News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

dbdoug

Re:The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @07:26PM (#49915786)
I’m not going to be alive in 40 years, but I would like to have known what classified information will be released in 2066 dealing with satellites in orbit now?
Re:The moral panic over data centres is foolish on Saturday September 05, 2026 @03:46PM (#49580020)
From the Economist website: "ALL writers at The Economist are anonymous."
Re:Hacking IKEA Furniture on Sunday August 30, 2026 @07:09PM (#49503735)
Shelf life? I have items from Ikea that I have had for over 40 years, like Ivar shelving and Poang chairs. And they'll be handed down to my kids....
Re:The Doorman's Fallacy in Action on Thursday June 25, 2026 @09:33PM (#48681364)
> you just drop everything you picked up into the box, it scans all the RFID tags and makes sure the weight is correct, and it's all done.

Well, not exactly. I saved a bundle of money inadvertently in a Decathlon in São Paulo. I read the instructions, but didn't understand the Portuguese completely. I dumped a ton of purchases into the bin, watched the screen scroll through the items, and paid the bill. When I got home I realized that I'd only been billed for about half the items. Next time I was there, I read the instructions more carefully and discovered that they said to put the items in the bin one by one

Hey, I'm nearly 80 years old. I haven't written a line of code in over 10 years. But I'm coding now, with the help of Claude & Gemini, and having a great time. Each block of Python or Applescript that they generate for me is a much better learning tool than a book - I'm going through the code line by line and researching everything. And I'm also learning how to deal with LLMs and their strengths & weaknesses. Correcting them from time to time when they screw up. Lots of fun.
Re:The Singularity Will Occur on a Tuesday on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @04:25PM (#46967131)
From Gemini:When you take those two shapes and combine them, the resulting image looks like an umbrella.
Re:Show HN: I Wrapped the Zorks with an LLM on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @07:09PM (#46789105)
Houses have 4 sides....
Re:The AI coding trap on Sunday September 28, 2025 @11:16PM (#45410046)
>We _already_ live in a world where most of us spend much of our time reading and trying to comprehend code written by others from the past.

In 1969 as a newly hired graduate working for the largest construction company in the country, one of my first assignments was to read through a badly formatted COBOL source code listing on paper, line by line, with 2 others. Each of us had a printout of a different version of the software, trying to discover where exactly the three versions were giving different outputs. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

And a month's supply of generic tadafila 5mg in Brasil costs less than USD$7.00
I can (at the ripe old age of 78) confirm this completely. Without stimulation, nothing except facial flushing. With stimulation, and only with stimulation, a functioning erection.
Re:Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell on Friday October 27, 2023 @12:36PM (#38040688)
Strange. I live in Canada, and visit Brazil often. I have never had any trouble using my only Amazon account to log in to Amazon USA, Amazon Brazil, or Amazon Canada. I have both Brazilian and Canadian addresses set up as shipping options on my account, and I often make purchases on Amazon Brazil while in Canada and have them shipped to the Brazilian address.
How about 'Fatal car crash renews debate over how many cars are too many'
Re:New iPad Pro with M2 on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @03:31PM (#33252663)
Paperlike is pretty pricey. I bought a similar screen cover on Amazon Canada by Bellmond for CAD$20. Works great!
Re:Explore ISS on Google Maps on Saturday January 12, 2019 @11:37AM (#18891909)
I have the same problem in Chrome
Re:How law enforcement is trying to avoid disabling Face ID on Saturday October 13, 2018 @11:17PM (#18211173)
I have blue blocking glasses (by Cyxus) and Face ID works fine with them on or off.
Re:The Octonion Math That Could Underpin Physics on Saturday July 21, 2018 @12:26AM (#17580683)
'Looking like an interplanetary traveler, with choppy silver bangs that taper to a point between piercing blue eyes' WTF? for a few minutes, I thought this was a serious article by a serious journalist. Apparently not.
I pay and, as I mentioned before, when I open the Guardian main site, Ghostery only picks up 4 trackers.
I just tried opening the Guardian site and Ghostery reports only 4 trackers. One of which is Facebook.
VBA/MS Access - active databases for several clients.
Re:Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @11:21PM (#12749550)
FWIW, I just turned 70 and I'm still being offered more coding work than I want. It is VBA, though :)
Re:Russian ship loitering near undersea cables on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @09:11PM (#12697650)
I'm a daily user of the marinetraffic site, and it's pretty fragile at any time.
Re:Average age of StackExchange users for each tag on Saturday December 29, 2012 @12:18PM (#4982647)
I would be interested in seeing an age profile. I, for one, removed my birth date after being flamed about my age. I've been programming since 1962 :)
Re:IQ scores in relation to web browser choice on Friday July 29, 2011 @01:08AM (#2820302)
A couple of points. First: In the paper, Aptiquant claims that over 100,000 took a Weschler (IV) test in 4 weeks. According to wikipedia, a Weschler test takes about 15 minutes. That's an awful lot of people looking for free IQ tests, and spending 15 minutes each on the site. Second: Check out Aptiquant's site. Maybe I'm stupid, but I was unable to find a single active 'Free IQ Test' link.

And another - Aptiquant's results (if they are real) are from a self-selected group. Does the need to take a free online IQ test relate to your IQ?

Can you give some examples?