HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

EvilGrin

61 karma · joined November 12, 2015

submissionscomments
EvilGrin··on Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove
If this was in England it may of been an extended priest hole to hide Catholic Priests after the reformation. If there was an entire chapel hidden away it may of been for said priest to conduct mass for the Catholic household in secret.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_hole

EvilGrin··on Amiga Samplers: Budget dance music in 1990 [video]
If you are interested in picking up some of this music from then and now check out the Mod Archive.

https://modarchive.org/

You will need a media player that understand mod file formats to play the majority of the music files on the site. They have recommendations per platform in their FAQ.

EvilGrin··on Show HN: AI Dungeon 2 – AI-generated text adventure built with 1.5B param GPT-2
The site seems to be down?
EvilGrin··on Airborne laser scan reveals Arran's ancient sites
Yep, one interesting idea about these Amazon sites is that they add corroborating evidence to Francisco de Orellana (the first Spanish explorer to travel the length of the Amazon) that he claimed he had found huge cites with hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people living in the Amazon basin.

Presumably by the time later explorers came along 50 years later to verify his claims, the people had all been killed by European diseases like small pox and the jungle had claimed back the cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Orellana

EvilGrin··on Airborne laser scan reveals Arran's ancient sites
It's LIDAR. It's main benefit for finding archaeology earthworks is that it is possible to remove the vegetation from the results. So anything obscured by trees becomes visible for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar#Airborne

EvilGrin··on New Game: Minecraft Earth
The Verge article mentions an in-game currency (rupees) so I expect they are going down the 'in-game shop' route. With the option that you grind for the in-game currency or you can just swap real money for game money. Hopefully they wont make this pay to win and stick to just cosmetics. They have stated in the FAQ that they are not doing loot boxes so there is hope.
EvilGrin··on Does the UK Think It Can Police the Internet?
However, the censorship requires enforcement. Post austerity the UK police force is overstretched and undermanned by its own admission. For example, the Manchester Police Commissioner stated just the other day that 43% of real world crimes are not investigated due to budget cuts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-47963134

So British government can write all the laws it likes, until it starts paying for enforcement I don't see how it matters.

EvilGrin··on I Can't Do Anything for Fun Anymore; Every Hobby Is an Attempt to Make Money
Well, you'll be pleased to know its very easy.

My first stab at it was simply following a youtube tutorial on how to make it based on what you can buy at the supermarket (bread yeast, mineral water, honey and some raisins). You mix it all up and leave it to ferment in the water bottle. This turned out rather well.

I then bought a basic 'kit' off amazon, and a couple of books. The recommended reading is 'The Compleat Meadmaker' by Ken Schramm and 'The Complete Guide to Making Mead' by Steve Piatz. Start off with simple meads. Then experiment. :)

Making friends with the local beekeeping association and LARP group is also recommended. :)

There is tons of info on the Internet as you would expect.

EvilGrin··on I Can't Do Anything for Fun Anymore; Every Hobby Is an Attempt to Make Money
I brew mead. There's no way I could make money from it. However I can make enough to get myself and everyone around me blind drunk. Free mead quickly stops a lot of arguments.
EvilGrin··on EU says new cars must include built-in speed limiters
Yes, I recently replaced my car headunit with an android based systema and I now have Waze as my Sat Nav. It is configurable to notify you when you are speeding[1]. More amusingly it'll tell you how close you are to the average speed for a section of road covered by average speed cameras[2].

[1] https://support.google.com/waze/answer/6386895?hl=en

[2] https://support.google.com/waze/answer/7052887?hl=en&ref_top...

EvilGrin··on Nasa Happily Reports the Earth Is Greener
This sounds like something the GMO industry would be working on already.
EvilGrin··on Strange earthquake waves rippled around Earth
Deep Underground Military Base
EvilGrin··on Gamers Want DMCA Exemption for ‘Abandoned’ Online Games
> Run on hardware an order of magnitude more powerful than was available to the original WoW server devs

Back in 2012 Blizzard sold the original servers off for charity so we actually know what they used (HP p-class blades).

https://www.geek.com/games/blizzard-is-selling-old-world-of-...

EvilGrin··on Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
This is just a facet of the good old fashioned project management 'iron' triangle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle

Crudely put, for project X you have three the following constraints. Cheap, On time, and good quality. You get to pick two of these three. It would seem to me most companies are opting for cheap, on time delivery and thus the quality is simply absent.

EvilGrin··on The Everything Bubble [infographic]
So when they repo lots of cars due to a downturn the second hand market will crash. Which means the book value for all cars goes down the toilet.
EvilGrin··on Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data
You could just check their Github? :)

https://github.com/nationalsecurityagency

EvilGrin··on Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
27 March 2017.

http://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2017/03/27...

EvilGrin··on Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
Despite countless protests from politicians, the laws of mathematics trump the laws of the land.
EvilGrin··on HMS Queen Elizabeth is 'running outdated Windows XP', raising cyber attack fears
Yes that ended in April 2015. The then Government decided to end the contract under the guises of austerity.

https://governmenttechnology.blog.gov.uk/2015/05/22/update-o...

I don't think it work out as a cost effective saving of course, as the NHS was badly hit by WannaCry as we all know.

EvilGrin··on Sale of Kodi ‘fully-loaded’ streaming boxes faces legal test in UK
The BBC like to change the page title after the initial posting of the article, especially if the story is still developing.