News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Malic

I remember seeing ads for this back in the day.

It is so much worse than I imagined.

Re:Banned Book Library in a Wi-Fi Smart Light Bulb on Monday June 15, 2026 @08:48PM (#48549144)
Has anyone heard of similar work done with smart light bulbs but for Meshtastic nodes?
Re:The Duodecimal Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 1, Year 1209 [pdf] on Tuesday December 23, 2025 @09:55AM (#46365748)
I feel obliged to drop the School House Rock video/song “Little Twelve Toes” here. It’s the earliest exposure to alternative counting systems for me.

https://youtu.be/7m3AHBu93OE

Re:Oracle made a $300B bet on OpenAI. It's paying the price on Saturday December 13, 2025 @11:56AM (#46255966)
Evergreen :)
Re:Space: 1999 – Special Effects Techniques on Thursday November 27, 2025 @09:22AM (#46069521)
Long time Space:1999 fan here. I've been thinking about this a lot over the years and I agree with you; the show is best looked at as The Twilight Zone in Space. Well - first season anyway. You REALLY have to pick through the dung of second season to find a few "well, that bit was alright" moments.

I think the show worked best when it was a review of variations of loneliness.

* Dragon's Domain - Tony Cellini is burdened by the loneliness of a demon no one else sees. * Guardian of Piri - John Koenig is surrounded by the best of the best in his senior staff. But under the "spell" of the Guardian, he has disagree with all of them and make some very lonely decisions. * Voyager's Return - Ernst Queller is burdened by the memory of his mistake many years ago with development (and many deaths) of the Queller Drive. And it comes back to haunt him in real life, not just his imagination. * End of Eternity - The alien Balor shows us that immortality could be the ultimate form of loneliness.

Re:Father Ted Kilnettle Shrine Tape Dispenser on Sunday June 01, 2025 @10:46AM (#44151276)
Dur-INK!
Re:Father Ted Kilnettle Shrine Tape Dispenser on Sunday June 01, 2025 @10:41AM (#44151222)
Now I want a rubber frog that croaks, “The Golden Age of Ballooning” (Monty Python reference)
It may be a simple case of overloading the washer. Assuming a front loading washer (common these days), if the clothes can’t “tumble”, they’re not going to come out clean.
The same thing happened to the 1963 movie "Charade" (with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charade_(1963_film)#Public-dom...
Re:Kaleidoscopico (A Demo for the Raspberry Pi Pico 2) on Monday April 21, 2025 @09:15PM (#43758214)
* LFT (Linus Åkesson) project - check.

* Demo with nice visuals and music - check.

* Bit-banged video with his own hardware out to VGA - check.

* Assembly coded - check.

* Didn’t go the obvious ARM instruction set path and went RISC-V instead - CHECK!

Re:50 Welcome Signs for 50 States on Sunday June 30, 2024 @12:27PM (#40838109)
I should provide a photo submission - there are some much nicer ones for Wisconsin at the Illinois border.
CGP Grey had a video essay that might resonate with you “You Are Two”: https://youtu.be/wfYbgdo8e-8
Re:Show HN: Nutrient insights through your grocery receipts on Sunday January 21, 2024 @02:08PM (#39081736)
The co-op that I belong to actually emails me PDFs of receipts of the groceries that I buy there (to reduce waste). It’d be really neat if this could accept PDF receipts as an input option.
Re:What makes cheddar cheese taste so good? on Friday December 29, 2023 @05:14PM (#38810884)
Hook's (out of Mineral Point, WI) 5-years aged cheddar is a good place to start. These are the folks that due to a warehouse/cheese-cave clerical error discovered they had a few cases of 20-years aged cheddar. Seriously, it was very good and in no way disgusting.

https://hookscheese.com/

Re:Eclipse: The Demo that Sold 3D to Nintendo on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @08:52AM (#38530662)
TOTALLY forgot about Stellar 7 until you mentioned it! Thanks for bringing that memory back!
TL;DW - The latitude you live at appears to have a correlation with general mortality. https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_weller_could_the_sun_be_go...
Re:From SVG to Canvas – A new way of building interactions on Wednesday June 07, 2023 @08:55AM (#36226190)
I feel the same way about WordPress. If you stick to it's sweet-spot as a solution, it's ... good enough and cheap. But too many folks have this hammer called WordPress and see a world full of nails.
I'd watch that anime.
Re:Energy Saving Road Lighting in Norway on Saturday May 13, 2023 @05:39PM (#35933021)
I've noticed that hotel hallways in Norway worked the same way. While on a tour, I poked my head out of my room quite early to begin the day - it was pitch black but only for a moment. My motion clearly set off the detectors and the hallway fully lit up.

I kinda wish this was the norm in other countries for apartment buildings, hotels, etc.

Re:RNA repair mechanism discovered in humans on Saturday May 13, 2023 @05:29PM (#35932932)
Gonna have to agree that at the very least, the immune system is way up there! After reading Philipp Dettmer's book "Immune" (recommended), I couldn't help but think, "Wow, the API and protocols that this thing has..."
A crowd-sourced map of such levels across a large geographic area (with outdoor/indoor data) would be interesting to look at.

Has anyone done something like this already?

I have to agree. As old as Taliesin (near Spring Green, Wisconsin) is, it feels totally modern to this day.

Mind you, some clear silicone caulk in between the gaps in the windows where they don’t quite fit would be nice.

FLW had a tendency to dream beyond what the building materials of the day could achieve and just didn’t care about little details like that.

https://www.taliesinpreservation.org/

Re:Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Branch Predictor on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @12:43PM (#34521483)
Ow. My head hurts.

And this is why optimizing compilers are some of the most complex programs there are. (or so I have been taught)

Re:An Event Apart – Farewell on Monday December 26, 2022 @01:46PM (#34140499)
I had a chance to attend An Event Apart ... er, event, in Chicago somewhere between 10-15 years ago and it was downright inspirational. There was a real sense of being together with other professionals to better learn about our craft. And there was so much back then that was still new! Amazing times
Re:The hand-cranked Curta mechanical calculator (2021) on Thursday December 22, 2022 @12:48PM (#34096147)
Adam Savage, of Mythbusters-fame, has one of these - and loves it dearly. He had the opportunity to have it CT scanned, to show its inner workings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n564Cw0lHLk

Older »