Hacker News Reader

voidmain0001on The battle to stop clever people betting

This podcast episode addresses sports betting and touches on why religious groups condone it.

voidmain0001on Perhaps Coinbase has made it too easy to impulse spend money with Base?

"...scrolling your feed, it actually makes you money" https://youtu.be/BKRd5M0TE6w?t=133

"...double tap to do a quick buy and immediately I trade $10 worth of Avantis" https://youtu.be/BKRd5M0TE6w?t=211

That’s the opposite of my experience with Spanish as I found verb conjugation super formulaic and easy. Regardless, what I meant is that I can explain when and why subjunctive is used in Spanish but struggle with this in English.

voidmain0001on The Whole App is a Blob

I'm a native English speaker and taught myself Spanish. I focused heavily on grammar and verb conjugation such that I can explain verb tenses and their uses to someone else learning Spanish, yet I struggle to explain the same to an English learner. Either I didn't care enough to pay attention during my English courses or it's not taught.

voidmain0001on Oldest woman to finish Ironman World Championship in Kona

The Oct-2025 National Geographic has an an article entitled How to age like an athlete. It has stories like that of Nora Langdon, 82 YO woman, that started powerlifting in her 60s. She set personal records in her 70s of 203lbs bench press, 381lbs dead lift, and 413lbs squat. Heavy exercise doesn’t appear to have negatively impacted lifespan in her or others in the article.

voidmain0001on Tell HN: Azure outage

If they used standalone merchant terminals, then those typically use the local LAN which can rollover to cellular or PoT in the event of a network outage. The store can process a card transaction with the merchant terminal and then reconcile with the end of day chit. This article from 2008 describes their PoS https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/store-operations/ca...

voidmain0001on Tether is now the 17th largest holder of US debt

NPR Planet Money has a podcast from last week speaking about hedge funds buying US treasuries. They touch on the chaos that can come from hedge funds buying treasuries and suggest that hedge funds might be lumped into the too big to fail group.

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/10/nx-s1-5565181/trilemma-treasu...

voidmain0001on uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

+1 for Orion.

voidmain0001on Claude for Excel

From their FAQ “Claude doesn’t have advanced Excel capabilities including pivot tables, conditional formatting, data validation, data tables, macros, and VBA. We’re actively working on these features.”

voidmain0001on AMD's Chiplet APU: An Overview of Strix Halo

The upper tier G1a comes with an OLED 2.8K touch display.

The vapor chamber cooling on the HP seems efficient, but the back side venting on the flow is clearly better.

https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/c09119722.pdf

voidmain0001on AMD's Chiplet APU: An Overview of Strix Halo

HP ZBook Ultra G1a is a great option and can be bought with up to 128GB RAM.

voidmain0001on Spotlight on pdfly, the Swiss Army knife for PDF files

How do you use qpdf for extraction when its README states “qpdf does not render PDFs or perform text extraction, and it does not contain higher-level interfaces for working with page contents.”

voidmain0001on A mechanic offered a reason why no one wants to work in the industry

A friend with 4 children and not much money would search out used vehicles with 300,000kms with the reasoning that if the vehicle made it that far and was in an reasonable condition then he wouldn’t have to invest much into it. Plus they were very cheap since no one wanted them. Pre-COVID of course.

voidmain0001on Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

A couple of weeks ago. My employer provided a new computer which I loaded with Fedora. I found the colors on Remmina really saturated and harsh. I loaded Win11 because I really disliked it. But, I will try Fedora again since I need to reinstall Win11 due to an account problem I can’t resolve.

voidmain0001on A mechanic offered a reason why no one wants to work in the industry

For years, it was difficult to hire licensed mechanics at Hyundai dealerships due to the massive recall of the 2.4L engine. Since Hyundai had to eat the losses of offering a lifetime warranty to owners of that engine, recalls and product improvements, mechanics bore some of that financial burden when Hyundai provided a low labor rate to them. They would spend days swapping an engine and watch a lube lane mechanic out earn them.

