Hacker News: DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DavidAdamsHacker News RSShttps://hnrss.org/hnrss v2.1.1Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:27:39 +0000<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more"]]>There are also a lot of nicknames for Margaret (Marge, Madge, Maggie, etc), I guess because there just aren't nearly as many biblical names for women/girls so people wanted to get creative.

]]>Mon, 10 Feb 2025 17:55:17 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003091DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003091https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003091<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more"]]>A "bodkin," an archaic word for a small knife or sharp implement, is probably a diminutive of "bod" or dagger. A "jerkin" or a tight vest, might be a diminutive of the Dutch "jerk," (dress), but all of these words are so old it's hard to nail down their etymology. As other commenters pointed out, today's diminutive suffix is -y/-ey, used mostly for childhood nicknames and baby-talk names like horsey.

]]>Mon, 10 Feb 2025 17:50:46 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003035DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003035https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003035<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "45 years ago CompuServe connected the world before the World Wide Web"]]>For me, the interesting takeaway from this article is that CompuServe started as a way for a big insurance company to monetize its idle computing capacity in the off hours.

]]>Tue, 24 Sep 2024 17:55:40 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41639170DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41639170https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41639170<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "The Double Irish Dutch Sandwich: End of a Tax Evasion Strategy"]]>The word evade has a specific meaning in English, implying avoidance by trickery. And it has a specific legal meaning, which is knowingly bending or breaking the law. They are not synonyms, especially in a tax context.

]]>Tue, 17 Sep 2024 22:03:05 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41573345DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41573345https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41573345<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Why is Chile so long?"]]>I'm sure that has a lot to do with the close physical proximity of the capitals of Argentina and Uruguay.

]]>Tue, 02 Jul 2024 16:38:40 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40858250DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40858250https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40858250<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "CitizenX: Invest in Citizenship"]]>Let's say you're a well-to-do citizen of Pakistan. There are only 11 countries you can travel to without going through visa bureaucracy (and they're not a whos-who of global commerce, either). You park a little bit of your wealth into an investment in one of these countries and now you can freely travel the world without hassle.

]]>Sun, 17 Mar 2024 04:52:26 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39732021DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39732021https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39732021<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "TX AG Pax­ton Opens Inves­ti­ga­tion into Media Mat­ters"]]>Yes, famous haver of factual allegations, Elon Musk. LOL.

]]>Tue, 21 Nov 2023 04:58:29 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359479DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359479https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359479<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "GPT-4 is great at infuriating telemarketing scammers"]]>If you don't have the right to hold up a sign saying whatever you want on land that you own, it's a serious limitation on your free speech. So while I think it's reasonable to place safety and aesthetic restrictions on advertising, it's worth balancing those restrictions against free speech ideals.

]]>Tue, 04 Jul 2023 13:48:34 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36586615DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36586615https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36586615<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Netflix will end its DVD service after 25 years"]]>This story prompted me to look into my email archives and I found an email thread from 2002 about how I accentually sent one of my own DVDs back in the Netflix envelope, and we had to straighten that out.

]]>Tue, 18 Apr 2023 20:48:25 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619875DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619875https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619875<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "John Glenn’s $40 Camera Forced NASA to Rethink Space Missions"]]>I think it's worth mentioning that a nice Nikon or Leica in 1965 would have cost about $400. So they modified a "cheap" camera that cost about 1/10th the price of a "nice" camera.

]]>Mon, 27 Mar 2023 17:06:15 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35329231DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35329231https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35329231<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Eduard: Swiss-Style Relief Shading for Maps Using Machine Learning"]]>I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that a 2D map is going to have roads and valleys and big green spaces in the mountainsides and peaks. The neural net identifies that villages and curvy roads represent valley floors and interpolate where the mountain slopes are.

]]>Fri, 24 Feb 2023 04:22:23 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34920727DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34920727https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34920727<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing"]]>I think the point of the article is that monospaced fonts, or near-monospaced, are good for production (writing), though arguably proportional fonts are better for consumption (reading).

]]>Mon, 07 Nov 2022 01:31:45 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33499902DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33499902https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33499902<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Tuna use sharks as back scratchers despite risk of being eaten"]]>That stupid smooth sharks meme has been taking up space in my brain all these years that could be used for remembering my wedding anniversary, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

]]>Sun, 23 Oct 2022 21:54:17 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33310651DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33310651https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33310651<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows"]]>You better think. Think about what you're trying to do to me.

]]>Wed, 12 Oct 2022 14:57:30 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33177916DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33177916https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33177916<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes"]]>Yeah, wait until you find out that some of your tax dollars go to pay for bridges you never use or to bomb people who never personally insulted you.

]]>Wed, 10 Aug 2022 18:53:56 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416787DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416787https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416787<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "The 1857 Utah War"]]>Porter Rockwell was dubbed the "Destroying Angel," but he was definitely a bona fide law man. But you're right that there is some evidence that he was also kind of the frontier version of a James Bond type secret service or special forces operative with a license to kill. And his boss was Brigham Young, who was a bit drunk on power. Mountain Meadows is absolutely a disgrace and a scandal that should (and does) taint the reputations of Young and other Mormon leaders of the time, but it's more understandable once you consider the greater context of the Utah war. The Utahns were paranoid and on high alert. And Brigham Young in particular was concerned about being deposed and jailed, so he had an interest in keeping people whipped up.

]]>Mon, 08 Aug 2022 19:37:50 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32390035DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32390035https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32390035<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "A Brief History of Frankincense"]]>Oman's pavilion at the Dubai Expo 2020 is "a tribute to frankincense." I learned more about frankincense than I thought I'd ever know.

https://www.expo2020dubai.com/en/understanding-expo/particip...

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1975621/middle-east

]]>Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:26:08 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31696270DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31696270https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31696270<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)"]]>The contemporary Arabian garb isn't exactly "native" or historical. It's a successful attempt at developing a national identity for countries that hadn't really existed as nations before the 60s.

]]>Fri, 27 May 2022 05:30:30 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31526295DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31526295https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31526295<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Policy punishes disabled people who save more than $2k"]]>It's unbelievable how much time, money, and wasted potential productivity the USA spends trying (and failing) to make sure that "undeserving" people don't have access to government welfare benefits of various kinds.

]]>Fri, 20 May 2022 20:45:58 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31452295DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31452295https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31452295<![CDATA[New comment by DavidAdams in "Gophie – modern gopher client for Windows, Mac, Linux"]]>It makes me think of VMS/VAX because I ran a gopher server on a VAX

]]>Wed, 18 May 2022 04:00:51 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31419101DavidAdamshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31419101https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31419101