Hacker News Reader

bloopernovaon Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'

And now musk is calling for the impeachment of Judge Paul Engelmayer who blocked his department from accessing government payment/financial systems.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5134725-elon-musk-impe...

This should be mandatory reading for everyone who argues this is just fine: https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/022...

bloopernovaon Generating Voronoi diagrams using Fortune's algorithm

Your animation reminded me of the style used in A Scanner Darkly (2006)

I wonder if it's possible to use video as an input to an algorithm that displays using Voronoi? Probably at that point it wouldn't be a Voronoi diagram, but it might look cool :)

bloopernovaon VSCode’s SSH agent is bananas

Are you OK? I just asked a question, which implies that I cared enough to at least ask.

bloopernovaon VSCode’s SSH agent is bananas

I'm DevOps and don't pretend to understand good code layout in large projects, but why would you keep a "printTime" function in remote extension management code?

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/c9e7e1b72f80b12ffc0...

(Genuine question, I'm puzzled!)

bloopernovaon German civil activists win victory in election case against X

Sure, there's definitely a chance that some people reacted to the pendulum swing to the left; highlighted by (among many things?) Obama's election and marriage equality being passed.

But I think that more people were affected by these things:

The continued lack of funds allocated to education resulting in a terrible lack of critical thinking

The constant bombardment of social media

The influence of russia et al on social media

The gaming of recommendation algorithms by the far-right resulting in the pipeline to hatred

The crisis of masculinity where today's men don't feel they fill the same roles as their grandfathers, leading some to fall down the pipeline to hate

The gerrymandering of districts

Election rolls/registers being purged of historically left leaning people

USA supreme court rulings like Citizens United

Congress being so utterly out of touch with average Americans

And congress' age issue

Of course, there's many more points that people could argue about all day, and I don't think we're going to find out any real reasons here on HN. Maybe in 100 years time, if there's anyone left, the historians will be able to find the root issues.

bloopernovaon German civil activists win victory in election case against X

thank you

The more people that call out derail and divide attempts, the better this site gets.

bloopernovaon Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

Why not just paste some and link to their source?

bloopernovaon Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

What sort of opinions?

bloopernovaon America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

Oh I just don't like the tendency of tech folks to reach for technological solutions before they consider social/organizational ones.

bloopernovaon What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

And if you gave that reason for taking down production, you'd get fired.

bloopernovaon What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

I think people are more concerned about the economic fallout and the illegality of what is being done.

bloopernovaon What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

The wealthy will just take their money and leave the country.

And for all you HN readers supporting these massive changes: you'd test changes beforehand and plan their deployment carefully if this were software. So why why do you support explicitly not doing those things when the livelihood of 300 million people depend on the economy being stable?!?

And before the inevitable derail or whatabout attempt: Don't play political games with people's lives.

And, again, everything is political, including every aspect of discussions on HN.

bloopernovaon America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

I think the grandparent comment is asking within the context of the past couple of weeks.

Not saying that your sources aren't useful or anything.

bloopernovaon America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

(this is going to sound like I think this can be fixed with a technical solution. I don't)

I wonder what the software UX is like for ATC, and if there's room for improvement? Is the software/hardware ancient? I'd hope that it is absolutely rock solid but knowing big custom projects I'm not very hopeful!

bloopernovaon The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

My other pet metaphor is that we're all standing on top of wobbling Jenga tower and the republicans want to knock out the blocks beneath us.

And thank you :)

bloopernovaon The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

It'll be just like the 1930s with a deeply isolationist USA.

History sure does have an uncanny way of rhyming if not actually repeating.

Something that greatly galls me is that the livelihood of tens of millions of families depend on the whims of people who think only in terms of profit. Government is not supposed to make a damned profit! The government's primary role should be to care for everyone, from entrepreneurs to people with disabilities. I'm not saying "handouts for all", I'm saying that the government needs to provide stability, a level foundation for all to build upon.

It's like Venkman in Ghostbusters, in the ballroom: he yanks away the tablecloth sending everything flying except "the flowers are still standing!". The rich are the flowers, secure on their own foundation, calm with the knowledge that the guy pulling the tablecloth can't affect them. In other words, the new administration should be carefully enacting new policies not causing chaos by doing everything too quickly.

Unless their goal is to destroy the USA, in which case US citizens will need to decide what country they want to live in and whether republicans are capable of delivering that.

bloopernovaon The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

The markets have been disconnected from reality for a long time, at least a decade.

bloopernovaon The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

The republicans purged a lot of people from voter rolls. They're going to do the same in 2026.

