Hacker News Reader

magic_smoke_eeon My Amazon TV Now Unmutes Itself During Prime Video Commercial Breaks

If true, yet another reason why I'm glad I ditched Prime Video.

I noticed that FireTV Sticks now autoplay ads on launch without an option to disable that. For such setups, I'm likely to replace them with Apple TV (not perfect, but better) that aren't naked ad-delivery platforms like they're trying to copy something from a dystopian sci-fi movie.

Also, it wouldn't work on my main setup because it uses a soundbar that's only controllable by an IR remote. I would be willing to bet that it sends an HDMI CEC signal to unmute stereo receiver volume levels too.

magic_smoke_eeon New 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 on sale now at $120

2.5 GbE is too slow for my home lab. I want 10 GbE-T PoE++ without having to add a craptastic hat that has a lot of failures.

My network test boxes run 100 GbE of various flavors supported by E810-CQDA2.

magic_smoke_eeon Luigi Mangione's account has been renamed on Stack Overflow

It's the implicit tyranny of building or contributing to public commons owned by corporations beholden to ideological individuals, investors, or advertisers, or to government jurisdictions with particular intrusive laws and policies. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to force a company to maintain publication of content it doesn't want to host... it can simply delete users and content whenever it chooses, but typically doesn't for reasons of goodwill and/or reputation. Youtube deletes millions of people's comments and videos daily because an AI algorithm disagreed with them by virtue of sentiment analysis and decided their combination of words was not allowed. At some point though, people around the world will demand a digital "Bill of Rights", even if the content, processing, and/or publication is happening on the systems of for-profit corporations... it's either that, or enough people must leave forums that have a history of one-sided, unfair, and/or unethical (while maybe legal) practices.

magic_smoke_eeon A rare alignment of 7 planets is about to take place

Don't give Joe Rogan or Alex Jones any ideas.

magic_smoke_eeon LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/palisades-fire

Edit: And hotspots - https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs;@-118.21,3...

magic_smoke_eeon VLC tops 6B downloads, previews AI-generated subtitles

> from the same guidelines: don't be snarky; don't post thoughtless insubstantive comments; reply to the argument instead of calling names; don't sneer; respond to the strongest interpretation - assume good faith; eschew flamebait; don't trample curiosity.

You're making a litany of unsolicited accusations while subtracting value in a conversation you're not a part of. Please stop with the self-appointed fixation on microaggression policing because it just creates pointless drama. Thanks.

magic_smoke_eeon The latest fake literary agencies

This. LLMs provide very low cost fake content generation capabilities. That makes due-diligence ever more comprehensive and thorough in the absence of a meaningful, proven referral.

magic_smoke_eeon The Latest Fake Literary Agencies

It's easy to catch when the customer is sophisticated. Business-unsophisticated writers looking at random for literary agents may well end-up paying money up-front for zero value services. I had a quick look around, and found this seems to be one sensible rubric: https://aalitagents.org/canon-of-ethics/

magic_smoke_eeon The Comet is a handheld Linux computer that brings extensibility

Build-in either a keyboard or the gamepad. I have BT mice, keyboards, gamepads, and other things that already handle how they charge (USB-C).

But it's not a single thing if you're carrying around other parts anyhow, and those appear kind of flimsy. And I already have a general purpose computing device with networking capability that goes in my pocket, a smartphone... so why would I want to put it my pocket if it does less?

magic_smoke_eeon Hitler dismantled a democracy in 53 days through constitutional means

This. Cults hack groups of people to commit very irrational acts that go against their previously-held individual traditions and values. (There are several new, predominant cult-like factions these days... so this isn't a veiled criticism of one group while ignoring another.)

magic_smoke_eeon VLC tops 6B downloads, previews AI-generated subtitles

> don't cross-examine

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

magic_smoke_eeon White House unveils Cyber Trust Mark program for consumer devices

NIST is involved (Dual_EC_DRBG).

Verdict: nope.

This is something that an independent, international cybersecurity nonprofit should be in-charge of, not a standards org that shills for what we think may have been the NSA (BULLRUN).

magic_smoke_eeon VLC tops 6B downloads, previews AI-generated subtitles

Authoritatively-correct subtitles rather than distributed generation and/or publication by anyone and everyone, including AI.

I don't know how many times I've seen subtitles that appear to be based on a script or were half-assed, and don't match the dialogue as spoken at all.

magic_smoke_eeon VLC tops 6B downloads, previews AI-generated subtitles

> Computers are INCREDIBLY efficient and still become orders of magnitude more efficient.

That's what a software engineer would say who views resources as unlimited and free.

magic_smoke_eeon Hitler dismantled a democracy in 53 days through constitutional means

Maybe the US needs a bug bounty for the conjecture raised by Gödel's supposed loophole.

magic_smoke_eeon Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2024

Yep. Impractical and fugly, but okay if you don't have a spouse, children, or care about aesthetics. BlueAir Classic 500/600 series-compatible models are the the way to go. (Was tested by Consumer Reports as the cleanest and quietest combination.) Most are basically just a rugged but minimal holder box for 3 identical filters on 3 sides with a much quieter and durable fan motor, and known good filters. The air a 680i/605 delivers is verifiably <0.5 ppm across PM0.1/2.5/10, eventually cleaning indoor air volume of reasonable size and minimal door opening frequency to an AQI <5. Note: the Classic Pro CP7i new costs almost twice what a Classic 680i/605 used to cost and uses different filters that aren't as good (thinner with less area), and the price is absolutely stupid. Buy a used 500/600 series on eBay for ~$200, clean the heck out of it, and source good filters.

magic_smoke_eeon Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2024

Oddly enough, I just bought some for my Aeron classic 2 weeks ago. They're about 10x better than the default casters on mid-height pile carpet with no/low padding and hardly move at all. It's not perfect, but almost usable.

