Hacker News: Crunchified

New comment by Crunchified in "An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy"

Crunchified — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 20:03:49 +0000

I always had a muLinux disk handy in my computer toolbox. Most of its shell commands came from a simple script ingeniously written by the distro's author. It's been around since the mid-90s, I'd guess.

https://micheleandreoli.org/public/Software/mulinux/mu/html/...

New comment by Crunchified in "Kirkland Roundabouts"

Crunchified — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 01:21:56 +0000

Tumwater. What you get when you put the wrong tablet in your denture bath.

New comment by Crunchified in "Astronauts told to return to ISS after sheltering over air leak repairs"

Crunchified — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:27:33 +0000

...or the scutters on Red Dwarf.

New comment by Crunchified in "The IsUpMap lets you check the status of over 100 major sites at once"

Crunchified — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:41:07 +0000

No Apple services listed? Where's iCloud?

New comment by Crunchified in "MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production"

Crunchified — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:22:33 +0000

Just so you know, the original Ford Maverick started out at just under $2,000 in 1970.

New comment by Crunchified in "I found a seashell in the middle of the desert"

Crunchified — Sun, 31 May 2026 02:54:12 +0000

I would wager that the land was lower than the sea back then.

New comment by Crunchified in "Kv4p HT – A homebrew 1W radio (VHF or UHF) that plugs into an Android phone"

Crunchified — Tue, 19 May 2026 08:17:06 +0000

The article is chiefly about a radio circuit you can "build", plus some controller software that happens to run on an Android phone. Meanwhile the headline is 100% focused on describing something that your phone can be made to do (which you have admitted that it can't).

The two don't add up, and your apologetic analysis doesn't convince me otherwise. It's still clickbait. An Android cell phone has radio guts, and that headline is just gutless.

New comment by Crunchified in "Kv4p HT – A homebrew 1W radio (VHF or UHF) that plugs into an Android phone"

Crunchified — Tue, 19 May 2026 06:27:10 +0000

This doesn't turn your phone into a ham transceiver at all. It turns your phone into a transceiver controller. Given that a cell phone is a transceiver, this headline is rather disappointing clickbait.

New comment by Crunchified in "My Two and a Half Years at TikTok E-Commerce in the US: Hope to Disillusion"

Crunchified — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 20:58:59 +0000

It's a little (or maybe a lot) different, given the added dimension of clashing (international) cultures and the resulting management perceptions. In some ways, it's the opposite side of the spectrum from those European countries that established their business operations in the USA in the '80s and '90s with far greater benefits and relaxed working schedules than the typical US corporate policies of the era. SAP comes to mind as an example.

New comment by Crunchified in "The Peppermills of Jens Quistgaard"

Crunchified — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 01:51:47 +0000

The pepper grinders at the gift shoppe at Seattle's Space Needle are terrible. Someone like this designer needs to make a GOOD Space Needle pepper grinder with a good (Peugeot) mechanism!

(I recall a sombrero-roofed observation tower at the I-95 South of the Border rest stop/tourist trap in South Carolina called the Spice Needle)

New comment by Crunchified in "Learning Synths"

Crunchified — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 02:10:41 +0000

I did exactly that as well. I wanted to figure out what a synthesizer does/is, so I bought a MicroBrute and had a great deal of fun with it.

So much fun, in fact, that I bought a MatrixBrute not terribly long afterward. Now _that's_ a monosynth to last me a lifetime!

New comment by Crunchified in "Tiny Black Holes Could Have Left Tunnels Inside Earth's Rocks"

Crunchified — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 07:03:47 +0000

Yeah, OK, it did say that. But the reasoning behind this rather complex scenario (i.e., the process) is left up to us to figure out. "The thing came in here, sucked out all the juice, and then left a while later leaving just the crust behind, like an old chewed out tennis ball."

New comment by Crunchified in "Tiny Black Holes Could Have Left Tunnels Inside Earth's Rocks"

Crunchified — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 06:54:08 +0000

"Stojkovic and his colleague, De-Chang Dai of National Dong Hwa University and Case Western Reserve University, also suggest looking for PBH evidence in celestial bodies with surprisingly low masses. They posit that if a PBH shot through a body such as a planet, moon, or asteroid with a liquid core, it might get trapped inside and vacuum up its center, hollowing it out until an external impact dislodged it."

Please explain how this phenomenon would lessen a celestial body's mass?

New comment by Crunchified in "NASA freezes Starliner missions"

Crunchified — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 23:03:15 +0000

Diverging slightly from the topic, Palm (the Palm Pilot company) at one point had a market cap higher than all US airlines combined.

New comment by Crunchified in "Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail"

Crunchified — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 00:41:11 +0000

A big externality is time-savings, and can be calculated.

New comment by Crunchified in "The Naming of America (2023)"

Crunchified — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 23:46:53 +0000

I am simply grateful that I don't live in the United States of Vespucciland.

New comment by Crunchified in "Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images"

Crunchified — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 23:42:12 +0000

It is NOT the insurance company's job to replace a worn-out roof. That is YOUR responsibility! If a roof on your home is not up to the proven (albeit occasional) stresses of your local environment (including snowfall, winds, volcanic ash, etc.), whether due to quality, design, or wear, I see no reason why the insurer should not modify its indemnity. I will grant you that a decent insurer would allow you to petition for a review based on any verifiable additional information that you, as owner and insured, might be able to present.

New comment by Crunchified in "Show HN: Rotary Phone Project"

Crunchified — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 20:43:08 +0000

Take that carbon mic element and tap it repeatedly on a hard surface to loosen up the granules of carbon that need to be able to move round in there when you speak into it. You may find that it improves the fidelity noticeably.

New comment by Crunchified in "Amazon plans to charge for Alexa in June–unless internal conflict delays revamp"

Crunchified — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 06:49:00 +0000

But how will Amazon sell all those Echo products without Alexa?

New comment by Crunchified in "The Pontiac Aztek Was Not a Design Tragedy, It Was a Corporate Tragedy"

Crunchified — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 00:29:46 +0000

It's what most people in leadership roles think leadership is (or should be). And they are SO wrong.