If you want to vote, anticipate dozens of hours over several months making sure you weren't removed from the register.

Why are they so against people voting? The number of actual fraudulent vote cases prosecuted was very, very small, but the measures taken against voter fraud have been disproportionate.

bloopernovaon Ask HN: Is onboard audio still good enough compared to dedicated Sound Cards?

Not OP, but here's my audio stuff in case anyone wanted product recommendations:

  (Connected to PC via USB)
  Schiit Modi DAC
  Schiit Vali 2 Headphone Amp (with a tube!)
  PreSonus E4.5 Powered Studio Monitors

  (Connected to phone via USB)
  Aune Yuki DAC
  Meze 99 Classics headphones.

To my ears, both sound pretty good. Especially on the phone, Tidal hires audio seems to sound better. Although I have not performed any double-blind tests or anything!!

bloopernovaon Bluesky now has 30 million users

Your comment appears to say "if you're not guaranteed a perfect, immediate, and lasting victory, then just don't bother."

This just reads as divisive, dismissive, or destructive.

Please note I'm not saying that you are those things, just that your comment reads like that.

bloopernovaon Bluesky now has 30 million users

My experience with bsky.app is good so far. It's more like twitter was before 2015: I've had enjoyable conversations with a few different people, blocked some trolls, and discovered some new history books to read.

The XBlock Screenshot Labeler moderation service has mostly kept the reposted screenshots to a minimum. When reporting a post you can choose which service to inform, so a screenshot would get reported to XBlock rather than the bsky.app mod team. https://bsky.app/profile/xblock.aendra.dev

I assume that more moderation services will get plugged in as the site grows. It's an interesting model/protocol/service.

bloopernovaon Musk Says DOGE Halting Treasury Payments to US Contractors

Whatever your political beliefs can you at least agree that suddenly removing billions from the economy, by not paying or firing people, is reckless?

These are your fellow US citizens, not faceless robots or zombies in a computer game. They have lives, family, hopes, and a third of the country wants to put them on the streets? Why do you dehumanize with such fervor?

bloopernovaon AstroForge selects target for “high risk, seat of the pants” asteroid mission

I wish you every success. You're doing what 10 year old me in the 1980s dreamed of.

I still daydream about bootstrapping in solar orbit. My amateur idea was to focus the sun onto rocks with huge mirrors at first, lasers later. Then using a handwaving/centrifugal force to separate out the elements lol. Though I wasn't smart enough to figure out what was needed to build a factory via a bunch of robots.

Sorry for the rambling!

bloopernovaon Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

I recently used virtualbuddy with a macOS VM to test a developer environment setup with an Ansible playbook.

Worked well for my simple use case.

bloopernovaon A bookmarklet to kill sticky headers (2013)

Is there a way to get this working on Firefox Android?

The bluesky sticky header is annoying, and I haven't seen a way to just switch it off.

EDIT: solved: drag kill sticky to bookmarks on desktop browser, then access bookmark from sync'd Firefox on Android.

bloopernovaon Giant catapult sends satellites into space

Good point!

If the launch vehicle can accelerate well enough in low pressure instead of vacuum then maybe you could "just in time" depressurize segments of the tube. Although that's still getting perilously close to the magical airlock concept.

Apologies for rambling, this is fascinating.

bloopernovaon Giant catapult sends satellites into space

Accelerating in a huge vacuum chamber seems pretty difficult to achieve, and wouldn't there be a huge shock to the vehicle as it hits a wall of dense air?

How much of a difference would a low pressure chamber make, I wonder? Maybe you could build the circular accelerator then a much longer exit pipe that runs up the side of a mountain. Although that sounds way, way easier said than done! But if your exit air pressure is roughly equal to your accelerator air pressure, then you don't need a fancy airlock system.

The tether they proposed also seems a bit too much of the wishful thinking like "we just need a bundle of carbon nanotubes 1km long!" Wouldn't an electromagnetic accelerator work better?

bloopernovaon Superheavy element half-life measurements push back the limits of stability

oh, right. Thank you for helping a bear with very little brain.

bloopernovaon Superheavy element half-life measurements push back the limits of stability

> bombarding lead with a beam of titanium-50 accelerated to 10% the speed of light

Please forgive the poor understanding, but isn't titanium non-magnetic? How does one accelerate titanium?

bloopernovaon Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

I know a couple of older people who smoke marijuana for pain/relaxation.

You are correct though, they're not the target market. I would like to see some of the more modern conveniences redesigned though. Perhaps I can win the lottery and start a business for that need. Kind of like the bras and shirts with magnetic clasps for people with limited mobility.