News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

knodi123

Re:Casio Watches of the 1980s on Saturday October 31, 2026 @04:02PM (#50319569)
I have a quartz-powered mechanical, with deep water proofing, radio sync and solar power, and sapphire glass. I don't have to worry about charge/battery, or scratches, or any water, and it's always 100 accurate. I will literally never have to think about those things, which is why I like it.
Climate change is a consequence of fearmongering against cleaner solutions. We have methods for handling radioactive waste safely- whether it's vitrification and dropping it in subduction zones, or just putting it deep underground in wastelands, there are lots of solutions that are infinitely better than the status quo.

Don't let perfection be the enemy of improvement.

It's perfectly understandable, if you allow that most peoples' understanding of nuclear safety is not perfect. Chernobyl and 3 mile island, but also Hiroshima and Nagasaki- atomic power's dangers get a lot more press than when it works quietly and reliably.

Sure, you and I can talk about newer plant designs that fail safely, or about how coal plants emit more radiation by far. But if we had the ability to rapidly convince large swathes of the populace of provable scientific facts, then clean power is only one of the many many problems we would be able to solve.

I saw a video series long ago where a guy kept playing with shapes algorithmically like this, and his catch phrase was something like "oops, I made a fractal again". Wish I could find it!
Re:Bob and Van on Saturday September 05, 2026 @03:29PM (#49579830)
I don't want to sound hyperbolic, but what if you were a jew, and you applied that reasoning to your hitler-loving neighbors back in nazi germany?

Modern politics is fundamentally different from the way things used to be. The right-wing political parties in america today have almost nothing at their core besides hatred for marginalized communities. Demonizing trans people, immigrants, muslims, "communists"- that's it. Everything else is just the whims of an impulsive imbecile - the tariffs, the war with Iran, kidnapping the president of Venezuela, the belligerence towards _greenland_ (?!?!?), etc...

And the purpose behind demonizing them it to energize a shrinking demographic base to compensate for how many reasonable people they've driven away. So at this point, the ones who remain under the maga umbrella have been exposed to so much vitriolic propaganda that they are just at a fever pitch of hatred at all times. I've seen it countless times in my own life- People who used to say that Obama was naive and inexperienced and that his policies were misguided, but who now say he's a muslim jihadi who wanted to destroy america. And so on with many other political issues.

I have several close relatives who used to be like bob, or van- but MAGA has changed them. They are just completely dripping with hate, now. And if I was a member of one of the communities they've been frothed up against, I don't know if I'd feel safe trying to engage with them like the person on the OP.

Re:Supersonic Trebuchet [video] on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @08:48PM (#49442811)
I looked into it. Yes, you're correct, I was wrong. Although there is a speed limit of mach 5 (theoretical, not reachable in practice!) for shockwaves in normal atmosphere.
Re:Supersonic Trebuchet [video] on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @11:19AM (#49362774)
Isn't it true that you can never generate a supersonic projectile with just air pressure?
wow, that was a pretty fast copyright takedown.
toss a raw tree trunk to distract him, and run in the opposite direction.
A møøse once bit my sister.
LCMS and ELCA are practically different religions, IMO. In fact, my pastor at the time had a long angry rant about one of his peers who gave a speech at an event where ELCA pastors also spoke- he said that speaking alongside them gave the false impression that we condone their behavior (ordaining women, accepting gays), which we absolutely did not.

I'm not religious at all anymore. But I value my time as a devout person, it was super educational, and honestly I got a lot out of it. But I wouldn't go back there even for the social aspects.

I know dozens. I'm sure I've met thousands. I used to be active in a lutheran (LCMS) church. If that's where you form your social network, you're likely to be _primarily_ around people who believe in abstinence before marriage. And if you're non-religious, you'll have a different social network.

America maybe a melting pot, but if you'll let me abuse the metaphor a bit- there's not a lot of stirring going on. There are conservative churches in every city in the US, and this is still a fairly religious country.

Re:The Git history command deserves more attention on Tuesday July 14, 2026 @01:12AM (#48902548)
there are plenty of text-based digital music notation systems. Then, you commit periodically as your composition evolves, and you can have all the history/fork/undo whatever that you might want.
Re:The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed on Monday July 13, 2026 @04:42PM (#48898553)
The DOS version has a special place in my heart. I memorized the opening text and thought it was an eerie and cool bit of original poetry, before learning much later that it was a quote from Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_. I still remember my preferred weapon loadout.

