Hacker News Reader

js2on Why birds can fly over Mount Everest (2020)

(2020). Previous submissions with comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639294 (Jun 26, 2020 - 96 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28844872 (Oct 12, 2021 - 108 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34210508 (Jan 1, 2023 - 6 comments)

This submission is from 4 days ago, so it must've been placed into the second chance pool.

js2on Blaise Pascal invented fixed route public transport (2024)

The Highway Trust Fund which pays for the IHS is funded by its users through taxation on gasoline and diesel. I wouldn't call that a weird parallel construction.

js2on Behind the scenes at the NeXT Computer office

Looks like it. I was working at a startup in Sunnyvale in the early 2000s and a some of us would meet before work for a run at the bay trail. Wouldn't be too unusual to do that at lunch hour either.

That said, these photos look a bit staged.

js2on The Real Kevin Bacon

This isn't true. Here's the guys who invented the game appearing on Jon Stewart in March, 1994:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMn3B4LAP48

They don't mention it on the Stewart performance, but they had just seen Bacon in two films on TV back to back:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/the-exact-history-o...

Now, maybe they named the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" because it sorta rhymes with "separation", but they didn't pick him to rhyme with the phrase.

js2on We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970

Colossus: The Forbin Project is not obscure.

js2on Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone

At one point, it was north of a billion dollars. 660 (nee 666) Fifth Avenue.

js2on A Place Among the Fiddlers

I first heard her a couple decades ago when she was at the start of her career and appeared as a guest singer at an NC symphony outdoor summer concert series. Her voice took my breath away then and still does. She's a remarkable talent.

Just came across this documentary on the Carolina Chocolate Drops:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg8nXPFU7go

js2on A Place Among the Fiddlers

This article could use some videos:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QnO5TH6I-wQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC3zoCoK4ZU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Z-CpXQiAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94AYKVibjaQ

> Over time, Scottish fiddle tunes evolved, as oral traditions do, and began to mix with the musical traditions of enslaved Africans, who had brought with them gourd instruments that would evolve into the American banjo, along with rhythms the Scots had never heard before.

If you haven't heard Rhiannon Giddens you have no idea what you're missing. Here's a decade old interview where she talks about the blending of the instruments and traditions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H7DtIh8akk

She lives in Ireland now. Here she is preforming The Wayfaring Stranger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Z4PAZX9Bs

js2on Honey, I shrunk the TV

> Just the windows shattering from the massive subwoofer

That's a respectable subwoofer but let me introduce you to massive:

https://www.avsforum.com/posts/64557995/

That would be 8x SI HS-24’s in 4 sealed GSG cabinets, with cabinets placed around the corners of the room, two in front behind the screen:

https://www.avsforum.com/posts/64778927/

js2on My Friend Bob Cringely

The best version on the high seas is: "Steve Jobs The Lost Interview 2012 720p WEBRip x264-TheRival" (F62B664C53D64208F36AA5F048E5418E325D23B5).

Other versions run at the wrong speed or have an incorrect aspect ratio.

js2on My Friend Bob Cringely

Blocked in the U.S. "Video unavailable. It was blocked due to the claimed content by Magnolia."

js2on There Are over 1M New York City Street Signs. Here's How They Are Made.

:-( The link works for me when open it in an incognito/private window w/o and login page. Wonder how NYT decides that.

js2on My Friend Bob Cringely

Mark Stephens (aka Robert X. Cringely) obituary:

https://www.hillandwood.com/obituaries/Mark-Stephens?obId=49...

Tell HN from two weeks ago about Bob's death:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49949438

Plane Crazy documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSNzF-KSGiw

(I watched it for the first time last week. Very entertaining.)

js2on My Friend Bob Cringely

FYI, that's audio only. Magnolia Pictures is enforcing their rights on it, so if you want to see the video you either have to rent/buy it or it can be found on the high seas in varying degrees of quality.

js2on There Are over 1M New York City Street Signs. Here's How They Are Made.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/nyregion/nyc-street-sign-...

js2on Namecheap just seized and disabled all my domains

If you use CF as your registrar, they require you to use CF DNS. If you're okay with that, they register domains at cost. It's also easy to move a domain later if you change your mind and is quite fast. I recently moved a gTLD domain from CF to Porkbun and the transfer was complete in a matter of minutes, at the cost of a 1-year renewal.

js2on Namecheap just seized and disabled all my domains

Porkbun. Cloudflare if you don't mind being locked into using them for DNS too.

js2on What was a Token Ring network?

