Hacker News: Jeema101

New comment by Jeema101 in "Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates"

Jeema101 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:55:31 +0000

Illustrates the importance of 'crossing the T' in naval warfare before there were turreted guns. :)

New comment by Jeema101 in "A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k"

Jeema101 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:29:51 +0000

Alexa play 'Nena - 99 Red Balloons'...

New comment by Jeema101 in "The Titanic’s Best Lifeboat"

Jeema101 — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:26:21 +0000

I don't think people are 'more concerned' - it's just that the sinking of the Titanic was (and still is) a shocking and compelling story. It was the largest ocean liner in the world, on it's maiden voyage, supposedly unsinkable, sinking in frigid waters in a single tragic night.

New comment by Jeema101 in "DOGE's Plan to Rewrite Social Security's Code in Months"

Jeema101 — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 03:30:47 +0000

Okay but why stop there: why not also hand-wave a new operating system and hardware architecture into existence for it to run on while they're at it? I mean it's only 60 million lines of code [1] after all. Should be able to knock that out in a weekend.

[1] https://oig.ssa.gov/congressional-testimony/2016-07-14-newsr...

New comment by Jeema101 in "Space Invaders"

Jeema101 — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 13:28:10 +0000

Objects at the top of the screen are drawn after the mid-screen interrupt. Objects at the bottom of the screen are drawn after the end-screen interrupt. Thus the code and hardware work on different halves of the screen.

I'm wondering what the mechanism is here to avoid bus contention between the video circuit and the CPU both accessing the VRAM at the same time.

Might be evident from studying the schematic I would suppose...

New comment by Jeema101 in "The XB-70 (2019)"

Jeema101 — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 16:15:44 +0000

It's back in the main exhibit now AFAIK. They completed a 4th hangar some years back and towed it back there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WptDcLKTYSM

New comment by Jeema101 in "CDC Study Finds Silent Bird Flu Infections in Dairy Veterinarians"

Jeema101 — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 18:08:34 +0000

I assume you're referring to old people when you say 'vulnerable populations', but the problem is that old people are not always the only ones that get affected during flu pandemics. During the Spanish flu pandemic, for example, half the deaths were in people 20 to 40 years old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Patterns_of_fatali...

New comment by Jeema101 in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

Jeema101 — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 17:10:50 +0000

He is barely coherent most of the time, but several of his ideas do resonate with people and are easy to understand:

1 - Other countries in the world have taken advantage of the US

2 - Illegal immigrants have changed the country for the worse and are taking jobs

#2 in particular has been framed as being racist. There IS a good deal of racism mixed in there, but the truth is that low skilled illegal immigrants DO compete for many of the same jobs as lower-skilled Americans.

None other than Bernie Sanders said as much about the subject right around 2007. His stance at that time was that we needed to do something about illegal immigration specifically to protect the jobs of American workers, but then later he changed his tune to fit in with the rest of the party.

If you address the majority of people's concerns and worries, they'll vote for you.

New comment by Jeema101 in "Why Pascal Deserves a Second Look"

Jeema101 — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 17:21:41 +0000

I recently ported an old Pascal game to Free Pascal. I had never really used Pascal before this particular project.

Learning the language was interesting, but there's a lot about it that seemed pretty irritating, the main one being the separation of variable declarations and code (similar to the original C spec). It also took me way too long to figure out how to properly construct an 'if-then-else' block without the compiler complaining about the syntax.

Can't say I would probably use it in a new project.

New comment by Jeema101 in "Brainfuck Enterprise Solutions"

Jeema101 — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 15:15:38 +0000

The 'computed COME FROM' is even more interesting than the regular one due to it's ability to violate causality by coming from a place in the code before it was ever computed.

That of course makes migrating from Intercal difficult for a lot of organizations.

New comment by Jeema101 in "The 1986 Oldsmobile Incas Dashboard (2020)"

Jeema101 — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 19:52:00 +0000

For a while I kinda wanted to buy a used Buick Reatta as a project car because it had the same CRT touchscreen technology. It's extremely cool if you're into the 80s retro futuristic vibe.

New comment by Jeema101 in "Things I Won't Work With: Dimethylcadmium (2013)"

Jeema101 — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 02:39:20 +0000

Cadmium was also widely used in the past as a galvanic coating on iron and steel parts to keep them from rusting. And unfortunately when and if it oxidizes, it can become powdery and easily airborne. I mess around with old electronics and it's unfortunately pretty common to encounter on old metal radio chassis and things like that.