Yeah, it doesn't hold up by today's standards, but it was stunning in its day.

This is technically true, but not helpful. These online services have buttons that say "rent" and "buy", they don't say "rent for a little while" and "rent for a longer but unknown amount of time". Of course they can go out of business, but the impression they intentionally give to the customer is that if you click "buy", you get access to the movie for as long as the site exists.
Re:How the Heck does Shazam work? on Thursday April 23, 2026 @01:32AM (#47872544)
Not unless your noise is louder at certain dominant frequencies than the source. The article gives examples, but the algorithm basically throws away everything except frequency peaks, in order to make the lookups faster.
Re:F-35 is a masterpiece built for the wrong war on Monday April 20, 2026 @10:25PM (#47843802)
Don't be silly. There's a third option, neither side gives up for a while.
Re:Hyperlinks in Terminal Emulators on Friday March 13, 2026 @01:54AM (#47361124)
> the link only becomes clickable if you hold down a modifier key.

Fun trick not a lot of people know -

In a web browser, links which are normally clickable become UN-clickable if you hold a modifier. On a mac, it's (option). It's helpful if you want to select text inside a large link (or in a button) so you can copy it.

Re:Bubble Sorted Amen Break on Friday March 13, 2026 @01:52AM (#47361113)
lol, that's the stupidest thing that I've ever watched all the way through with a grin the whole time.
Re:Microsoft BitNet: 100B Param 1-Bit model for local CPUs on Wednesday March 11, 2026 @01:06PM (#47338229)
Why would they film a demo video of it spewing out barely-coherent rambling repetitive drivel? If your model sucks at writing essays, maybe just tell us that, and film a demo of it doing something it IS good at?
Re:Apple Introduces MacBook Neo on Wednesday March 04, 2026 @11:09PM (#47257444)
> even just two dots above the USB3 and two dots above the USB2 wouldn't be rude.

But then they'd look the same! :-P You're reminding me of the old story about the leprechaun, commanded not to tamper with a marker over the location of his buried gold, nor to move the gold, instead filled the entire forest with identical markers.

Re:Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge on Wednesday December 24, 2025 @01:18AM (#46372984)
I guess that makes sense. Thanks.
> "would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors..."

It's a dumb law, but, devil's advocate - isn't that how porn shops work? And porn shops also sell some non-porn items, too.

Re:Scientists find ways to boost memory in aging brains on Thursday November 06, 2025 @09:51PM (#45843094)
but what about my senile mice? please, won't somebody think of them??
Re:System.LongBool on Sunday October 26, 2025 @05:47PM (#45715473)
I chuckled, but presumably it's useful for applications where you want data types to take up the same amount of space, like for matrices or database columns? Or maybe where you coerce different data types into boolean? The language offers WordBool and ByteBool too, so they're pretty consistent. And AFAIK, there aren't any languages where you can specifically allocate only a single bit for a single boolean.
Re:Jane Goodall has died on Thursday October 02, 2025 @10:41PM (#45458319)
"But what if black people really _are_ subhuman?" No thanks. Not biting. I disagree, but arguing that topic just makes me sad and angry, and I've never changed a racist's mind.
Re:Cormac McCarthy's personal library on Thursday October 02, 2025 @10:27PM (#45458212)
> The judge is an incarnation of evil and a pedophile so I don't think that's his Mary sue

Although... he did rather famously have a thing for underage girls...

https://medium.com/belover/cormac-mccarthy-was-a-pedophile-a...

Re:Jane Goodall has died on Thursday October 02, 2025 @03:47PM (#45454577)
holy racist dogwhistle, batman.

chimpanzees are animals, and the only people who think differently are the straw men in the imaginations of people I prefer not to spend time talking to.

Re:Ruby Central's Attack on RubyGems [pdf] on Friday September 19, 2025 @07:58PM (#45308257)
he's been moaning loudly and histrionically about how london is doomed because there's not enough white natives.
Re:Ruby Central's Attack on RubyGems [pdf] on Friday September 19, 2025 @07:54PM (#45308233)
her followup post:

Deleted my post, which I published before Ruby central released their blog explaining things.

It’s ultimately not my place to say or speculate about what’s going on.

It’s obviously a disastrously bad roll out or whatever is happening and I hope they are able to make things right w the community.

Older »