Hacker News Reader

steverbon How to Tell a Real 1959 Gibson Les Paul Guitar From a Fake

And tuners are super easy to replace.

steverbon Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

Not the OP, but as I live in a "lifestyle city" (Knoxville, TN) there are several middling big cities that are in close proximity to activities (hiking, climbing, skiing, beaches, etc).

Pretty sure the cities the OP was referring to are Boulder Colorado, Boise Idaho, and Chattanooga Tennessee. My family prefers Knoxville due to it being closer to the Smoky Mountains, but Chatannooga was on our list when we were deciding where to live.

steverbon Hackers use an ordinary light bulb to spy on conversations 80 feet away

I don't think it's about observing the filament directly, just that the filament basically being a spring is more susceptible to vibrations which would change the amount of light emitted.

I am totally guessing at that, but it seems reasonable.

steverbon A collection of videos of police brutality

Had to look it up.

"Tū quoque (/tjuːˈkwoʊkwi, tuːˈkwoʊkweɪ/; Latin for "you also"), or the appeal to hypocrisy, is an informal fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s)." - Wikipedia

steverbon Shopify Goes Digital by Default

I also live in the city to go to museums, art galleries, the symphony, plays, comedy shows, concerts, restaurants, happy hours etc. I have no interest in living outside the city and I especially have no interest in maintaining a house.

And there is no way I am going back to going to an office to work.

YMMV

steverbon Learn sound theory with an acclaimed synth company

Here's a link to the YouTube lecture just in case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow2ZmBmDaNo

steverbon The Parents Are Not All Right

It's doable. Wife and I have done it for literally 23 years. With 4 kids.

Granted, after year 3 (and kid 2) I was making entry level developer money, but here in the south 18 years ago that was a long way from FU money. We made sacrifices and decided that some things were more important than others. Our vacations were camp outs, our four kids wore secondhand (and third/fourth hand) clothes. I bought (and still buy) most of my clothes from Goodwill or Walmart. We have never had the newest anything. There was a period of about two years where we were a single car family.

It's doable. You will have to lower your standard of consumption, probably a lot, but in our case it was totally the better choice. YMMV.

steverbon Covid-19 Will Kill a Ton of Startups (Or So It Will Seem)

Conversely, now may be the time to do the ground work so that a startup is ready to launch as soon as demand returns.

Maybe not doable with VC money, but with sweat equity.

steverbon Berlin Clubs stream live electronic music

Lot of that going on locally too as musicians try and stay afloat.

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2020/03/20/knoxville-mus...

steverbon The chronic suffering of the VB.NET community

Used to occasionally import VB libraries into C# for that sort of thing. :-)

steverbon Using Models to Stay Calm in Charged Situations

We always phrased it as "Presume good intent."

steverbon The Coronavirus Is Forcing Techies to Work from Home. Some May Never Go Back

My employer provides me (and other remote employees) all the equipment needed to work from home. Laptop, Docking Station, Monitors and Keyboards.

But you are right about the corporate BS.

steverbon Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure

There's a registry setting to turn that off thank God.

I LIKE Windows 10, but that particular "feature" is a no go for me.

steverbon No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

On. I appreciate a company that isn't going to waste two days of my time with a succession of people asking the same questions over and over.

Also, I want to meet my potential co-workers so I can decide if I want to work there.

steverbon Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't

Try a little salt and black pepper on your cantaloupe. It's amazing.

steverbon The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development

I agree, and having been the volunteer runner of my kid's middle school computer clubs (and occasional stand-in teacher) I think the best way to teach computing is not with computers, but with pencil, paper and classroom simulations.

We've successfully implemented some very simple computers by letting various class members stand in for components, and we had one very good implementation of TCP/IP over middleschooler.

steverbon Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

Oddly enough... the same site has it.

https://www.expeditedssl.com/azure-in-plain-english

steverbon Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

I've been quite pleased with the Azure stack myself. There is the issue of figuring out what the marketing team named the damned thing you are looking for, but I had the same problem with AWS.

I am focused primarily on .Net though, so your YMMV by a lot.

steverbon If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead

That was one of the things I liked about the MS Sculpt Keyboard, the numpad is its own separate device. You can put it wherever you want it.

steverbon The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

I honestly don't know what a "deep" question sounds like. Is there a list of topics that fall into that category somewhere?

steverbon Drivers Refuse to Put Down Their Phones. People Keep Dying

So, how do you get the phone to know whether or not you are driving or merely a passenger?

steverbon The Cannonball Record has been broken again

In automotive parlance it is fuel cell... ie a cell to hold fuel. That's just what they're called.

steverbon The Cannonball Record has been broken again

I would love to understand their reasoning for not making the tank as large as absolutely possible though.

Maybe not worth the extra cost of all the work required to absolutely fill the trunk with fuel? 22 minutes spent refueling is incredibly low either way.

steverbon Help me ask why you didn't just

I usually go with something along the lines of: "I assume you tried sshd and it didn't work?"

IE, I am assuming that you are not an idiot and that you tried the obvious thing and that it didn't work for some reason that I don't understand yet.

steverbon Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

Or you could just say "bread and circuses" which is the common english idiom.

steverbon Risk the kitsch: The life of a concert pianist

Daughter is currently experiencing this as a piano performance major. And in the jazz band, and the marching band (sax) and the concert band (clarinet) and two vocal groups and working as an RA and trying to keep her "pop" recording/gigging career alive ( https://open.spotify.com/artist/0fDIdSgcV9GejFZw4lYlWf ).

She considers herself blessed to have inherited my sleep disorder so that she has nights to practice. She has pretty much given up on having a social life except with people she performs with.

The sad part, is that in order to have a shot a real career is that she really has to do 90% of all these things. It sucks.

I think she may give up the RA gig next year and just deal with having more debt.

steverbon Dating as a foreigner in America: Everyone thinks I’m looking for a green card

Yeah, some people are just amazing jerks. :-)

Sorry about that.

steverbon Dating as a foreigner in America: Everyone thinks I’m looking for a green card

I'm with GF's Dad on this one. You're just a boyfriend, not even a fiance. You're not part of the family...yet. Non family members don't get to be in family photos. Event photos, yes, but not family ones.

steverbon It's Not Sabotage, They're Drowning

And just because a developer thinks it's broken doesn't mean it doesn't work exactly the way the customer likes it.

steverbon Estonia has a new way to stop speeding motorists

Heh. We used to use this technique in the Military Police. Speeding tickets on base (at that time in Germany) did not result in a fine. They resulted in what amounts to the person's commander getting a notification and then deciding what to do with it.

It usually resulted in a butt chewing for the service member. The military spouses tended to be less impressed by this. So for spouses we always took a lot of time filling out the paperwork.

For the spouses who proclaimed how "important" their husband was, I liked to be especially obsequious and insist that they talk to my supervisor, and make them wait by the side of the road until said supervisor could make it to the scene (or have better things to do and tell me to quit screwing around).

Young me was a jerk sometimes.