New comment by Jeema101 in "Jake Seliger has died"

Jeema101 — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 22:37:25 +0000

It's very strange - some people are lucid and mobile up until nearly the end, and others are 'out of it' for a long time. My mother was mostly delirious and bedridden for the entire last month of her life before dying from cancer.

I suppose if the person is able to find peace with what's happening, then maybe it's better to be lucid, but for others, maybe being 'out of it' is a blessing.

New comment by Jeema101 in "No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)"

Jeema101 — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 13:45:56 +0000

The article seems to contain a lot of hand-wringing about upper class' beliefs allegedly harming lower class families, but I don't see any mention about the main change in the labor force since 1960 - namely the participation rate of women. Men probably work less nowadays simply because it's easier to do in a two-income household vs a one-income household.

New comment by Jeema101 in "Show HN: Wadzilla. Play DOOM in Zork"

Jeema101 — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 14:45:40 +0000

Relevant xkcd (and personal favorite of mine) since no one else posted it yet: https://xkcd.com/91/ :)

New comment by Jeema101 in "After 6 years, I'm over GraphQL"

Jeema101 — Thu, 30 May 2024 12:32:42 +0000

I think an aggravating factor in the software world (that's maybe not as prevalent in other fields), is that developers tend to want to use the latest and newest technologies, even if said technology is not really appropriate for the task. It looks good on your resume to say that you used the same technology Facebook uses - the ol' "resume driven development".

New comment by Jeema101 in "40 Years of Sopwith"

Jeema101 — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 13:29:07 +0000

Interview from one day ago with the original author of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIoYM_p3HX4

Interesting takeaways:

* The game was developed for the company that the author worked for in 1984 as a demonstration of the company's networking tech. It was supposed to only be for their clients. But it ended up being copied and passed around and by 1988 (at the latest) it was being distributed by shareware distributors.

* There is an Atari ST port that the author made around the same time as the PC version which apparently never made it onto the internet but might still be floating around somewhere (on disk or ROM cartridge) in his personal collection of stuff.

New comment by Jeema101 in "Krazam OS"

Jeema101 — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 15:18:59 +0000

Oh definitely. Love Galactus.

Ask HN: Is this the norm nowadays for big tech customer service?

Jeema101 — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 16:17:21 +0000

Earlier this week I signed up for LinkedIn Premium (which is $40 a month after a 30 day trial). Today I attempted to sign in to my account, and was greeted with a notice that I am locked out due to 'suspicious activity'.

Normally in a situation like this, I would contact customer service and get it resolved. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any email contact for LinkedIn customer service that I can find online anywhere. Nor does there appear to be any live chat option unless you have LinkedIn Premium membership and are signed in. But I can't sign in because I'm locked out!

The only recourse that is being offered to me is to upload a government issued ID, or else presumably I am locked out forever. This seems absurd considering I just signed up for a paid subscription. Do they want my money or not?

Is this the norm nowadays for big tech customer service? I work for a small online company and we at least offer online live chat support for anyone who needs it.

EDIT: I managed to get this resolved. For anyone else facign a similar situation in the future: I first went here to report an account access issue: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/ask/TS-RHA They then sent me an email asking again for a government ID. I responded saying that this was not acceptable because I'm a Premium subscriber. At that point, an actual person then responded and unlocked the account.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40003844

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by Jeema101 in "Peter Thiel Turned a Roth IRA into a $5B Tax-Free Piggy Bank (2021)"

Jeema101 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:50:37 +0000

The article seems to allege that Roth IRAs are being used as illegal tax shelters by using them to purchase assets at below-market value. It states:

"Thiel paid $0.001 per share — yes, just a tenth of a penny — for 1.7 million shares. At that price, he was able to buy a large stake for just $1,700.

In 1999, $2,000 was the maximum amount you could put into a Roth in a year.

Thiel’s unusual stock purchase risked running afoul of rules designed to prevent IRAs from becoming illegal tax shelters. Investors aren’t allowed to buy assets for less than their true value through an IRA. The practice is sometimes known as “stuffing” because it gets around the strict limits imposed by Congress on how much money can be put in a Roth."