Hacker News Reader

mikestewon US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban

Which is why, as you imply, that such things be in carry-ons. But, man, just ban power banks outright? Outright bans won't fly, but the power banks will.

mikestewon Surely you have ultra-wideband radios on your bins too?

Yeah, our city’s new garbage contractor is kinda crap. After three weeks of no new bin (“You’ll get a new one on Tuesday.” “Which Tuesday?”), I sent the city solid waste manager after them. Next day, new bin. :-)

mikestewon Surely you have ultra-wideband radios on your bins too?

That’s all well and good until the truck driver operating the mechanical arm drops your bin into the truck. Spoiler alert: the bin will not be fished out, it is now garbage.

So those tags are going to have to be a little cheaper before I’ll use them. :-)

mikestewon Apple Pass Designer

Not a new idea, and it could be worse. How about we drive the front wheel instead, and put a bunch extra weight over the front?

https://motoredbikes.com/resources/sears-bike-bug-engine-man...

Filed under “I’m kinda surprised that was ever legally sold”. (You’ll find it next to the lawn darts.)

mikestewon Creatine may help build muscle even without exercise, researchers find

Where did you see this? I don’t find it in TFA. And who are you taking about?

mikestewon RIP, vector database

There are HN accounts that have been shadow-banned for years, and yet they keep posting despite few people ever seeing their posts. They're not LLMs AFAICT, but they just keep posting into the void.

So why use an LLM for commenting? See above, people are weird.

mikestewon Strange Parodies of Atari 2600 Video Game Box Cover Art (2008)

All those titties on the Nintendo cartridge box put U. S. Congress into a tizzie, I’m sure.

mikestewon Climate is accumulating 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of heat per second

“Evaporated“? I think you need to reread parent comment.

mikestewon Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain

https://roboticparking.com/how-it-works/

...as one example.

mikestewon On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted

The “drama” was linked in TFA:

https://github.com/neovim/neovim.github.io/issues/501

mikestewon On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted

The software might eat your dog, and feed your homework

Sure, and when it does we can say “this piece of shit ate my dog, and the authors of the software have no concept of a duty of care to their users”. And no amount of “well, axually…” is going to make any difference. I have a hard believing someone is copy-pasting a license file in good faith in response.

mikestewon Rising sea destroys homes, erases beaches in California

If you're talking about this article[0], you'll have to argue with NOAA[1] as that's the source that The Seattle Times used to determine that the "high tide in Elliot Bay has risen 10 inches since 1899".

Since you didn't provide a link to your referred article, I have no idea if the Times blamed any particular cause or not. In the article I've referenced, there were several causes for the flooding in the South Park neighborhood.

[0] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/4-thin...

[1] https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station....

mikestewon Rising sea destroys homes, erases beaches in California

And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. But frogs don't have wings, and the line wasn't drawn.

mikestewon Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy

Some reactors we operate today are older than the oldest people on the planet!

You might want to look that up, because I’m older than the oldest operating reactor.

mikestewon Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived

Trust was a thing back then.

No, it wasn't. The reason I even raised this bug to begin with was not because of some nefarious $BAD_COUNTRY hacker getting yer dataz from far away, it's because you have to worry about your own users first. I'd guess that any consultant doing the kind of work FoxPro excelled at (LOB apps) has found some clever boy or girl who discovered they can poke at DBF files directly. Long before internet connectivity was common, one still had to worry about your own coworkers futzing things up.

mikestewon Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived

I will concede the point, it was a long time ago. :-)

EDIT: I looked it up. Causes an error in VFP 6.0 and earlier, but not in VFP >=7.0.

mikestewon Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived

Well, I had to call it something. File system DBs were a problem long before FoxPro’s DBCs, yes. Yes, it’s an architectural decision. Sharp cookies would just modify the files directly. But that would just trash data (or bump my hourly rate in the HR DB). Most of the time, “full access to data” doesn’t necessarily mean “run arbitrary code”. In this case, it does, which I don’t think folks expect, hence “hole”.

mikestewon Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived

Feel free to quote me, contact info in profile if needed.

