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pugworthy

Re:US boy names that became girl names and vice versa on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:22PM (#50343146)
Ambiguous couple names are always a challenge. I indirectly know of a Tony and Dawn. Or is it Toni and Don? I can never remember which is which.
Re:Radiation Map of the World on Sunday November 01, 2026 @11:53AM (#50327329)
I think I finally know how The Prisoner was recorded in the database.
Re:Simple circuits can create complex behaviors on Saturday October 31, 2026 @04:31PM (#50319855)
Thank you - also came to comment on Elmer and Elise being the precursor long ago.

Walter himself mentioned the perceived complexity of a simple system to the observer, stating it "might be accepted as evidence of some degree of self-awareness."

Re:Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament on Saturday October 31, 2026 @04:19PM (#50319723)
As opposed to say, that career politicians will be overly confident in scientific decisions they make in new domains completely foreign to them, primarily due to their expertise in their own domains and that this will lead to disastrous policy decisions.
Just saw a presentation at the OSU PRAx Center last night bringing science and arts together (https://prax.oregonstate.edu/poetry-polar-science).

One of the presentations was on this research, and I was somewhat amazed the new stretch goal is to find 10 million year old ice. More power to them!

To be clear, so far some of the oldest ice found is over 6 million years old...

https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/six-million-year-old-ice-d...

Re:Linode Security Incident on Friday October 30, 2026 @06:42PM (#50311056)
Lately it seems like we need "hacks.ycombinator.com" as a new sub-list.
Re:A Health Update on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @11:02PM (#50284095)
I take it for RA, and am kind of amazed I've not had any real side effects per se. Daily Folic Acid (which I take) is supposed to help. I take it once a week (20 mg). And was also kind of surprised when I started reading up on it what it also was used for.
Re:MicroZig to Adopt Strict No LLM / No AI Policy on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @09:53PM (#50283599)
There will probably be a time when it's impossible to determine if content came from an LLM or a human. We're currently in the, "It's been 'shopped, I can tell by the pixels" stage.
It's not about heat loss, it's about possible impact on the ocean floor and thus the unique ecosystems of hydrothermal vents. It may have a low-impact profile when managed correctly, but the process carries potential risks to delicate benthic ecosystems if not done well.

I'm not saying this work is a bad thing, just that one needs to be pretty careful about it. It's probably a soap box I'm more willing to jump up on being a former marine technician on research ships for many years.

My first thought was to wonder what the impact is on existing hydrothermal ecosystems.

The Axial Seamount area is not at all some dead barren zone we can just tap into without concern for ecological harm. Hydrothermal vent areas are very vibrant ecosystems that influence deep ocean ecology in ways we already understand, and probably ways we don't yet understand.

I am glad to see in their press release [1] they do mention careful selection of sites, conditions for operation, and ecological monitoring. And the area is already the focus of oceanographic research by various institutions.

[1] https://www.enduranceenergy.com/press/adelie

Re:SimCity, but with Permits on Tuesday October 20, 2026 @11:47PM (#50175851)
Next up, Stardew Valley with an HOA
Re:Do dentists know what they're doing? on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @11:12PM (#50098669)
TL;DR

Dental advice is contradictory, confident, and often self-serving, so the patient can’t tell who to believe.

Re:Things to know if you get cancer in 2026 on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @07:53PM (#50097306)
A few comments based on having gone through prostate cancer as well as observing how others deal with it (or don't).

As much as you need the health care system to make decisions and act, you need to do the same. And there are some kinds of cancer where talking about it is embarrassing, or fear of treatment keeps the patient from proceeding - not the doctor.

Prostate cancer detection for example has it's basic roots in the PSA test (easy enough), but also DRE (Digital Rectal Exam). As things go for exams, it's not many people's favorites and some will put it off.

Next up, say you have higher PSA. You probably will get sent off for a biopsy. Guess where they have to go to get core samples? There are a few routes, but none of them are what one might call fun at all.

So just to get diagnosed, you're going to find people who will put it off or not do it simply because they have anxiety or otherwise are uncomfortable about it.

Then there's the outcomes of the treatments - of which there are many types of treatments. The two big negatives of treatment can be incontinence and erectile dysfunction. That and your penis might be shorter post surgery if you go that route.

What that does is get people who need treatment going from doctor to doctor to find the one that tells them what they want to hear (no side effects). It's paralysis by analysis combined with fear of the not necessarily guaranteed side effects.

