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michaelmcdonald

897 karma · joined October 2, 2014

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michaelmcdonald··on Noctua Fan Swap on a Calnex Rb/GPS Frequency Reference
Starting price of $835 after a quick search.
michaelmcdonald··on Retired decorator's Pokémon cards sell for £1.5M
Just to clarify: it was 42 _sets_ of cards, not just 42 cards.
michaelmcdonald··on Google has officially turned these Nest thermostats back into dumb thermostats
Did you move to a different “smart” smoke detector? Just go with an old school “dumb” one?
michaelmcdonald··on I turned my Kindle into my own personal newspaper
No need to be sad: the Oasis never had a USB-C version.
michaelmcdonald··on Personal Encyclopedias
Are you documenting this with any particular software? Any interesting resources you can share that have made this project easier? I have a bunch of paper records for one side of my family that was passed along to me and would love to work on the other half but am not sure where to start.
michaelmcdonald··on Antimatter has been transported for the first time
Read them for what they are (fictional novels with allusions to truth and fact) and you will truly enjoy a good story!
michaelmcdonald··on New iPad Air, powered by M4
On the go video / photo editing is AMAZING on my iPad! More power speeds up some the effects / transition editing. Batch processing, all with a device that has great battery life and is smaller than a magazine. For super heavy stuff, sure, use my Mac, but when I travel and want to be productive on the go, the iPad is awesome!
michaelmcdonald··on U.S. science agency moves to restrict foreign scientists from its labs
Does the 1 day old account have any type of source or information to back up this claim?
michaelmcdonald··on A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs
"We're in early February ~2025~ *2026*"
michaelmcdonald··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
Would be curious to know (if you're willing to share) how you were found if you were working to obscure / encrypt your communications. What _was_ it that ultimately gave you away or allowed them to ID you?
michaelmcdonald··on Dell UltraSharp 52 Thunderbolt Hub Monitor
Would love to see a picture of this setup and your thought on the brands / models you have. I’m in the market for new monitors / setup and yours sounds very much like something up my alley.
michaelmcdonald··on Shopify CEO vibe codes an MRI viewer
The very first line had me interested:

> My annual MRI scan

Not sure if he has an underlying health condition that necessitates an MRI scan yearly or if this is part of his preventative medical regiment (much like an annual physical).

michaelmcdonald··on Ask HN: Best self-hosted wiki solution in 2025? Mediawiki or something else?
My biggest beef with Outline is that I can initially use Markdown, as soon as it is saved, you cannot see the raw markdown again for editing.
michaelmcdonald··on Sky Calendar
This is a block from where I work! MSU's Abrams Planetarium has been a mainstay of the Lansing community for decades and does awesome shows for astronomy fans of all ages! If you get a chance to visit I highly recommend it!
michaelmcdonald··on Cancelling mRNA studies is the highest irresponsibility
People are injured wearing seatbelts in automobile accidents. People are injured by anesthesia during surgery. We require these things because for the greater population, the larger scope, they are well worth whatever small risks exist. We as a species / society have an issue looking at the bigger picture when the consequences affect us personally.
michaelmcdonald··on Toothpaste widely contaminated with lead and other metals, US research finds
This was in the article (linked to from the blog); is it not what you are looking for?

"The federal Baby Food Safety Act of 2024, which is stalled in Congress, called for lead limits in kids’ food or personal care products like toothpaste of five parts per billion (ppb). California’s limit on lead in baby food is two ppb, but it does not include toothpaste."

"Most toothpastes exceeded those thresholds."

"The FDA’s current lead limit for children is 10,000 ppb, and 20,000 ppb for adults. None exceeded the FDA limits."

"The state of Washington recently enacted a law with 1,000 ppb limits – several exceeded that and have been reported, Rubin said, but companies have time to get in compliance with the new rules."

michaelmcdonald··on Zotero Fullscreen Mode by Script
This is my major reason as well. I run a Mac, Windows machine, and have iPhone / iPad devices spread around. I am constantly working with PDFs and highlighting them and having those highlights sync cross platform has been amazing.
michaelmcdonald··on Show HN: Daylight – track sunrise / sunset times in your terminal
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/378/
michaelmcdonald··on Berkeley Mono v2 Release
Release occurred at the end(ish) of December. Love this typeface and can’t wait for Houston to be released!
michaelmcdonald··on 3D-Printed Dune Chess Set
I won't discredit how beautiful this set turned out, but by my eyes the pieces are not particularly easy to (quickly) distinguish from one another (i.e. rook vs pawn vs bishop). Gorgeous to look at though!
michaelmcdonald··on Kagi Search API
I can only assume that a number of factors play into the ranking. Probably aspects you can't see (how many people followed through to the link at Kagi.com? How many people loaded up the comments for the submission?). Upvotes and comments are almost certainly not the only factors in ranking on HN.
michaelmcdonald··on Show HN: I made an SSH tunnel manager to learn Go
To be fair: it is a "Show HN" title (which I believe is typically used to denote a project being "shown [off]" by the op).
michaelmcdonald··on Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer
Penn State.

https://www.psu.edu/news/administration/story/penn-state-off...

michaelmcdonald··on Tsunami Alert Issued for Japan
That same site. You can see when a change in the alert was issued here:

https://tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2024/08/08/24221000/3/WEPA40

michaelmcdonald··on U.S. maternal death rate increasing at an alarming rate
This study was looking at data between 2014 - 2021. COVID and the related vaccines are inconsequential to the data presented.
michaelmcdonald··on How do jewellers capture every last particle of gold dust? (2017)
For those wondering like me:

6000 metric tons of silver is approximately 192,904,200 troy ounces, and 6000 US tons of silver is approximately 175,000,000 troy ounces.

michaelmcdonald··on Doks – Build a Docs Site
Oldest GitHub release for Doks appears to be from 2020:

https://github.com/gethyas/doks/releases?page=4

Oldest GitHub release for Starlight appears to be from 2023:

https://github.com/withastro/starlight/releases?page=9

michaelmcdonald··on The failure of self-checkout technology
The chain "Meijer" has this option. It slows down the process while you're actually finding the items in the store, but drastically speeds up the checkout process as the cashier only has to "verify" between 3-7 items. They just randomly grab them from whatever is on top of the cart, scan them, and away you go!
michaelmcdonald··on Designing, manufacturing, and selling an LED 'social battery' pin badge
I would be very curious to discover what the actual issue with Etsy was. Not sure if that will ever be discovered, but if anybody from Etsy is here / reading this would love to hear your insight on what might have been the hiccup!
michaelmcdonald··on Kagi Search – Paywalled articles indicator and improved weather widget
Would you share a bit more about how you have your custom bangs setup? I'm always curious to see the life hacks people implement that speed up workflow processes.
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