Hacker News Reader

ottoluddon Why flying insects gather at artificial light

I've always noticed that sun rays through monofilament fishing line attract dragonflies, yet fails to do so on overcast days.

ottoluddon Google's NotebookLM Could Be the Ultimate AI-Based Notes App If It Stops Lying

I haven't found Bard to be particularly useful due to the lies and hallucinations. I feel like there should be more warning that the information you receive is very likely to be incorrect, given that there's a large number of people who google a question and accept the first answer they find as fact, and they'll be transitioning to this technology, perhaps initially unaware of its shortcomings.

ottoluddon Ask HN: How many of us have (nearly) abandoned Reddit over the API debacle?

my Infinity installation on Android (obtained via fdroid) continues to work, without prompting me to make any payments, so I'm still using it. however, the general quality of content and discussion seems to have dropped significantly. all interesting discussion on the comment section is obscured by tired and banal "reddit culture " attempts at humor, or political flamewars, since literally everything is politicized now. I don't find Reddit nearly as useful, interesting or entertaining as I once did.

ottoluddon Tell HN: Anyone else realize that Twitter has been in the news every single day

Twitter is still alive? Millions of active Twitter users assured me it'd be dead by now.

ottoluddon The past is not true

While he did attack two men, the blinded victim actually lost his eye prior to the incident and claimed Wahlberg didn't inflict any lasting damage. Apparently Marky Mark mistakenly believed he blinded the man. Not that I'm defending him, I don't even like him.

ottoluddon Tell HN: Google will delete inactive accounts

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this is a means of preventing other companies from using YouTube videos to train AI. Google will have access to the whole of YouTube uploads, whereas the rest of the world will only have access to the videos that were uploaded by active accounts.

ottoluddon What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers

I remember carding hosting, creating a site, calling it dk-online and uploading every spammer and email harvester we had, then posting a bunch of affiliate links. I think I made like $800 in AdultRevenueService webmaster referrals before the site was taken down.. good times..

ottoluddon What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers

There's still mirrors of AOL-Files on the web somewhere. I was looking at my profile I submitted to their "AOL People" directory back in '98 not too long ago

ottoluddon What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers

The "modal tool" I think they called it. It was accessed from a asterisk-marked drop-down menu.

T4nk by Kai, empee3 player by freeza and A.S.S. (AOL spamming system) by Mikey were my favorite AOL proggies. I remember hanging out in the private room "vb" a lot, with all the crackers and spammers chatsending their rates