which is 45 calories. Seems like I don't have much wiggle room and should continue avoiding soda and juice.

exhilarationon A man keeping hope, and 70-year-old pinball machines, alive

Related - Technology Connections has several videos about old pinball machines that showcase how incredibly complex they are, here's the first video:

Old pinball machines are amazingly complex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-1JoJQaEg

exhilarationon How saffron became an American cash crop

The article mentions sanctions on Iranian exports, that might have played a role in higher prices.

exhilarationon Belgium will ban sales of disposable e-cigarettes

with tobacconists becoming the targets of many arson attacks

Are you saying that legitimate tobacco stores are being burned down by illicit tobacco traffickers? To eliminate competition?

exhilarationon Show HN: High School Student's First App – NWS Weather Report

Does anyone know if there's an official NWS API you can pull from? Is that what this app uses? The NWS weather.gov site is my go-to for weather (no ads, no tracking) but the UI isn't great, I'd love to build my own customized front-end for it.

exhilarationon Exploring the Cost and Feasibility of Battery-Electric Ships

The Maid of the Mist boats at Niagara Falls have been fully electric since 2023: https://www.maidofthemist.com/maid-of-the-mist-sets-the-stan... They don't talk too much about battery capacity or charging but I'm sure the information is out there.

exhilarationon Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

Marriage triggers automatic emancipation. Just sayin'.

exhilarationon GNU Artanis 1.0.0 Released

Yes the crazy sci-fi font is hard to read, but I have to give them props for being unique. I even like the grammatical mistakes, it's so different than the ultra-polished stuff we usually see here. This project has personality!

exhilarationon I Followed the Official AWS Amplify Guide and Was Charged $1,100

It's been mentioned several time in HN comments that the AWS billing code is a giant pile of spaghetti and there is generally a lot of fear around making big changes to it.

That's been one of the more interesting inside baseball facts I've learned here.

exhilarationon Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure

Can you watch anything fun while doing your cardio? I look forward to working out because that's when I catch up on my Netflix shows. There's no way I'd stick with it if I didn't have something to take my mind off the grind.

exhilarationon New documentary reveals that 21,000 laborers have died working Saudi Vision 2030

I personally think it's relevant because of the tech investments that the Saudis are making around the world. Based on my years of reading Hacker News, I feel the focus here is is about VC/investment/business first, "hacking" topics second.

exhilarationon World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

What is conker, you ask? Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LcaUTAuQfc

exhilarationon Researchers develop first banana plant resistant to TR4 and black sigatoka

Here's the key section about the techniques they used:

The team of experts employed a combination of traditional crossbreeding techniques and modern DNA analysis technology to accelerate the process of developing resistant banana varieties. This allowed them to select new varieties with desired traits, such as disease resistance, more quickly and efficiently.

So they didn't actually perform any genetic modifications.

exhilarationon COBOL has been “dead” for so long, my grandpa wrote about it

IBM offers just such a service under the WatsonX branding, it's an LLM to convert COBOL to Java: https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-code-assistant-z

I work at a company with a large COBOL codebase and this has been mentioned in a few presentations about our modernization efforts.