HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

sammyo

378 karma · joined August 24, 2007

Standard run of the mill ex ballet dancer/corporate ruby/java/c/python/go developer.
submissionscomments
sammyo··on Mechanical Watch (2022)
My wife finds yard sale watches and has me change the battery, but then I open one, a tiny thing and it's not battery powered but there are layers of tiny tiny gears. Mind boggling. (pro tip, a "bench knife" has a tiny blade that's optimized for plying open watch cases)
sammyo··on Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers
Worked for me yesterday, not the newest but pretty recent. 10th gen paperwhite.
sammyo··on Tell HN: Get a dying iPhone 12 mini in 2026
Had a used 13 Mini for about a year now, very pleased and the battery is just fine.
sammyo··on Public static void main(String[] args) is dead
Same here, oddly pleased that the Scanner class is deprecated before I even knew about it.
sammyo··on Emacs as your video-trimming tool
>I honestly don't know why more people don't gravitate towards these ideas.

They would if there was a bit more GUI introduction. Seriously functional menus and visual indication of modes. With hints from graphical to the faster keyboard sequences.

sammyo··on Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
Not with the ancient barely working WRT54G that comcast keeps nagging me to replace!
sammyo··on The evidence suggests Covid-19 came from a lab
So, is the "The Prosperity Institute" the new NIH? The briefest of googling suggests the source of Covid is undetermined.
sammyo··on MagiskSSH – SSH server on Android without Termux
A (super easy to set up) rsync on IPhone that can "see" the itunes music folder would be a huge boon and likely change the world for the better!
sammyo··on My Dream Thermostat
Just want to turn it on a half hour from arriving home.
sammyo··on Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails
I sent in a report sending bikes through a highway tunnel in Boston, took six months but received a message they made the correction.
sammyo··on Why Google Search Is Falling Apart [video]
Soo essenially eaten by MBA's?
sammyo··on The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out
One actual researcher mentioned good habits will get anyone into their 80's but everyone tested over 105 has most of 100 certain genes. Really old age may be genetic.
sammyo··on The life of two Boeing Starliner astronauts stuck indefinitely in space
Noticed a comment in /r/spacex from a reliable poster that there are very quiet ongoing discussions between NASA and Spacex.
sammyo··on Is America approaching peak tip?
A big percentage of ticket price goes directly to the studio/distributor, perhaps the entire fee stays with the theater.
sammyo··on How the 'queen of thieves' conned French riviera wealthy (2021)
It was altered from the original to allow a Chinese mainland release.
sammyo··on How did people deal with punch cards?
So much better than paper tape! My first adventure was on a PDP-8 that had a paper tape reader that was great but really slow even for that time. So a job with a real card reader that ran through a deck in seconds was cool.

(And I almost got to take a 360/30 front console until some company bought it for scrap. So many flashing lights and dials, I figured I could drive them with a Z80)

sammyo··on How to stop the “login with Google” pop up window?
882
sammyo··on Is math real?
Math is the map. The map is not the territory, yet incredibly useful.
sammyo··on Sears offered complete houses in large DIY kits
There is a couple blocks of these houses near me (near Boston) that seemed like normal small homes. Did not realize until someone mentioned at a party that they lived in a Sears house.
sammyo··on Tildes.net – a non-profit, open-source, text-focused Reddit alternative
Yes please.
sammyo··on Ask HN: What are current (viable) alternatives to Reddit?
Metafilter
sammyo··on Bot or Human? Detecting ChatGPT Imposters with a Single Question
A bear walks due south one mile, then east one mile, then north one mile. Bear is back where it started. What color is the bear?

ChatGPT The color of the bear is not provided in the given information.

(I win, yea! Yeah probably the last time ;-)

sammyo··on Gmail is showing ads in the middle of the inbox
Throw'm a bone. Click on gmail ads, keep gmail alive as long as possible. Yes issues, yes privacy, yes a lot, but gmail is one of the best things on the internet. So good at spam, especially the real nasties. Worth a few clicks.
sammyo··on Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?
Well unless you tell them, don't do that;-)

..sigh and don't ask me how I know.

sammyo··on Sorry, I still think I am right about the media rarely lying
From my short stint as a tech columnist, the number one goal is to get the copy in by deadline. So deliberate lies, not so much, just no time to craft a great lie, joking/not joking. Getting it exactly right in a short time frame, easy to be approximately right, which in some cases is interpreted not well.

One small reference: https://gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolat...

sammyo··on Starlink maritime coverage map [pdf]
Check out the "starlink on boats" forum on fb. Working now for folks.
sammyo··on Ask HN: How does HN manage to be always online?
Why hasn't most of the web moved to Erlang (or erlang like) architecture, actually distributed?
sammyo··on Bizarre Talmudic Scenarios
Ah excellent, I read about the fish and donkey conundrum on an email list years ago and have hunted and asked well versed folks if they knew the reference but no luck. And hey, good luck doing a search for a specific talmud reference ;-0

It's a really fun thought experiment at the level of Schrödinger's poor cat, with interesting nontrivial moral and ethical paradoxes.

sammyo··on Ukraine: Russia plans biggest war in Europe since 1945 – Boris Johnson
Can you comment on that "force"?
sammyo··on Show HN: SHA-256 explained step-by-step visually
They can't. But there are certainly unsavory actors that are able to trick a certain percentage of the unsuspecting to just give them a private key.
Page 1 of 9Next →