Hacker News Reader

hfeon NASA spacecraft to probe possibility of life in Europa's salty ocean

> If NASA spends $10 billion on a mission that fails, it will be complained about for decades to come about how "wasteful" NASA was.

And rightly so. The solution isn't to not try. The solution is to continue investing. See the Apollo missions. Lots of failure there, but it wasn't a waste because it did eventually succeed, both in its mission and also in bringing a bunch of technological advancement. Investing a ton of money into some venture, only to give up on it after the first failure is something we should all be angry about. If its worth doing, its worth trying again when it fails.

hfeon De-googling, so far

> my second issue with Kagi: privacy-wise, I simply don’t believe that a service that requires login and thus naturally associates all your activity with your identity is better than a service which can be used without a login.

I don't get this argument. Do you want to be protected from the services you use, or do you want a partnership based on trust? With aligned incentives, trust is easier. Without trust, not logging in won't save your privacy. Just pay the nice people money for the very nice service they provide, and let them build trust with you.

hfeon Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

What is the brand with the best reputation these days?

hfeon Don't DRY Your Code Prematurely

My experiences are the same in C++ and Python. C++ in particular can get way out of hand in service of DRY.

hfeon Walmart joins other big retailers in scaling back on self-checkout

https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/answer_view/a...

Its also loss prevention.

hfeon I made an open source Windows app to rewind and search everything on screen

> I made this app on Windows. The major inspiration from the early concept of Mac app Rewind and Black Mirror S1E3 "The Entire History of You"