Hacker News Reader

trevithickon Who Wants to Be a Thousandaire? (2011)

There's definitely more money in gaming credit card rewards, especially if you master the manufactured spending. Like this guy[1].

[1] https://www.twrblog.com/2021/05/making-a-point-tax-courts-an...

trevithickon Who Wants to Be a Thousandaire? (2011)

> One of his later schemes involved opening a checking account with a bank that was offering a promotional $500 to each new customer; he would withdraw the cash at the earliest opportunity, close the account, then repeat the process over and over under assumed names.

He could do this today, without using assumed names, at different banks. Sign up for a bank account that's offering a bonus, comply with the fine print to the letter, get bonus, close account. Repeat at a different bank. This can be parallelized for increased performance. It's minorly lucrative.

There was probably only one local option for this when Larson did it, forcing him to use assumed names. Today there are countless online banking options available. No assumed names required.

$500 is a solid bonus today. That was even more money when Larson was doing this.

trevithickon The Camorra Never Sleeps (2012)

This may not be his best article. But I have enjoyed some of the author's other writing. In particular this one about the sinking of the ferry Estonia.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-s...

(https://archive.is/bs3y6)

trevithickon Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

The example of buying options given in the article would take literally minutes for anyone with an existing brokerage account.

trevithickon Exploring Bauhaus: Revolutionary design school that shaped modern world

Earlier HN discussion on this topic (different article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30270286

I mentioned Tom Wolfe's book "From Bauhaus to Our House." I don't think he likes Bauhaus much.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41001.From_Bauhaus_to_Ou...

trevithickon Considerations for a long-running Raspberry Pi

I use one of these.

https://www.p3international.com/products/p4400.html

trevithickon The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering

Probably too late with this comment, but from today's WSJ: "Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet"

Lends some support to the author's thesis. A little unsettling that the reflective SRM material in the WSJ article isn't sulfur (apparently) but something proprietary of undisclosed composition.

https://www.wsj.com/science/environment/geoengineering-proje...

trevithickon Better Call GPT: Comparing large language models against lawyers [pdf]

You would be a vexatious litigant.

https://www.courts.ca.gov/12272.htm

trevithickon 1D Pac-Man

This is really cool. My bot score stayed low because there was a single dot remaining near the middle which Pac-Man couldn't reach. They went back and forth for a long time until the ghost became fast enough to get him. Still fun to watch.

trevithickon Cisco to acquire Isovalent

Do Cisco certifications still carry any weight? If not, is there another, non-Cisco cert that's worthwhile? I know CCNA etc. used to have value, but it seems most certifications in general are pretty worthless anymore.

trevithickon Johnny Cash Has Been Everywhere (Man)

This is really cool. I thought it was Hank Snow, not Johnny Cash, who made this popular. Not that it matters. (Looks like it was both, and a boatload of other people too.)

trevithickon AMD Open-Source GPU Kernel Driver Above 5M Lines, Entire Linux Kernel at 34.8M

Yeah, I guess this is the answer. When I posted the question I had this[1] in mind, and was thinking of something like that with simplified labels maybe. But I guess the file structure is so organized it would explain itself to anyone interested in this kind of thing.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/GNOME_Di...

trevithickon AMD Open-Source GPU Kernel Driver Above 5M Lines, Entire Linux Kernel at 34.8M

Does a graphical representation of the files in the Linux kernel exist anywhere? Like a graphical file explorer but for the different kernel components.

trevithickon What's Hashing? (2022)

From later in the article:

> MD5 is considered a weak hashing algorithm these days; we use BCrypt, which is stronger.

trevithickon How Will Language Modelers Like ChatGPT Affect Occupations and Industries?

Non-human "life forms on earth" to quote OP. Maybe not birds or bears, could be just a slime mold, but something here will still be going strong after we wipe ourselves out.

trevithickon How Will Language Modelers Like ChatGPT Affect Occupations and Industries?

I agree with your second paragraph but am confident other life forms will ultimately prevail.

trevithickon Slackware Linux distribution turns 30 years old

Good points about Slackware being perfect for learning. It really was, for the reasons you gave. I started with Slackware 9.0, which I think was the last release to fit on a single CD-ROM. Like you I learned a lot about Linux, I wrote lots of simple shell scripts and did a lot of ./configure; make; make install.

Slackware lets you do things your way.

Congrats Patrick and Slackware.

trevithickon Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

Check out the OpenWRT Table of Hardware.[0] It runs on all kinds of stuff.

[0] https://openwrt.org/toh/start

trevithickon Turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer (2022)

Same here. I appreciate the projects like OpenWRT that make this kind of thing possible for mere mortals like me. I flashed OpenWRT onto an old Verizon combo DSL modem/router[0] and now it's a VPN endpoint. I think the most complicated part was uploading the initial firmware via TFTP. But it looks like you can now just use the web interface, so it's even easier. Props to the people who figure this stuff out and make it available.

[0] https://openwrt.org/toh/actiontec/gt784wnv

trevithickon Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

I see the logic in your initial comment. But getting a big pile of money is as realistic as much of what you listed here. How is "Just marry someone wealthy" more realistic than getting a pile of money (not to mention that that suggestion is merely a roundabout way of getting access to a pile of money)? What if I'm already married? There are many reasons the other suggestions are virtually as out of reach for most wage slaves as getting helicopter money.

trevithickon Ask HN: Can I see your scripts?

A bloated script to automate creation of an Arch Linux Qemu VM. The subscript that runs in the VM is useful by itself for setting up a new Arch installation.

https://github.com/trevorgross/installarch/blob/main/install...

It's a personal tool that just kept growing. Probably amateurish by HN standards, but then, I'm an amateur. Yes, I could simply copy a disk image, but that's no fun.

trevithickon The endless influence of the Bauhaus (2017)

This sort of thing never stood out to me until I read Tom Wolfe's sardonic "From Bauhaus to Our House."¹ I recommend it.

¹ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41001.From_Bauhaus_to_Ou...

trevithickon Slackware Linux 15.0 RC3

Congrats Patrick and Slackware.

I started with Slackware 9.0, which I think was the last release to fit on a single CD-ROM. Like others I learned a lot about Linux, I wrote lots of simple shell scripts and did a lot of ./configure; make; make install.

Slackware lets you do things your way.

trevithickon Coinbase outages

https://crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-insid...

Posted on HN a while back.

"To be crystal clear: every time you sell Tethers on Kraken, you are forcing Tether Ltd. to pay you in US dollars. If you can manage to sell enough Tethers for USD on Kraken, then Tether Ltd. will run out of dollars and this whole machine — which currently undergirds 70% of all crypto trading flows — will fall apart.

Well-capitalized hedge fund managers may wish to re-read the above paragraph, and ponder its implications."