Hacker News Reader

macintuxon Leak website releases data on DHS employees

Really.

When I used phone books:

- My banking accounts weren’t globally accessible

- The data companies collected about me was effectively non-existent, and wasn’t globally accessible

- My phone had no information about me, didn’t know my minute-by-minute whereabouts, and if somehow you organized a DDOS against it, I could just take it off the hook and walk away

- My employer didn’t have social media, and couldn’t be bombarded with accusations against me

- Swatting was less likely, because there weren’t 8 billion people with easy access to my data

I could probably go on for a while. None of the above is me “opening myself up” except by virtue of owning a smartphone, which is difficult to avoid.

macintuxon New 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M6

It may also reflect the quality of the touchpad. For a Windows laptop, it's virtually guaranteed to be of lower quality than something offered on an Apple laptop.

macintuxon Git for the US Code

Electrical & building codes are also paywalled, IIRC.

macintuxon Reviewers rarely talk about reliability. Owners bring it up twice as often

Can’t be true of their brake lights. One of my hobbies is alerting people to burnt-out tail lights, and every time I see a Soul I pay particular attention to it, because at least 1 out of every 4 cars has a light or two out.

macintuxon Radio-tagged Monarch butterflies

The ones available online are from the western U.S.; depending on where you live, that may be counterproductive to the locally native species that are struggling.

macintuxon New 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M6

Press event is tomorrow. I don’t think a touchscreen laptop is a good idea, but I guess we’ll see whether Apple can do a good job with it.

macintuxon Birdwatching rewires the brain and slows cognitive decline

Video games that would involve that level of sensory engagement also generally require a level of hand-eye coordination that’s tough to achieve at that age, or at least that’s my completely uneducated guess.

Also, speaking as someone approaching retirement age, sensory overload isn’t particularly enjoyable.

macintuxon Birdwatching rewires the brain and slows cognitive decline

Goodwill’s online auction site, shopgoodwill.com, has opened my eyes to how much people appreciate Nikon gear. Nikon pro film cameras sell for stupid amounts of money.

macintuxon Birdwatching rewires the brain and slows cognitive decline

Makes me wonder whether the use of AI to substitute for that extensive training is going to leave anyone not suffering from dementia.

macintuxon Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name

> Aside from the paltry number of trials in the federal system, states including Pennsylvania, Texas and New York have trial rates of less than 3%. In Santa Cruz County, Ariz., there were no trials from 2010 to 2012, the report said.

The numbers are damning. It's simply not possible that police & district attorneys are good enough at their jobs to identify the correct perpetrator with >97% accuracy. Or 100% accuracy in Santa Cruz County.

macintuxon Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim...

Accepting plea bargains, even when innocent, to avoid the huge expense of defending yourself is the norm.

macintuxon Ukraine claims first drone evacuation of wounded soldier

Active discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50155237

macintuxon Apple ML Research: Muse Spark Open with MLX on Mac Studio

Apple also was one of the largest contributors to the ballroom. They're not maintaining much of a "moat" between the company and the administration.

macintuxon Yet another way to invoke functions without parentheses

I think you mean Elixir, unless Erlang added a pipe operator in the last 10 years...good grief I've been out of that world too long.

macintuxon New 'Super Ice' 10 Times Stronger, Bringing It Close to the Strength of Concrete

Side note, but I have a hard time thinking of Seveneves in halves; isn't it 3 distinct parts?

Mainly I remember skimming the middle third because it felt like such a drag.

macintuxon Tesla Debuts 2026 Roadster

And Cybertruck can act as a boat.

macintuxon New Apple TV 4K

Turns out there is a way to revert Siri. Turn it off and back on again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50077296

macintuxon Apple HomeView

Thank you very much. Whew.

macintuxon New Apple TV 4K

I want to downgrade to old-Siri. At least it was predictable and relatively quick to respond.

macintuxon Apple HomeView

Yep, I really wish I could revert to previous-Siri on my iPhone 15 Pro. Old Siri was reasonably predictable and faster. New Siri is slower, more ambitious, and fails more often.

macintuxon A Dynamic and Distributed Virtual GPU Cloud Built on Idle Apple Silicon Devices

That was the original pitch for Ian Murdock's Progeny startup in the late 90s: a Linux-based distributed filesystem for corporate desktops to boot into overnight for distributed computing.

macintuxon Apple's Minions: A virtual GPU cloud built from idle Apple Silicon Macs

They've had a great deal of success playing them off against each other.

macintuxon A Remote Employee Refused 160 Webcam Photos a Day. Her Employer Fired Her

I wonder how many employer-provided laptops are secretly recording video or audio for WFH staff. You can tape over a webcam, but what do you do about a microphone you don't trust?

macintuxon I paid people to try and follow my README

Thanks for the tip. A couple I found with a quick search:

https://github.com/matiassingers/awesome-readme

https://github.com/yowainwright/awesome-readmes

macintuxon 4-hour battery storage is cheaper to install than gas turbines all across globe

> Trips under a mile should not be by car are all unless you are carrying luggage or are disabled or similar.

Persuade my city to install some sidewalks, please. I can't leave my neighborhood safely on foot.

macintuxon ICANN Reveals 2026 Round Applications for New Generic Top-Level Domains

In fairness, the problem they're trying to solve is insanely complex. Not surprising that the solution went off the rails.

macintuxon Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer

I upgraded to an Apple Watch Ultra because it offered a face with only red and black. It’s been long enough now that I don’t remember all the details, but I appreciated being able to monitor time in the darkroom (using DND to avoid flashes of light).

macintuxon Gleam doesn't compile to Erlang source anymore

I was fortunate enough to use Erlang professionally for a couple of years. I agree: the syntax is quite comfortable.

macintuxon Automating my 35mm film scanning pipeline

Heh, I don’t think I even have any film cameras with batteries.

macintuxon Automating my 35mm film scanning pipeline

Speaking for myself, I like film for a few reasons.

The wide variety of form factors keeps things interesting. Yesterday I went to shoot a sunrise, and I took a panoramic 6x17, a pinhole 6x12, and my TLR (which I didn’t shoot) at 6x6.

Everything about shooting film is more deliberate. Simply loading a medium format is typically time-consuming, developing the negatives, and if you’re lucky enough to have access to an enlarger, creating your own prints is very satisfying.

Slow but rewarding.

And I spend all day in front of a computer; it’s nice to have a very analog hobby.