Hacker News Reader

asteroidburgeron Silicon Valley finally has a big electronics retailer again: Micro Center opens

There's already a bunch of vacant Walgreens / Rite Aid / Bartell Drugs locations, with more to come. Surely one of the bigger ones would be adequate.

asteroidburgeron Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

A US pilot certificate itself does not include a photo, but you must have a photo ID to use it. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-61/section-61.3#p...

asteroidburgeron Show HN: I used OpenAI's new image API for a personalized coloring book service

The author has since listed the prompt elsewhere in the comments. It includes, "The drawing is in a simple Studio Ghibli portrait style."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43801189

asteroidburgeron Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

I haven't used them personally so I can't vouch for them, but UGREEN's NAS line is the same form factor as a Synology unit, but it lets you run any OS. I'd probably put straight Debian on mine and handle it all manually as I do now. I wouldn't be surprised if you could put Unraid on it.

asteroidburgeron Microsoft employees recall their early years

Doesn't that include Google Workspace though? Sure, a dollar is a dollar, but presumably a huge chunk of that money is Workspace, meaning it's not going towards raw compute.

asteroidburgeron A note on the USB-to-PS/2 mouse adapter that came with Microsoft mouse devices

There's a purple adapter too that came with some keyboards. It looked like it came out of the same molds, so I suspect it's a similar situation.

asteroidburgeron U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

The Senate Intelligence Committee already held a hearing today: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339484/signal-war-plan...

asteroidburgeron These Are the 10 Doge Operatives Inside the Social Security Administration

Thiel himself has stayed out of the media, but a lot of what's happening is directly related to him. He's a big part of the reason we have JD Vance.

I recently came across this article from July 2024. I'm not sure what to think of it - it feels a bit conspiracy-ish, but it explains a lot of what's happening now.

https://washingtonspectator.org/peter-thiel-and-the-american...

asteroidburgeron EdgeDB is now Gel and Postgres is the future

Figured I'd poke at the quickstart a bit, but the github repo linked to from https://docs.geldata.com/learn/quickstart/setup/nextjs (https://github.com/geldata/quickstart-nextjs) appears to be missing.

asteroidburgeron Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

If you need the upgraded performance, you can pay a bit more and get the ESP32 equivalent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4Z4YG4H/

Personally, I've found the ESP8266 version adequate in the year I've owned it.

asteroidburgeron Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

I’m a fan of these guys:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHHZTGJR

Power is passed through from either connector, so it’ll work on 5v or 12v strings. And it’s got two output channels. It’s only an ESP8266 inside, but that works fine for my needs.

For a slightly more DIY approach, try this one:

https://wiki.vdbx.io/product/flip_c3

Has everything you need to give it some sort of power and get the requisite data signal out.

asteroidburgeron What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

For various definitions of "you." That's far beyond the reach of the average consumer.

asteroidburgeron Comparing AWS S3 with Cloudflare R2: Price, Performance and User Experience

There is a difference between policing the internet and supplying resources and services to known bad actors.

Their job isn’t to investigate and punish harassment and criminal behavior, but they certainly don’t have to condone it via their support.

asteroidburgeron Comparing AWS S3 with Cloudflare R2: Price, Performance and User Experience

“Here’s a bunch of great things about CloudFlare R2 - and please buy my book about it” leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Also, has CF improved their stance around hosting hate groups? They have strongly resisted pressure to stop hosting/supporting hate sites like 8chan and Kiwifarms, and only stopped reluctantly.

asteroidburgeron Tesla excluded from EV buyer credits in California proposal

I used an L1 charger at home when I first bought my car; I'm familiar with the process and speed. But I didn't have the foresight to carry the L1 cord with me in my carry-on luggage, nor did I want to buy one to leave behind, so I was missing that very critical component. Rentals do not include any cables, so I had no way to go from a 5-15 outlet to a J1772 or NACS vehicle.

asteroidburgeron Tesla excluded from EV buyer credits in California proposal

Twice recently I've traveled by air to visit an ill family member in CA. Both times I've reserved a hybrid, but given a "free upgrade" to an EV because the hybrids were gone. I stayed with family who don't have any charging infrastructure at home. The two DCFCs in town were constantly busy any time of day I tried them. My only saving grace was that the rental facility was apparently aware of this sort of problem, and preemptively told me to not worry about bringing it back charged.

I love my EV that I daily drive back home, but if I, someone who already has the apps and knows how things work, have a problem with it, it's gonna really suck for those who don't. CA should really consider improving local charging infrastructure before sponsoring more EVs on the road.

asteroidburgeron Tailwind CSS v4.0 Beta 1

Software is required to "help" with CSS. Only seems reasonable that you'd need to install said software. Installing the Tailwind package provides the Tailwind software. So when you build your website that uses the `block` class, that class actually exists somewhere - because you pulled it in with the installation via the package manager.

Surely we can agree that distributing shared libraries via a package manager is a good practice, no?

asteroidburgeron Restic: Backups done right

Rustic is a rewrite of Restic from Go to Rust. See https://rustic.cli.rs/docs/comparison-restic.html

asteroidburgeron Bankrupt Fisker says it can't migrate its EVs to a new owner's server

The latter one is the most plausible explanation I’ve read yet. Basically, they can’t give away the keys to the kingdom because they’re for the entire kingdom, not just the unsold inventory.

asteroidburgeron We're excited about our new roundabout

https://maps.app.goo.gl/aBMc8ik6B1zZbBPQ7

It's not quite the middle of nowhere, but definitely quite rural. I wouldn't expect to find pedestrians out there.

asteroidburgeron Ask HN: What are you working on (September 2024)?

I have an experimental aircraft, a Vans RV-14, that I've been working on for far too long. I have all the expensive parts on hand, I just need to finally finish putting them together.