But there is one side effect if you do nothing for long enough - you'll die.

So do something - don't let the blocker to treatment be you.

Re:Apple/macOS silently removed from official Unix registry on Monday October 12, 2026 @10:40PM (#50065898)
Totally off topic, but I'm replying to an old comment from 3 months ago about me getting a ticket to KGATLW due to a gmail name typo. ("Are you in the weights?")

Yes I went!

The other me had bought new tickets already by the time I tracked him down, and he said "Just keep them!" I took the Amtrak down from Oregon to the Bay Area, and my daughter and I met up with the other me for drinks before the concert at the Frost Amphitheater. GREAT time, tons of fun. Wouldn't have been on my list per se but as an impulsive fun thing to do it was fantastic!

Ages ago I was working on a Mars-based game idea and at the time the terrain res data wasn't great. This kind of concept really would have been a game changer (as it were).
Really neat idea - would have loved to have this 15-20 years ago!

I'm curious how it does for non-Earth data. Mars terrain for example.

Christ, what an asshole
Re:Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock on Sunday September 27, 2026 @11:49PM (#49873394)
Bought $1000 of MSFT right after IPO. Went up 20% very quickly. Sold it immediately feeling confident I'd done the right thing. Worth $5+ million now I think?
Re:Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock on Sunday September 27, 2026 @11:08PM (#49873128)
To satisfy the curious, "I have been everything, and nothing is worth it."

Well quoted.

Re:Database and Map of Flock Surveillance Cameras on Saturday September 26, 2026 @05:47PM (#49860836)
I've gone and looked at all the locations in my town listed - every one of them is wrong. I think if there were 7 Condor Trailer cameras for example at one of the locations given, it would be pretty obvious. Or if a local Credit Union had a Falcon unit it would be pretty obvious too.
I would encourage anyone concerned about cameras in their town to explore the DeFlock website map (and app). It allows crowdsourced reporting of camera locations.

I also would STRONGLY encourage people to actually go look for any ALPR reported in their town, because DeFlock also allows crowdsourced corrections to misreported instances.

Where I live, it had been reported that we had 9 ALPR cameras, which in fact were not ALPR cameras but rather traffic management cameras - or in two cases not cameras at all. It gave the impression of a problem that didn't exist here.

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026) on Sunday August 09, 2026 @06:14PM (#49236694)
Enjoying retirement. Amazed how fast I was able to just stop thinking about software. It's very liberating.
Re:Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI? on Tuesday July 14, 2026 @01:10PM (#48909959)
I'm probably not the only person that types math problems into google search because I'm too lazy to open up a calculator (or do the math myself). So yes, given I do that, I probably am susceptible to offloading some of my thinking to AI.
This might be just the thing for my elderly mother. She's used an iPhone for many many years, but struggles lately with motor dexterity, vision, and a bit of cognitive challenge making phone usage difficult. Lots of things I'd like to just hide she doesn't need to get to (like Settings).
MMOSS (Massive Multiplayer Online Screen Saver) is what I've always seen it as. Beautiful game. Not for the faint of heart .
Re:Show HN: Are You in the Weights? on Thursday June 18, 2026 @07:27PM (#48592978)
I have yet to get the page to load, but due to gmail mixups I've been confused with a retired professor of economics in the UK, and also got a pair of tickets for a King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard concert.
Re:Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness on Tuesday June 16, 2026 @06:19PM (#48562994)
My elderly mother paying $350/month for Eliquis (in the US) would love this sentiment.
Re:Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness on Tuesday June 16, 2026 @06:17PM (#48562982)
My personal model of motion sickness is that either your inner ear is saying, "Hey we are moving" and your eyes are saying "No we're not!" (classic sea sickness/car thing). Or your eyes are saying, "Hey we're moving!" and your inner ear is saying, "No we're not!" (classic VR motion sickness).

So it makes sense with that model that you'd get motion sickness reading in the car. Your eyes are so focused on the fixed page you're not getting the movement cues you would if you looked out the window. The dots give you that cue somewhat subliminally.

I have a theory it could be slightly nauseating for one to try and read when not in motion while dots moved around the page like that.

This brings to mind Neil Rickert's "The Parable of the Two Programmers", which was published in the ACM SIG Software Engineering newsletter, January 1985.

https://dl.acm.org/action/showFmPdf?doi=10.1145%2F1012443 for the original, or https://realmensch.org/2017/08/25/the-parable-of-the-two-pro... for a reprint.

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