Hacker News Reader

simonblackon How World War III became possible

None so blind as those who will not see.

"Stumbling into War".

"Huh?? Wha' happen?"

simonblackon Why can't we just "reset" Usenet?

I don't think training materials would be necessary. YMMV. Most people get and appreciate the threading model.

Clients could be improved, I guess. Myself, I use a self-improved version of Tass that I originally got with a copy of Coherent (a UNIX Version 7 clone) around 1991. It uses an ncurses 'gui' which I admit I have thought of upgrading from time to time so that it uses a real GUI such as GTK.

However it works well enough, and though I suppose it could do with improving, it works well enough that I can't be bothered spending the time to debug/rewrite it.

My main thrust is that most people have never heard of Usenet and what it is capable of.

simonblackon 'We're not stuck.' Why Boeing's Starliner isn't returning to Earth (yet)

"Methinks he doth protest too much."

simonblackon Why can't we just "reset" Usenet?

I use Usenet.

But I don't feel an extra server would add anything that current ones don't have. On the other hand, an extra server is a backup in case one of the current servers falls off the Net.

Today we have http and ftp to obtain binaries, and quite large ones at that. The need for binary Usenet newsgroups is pretty much obsolete.

What Usenet could do with is more 'advertising'. Not 'advertising ON Usenet' but 'advertising ABOUT Usenet'. Many people just do not know that Usenet exists.

I have often said that Reddit is 'The New Usenet' because its layout and threading is very similar. Having said that, my preference is that Reddit can FOAD.

simonblackon Duel phase magnetic material to reduce needs for REEs

"Duel" = fight between two people.

"Dual" = "two things', "Double", etc

Sorry, but the use of 'duel' where it should be 'dual' just grates on me. I find it impossible to ignore.

simonblackon How World War III became possible

We're already in WW3.

But just as WW2 started in 1937 but didn't really kick off until 1941, the main bouts of this one, The West vs the BRICS, won't be for another few months yet. (Say end 2024, beginning of 2025)

simonblackon What is soap made of?

Long-chain fatty acids, mainly.

simonblackon Russian death camp: Three stories of Ukrainian prisoners

In a country of 350 million, the only two selections are Trump and Biden?

Surely there are hundreds of thousands more suitable candidates.

We always get the leaders we deserve.

simonblackon Sometimes Red, Sometimes Blue

It kept you off the streets for a while, didn't it? Obviously a great success.

simonblackon McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken and now the feds are involved

Unintended consequences of things like the DMCA Act. No wonder the country is going downhill at a great rate of knots.

simonblackon Top Wealthiest Families in the World

I didn't see any Rothschilds there.

simonblackon Ask HN: Have coders made stuff complicated on purpose?

There's 'simple' and then there's 'spartan'.

People don't want simple programs today. They want bells and whistle and stuff that doesn't make them think. They want to be, in effect, 'mindless morons'.

In the old days, you had a very simple text program that did every single thing you wanted but you were obliged to remember the command-line options for it.

Today they don't want to have to remember anything, they want a button nicely labelled right in front of them to do the exact thing they want.

simonblackon US in talks to send Israel's Patriot systems to Ukraine

How come they're so scarce?

Good thing there's no hot war going on between China and the West. Oh, wait, didn't some General say the two countries would be at war next year? (That's only a few months away, you know.)

simonblackon If my mother-in-law can use Ubuntu Linux, anyone can (2012)

That may be so, but how many other mothers-in-law are elite Linux kernel programmers?

simonblackon Boeing rejects claims NASA crew 'stranded' by spacecraft

I get wanting more data, but I don’t understand how it would be lost.

If the craft burns up on re-entry due to many possible factors (Angle of descent, speed of descent, uncontrollable trajectory, etc, etc) any evidence of faulty components would be 'disappeared'.

simonblackon The Singularity Is Nearer

<grin>

That's probably more accurately how I look at the singularity, actually. The singularity is ever receding.

simonblackon Do We Need Language to Think?

Yes and no. Sometimes we think in words and sometimes we think in images.

We can think about an object we have seen but don't know the name of.

simonblackon The Singularity Is Nearer

Every day that passes brings the singularity one day closer. However ... there is no way that the singularity as promised will occur within our lifetimes.

It won't hurt you to dream though. It might keep you off the streets.

simonblackon [dead]

ELI5 why they are using helium instead of something else that's cheap and inert and easier to handle like nitrogen.

simonblackon Why USA isn't buying more EVs

No infrastructure.

When there as many charging stations as there are fuel pumps, get back to me.

simonblackon Meta has suspended my Facebook account

Some people have all the luck!

simonblackon Ask HN: What's the oldest file on your computer?

Program files from the 1980s. Operating system files from the 1970s.

Their timestamps don't show those ages, unfortunately, as they have been transferred from machine to machine and medium to medium over the decades.

Here's one of my own COBOL files:

     0130*  INSTALLATION.   Giacomo Software, P.O. Box 584, Hamilton, 3300
     0140
     0150 DATE-WRITTEN.    29 MARCH 1984.

Would you believe that was from an 8080 disassembler written in COBOL? I suppose we did silly things like that because we could. And we used whatever it was that we happened to have on hand.

simonblackon China could take Taiwan without even needing to invade

As long as the the Republic of China does not declare Independence, China will wait. China's been around for several thousand years, another century or so wouldn't make any difference.

If the Republic of China declares independence from Mainland China, the Chinese will do exactly what the US Unionists did in 1861 when the Confederates declared Independence.

simonblackon Astronauts stranded in space due to multiple issues with Boeing's Starliner

I predict that the Starliner in orbit will be abandoned to burn up on descent. And the guys will have to get a lift home on some other spacecraft.

simonblackon Weeks before the 2024 Olympics Eiffel Tower ticket prices increase by 20%

How much of that increase is earmarked to be skimmed off by the Olympic International Committee, I wonder.

The Olympics of today are a money-sucking operation that the Games-holding countries get suckered into. Those countries lose billions over the Olympics.

Once upon a time, you could see many different sports of the Olympics, and on practically every TV channel. Nowadays, you get (extremely expensive) 'exclusive rights' by one or two channels and you get a very limited selection of sports information released by the IOC.

I boycott the Olympics and anything connected with them.

simonblackon Retired army general's chilling warning over China's chokehold on US Military

There's no such thing as 'counterfeit parts'. There are 'parts sourced from cheaper suppliers'. I keep saying it it, but EVERY MANUFACTURER both local and foreign will source parts from wherever they are cheaper.

How else are they going to keep their shareholders happy? And they have a responsibility to do just that. Their shareholders should always come first.

simonblackon China could take Taiwan without even needing to invade

"China could take the Republic of China without even needing to invade"

When you write the headline properly you can see how dumb a headline it is. Taiwan is the name of a geographical feature (an island), not the name of a country.

Next thing you know, you'll read headlines like "The US could take the Republic of Texas without even needing to invade." or maybe to mimic better the headline above "The US could take Maui without even needing to invade."

simonblackon Boeing Starliner return to Earth delayed again, no date set

Do you get the feeling that something major and/or unfixable has happened?

I predict that the Starliner will be cast off abandoned to burn up on descent.

Meanwhile the astronauts will have to wait for a lift home on some other spacecraft.

simonblackon 'Each person has a unique smell: this is our olfactory footprint'

Dogs could have told us this thousands of years ago.

simonblackon I'm Not Switching to Linux

Well the OP didn't need to say 'I'm not switching to Linux'. All he needed to say was 'I'm staying with Windows' and I would have said 'Congratulations. Enjoy!'.