EDIT: sorry, I originally just skimmed your comment. I was unclear in my original comment: the files can be accessed and “hacked” from the file system with a text editor. (And a bunch of deleted stuff because I misread your comment.)

mikestewon Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived

The runtime didn’t contain the debugger or other dev tools, only the dev version/IDE did. It did contain the report writer, though.

mikestewon Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived

It wasn’t that hard to make it multiuser back on the day, either. But as OP discovered, FoxPro also made it very easy to write shit multiuser code. Pessimistic/optimistic locking, etc.? It was in there, but you had to use it.

mikestewon Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived

Here’s my problem with reviving FoxPro in any form: there’s a huge security hole in the Database Container (DBC) design. For DBCs to be useful, they must be read/write to all users (there is no permissions scheme). DBCs have stored procedures that can run any FoxPro code, including Win32 calls made from the FoxPro runtime. The stored procedures are stored as plain text in a “memo” field. Do you see where this is going? With a little technical knowledge, one can modify that INSERT trigger to whatever you like. EDIT: as the DB is just files in the file system, modifications can be made using a text editor, bypassing any checks in the FoxPro runtime. FoxPro just executes what it finds in there.

My recommendation is to get rid of the DBF/DBC files and move to a SQL DB of some flavor ASAP. If you have the source code, use ODBC or OLE DB to point to a server.

Source: filed that bug over 20 years ago when I worked on the Fox team. No, it wasn’t going to get fixed without rewriting large parts of how the DB engine worked.

mikestewon Explaining to business people why building software is still hard

Not OP, but… It can drive itself…mostly (the “belt”). And when it doesn’t, you need remote drivers (the “suspenders”) to get it unstuck. I don’t need that with the car I drive myself, and it probably won’t be needed with self-driving cars (waaaay in the future, IMO).

mikestewon The Machine Behind Michael Jackson's "Undeniable" Genius

As sibling comment says, a combination of song writer, performer, producer. Much like the Richard Daly "machine" of Chicago politics, it's not a box with a button you can push but a combination of different people and circumstances that produce a result.

mikestewon The Machine Behind Michael Jackson's "Undeniable" Genius

That's all that account does is post "slop". Flag it and move on.

mikestewon Xbox continues its “reset” with dramatic restructuring

I mean, I'm not even asking for a new installment, but the TV show is in New Vegas now, and not even a remaster of Fallout: New Vegas? In a world gone mad with advertising, I'm truly shocked that the single tie-in was a remaster of Fallout 4.

mikestewon Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy

I didn't pay $2000 to view that web page. A new iPhone, OTOH...

(But, yeah, I'm reminded that I need to set up a Pi-Hole on the Starlink in the camper. I'm paying by the byte for those TechRadar ads.)

mikestewon Turn off and restrict access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac

Just today: “give me directions to the ferry terminal”. I’m on an island with one terminal, I shouldn’t have to be specific.

“Here’s a list of three ferry terminals that are on different islands, none of which are the island you’re on.”

“Give directions to the Orcas Island ferry terminal.”

“Here’s directions to the Port of Orcas Island, which is on the side of the island opposite the ferry terminal.”

If I weren’t driving a camper van on narrow roads, I would have taken her up on the “other island” option. “How do you propose we get there, Siri? Maybe start by driving to the g-ddamned ferry terminal?!”

mikestewon Let's make quality the norm again

Ran into that with an Oxo coffee grinder recently. Old one died, bought the exact same one again. And that motor sounds just a little more tinny than the old one, and the whole thing seems just a little more...rattly than the old one. I am not exactly sure where they cut the corners, but corners were indeed cut. Oh, and the new one was $10 more, so the savings were most definitely not passed onto me.

mikestewon How my e-reader lost its stripes

The reader functionality was not the point of TFA. If you want a product review, there are plenty, including the prior HN discussion linked in this thread.

That said, I read enough in the HN thread to get the sense of not bothering with “out of the box” and just flash Crosspoint Reader on it. I played with stock for a few minutes, it was functional, but not notable. Crosspoint took ten minutes to flash, and is head-and-shoulders above the stock FW. Better reader functionality, better font rendering.

mikestewon Things That Annoy Me About Cars

Add automatic high beams to the list.

You mean to say "automatic high beams on Teslas". The ones on our Hyundai Ioniq work just fine, and have never blinded anyone. But in Redmond, WA, Teslas are everywhere and 90% if you're getting beamed, it's a Tesla. Their headlights are, in many cases, improperly aimed out of the factory and their shit auto high beams only make it worse.