Hacker News Reader

ortunaon Waymo in Portland

I feel like I've lived in enough places and they're pretty small relatively speaking but whatever, seems like we'll see how it actually plays out.

I'm not saying it's going to randomly speed up to 80mph and crash into a building and explode. Just that I'll finally have a chance to witness those hilarious videos in person

ortunaon Waymo in Portland

So, these streets are so tiny and pedestrians are used to just walking out on crosswalks because most people stop at crosswalks

ortunaon Beavers are helping restore wetlands and create buffers against wildfires

So… you didn’t read it? This comment is wild and entertaining!

ortunaon Beavers are helping restore wetlands and create buffers against wildfires

Another cool article on beavers’ measured impact in Idaho after they were reintroduced from NASA: https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/our-impact/story/researcher...

ortunaon ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

They don't buy a laptop but a seat for some amount of years. So they're guaranteed X amount of laptops for Y years.

The selling company is obviously going to min/max this contract as much as they can. You could order a bunch of laptops if you had the authority I guess, but it will not be making on to the network since that is under contract too (probably the same company)

ortunaon Tough Turban: an open-source design for turban-wearing motorcyclists

One of the reasons to not cut your hair and wear a turban is that a Sikh can't hide out in a crowd. You always know who is Sikh. This coupled with the mandate that a Sikh must always help those in need means that you always know where to look and ask for help.

From my perspective (US), this is a much needed belief today since it was born out of the similar circumstances in 1699.

ortunaon Shall the West Pass Too? Whispers from Fallen Civilisations

It's very easy to adapt (as an immigrant). It's not rocket science. I wonder what the argument is going to be since it's way easier with the internet now to be primed already.

ortunaon Smokers quit in record numbers amid Covid fears

I must have tried ~15 or 20 times to quit. I mean really, going at least a week without smoking. I was ~1 pack a day. It stuck the last time, and it's been 5 years I think? People said you'd never stop craving it, which was true for a while. Today, I really don't think about it at all.

ortunaon Head injuries, broken bones plague e-scooter users as more data rolls in

Look again, they are back. City did a trial for 3 or 4 companies and gave a permit to 2 this time around. So they’re back for a while.

ortunaon Ask HN: What is an example of a super simple SaaS that is profitable?

https://commits.io

Pretty simple code poster creator.

ortunaon Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti Push the Limit of Gaming Graphics

I believe the miners are buying up the chips not the cards anymore

ortunaon Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

In a lot of states you used to be able to get the address of a license plate with $5 in admin fees. Not sure if that is still allowed.

ortunaon Quantifying the impact of the Twitter fake accounts purge – a technical analysis

might be the function of the default follow feature and when they were created

ortunaon Dell XPS 13 Kabylake Makes for a Great Linux Laptop

If you want to use NixOs: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Ortuna/b6e95d6baefd2a1683...

-- with the latest kernel, even the webcam is working now (the only thing that didn't).

ortunaon Ask HN: What metaphors or analogies did you find really helpful?

Wow! super helpful!

ortunaon Ask HN: How did you transition from Mac to Linux?

none for me on the 2018 model. Pretty much love it. I did have the older one 2 models ago, which did have the whine, but I bought it at a discount because of that.

ortunaon Ask HN: How did you transition from Mac to Linux?

It does drain, maybe 2%/hr but I thought that was normal? That's what I expect to get on a Mac. I did have to `echo XHC > /proc/acpi/wakeup` because I would shut the lid, but something on the USB bus kept turning it back on.

ortunaon Ask HN: How did you transition from Mac to Linux?

Have a Dell XPS 13 (2018) edition, NixOS w/ minimal gnome install works like a charm!

NixOS config: https://gist.github.com/Ortuna/b6e95d6baefd2a1683ddd848f485b...

ortunaon Anger Over Tourists Swarming Vacation Hot Spots Sparks Global Backlash

The article is talking about remote areas (NZ - Lord of the Rings), beaches, camping trails etc. These areas didn't get a lot of traffic. Now they do which is leading to the undesired outcomes. It's not talking about locals vs tourists. It's mainly talking about sudden influx of people coming into an area.

ortunaon Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

Have he new 9370 with NixOS, no cool whine. Although I had it on the one I had 2 models ago. WiFi and Bluetooth work fine for me. So maybe they’ve worked the kinks out?

ortunaon Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer

I feel like these things are made to be found. They undermine our election process and democracy.

ortunaon Show HN: Hex – Art from files

Neat! I have a similar project for your code https://commits.io

ortunaon Plotter Drawings: Five seconds of Donkey Kong

It's totally worth $200. Same person has probably splurged on something they deem is worth $200.

ortunaon There’s a good chance wildlife photos weren’t shot in the wild

This type of article might be the step to demystifying photography. But the story I get told over and over again (not directly, but by exposure) is about the photographer that traveled miles and waited days to get that shot.

ortunaon Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

That would seem like the strategy used. Mark all the low ratings as "fake" until the business stops paying. Just do a review again. "ohh these weren't fake" reviews and restore them.

ortunaon Ask HN: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Fiberglas boats mass-produced ~20,30+ years ago have been holding up well (depending on maintenance). So they are relatively cheap now. Something that was really mass-produced like the Catalina can be bought for like 10k for a 27 foot one.

ortunaon Building Code Posters with Elixir

You can select the language on the poster page. It'll let you select any/all languages it detects.

Everything is automated so I only look at the poster if someone asks me to checkout an inconsistency (was earlier, not at all now).

Take a look at some of my code (https://github.com/Ortuna) most of it is bad and hacked together. Until I find that one thing that is fun, like commits.io. Then I savor writing each line. I start sweating the little stuff because its fun. But then again some days code isn't as important as going outside.

"Your are not your code"

ortunaon Building Code Posters with Elixir

The PDF library I use gives you the dimensions of a certain letter (via FreeType I believe). I just plot 'X' (or any char for monospace) and get it's width, height.

You could support ignoring binary/generated code with a Linguist(https://github.com/github/linguist) wrapper(ruby).

Hope it didn't sound like criticism, just wanted to talk about it. Not everyone wants to talk about generating posters :)

ortunaon Building Code Posters with Elixir

Execution. I'm a total language nut. So learning each was fun on it's own. Go's package management was a heart breaker for me (at the time). Coming back and fixing an issue in Go was ok until my build machine on EC2 messed up for one reason or another. I had to redo it and took so long to get everything compiling again.

I looked at Rust for mainly Cargo, but ended up staying for the C interop. I was able to take PDF libraries (namely libharu and mupdf) and just link to them (after using bindgen). This gave me a really good binary that was reproducible from scratch easily.

ortunaon Building Code Posters with Elixir

Nice! Maybe we all should come together and make a singular thing :D