And this is before I'm able to get a (carpet-covering) chair floor mat for one of the custom floor mat, preferably not PVC or glass, but made from one of the harder plastics. I have 2 105x30" Uplift tables in an overlapping L configuration (due to the small size of the room) that needs a rolling surface. I've seen price quotes ranging from $300-1000 USD for custom mats. Bonus points for a mat and wheel material combination that doesn't create terrible static (ESD) problems.

magic_smoke_eeon The Comet is a handheld Linux computer that brings extensibility

Reminds me of the unrepairable, craptastic design of FitBits charging connectors that would fail just about the time the warranty expired and the tech support "solution" was to "buy a new one".

At least on Apple and similar with inductive charging designs, there's nothing to break. (Repairability of the rest of it, notwithstanding.)

magic_smoke_eeon The Comet is a handheld Linux computer that brings extensibility

And if flimsy parts and design-for-manufacturing rather than design-for-repair aren't done intentionally to increase sales through replacements and/or to optimize for minimal cost, then it's done through negligence.

magic_smoke_eeon The Comet is a handheld Linux computer that brings extensibility

At the expense of more software dev and a bluetooth module, It would've been more extensible and versatile if it had just used BT for input (HID) and GPIO rather than creating yet another proprietary connector and forbidding the use of GPIO and a keyboard simultaneously. Why not integrate the most popular one and use BT for the rest? Great, we've re-invented what already exists. Sigh.

magic_smoke_eeon Fired from Meta After 1 Week: Here's All the Dirt I Got

Indeed. Meta conducts most SWE/PE/SE interviews over VC (Zoom or similar) using CoderPad (which supports all sorts of languages), with unofficial prep using HackerRank. The language for the interview is set in advance by the candidate because the code is never executed directly but is mentally-parsed by the interviewer. (CoderPad is used only as a shared text editor.) Picking a random, obscure programming language would be frowned-upon and not possible. Also, the bootcamp process lasts longer than a week and it would neigh impossible to be fired before that without doing something really egregious because, by that point, each party would have too much time and money invested to simply call it quits randomly.

Maybe instead of making up creative falsehoods, they could just speak simply without whipping the village idiot for approbation.

magic_smoke_eeon NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

Whataboutism FUD. Nice try.

magic_smoke_eeon Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

Back in my day, real cowboys wrote their papers in PostScript, making their papers as inaccessible as possible for user of consumer-grade devices. /s

PS won on human readability and editability but lost on portability to Adobe's own internal competitor, PDF, and because it fought and lost to (La)TeX -> PDF & (La)TeX -> DVI -> PS.

PS: I once printed out and bound the PDF 1.3 spec[0] on 24 lbs. bleached dead trees on an HP LaserJet IIIP with over a million page count. Some of the nuclear engineers and scientists an office containing <50 people routinely printed thousand page documents every week.

0. https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandard...

magic_smoke_eeon Hyperview – Native mobile apps, as easy as creating a website

Someone will inevitably create an app to create apps using Brainfuck encoded in Morse code running on a 16-QAM wireless protocol... just beam your app with your data.

magic_smoke_eeon Ford CEO on why it's so difficult for legacy car companies to get software right

There are many more:

F'd-Over, Rebuilt Dodge

Fix Or Replace Daily

Faulty Overheating Rattlebox of Detroit

Fails On Rough Driveways

F'ing Old Rusty Dump

magic_smoke_eeon All clocks are 30 seconds late

All dumb, manual, HH:MM clocks, that is, unless the setter had patience and used a minute-crossing boundary to synchronize, reducing the error to ~1 second and resets them frequently to not drift more than a maximum of say 10 seconds. Most dumb clocks are likely to have an error of a minute or more because of cumulative drift and few people correct them until they are wildly wrong, say 5 minutes or more.

Or eschew the entire class of problem of daylight savings and drift with a GNSS- or radio time beacon-controlled clock.

magic_smoke_eeon Laid off for the first time in my career, and twice in one year

Misalignment of interests is the core error of reasoning the traditional employee makes in offering up unquestioning faith and loyalty to a random corporation run by strangers; that greedy incompetence will somehow give them enduring security. This is decidedly not the case. Instead, more sensible employees should form worker-owned co-ops to both share in the treasure of livable earnings with potential immense profits and structure themselves for the maximum security of those who "sail on that ship" together rather than optimizing short-term profits of someone else.

magic_smoke_eeon When the U.S. tried to replace migrant farmworkers with high schoolers (2018)

It's working "perfectly" for the benefit of around a million heartless, horrible people based on the exploitation of a few million others.

> New York Times investigative journalist Hannah Dreier has interviewed more than 100 migrant children working in violation of child labor laws across 20 states.

> "I talked to a 12-year-old girl in Alabama who was working overnight stamping auto parts. I talked to a 12-year-old in Florida who came to this country and the next day was put to work roofing houses," Dreier says.

> Dreier met one 13-year-old boy in Michigan who worked 12-hour shifts at an egg farm, six days a week. "He told me that really he wanted to go to school, but he hadn't understood how expensive things were in this country," she says.

> Dreier estimates that some 250,000 children have crossed into the U.S. without their parents in the last two years, and that the majority of them wind up working full-time jobs.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-la...

magic_smoke_eeon Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

Doubling-down on idiocracy and civilizational decline because there's money in it.

magic_smoke_eeon Choosing an op-amp for your project

There's a massive (old) list of them in Horowitz & Hill TAOE 3e Table 8.3a p. 522. I'm sure you can just go to Digikey or Octopart and do a parameter search for high-voltage, low-noise, BJT-input op-amps too. If one wanted to "use a Ferrari to go the grocery store", they could always use a $20 AD797 or LT1115 for audio applications. :o)