Hacker News: Magi604

New comment by Magi604 in "A Brief History of Fish Sauce"

Magi604 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 02:38:02 +0000

Wow, Legalnomads! Happy to see her pop up here. Way back in the day when I used to backpack and freelance she had a very big online presence in the internet hustler community. I just read through her recent history and I'm sad for her recent health issues, but glad she's still pushing through.

Study investigates how mass distribution of baseball bat affects performance

Magi604 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 02:49:17 +0000

https://baseball.physics.illinois.edu/ISEA2026-Torpedo-v7.pd...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47622717

Points: 24

# Comments: 17

New comment by Magi604 in "Tracy Kidder has died"

Magi604 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:20:00 +0000

I found this book in a $2 bin at one of my (now long gone) used bookstores. It was a fantastic read. Thank you Mr Kidder for the fantastic story.

New comment by Magi604 in "BYD is seeing a flood of new EV buyers"

Magi604 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 19:08:59 +0000

Happy PHEV owner here. I have a few quibbles with my particular model, but imo this is currently the way to go. It's the best of both worlds.

New comment by Magi604 in "See how many words you have written in Hacker News comments"

Magi604 — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 16:04:10 +0000

You're kind of describing old school forums. Man I miss those.

New comment by Magi604 in "I found the perfect yearly calendar (for me)"

Magi604 — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 04:13:14 +0000

This is such a great layout, thank you for bringing it to my attention!

New comment by Magi604 in "A spider web unlike any seen before"

Magi604 — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:08:48 +0000

This was my exact arrangement with them when I used to live in a basement suite that was crawling with them.

New comment by Magi604 in "The Gentle Seduction (1989)"

Magi604 — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 18:57:05 +0000

What a though-provoking story to read with my coffee.

I've often had the thought that I will probably just miss the singularity due to my age, but people like my nephews will have a greater chance at experiencing it.

New comment by Magi604 in "Size of Life"

Magi604 — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:49:39 +0000

The visual scale seems off, especially on the smaller end of things. Also, are Velociraptors really that small? Jurassic Park lied to me.

New comment by Magi604 in "Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain"

Magi604 — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 15:55:26 +0000

I was thinking this would find great application at my job (Paramedic) but then I remembered that we are always always wearing protective gloves and this would likely not work as great (if at all) when completely covered like that.

New comment by Magi604 in "Kids who ran away to 1960s San Francisco"

Magi604 — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 02:38:10 +0000

>If there is a lesson to this side quest, it’s certainly this: you can JUST go to the library (or do things, in general). The world is full of rooms like that sixth-floor reading room, and it’s up to you to walk into them. Work usually can wait, and you often come back more inspired to it when you’ve given yourself permission to wander. Just go on that quest!

People too often forget this.

New comment by Magi604 in "Broccoli Man, Remastered"

Magi604 — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 21:06:48 +0000

We're still early. I imagine a lot of creativity will be unlocked once more people have access to easier to use video creation tools like what was shown in OP.

New comment by Magi604 in "Outdated Samsung handset linked to fatal emergency call failure in Australia"

Magi604 — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 17:54:07 +0000

My S21 Ultra is the best phone I've ever had. I bought it a couple of months from when it was newly released and it just will not die. I've traveled with it, played all the games, thousands of photos, used it for nearly a year while I was doing gig driving (so plugged in and screen on for hours at a time), dropped countless times, and the screen has no cracks and the battery still lasts more than a day with regular use. For the past few years every new Samsung smartphone has piqued my interest, and the second my S21 dies I will buy whatever Samsung flagship happens to be the latest, but it just will not die.

New comment by Magi604 in "My dad could still be alive, but he's not"

Magi604 — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 04:04:13 +0000

So I don't know exactly how Toronto operates their ambulance service, but unless the family gave some bad details, the calltaker should have gleaned that they were likely dealing with a case of cardiac-related chest pain, and that's right at the top of the list of severe emergencies, regardless of how far along it has progressed, at least over here anyways.

I should add I feel a little queasy about dissecting this blog post for details. It seems more like a cathartic exercise for the author rather than some breakdown review of how the incident went, so it seems like some details were left out on purpose.

New comment by Magi604 in "My dad could still be alive, but he's not"

Magi604 — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 03:30:17 +0000

This is a very tragic story and my heart goes out to the family. It's one I've seen a few times now and hear about on a very regular basis from my coworkers.

I am a Canadian Paramedic (EMR soon to be PCP in a few months, roughly equivalent to EMT and AEMT respectively). Some things strike out at me:

- Here in BC our calltakers can advise patients on some treatments. I'm sure if that were to happen here, they would have advised the family to administer some ASA (Aspirin) to the patient which would have bought valuable time until professional care could be reached. Even if it was found to be contraindicated, the fact it was not mentioned in the blog post stands out to me.

- I'm not familiar with the geography of Toronto or its normal traffic patterns, but it's surprising that a single ambulance was not 30 minutes from the patient driving lights and sirens at that time of night (shortly after dinner).

- Fire crews here in BC are dispatched to severe medical incidents (like heart attacks) and most of the time can even beat ambulance crews to a scene. They would have been able to provide CPR if needed, possibly even ASA or Nitro depending on their scope. So again it's surprising that there's no mention of them. Perhaps they aren't dispatched to medical calls in Toronto?

- Lastly it's surprising that the calltaker had no visibility on where the dispatched crews were at. At the very least they could have radioed the crew to get an ETA. I guess I just take it for granted that over here we are tracked as soon as we sign in to our vehicle (it's a safety thing especially in some of our more rural/remote stations). If the ambulance was just about to reach the patient right before the family decided to go to the hospital on their own, things might have turned out differently.

Also since I'm assuming that a large percentage of HN readers are older males who are at risk of a heart attack (due to factors like working desk jobs and not keeping up with fitness as much), read up on the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and keep a bottle of aspirin at the ready. Bodies are complicated and weird and you never know.

New comment by Magi604 in "A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)"

Magi604 — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:48:57 +0000

A small group of people took a chance, and it turned into a movement and changed internet history. I bet this could become a solid documentary.

New comment by Magi604 in "Don't avoid workplace politics"

Magi604 — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:02:51 +0000

"Politics is just how humans coordinate in groups. It’s the invisible network of relationships, influence, and informal power that exists in every organization. You can refuse to participate, but that doesn’t make it go away. It just means decisions get made without you."

This is how I feel, and this is what I tell people when they don't want to get involved in the organization's politics.

New comment by Magi604 in "A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks"

Magi604 — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 14:50:57 +0000

I'll have to ask him for the details

New comment by Magi604 in "A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks"

Magi604 — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 19:56:11 +0000

Recently I found out that one of my friends had his identity stolen, thousands and thousands drained from his bank accounts. After thorough investigation it was traced to a PayPal breach, and he had to fight hard to get them to admit it was their fault. He got everything back, eventually, but the whole process was a nightmare.

New comment by Magi604 in "The Effect of Noise on Sleep"

Magi604 — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 15:38:34 +0000

My apartment is along a corridor that is frequented by emergency vehicles, so sirens are frequent during normal sleep hours, and my apartment windows face the sunrise. I've adopted a number of things over the years to combat all of this:

- Blackout curtains

- Earplugs

- White noise maker (just an air purifier but it does the same thing)

- 3mg Melatonin