TokenRing was already an academic curiosity when I was getting my CS degree in the mid-90s. The CS department by that point had already switched to twisted-pair Ethernet. By the time of my first job in the late 90s, we used FDDI for our web farm's backend network, but we tore that out with the arrival of gigabit, so FDDI didn't last too long either.

js2on Tesla Roadster

> and one with real combustion rocket engines

The site states it's cold-gas thrusters for both models: "Features a multi-mode suction system paired with cold-gas thrusters positioned around the perimeter of the vehicle that support forward and upward acceleration as well as lateral rotational movement."

js2on New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing

This change sucks (but as a long time Withings user doesn't affect me... for now), but I haven't had trouble with either the scale or BP cuff syncing to Apple Health. I don't have any suggestions besides double-checking the Withings app has permissions to write to HealthKit. I don't see any settings in the Withings app itself besides a prompt to check "Settings > Privacy > Health > Withings App".

Sorry if this isn't helpful.

Aside: all BP cuffs and their apps sorta seem to suck when it comes to sync. I also have an Omron. At least mine measure accurately. Make sure to validate yours with your GP.

js2on Plane Crazy: Building a Plane in 30 Days [video]

What the heck was that?: The first and last essay ever to be written about "Plane Crazy" (JULY 24, 1998) :

https://web.archive.org/web/20090510230055/http://www.pbs.or...

js2on The Origin Story of Kid Pix

According to its wiki page, it's still under active development by Software MacKiev since 2004 (Kid Pix Deluxe 3), with Hickman serving as a consultant since 2011:

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

js2on New Apple TV 4K

The Apple TV doesn't support DV profile 7 (you just get the HDR base layer; you lose the enhancement layer), nor does it support TrueHD Atmos (you get the bed channels but lose height channels). Same for DTS:X.

Whether or not this matters or you notice will depend on the specific Blu-ray and whether you have a Dolby Atmos capable sound system.

https://community.firecore.com/t/dolby-vision-profile-7-8-su...

https://community.firecore.com/t/help-get-more-dolby-atmos-o...

https://old.reddit.com/r/appletv/comments/1789et4/does_infus...

js2on New Apple TV 4K

> The appeal of the Shield Pro is you don't have to deal with custom flashing a "no-name" device and you don't have to dual box to keep streaming services happy.

Fair, but I just wasn't willing to put up with Android TV. And the Shield doesn't handle FEL so there's still some ripped content it won't play.

For me it's easy enough to use my Apple TV for streaming and even most ripped blu-rays, and the Ugoos for the blu-ray rips that benefit from it. Flashing the AMB6+ was a one-time thing. After that, updating the OS is just dropping a tar file into a folder and rebooting it.

> It's frustrating that nobody else seems to care about attempting to be the all-in-one box given how much Shield is showing its age now.

It's a niche market and any all-in-one box is likely to run afoul of Dolby Labs licensing restrictions.

> I don't get why Apple just refuses to allow audio pass through or DV Profile 7.

I don't even care about pass through audio if it could just use Dolby MAT to playback decoded DTS:X / Dolby TrueHD Atmos w/o losing the spatial channels.

DV Profile 7 is very likely Dolby licensing issues.

js2on New Apple TV 4K

> What's crazy is that it's still close to the best device you can get.

Unless you prefer an Android TV device, I don't get the appeal of the Shield Pro. I bought one years ago and resold it a few months later. For me the only things it did better than an Apple TV (playing certain ripped blu-rays) are better done by the Ugoos AM6B+. So those are the two devices I use nowadays.

js2on US man given prison sentence for bot-farming music streams

Except they left in "AI-generated" instead of using "SI-generated".

js2on US man given prison sentence for bot-farming music streams

> At times SMITH was using as many as 10,000 Bot Accounts at once to fraudulently stream music, and he used fake email accounts and fraudulently-obtained debit cards to create the Bot Accounts

I gather these are cards that he opened and funded, not stolen cards. I'm surprised at this scale it wasn't detected much sooner.

These accounts had to be listening a lot in order to generate more royalties than the subscription fees. e.g. Spotify family is $21.99/mo for six accounts. That's $440K annually for 10,000 accounts. Sheesh.

js2on Resurrecting iChat Audio and Video Conferencing

It was FireWire, wasn't it? Pretty sure I still have mine in a box somewhere.

js2on Lace and Labor: Lessons from the actual Luddites

Now having listened to both episodes:

The 99% Invisible episode is all about the Luddite movement.

The Lace and Labor episode talks primarily about the history of crochet and its relationship to labor, with a detour through knitting, after a brief introduction to the Luddite movement.

The episodes are complementary.

js2on Linux containers in 500 lines of code (2016)

(2016). Previous submissions w/comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30623372 (250 points | March 10, 2022 | 27 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22232705 (267 points | Feb 4, 2020 | 29 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15608435 (440 points | Nov 2, 2017 | 53 comments)