Hacker News Reader

pbj1968on Cicadas are so loud, fiber optic cables can ‘hear’ them

We used to call them locusts in Texas. I still miss it. Yes, I know they aren’t locusts. We’re all suburban tv babies sharing the same accent these days.

pbj1968on My $500M Mars rover mistake

Because they’re more or less universal.

pbj1968on First Is the Worst: Nintendo's Color TV Game 6 and 15

Hey Nicole, shoe horning my PC Engine project onto your last hacker news thread was actually successful at getting the attention I needed! And now I’m sitting on PCE joystick pcbs nobody wants. :)

pbj1968on The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

Then why continue to quibble over it?

pbj1968on The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see

Nah, I consulted a couple MDs. “Suffered from” and “had” were their preferred verbiage.

pbj1968on Why does the moon change size when you snipe it in GTA?

I first read about this trick in a Heinlein novel, and it involved shipping logs if I recall correctly. Luckily I caught it early in my career - leave in an easy mistake that is trivial to fix and harms nothing. It 100% works. The nitpicker feels like they won and you don’t waste time watching them spend hours pouring over everything.

pbj1968on Julia Child's Culinary Notes

I always felt like she downplayed her WW2 service, which is fine. The article does the same.

My Life in France was a fascinating book. At one point she describes dangling raw chickens out of her apartment window for three days before roasting. I guess we’d call that “dry aging” now but it repulses every fiber of my food safety being.

However, it did not stunt her growth or shorten her lifespan.

pbj1968on America Is Getting Lonelier and More Indoorsy. That's Not a Coincidence

https://archive.ph/p7MW2

pbj1968on The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

That’s the version he gave you. Think critically.

pbj1968on The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

Emeralds are far more valuable. XD

pbj1968on The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

These threads are always great for men posting about how their wives love the imitation stones “just as much” and “I didn’t foolishly spend money.”

As always, if it worked for your marriage, it worked, but many of us can sniff out a fake from across the room. And it will always look tacky and cheap and she will be wearing it, in theory, the rest of her life.

I have visited exactly one jeweler in my life that set man made stones into quality precious metal settings. Every moissanite I’ve seen has been in the same plated stuff that gets cut glass or cubic zirconia or the like.

pbj1968on Jezebel to shut down after 16 years as parent company lays off staff

And the Deadspin offshoot Defector is bleeding money, too.

pbj1968on Omegle 2009-2023

Fascinating. Could you link me to the court documents on Pacer?

pbj1968on Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

The official soundtrack of Houston, TX. The noise is so ubiquitous it is almost noteworthy when you can’t hear it. Paradoxically, the better the neighborhood, the worse the noise.

pbj1968on Louis Armstrong's Last Word

“That’s…jazz.”

pbj1968on In 1886, the US commissioned watercolor paintings of every known fruit (2019)

You know what would be better than some mythical museum of context? Melting that garbage down into park benches or public toilets.

pbj1968on Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

Give him a chance to wrap things up. He’s not going anywhere in the interim.

pbj1968on Alan Wake 2 is an unexpected visual marvel even on older GPUs

Starfield looked incredibly boring from the trailers and preview videos. I had to shake my head and roll my eyes at the review scores. I’ll stick to Halo if I want to constantly jump and shoot aliens.

pbj1968on Synth Emulation in MAME

Ain’t no drama like pac man drama.

pbj1968on Life After “Calvin and Hobbes”

https://archive.ph/CBMea

pbj1968on CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless

Missouri was the meth capital of the United States and pioneered the laws restricting sales. Meth labs were never run off buying 2-3 boxes at a time - before the restrictions you could buy the pills by the thousands from compounding pharmacies. As much as I “appreciate” your downvote, my quality of life has been directly impacted by the sales restrictions. The only way I can buy enough to maintain the dose I need involves straw man purchases far more expensive than they used to be. Accordingly, I moved on to other medications which are not as effective.

pbj1968on 'A Neolithic feat of engineering': Orkney dig reveals ruins of tomb

That was fairly damn insensitive and horrible. These people were just as complicated as we are.

pbj1968on Bitcoin miners running up Texans' electricity bills

https://archive.ph/ePjBp

Houston Chronicle has previously committed to releasing articles circulating social media from the paywall, but I guess we aren’t big enough.

The guy that runs their website probably posts here, too…

pbj1968on How to Make Your Own Spooky Magic Eye Pictures (Autostereograms)

Hyper Color tshirts reminded us we all had nipples and sweaty armpits.

pbj1968on Canada has fewer entrepreneurs today than it did 20 years ago

They all move to America, take high paying jobs, and complain about everything. At least the ones I’ve encountered.

pbj1968on Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope

If any of this stuff actually worked we’d already be using it. Similarly how every medical problem hadn’t gone away in states that legalized marijuana.

pbj1968on You can use lightguns on LCDs sometimes

I did.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,167636.0.htm...

No shade was intended towards Nicole, she was probably a voice of reason. It’s playable enough I can enjoy it at the moment.

pbj1968on You can use lightguns on LCDs sometimes

I approached Nicole recently with a mostly complete project I felt might be appropriate for her blog, and I thought she’d have the connections to get it across the finish line. And the response was a polite “why would anyone bother with this?”

And here we are… playing duck hunt on an LCD.

Keep on keeping on, Nicole.

pbj1968on The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

Please do. Haven’t thought about this book in decades. Wow.

pbj1968on Roughly 80% of Grades Given at Harvard Are in the 'A' Range

“It is not clear how employers would be informed of the narrative-based performance of students in school.”

Is an employer demanding to see your GPA such a common thing? I’ve seen it used as a weed out for things like internships but even they will bend the rules if you actually talk to someone behind the curtain.