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anonlastname

89 karma · joined April 19, 2018

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anonlastname··on Party City says it is closing 45 stores amid a global helium shortage
Hopefully this will make helium supplies last longer for medical and industrial applications
anonlastname··on Chernobyl comes back to life in Ukrainian computer game
See: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
anonlastname··on [dead]
Finally, a distribution for Microsoft apologists
anonlastname··on Ask HN: Why is everything a file in Unix
The idea is that it maximizes simplicity.
anonlastname··on Great White Sharks Flee from Killer Whales
Little fish get eaten by bigger fish
anonlastname··on Super Mario Bros. has been released for the Commodore 64
Thank god. Now I can finally sleep at night.
anonlastname··on Former student destroys 59 university computers using USB Killer device
I could see it being useful for when you want an easy way to get a high voltage spike out of a 5v power supply. For example, if you wanted to build a board for igniting the gas in a potato gun that ran off of a USB power bank.
anonlastname··on Pepsi Plans to Project a Giant Ad in the Night Sky Using Cubesats
It's possible that it could actually work, meaning, average Joe thinks its kind of cool and buys some pepsi.
anonlastname··on Chatbots aren't as difficult to make as You Think
I made a chatbot for the website Omegle one time. It just randomly selected messages to send from a list. It was sort of like the emacs psychotherapist but dumber. Some people would talk to it for minutes before skipping.

It would be interesting to actually port the emacs psychotherapist to Javascript or wasm.

anonlastname··on Explaining Sex Rate Changes
probably because a large portion of HN users are basically STEM nerd incels
anonlastname··on Why Wolfram Tech Isn’t Open Source
Those are not "because it allows us to get more profit." They are arguing that non-free Mathematica is completely in the best interest of their users. Of course it's not. At the end of the day, Sagemath is there for everybody to use and a person can't even use Mathematica unless they're connected to a university. They've sabotaged it with legal barriers and DRM.
anonlastname··on Why Wolfram Tech Isn’t Open Source
Interesting that money is not even on this list
anonlastname··on Berkin Elvan (15 year old “terrorist” killed during Gezi Protests in Turkey)
So it goes
anonlastname··on Tasmanian devils 'adapting to coexist with cancer'
This is because at one point the Tasmanian devil population completely crashed and much of the genetic variation in their population was lost. This is literally a textbook example of something called the "founder effect." The result is that the Tasmanian devils alive today are genetically close enough for their immune systems not to reject each other's cancer.
anonlastname··on Twitter took over a user’s account and joked about reading their DMs
this is peak pettiness
anonlastname··on Appeal accepted: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”
Google can be very difficult when it comes to approving add-ons for their add-on store as well. They approved my add-on that blocks porn ads on a certain website, but won't accept a trivial update on the grounds that it is too NSFW.

They make you provide a screenshot to submit an add-on. I used a screenshot of the website it works on with the porn ads it blocks heavily pixelated. I can't think of any other way to take a screenshot of what my add-on does. So I guess users will have to do without the new update.

anonlastname··on Digital textbooks are technology’s answer to obsolete and heavy textbooks
Digital textbooks aren't going to catch on. The problem is that it is more profitable for publishers to have DRM, so there are legal barriers.

The one digital textbook I rented this year is terrible. It is done through a website with a custom Javascript book viewer that is total garbage.

anonlastname··on Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator
This is the most trivial program on the entire OS. Hooray for Microsoft, I guess.
anonlastname··on Computer Modeling Should Become a Popular Hobby
Many games have a modding community. A lot of these mods are usually suprisingly detailed model packs.
anonlastname··on Apple, Google criticised for Saudi Absher app that tracks women
I support the Google play model- if you want to have your app on the Google Play store it has to conform to certain standards, but the operating system allows you to install arbitrary APKs
anonlastname··on Emails show how fake university in metro Detroit lured students
I don't understand who they were trying to catch with this "sting operation."
anonlastname··on Show HN: Spreadsheet of 1,847 stolen online courses and how to fix it
Sorry chief but I don't believe in imaginary property
anonlastname··on Pictures of Singapore from the same spots, 30 years apart
Interesting how in the recent pictures all of the skys are perfect and blue while in the old pictures they're clowdy. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a hidden agenda behind this.
anonlastname··on Symmetry Continues to Beguile Mathematicians
this story doesn't really say anything about an application of the monster group to physics
anonlastname··on Norden Bombsight (2004)
The Russian strategy during WWII and the winter war only "worked" because they accepted an enormous loss of troops to compensate for all of their other shortcomings. During the Winter War especially, Russian troops lacked equipment such as white camouflage and a single Finnish sniper killed at least 500 Russian troops.

This strategy may have worked, but it's not acceptable.

anonlastname··on Mounting python objects as file system
I love this idea
anonlastname··on A Giant Speaker in Taiwan Is About to Switch on Again (2018)
Building giant speakers to mock the Chinese from must be close to the peak of human pettiness. It is worse than the Frenchman in Monty Python...
anonlastname··on The Erdos Paradox
Perhaps people who think mathematics is full of low hanging fruit are the same ones who grew up looking for binomial coefficient identities and calculating the 3n+1 sequence. It might not seem low hanging to everyone, but maybe to mathematicians.
anonlastname··on OpenSCAD: Software for creating solid 3D CAD objects
In OpenSCAD you build your part by constructing its convex hull. This is done by using primitives with known convex hulls such as rectangles and spheres and combining them using operations such as addition, subtraction, union, and Minkowski sum (which is an interesting peice of mathematics.)

Because you interact with shapes using code, it feels much more precise than a GUI. I think this makes it easier to create parts that aren't "glitchy." You want your part to have the minimal amount of detail and using code makes this easier because you can keep track of the steps to draw your shapes to see if you made any unnecessary changes.

OpenSCAD made me think about CAD in a different way.

anonlastname··on Reversing an n-bit number in O(log n) time
There is a very good art of computer programming book that has a discussion of bit reversal algorithms
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