Hacker News Reader

jmonty900on Banned in California

If California made the products illegal that couldn't be produced here I wonder how many of these laws would suddenly be removed because the issues associated with the laws were suddenly considered "acceptable".

jmonty900on Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

Huh. I thought Greenland was going to be the 51st state.

jmonty900on Late night pizzeria nearby The Pentagon has suddenly surged in traffic

Years ago I had a cubicle right next to the supervisor's office. I noticed that he was having more closed-door meetings than usual, and mentioned it to my good friend who was also my boss. My boss did a good job not reacting, because she already knew a layoff was eminent but couldn't share that with me (I was not one of those let go.) Events like this can be surprisingly accurate indicators of something significant going on.

jmonty900on Coffee linked to slower biological ageing among those with severe mental illness

I sure liked the first half of this title.

jmonty900on Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera

Kohler can "de-identify [the user’s] data for lawful purposes." I mean exactly how would that ever be justified? "Hey, we see a man-sized log in the bowl. There's only supposed to be women there. The perp must be in that house!!!"

jmonty900on India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

> Apple's iOS powered an estimated 4.5% of 735 million smartphones in India by mid-2025, with the rest using Android, Counterpoint Research says.

Sounds like Google should be the one leading the charge against this. Will be interesting to see what they do.

> The app is mainly designed to help users block and track lost or stolen smartphones across all telecom networks, using a central registry.

It's an app. That's all it does now (presumably). Once installed, it can be changed in the future to do all kinds of terrible things. This is big brother.

jmonty900on Bricklink suspends Marketplace operations in 35 countries

Even if there were significant challenges in some countries, certainly other countries on this list didn't deserve the 2 week treatment. Lego's actions here are very sketchy.

"We appreciate your understanding, - The BrickLink Team"

Understanding of what? They didn't describe the situation that lead to their decision to unilaterally apply the same treatment to all of these countries.

jmonty900on Loose wire leads to blackout, contact with Francis Scott Key bridge

I recently had a home network outage. The last thing I tested was the in-wall wiring because I just didn't think that would be the cause. It was. Wiring fails!

jmonty900on Pyrex catalog from from 1938 with hand-drawn lab glassware [pdf]

It's not lost. People can draw like this today. It's just that nobody wants to pay for it.