voidmain0001on A mechanic offered a reason why no one wants to work in the industry

I thought the same about Toyota being better quality, but I took delivery of a 2024 Sienna and it has had several visits to the dealership for warranty items. Not mechanical, but I still find them disconcerting since they could indicate a lack of QC. I'm sure you're aware of the major turbo QC problems Toyota has with the 3.4L twin turbo in the Tundra and Sequoia models. I think all automotive mfgrs are racing to the bottom when it comes to quality hoping that the world moves en masse to an AaaS model and stops holding on to them.

voidmain0001on Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account

I so wish I could move to Linux, but I extensively use Windows computers via RDP and the Linux RDP clients are just so bad on my eyes. I tried Remmina, rdesktop and FreeRDP. Maybe NX would be a good option but I can't install NX on all of the computers I use. I guess I should shut-up and try to contribute to those projects to make them better.

voidmain0001on Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

Sleeping on a hard surface to avoid side sleeping - noted. Sleeping on my back will lead to snoring which is not appreciated by those around me. I will try the pillow replacement suggestion, though.

voidmain0001on Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank

You sleep on a hard surface? That is really difficult for me as a side sleeper. I have slept on hard surfaces out of necessity and my hips and knees are hurting by morning. Do you use a pillow or is your head on the hard surface too?

voidmain0001on $2 WeAct Display FS adds a 0.96-inch USB information display to your computer

Or the opposite function of an audio potentiometer (logarithmic potentiometer).

voidmain0001on Grocery prices have jumped up, and there's no relief in sight

I listened to Planet Money from NPR in August[0] where it claimed that inflation was based on feeling rather than data. The summary was that groceries are not a good measure of inflation since they're seasonal and the best way to buy groceries was the same as dollar cost averaging investment - buy the groceries when you need them and the prices will average out.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/08/15/nx-s1-5500523/when-our-inflat...

voidmain0001on Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels

Don't forget Calgary, AB and this film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waydowntown

voidmain0001on Lazy-brush – smooth drawing with mouse or finger

Lazy radius of 1, friction of .50 and brush radius of 3 provides the ideal environment for me to cursive write with a mouse.

voidmain0001on Dumb Pipe

One limitation of iOS is the inability to use Bluetooth to transfer an image/video file to a Bluetooth receiver such as Windows. The Apple documentation requires a wired connection. https://support.apple.com/en-ca/120267

If LocalSend is running on iOS and Windows does LocalSend have the ability to send photos?

voidmain0001on Better Auth, by a self-taught Ethiopian dev, raises $5M from Peak XV, YC

Why does the article’s title state the country of origin of the developer? Does it matter? Is it a surprise that there are smart, business savvy developers across the globe?

voidmain0001on No Hello

Uh, Yes Hello. My technique is to send an initial 'hello' message when I need to get a quick response or when I don't frequently communicate with the other party. After sending the 'hello' message I immediately plough on by sending my next message(s) which are probably questions or wants. With so many people exhibiting ADD symptoms, myself included, a series of notifications on their device encourages them to respond to me. The cat's out of the bag now for why I do this.

I also like to inject civility and cordiality into messaging because I find it's treated with barbarism by some that send a message like a stone through a window.

voidmain0001on Show HN: PyDoll – Async Python scraping engine with native CAPTCHA bypass

I will be using Pydoll for the following legitimate use case: a franchisee is given access to their data as controlled by the franchise through a web site. The franchisee uses browser automation to retrieve its data but now the franchise has deployed a WAF that blocks Chrome webdriver. This is not a public web site and the data is not public so it frustrates the franchisee because it just wants its data which is paid for by its franchisee fees.

voidmain0001on Launch HN: Nomi (YC X25) – Copilot for Sales

I just finished a presentation from Ring Central where it highlighted this exact feature as one of its many features that exist to provide real time coaching.

voidmain0001on New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

Option+ 30B CFU. It was on sale at a pharmacy that was in a convenient area. I bought based on it being discounted and having average CFU.