Hacker News: MaMa

New comment by MaMa in "Tim Curry has died"

MaMa — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:59:35 +0000

"By definition", I begin "Alternative Medicine", I continue "Has either not been proved to work, Or been proved not to work. You know what they call "alternative medicine" That’s been proved to work? Medicine."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Minchin%27s_Law

New comment by MaMa in "The raster tragedy at low resolution (1997)"

MaMa — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 15:59:30 +0000

Subtitles are stored as bitmaps on a DVD. That is why they are usually rather blocky, depending on the font used when mastering the DVD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video#Subtitles

You are probably watching video files with subtitles as embedded (or separate) text files (srt etc). This allows the video player to render them with any font and higher resolution.

New comment by MaMa in "Real Life Model of M.C. Escher’s “Waterfall”"

MaMa — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:33:05 +0000

Probably just blue dye to make it visible to the camera

New comment by MaMa in "Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations"

MaMa — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 20:01:58 +0000

Or that disecting a joke ruins it?

New comment by MaMa in "Brilliant talk by John Cleese on creativity."

MaMa — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:10:00 +0000

I had the trouble of going to bed but my mind was racing with ideas, and I could not fall asleep. I noticed that taking a notepad next to bed and writing down the ideas or seeds of ideas I could get them out of my mind and my mind could be at rest and I would fall asleep.

I think it releases the mind from trying to remember the ideas in the morning. When I write the ideas down I can review in the morning with the benefit of having a good nights sleep.

New comment by MaMa in "Brilliant talk by John Cleese on creativity."

MaMa — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:05:55 +0000

Also, our laptops are usually filled with interruptions.

When going into your oasis and taking your time, I'd recommend taking only pen and paper with you.

New comment by MaMa in "The 7 Habits Of Highly Ineffective People"

MaMa — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:13:31 +0000

http://www.civanon.org/

New comment by MaMa in "Apollo 11 Launch at 500 Frames per Second"

MaMa — Wed, 05 May 2010 06:48:20 +0000

He also invented the Rapatronic camera that was used to take pictures of nuclear explosions with 10 nanosecond exposure times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapatronic_camera http://www.simplethinking.com/home/rapatronic_photographs.ht...

New comment by MaMa in "Top Things That Annoy Programmers"

MaMa — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:15:12 +0000

Then it's not a single character variable name anymore

New comment by MaMa in "A Democracy of Netbooks"

MaMa — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:19:37 +0000

Probably just hardware envy, but that's what you get by swinging that huge vpenis around like that ;)

New comment by MaMa in "Twirling Battery Provides Instant Energy for a Dead Cellphone"

MaMa — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:05:13 +0000

Somehow this leads me to imagine pull-cord powered phones.

New comment by MaMa in "Ask HN: What tool makes you most productitive?"

MaMa — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:00:06 +0000

The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm: (1) write down the problem; (2) think very hard; (3) write down the answer.

New comment by MaMa in "What Europeans do at Night"

MaMa — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:38:09 +0000

Exactly. Europe is quite narrow continuous set timezones whereas in the American graph shows the east coast and west coast nicely.

New comment by MaMa in "Gravity to Save 90% Energy When Using a Fridge"

MaMa — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:57:01 +0000

It's a converted chest type freezer. Freezers also have a lot thicker insulation on the walls that also helps improve the efficiency a lot.

It also takes a lot of floor space. On the other hand it could be usable as a secondary refridgerator to hold cold drinks, vegetables etc. that you don't want taking space in your main fridge.

And btw where is my aerogel-insulated fridge? I want one for my flying car!

New comment by MaMa in "Chroma-Hash: a sexy, non-reversible, live visualization of password field input"

MaMa — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:24:55 +0000

There could be a little animation or delay before showing the final "hash". Only the colors for the complete password are important.

And if somebody can take video of the screen they could take video of the keyboard too, no?