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We need insane for culture to survive.

simmo9000on Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop

How much would you pay? Seriously.

There is market demand, but at what price? Hardware is a thin margin product.

Is it a few off the shelf parts placed in a custom CNCed block of aluminium or is it engineered, from the ground up, to suit purpose.

Getting an idea of what would people pay for such a product is step one.

5k?

simmo9000on Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

Recommendations for any 'good' ones?

simmo9000on Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

And the Nicotine situation... The "government" sure got a good handle on that.

simmo9000on Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

Australia has "the vote" for that.

simmo9000on Australia is quietly introducing age checks for search engines like Google

1788-2025 and still going strong...

simmo9000on Database management in a single PHP file

Less than a minute to install deploy and use. Could not be easier, well done.

Simple and strait forward is always a winner.

simmo9000on Show HN: Leaflet.pub – a web app for creating and sharing rich documents

Well done. Intuitive and simple like this sort of tool should be.

simmo9000on Station of despair: What to do if you get stuck at end of Tokyo Chuo Rapid Line

Uxbridge, High Barnet, Edgware, all painful for a wake-up nudge from a rail worker at 1am.

Cockfosters was proper despair, and Mordor (or Morden) well... don't.

What took the cake though was flying back and arriving at Stansted after midnight and waiting for the 5am escape back home in the depths of winter.

London offered many memorable evenings for those silly enough to party in the city a while back.

Not drinking so much is probably a way to avoid the despair, but where is the fun in that?

simmo9000on After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

Well done having a go. Most don't.

Publishing your results makes you part of history. Respect.

simmo9000on Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced)

OP having to consult a lawyer IS the problem...

simmo9000on Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced)

Exactly. Adding punitive governance hurdles hinders the small and/or solo.

Those that do whist not seeking financial gain are impacted the most.

Regulatory capture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

simmo9000on UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

Australia is following suit with it's 'Social Media Minimum age bill' that will require ALL users to prove their age.

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...

simmo9000on The Onion buys Infowars

All place every experience in a category. One "man's" lethargy is another's strategy. Look and you see it. We all be it.

simmo9000on A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles

Umm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_carbon_fixation.

simmo9000on A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything from Smartphones to Missiles

It is a financial question... Which product makes most profit, in whole? Whole includes, in part, "The Commons".

simmo9000on Google releases smart watch for kids

Implant would be better. Harder to loose.

simmo9000on Google releases smart watch for kids

"Hook em while they are young" - George Carlin. Dogma.

simmo9000on Mornington Crescent

Bell-size park.

simmo9000on Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

10 mins does sound a little quick?

I can say from experiencing, 20 mins in the freezer for a bare 3.5 or 2.5 HDD would give about 5 mins of "quick, find important stuff" time...

>_last ditch method for pulling files off a dying HDD_ Before pulling it apart and and putting the platters in an identical donor drive. (Dam IBM DEATHSTAR drives back in the day!)

simmo9000on TimeGuessr: Guess what year a photograph was taken

Great concept, addictive enough to keep me playing til I got a 48000!

Two points of note: 1. Some pictures repeat, even in the same game?

2. Years get rounded down to the decade in some cases? "Frank Horvat via Horvatland. A couple in Avingon train station in the late 90s. 1999 - guessed. You were 10 years off"

simmo9000on Why is my dryer radioactive?

Reading more on Po-210, apparently it is used in anti-static objects.

"An antistatic fan made by NRD, of Grand Island, N.Y., contains 31,500 microcuries of polonium 210 — or, in theory, more than 10 lethal doses."

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/weekinreview/03broad.html

simmo9000on How we plan to de-extinct the Dodo bird

Hope that they are better with their genomes and don't put excess "stuff" in...

(Hollywood showed me that could be a bad thing. Frogs, Cuttlefish...)

simmo9000on Microsoft eyes $10B bet on ChatGPT

You mean profitable?

simmo9000on Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

Good call! Better tools make a job easier. Improve your work environment.

Look at your IDE, desktop, editor, OS, monitor, chair, etc. and see how you could improve it with new options. Tech or otherwise...

Is your desk a space of zen? Got a plant on your desk?

simmo9000on Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

Wait till your 50!

Days get shorter, winter gets colder, days blur together. Things change. Fortran was way easier... Pfff objects of objects to keep track of.

Remember what your core strengths are... Where the true wisdom is. And always check back to the requirements document.

You have a detailed one right?

Break what you are required to do into smaller components, but from the other side of the problem, systematically. I find by going smaller and smaller I eventually find a manageable chunk that I can start with.

A rainbow attack on the sha512 can often deliver a fast result.

I have to go yell at a cloud now...

simmo9000on HypChain, the first completely hypothetical blockchain

I sent 0.01 BTC but have not received anything yet...

When will I become rich?

simmo9000on NopeCHA: Captcha Solver

But I do this too...

simmo9000on Galactica: an AI trained on humanity's scientific knowledge (by Meta)

>Question: Will artificial intelligence become sentient in the future?

>Answer: To explain, the question is not whether AI will become sentient, but whether it will be sentient.

>The question is not whether AI will become sentient, but whether it will be sentient.

Philosophy departments may be the first victims of this technology... (or not!)

simmo9000on The forty-year programmer

Started programming on a Vic20 in 1981, kept hacking away for 25 years before going into management in investment banking, telecoms and was c-level in listed companies.

I got noticed by being good at developing small pieces of code to fix a specific problem that individuals had. Code quality did not matter, just the function of the end product. Easy to deliver, nightmare to manage on-going. Agile came in because so many others had the same nightmare.

Got fed up with computers and changed to Landscaping/Building starting as a basic laborer, had great fun and learnt an immense amount but was hard work on the body. Not long-term sustainable which is why I guess lots of co-workers my age go into specialisation, particularly in joining two separate disciplines into 'their' skill. The best bit for me was seeing a tangible result each day, and this is on display to everyone.

I've been back developing code full-time for 4 years now and nothing makes me happier to see concepts come to digital reality. Even if I am the only one that sees my daily progress, I am happy. I know now, eventually people see at the end of the project.

Managing expectations.

Development is the balance of enjoying coding for the coder while delivering for the user, (whoever pays the bills). I assume this is why there are so many open-source love projects, which fits into the playing an instrument for fun.

But hey, it's like that Sunblock Song...