Hacker News Reader

havalocon Willis Whitfield: Creator of clean room technology still in use today (2024)

On page 12 there's an ad for the cleanroom, and one of the selling points is that it would allow cigarette smoking!

havalocon How Does Microwaving Grapes Create Plumes of Plasma? (2019)

I'd like to think that some day in the near to mid future microwaving grapes or other spheres will be a way to start a fusion reactor or similar.

havalocon Apple Mini Apps Partner Program

They already did : https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/instagram-finally-gave-us-an-...

havalocon Drilling down on Uncle Sam's proposed TP-Link ban

I miss the insider information. Some Redditors were not nice and they all left Reddit and their insider information stopped flowing, it's a shame, it was cool to see behind the development veil.

havalocon Gmail AI gets more intrusive

One of my tech clients emailed me about a Roku problem and one of the AI suggestions in Gmail was to tell the customer to try unplugging a Roku for a minute and plugging it back in. I pressed that button, proofread the suggested text, and hit send.

In truth it felt both amazing and made me uneasy, for AI was encroaching on my career of telling people to reboot their errant device.

havalocon AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

Not all MVNO are the same in this regard, some sell the same quality of service data tier.

havalocon Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly

I support a couple of retired people on the side, and they are totally addicted to the lowest quality slop on Facebook/Instagram imaginable.

It's so bad that they'll click on a link to see the latest slop, and ostensibly get one of those webpages that says they have 47 viruses and call the number. I politely told them that they shouldn't click on those links anymore.

To which they said, well, if I shut my phone off when that happens, can I keep on doing it?

It's like that Star Trek the Next Generation episode where they all get addicted to that game. It's creepy and sad.

havalocon Windows 10 Deadline Boosts Mac Sales

When Windows 8 and the start page came out, I convinced a lot of my end users (most of my 75 end users did over time) to switch as they'd have to learn something new anyway.

Now with Windows 10 going away, they are picking up the stragglers.

Made my life easier.

havalocon Show HN: Oh Yah – Routine management app I built for my sons

Frederick Taylor approves!

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

havalocon US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

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

"For many years, all flights featured 2-by-2 leather seating (in aircraft usually fitted with 3-2 seating), ample legroom, complimentary gourmet meals, and warm chocolate chip cookies. This made the airline popular with business travelers. In addition, Midwest Express operated a sizable executive charter operation with a specially configured DC-9."

havalocon Is it possible to allow sideloading and keep users safe?

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." - John A. Shedd

havalocon The National Design Studio is a scam

"AirBnB’s present dominance isn’t the product of real innovation. He and his friends stumbled upon an idea after listing their apartment on Craigslist for under-the-table sublease during a popular conference."

Does the author wish he thought of it first?

havalocon Starlink Mini users just lost their beloved pause feature

There's a lot of use cases for that definitely! Alarm monitoring, text messaging, some users are reporting YouTube works at 360p.

One problem though is that in the terms they say that if you're using a lot of data or using that plan for more than 12 months they may require you to switch to a different plan or lose access.

havalocon Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser

Apple should acquire Perplexity - it's a pretty great product and combined with some privacy enhancements it's a win, and they could likely integrate it better than Google could with Gemini.

havalocon Tesla Robotaxi Videos Show Speeding, Driving into Wrong Lane

https://maticrobots.com/ - Lidar seems like a stopgap, check out this robot vacuum which works with vision only. I am not conflating a car and a vacuum, but it's an interesting technological exposition.

havalocon Sperm are very different from all other cells

Seems very Star Trek Enterprise when they polarize the hull plating.

"To prevent this from happening, once a sperm cell has made contact with it, the egg quickly employs two mechanisms. First, its plasma membrane rapidly depolarises – meaning it creates an electrical barrier that further sperm cannot cross."

havalocon The accuracy of weather forecasts

Somewhat related: Before launching our new long range (5 day) turbulence forecast tool (for nervous flyers), we spent time experimenting to see how far out we could reliably predict turbulence. Once we had something promising, we started posting daily snapshots—each showing the forecast from five days earlier alongside what actually happened. The model updates continuously, and we’ve kept the process public to demonstrate how well it works, not just claim it does.

https://www.turbulenceforecast.com/drift

havalocon A New Headache for Honest Students: Proving They Didn't Use A.I

A professor at my day job offers oral exams to students to avoid this - zero takers.

havalocon iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

If Apple eventually wins their appeal think among how hard it will be to put the genie back in the bottle.

havalocon Buffett to step down following six-decade run atop Berkshire

94 years of age isn't too bad for someone who is a legendary Coke drinker - five cans a day!

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffe...

havalocon I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

No longer maintained as of very recently: https://docs.getwhisky.app/maintenance-notice

havalocon Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over

I support a small group of elderly people on the side. At least once of week they land on a Facebook video which then leads to the "your phone has 78 viruses" scare ad. I tell them to stop using Facebook and they look at me like I'm crazy. One of them even said, if I turn off my phone when I get that scary ad, does that keep me safe?

havalocon Careless People

To be fair, Catan really brings out the worse in people, despite it being a friendly Euro game. It's worse than Monopoly in a lot of ways.

havalocon EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

It's too bad the label won't have the number of charge cycles the battery is good for.

havalocon Why is C the symbol for the speed of light? (2004)

C you later?

havalocon Chrono Trigger Still Blows Me Away 30 Years Later

Tremendous game, and probably my favorite soundtrack, but my favorite feature was the lack of random encounters.

havalocon Achieving Great Privacy with Safari

That's new, thank you for that. I worry that since it's "developer" it may not be supported in future releases.

Edit: it resets that setting after Safari updates apparently.

havalocon Achieving Great Privacy with Safari

Safari is too good in this regard, it deletes first party cookies after 7 days, so any site you haven't used in a week it acts like it's never seen you before and is completely signed out.

As far as I know, you can't change this setting.

havalocon Porkbun partners with Proton

Agreed. They support ALIAS records in their DNS, which many registrars don't.

havalocon My 16-month theanine self-experiment

Ironically Now Foods L-theanine used to be a variant of a special extraction method named Suntheanine but that’s no longer the case, probably due to cost.

I’ve had good luck with the Suntheanine brands. GNC brand has been effective for me. YMMV.