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dirtbox

388 karma · joined December 22, 2009

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dirtbox··on Kidney Stones Are More Beautiful Than You Might Think
Sorry, I missed this - Quite simply my kidneys filter more than they're meant to, it's hereditary, as you've discovered. I've found that a cup of stone breaker tea once or twice a week keeps them at bay so that's well worth looking into. Look it up on Amazon.
dirtbox··on Kidney Stones Are More Beautiful Than You Might Think
I get one to two stones per year because my kidneys are over efficient. I'm fairly used to it now and can usually pass one with minimal discomfort, but every now and then it destroys me. The only beautiful thing about them is when they exit.
dirtbox··on The C256 Phoenix Project aka What Commodore 256 could have been like
I grew up with the ZX Spectrum, initially starting out with the ZX80 and 81 which I soldered together myself with the help of my equally clueless father.

One of the most enduring and engaging aspects of the old micros is the inherent limitation of the hardware. You're constantly battling with extreme optimisation and utilising often quite hacky hardware tricks to do things that would otherwise be impossible to achieve while mastering the arcane arts of assembler. I think above all that's the beauty of them and why people are still supporting these projects.

I'm very sad about missing out on the Spectrum Next which is nearly due to ship their completed cased model after a successful release of only the board. Complete with keyboard and design from the recently late original designer of those same machines I had in the 80s, Rick Dickinson.

dirtbox··on It certainly looks bad for Uber
You can continue to cast the blame for frankly abysmal state of cyclist safety in this country, meanwhile cyclists die with alarming regularity however many of those factors are in play.
dirtbox··on It certainly looks bad for Uber
I moved to the US a few years ago and have already lost count of how many cyclists wearing dark clothing and no lights on poorly lit roads I've nearly hit at night.

I had to take a cycling proficiency test in the UK, here no one seems to have a clue, they don't even always ride on the right side of the road.

This woman neglected any due care and her death, while tragic, is entirely her own fault.

dirtbox··on Paper is dead, long live paper programming
I wish I'd thought of that, now I have bad handwriting and a plethora of D's.
dirtbox··on The FBI, CIA and NSA say American citizens shouldn't use Huawei phones
The takeaway being that the Kirin line of CPUs is proving difficult to create a backdoor for.
dirtbox··on Fermented Shark, Anyone?
For me worse than shark was ordering lamb and being served an entire sheep's head.
dirtbox··on Meltdown Proof-of-Concept
No.

It's just that it's highly suspicious that anyone is making any type of mention of it at all.

dirtbox··on Meltdown Proof-of-Concept
It's the type of announcement that makes me wonder if they had the chip makers incorporate it specifically for them to exploit.
dirtbox··on A CPU bug with undocumented opcodes, possibly Intel (scroll to p. 155)
Here's the page for all who wondered.

https://image.prntscr.com/image/KDuFv8gRQYeLJG3pO8wwmQ.png

Within the context of the prior and subsequent pages, it appears to be talking about AMD.

dirtbox··on Apple has admitted to purposely slowing down iPhones
If improving stability was the intention, why haven't they ever warned anyone that it would make their expensive, perfectly functioning phone relatively useless?

Nothing about their reason rings true. If it were the case then why didn't the previous IOS installation have limited performance before the update?

dirtbox··on Google Maps' Moat
Even more impressive, when in satellite view hold control, click and drag upwards.
dirtbox··on Google Maps' Moat
I wouldn't even know my own neighbourhood as well as I do without Google maps. One of, if not the single most impressive digital feats freely available to all on the internet.
dirtbox··on F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules
This seems like a last gasp attempt to tighten the monopoly, and it's doomed to fail. If nothing else, this will set the wheels in motion to bypass the established ISPs altogether, whether it's via node distribution or banking on Musk's satellite network. Or holding out hope that Google will pick up their fiber business again. Whatever happens, it's going to be interesting.
dirtbox··on “The Orville” is on a smoother trajectory, with just a bit of turbulence
To be fair, the first season of TNG fared worse.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/star_trek_the_next_generat...

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/star_trek_discovery/s01

dirtbox··on Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
Hah. You're not wrong about calling it a downgrade. Absolutely everything I've tried has been a downgrade from pebble. It's as if everyone is deliberately avoiding what was, for me at least, perfection.
dirtbox··on Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
Someone posted a proof of concept a year or two ago on reddit.com/r/pebble Beyond that I don't know any specifics.
dirtbox··on Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
It lasts up to 10 days on one charge and the app has been decentralised, meaning it's not reliant on external servers.
dirtbox··on Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
Which, from your point of view, isn't a bad thing. It's no longer dependant on external servers, yet still enjoys a lot of support, is easy to code for, plus it's superb as smart watches go. Charging 3 times a month rather than every night means you can track your sleep with it effectively as well.
dirtbox··on Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable?
Pebble. Someone installed linux on one and they're extraordinarily cheap to pick up now.
dirtbox··on A Berlin Borough Buying Out Private Landlords
This is an incredibly US-centric way of looking at it, the rest of the world really doesn't have the same problems as the US in any of these areas. I lived in Berlin for a time and many places in the UK and around Europe and really none of this applies. People live where the work is, commutes are generally under 30 minutes.

The US owes it's "walkability" or lack of due to Blockbusting by property developers in the 50s that used racism to drive the middle classes out of the cities into the newly built suburbs. No such thing happened anywhere else.

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

dirtbox··on Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser
It makes sense to do this on the mobile browser, trying to get around the net can be horrific on a phone, not to mention the data useage. Ublock and so on already have the desktop sewn up.
dirtbox··on Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors
The camera surveillance stuff hasn't been true since the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 when much of it was scrapped. I'm not sure I've never heard of surveillance vans on every block though, that's certainly not true.
dirtbox··on Secret colours of the Commodore 64
As I understand, the FPGA is to interface the Z80 with the raspberry pi that's onboard to include extra graphic modes and HDMI output, but I could well be wrong. There's a lot of unanswered questions about its inner workings, but they have some good looking test boards already etched.
dirtbox··on Secret colours of the Commodore 64
There's even a new speccy coming out. http://www.specnext.com/
dirtbox··on Secret colours of the Commodore 64
You could use this same palette flicker on the speccy to remove the attribute clash and create new colours, I remember someone demoing a more or less pixel perfect version of Super Mario World, albeit with a black background.

The spectrum was capable of all sorts of odd things that were never intended. http://tarjan.uw.hu/zx_gfx_modes_en.htm

dirtbox··on Apple is betting on augmented reality
Apple are superb at introducing aging, but specialized tech to the mainstream masses.
dirtbox··on Google Fiber Was Doomed from the Start
I was under the impression that it was never meant to succeed as a business, it was merely a proof of concept. That despite the lobbying and stalling tactics of national ISPs, progress could still be made to improve infrastructure despite the incessant arguments to the contrary.
dirtbox··on Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
Entered the network, manipulated data, created misinformation, use social engineering tricks and tried to control stock pricing. When you have a platform only accessible to the elite, it makes the possibilities extremely tempting.
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