Hacker News Reader

ataruon I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

If I ever feel an urge to try out test cases on banking apps, hopefully I'll think of this story and stop.

ataruon Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

I think it is market forces. Fanless laptops can be made, but the bulk of the market seeks reasonable performance at the best price.

I think it doesn't matter much, as you can take a standard laptop and restrict the clock speed, and the fan will never turn on.

ataruon Ask HN: Software Developer vs. Software Engineer

I like to use "software developer" because it's the most straight forward description of what I do. When I need to describe my role to people who don't work in the software industry, it's useful to have a simple title.

Development is more than programming, as it includes other aspects of creating software. I'm not sure we should use the words engineer or architect, as both have strong meanings in other professions, which might not completely fit.

Another reason I like the word "developer", is it implies that there is an ongoing process of "development" - a process which changes direction as it progresses and develops continuously. That fits perfectly with the agile practise I use.

ataruon Renault Zoe NCAP crash rating: zero stars [pdf]

Lightbulbs too, even a 5.5 watt 470lm lightbulb has an F.

ataruon The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS

Maybe he doesn't want to have to create an account. Maybe he doesn't want to figure out how to disable cloud saves. Maybe he doesn't want to pay a subscription fee. Maybe he doesn't want emojis, mentions, hash tags and recommendations about what his friends are reading. Maybe he doesn't want a analytics report in his mail describing about how he used the software this week. Maybe he doesn't want "undoubtedly absolutely necessary telemetry" being reported. Maybe the old ways were better.

ataruon The most impressive linguistic feat I’ve ever seen

I think it could have been written in something like MS-DOS edit, which doesn't have a spell check feature anywhere in sight. So it never saw a spell checker, they didn't have too much awareness of the errors. Maybe they also didn't care about spelling too much - thinking up words that fit in the spaces is fun but correcting spelling errors isn't much fun.

The document being an in depth write up of Super Metroid probably also says something about the person's character!