Hacker News: Scoundreller

New comment by Scoundreller in "Delta’s Biscoff cookies were supposed to be temporary"

Scoundreller — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 06:29:13 +0000

We’re mostly adults here, we can call it by its unsanitized name: Speculoos

New comment by Scoundreller in "The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s"

Scoundreller — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 22:06:23 +0000

I can't be the first small-brained Canadian that stuck a fan in front of those euro apartment bloc radiators on a cold day.

(And re-arranged the furniture a bit + stopped using the radiator as storage...)

New comment by Scoundreller in "15-year search for a band that charted once and vanished"

Scoundreller — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 20:47:38 +0000

Using HN, I found a near-vanished documentary called "e-dreams - the rise and fall of kozmo.com", basically a proto-Doordash that I originally watched on Netflix:

> Kozmo.com was a venture capital–funded online company that promised free one-hour delivery of "videos, games, DVDs, music, mags, books, food, basics and more"[1] and Starbucks coffee in several major cities in the United States. It was founded in March 1998 by young investment bankers Joseph Park and Yong Kang in New York City, and was out of business by April 2001.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com

All links/isos were dead. One listing on eBay that's not for my region and that it would be wrong to circumvent that. But I found a (dead) youtube link on HN's search and found a service that can find YT links on archive.org (which seems to be non-functional for me nowadays: https://findyoutubevideo.thetechrobo.ca/ )

https://web.archive.org/web/20140625051331/http://www.youtub...

New comment by Scoundreller in "Yandex Takes a Second Data Center Hit in 48 Hours"

Scoundreller — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 20:32:40 +0000

Countries still have strategic reserves, but usually of crude, not refined product --> decentralized reserves would help with supply cuts by any cause. The benefit would be too individual vs export/frontlines, so won't happen.

New comment by Scoundreller in "Yandex Takes a Second Data Center Hit in 48 Hours"

Scoundreller — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:49:12 +0000

my Arm/Android set-top box of choice for, ahem, streaming subscriptions, is up 50% in price despite no changes to the design since I bought it 2 years ago. And that's on aliexpress where margins are limited.

New comment by Scoundreller in "Yandex Takes a Second Data Center Hit in 48 Hours"

Scoundreller — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:43:17 +0000

coming soon on alibaba: data-centre-specific bomber drones, sales to all parties, no questions asked!

New comment by Scoundreller in "Yandex Takes a Second Data Center Hit in 48 Hours"

Scoundreller — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:41:05 +0000

Energy facilities have the destructive energy stockpiled on-site. Don't need to fly in much force yourself.

Also why I think governments should mass-produce & subsidize blow-molded 25L plastic gas cans instead of building centralized storage tanks/caverns. No way those things cost anywhere near US$25 to make.

New comment by Scoundreller in "Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days"

Scoundreller — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 06:51:59 +0000

ChatGPT sometimes spit out some characters from very foreign character sets. Maybe only an issue on the free side?

New comment by Scoundreller in "So You Think You Could Be an Electrician?"

Scoundreller — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 03:22:04 +0000

> Got something that's an absolute bitch to get apart or something goes wrong? Yeah you're still getting paid the same even if it's not your fault.

I feel bad for mechanics in the rust belt getting paid what another mechanic gets paid for much more effort

New comment by Scoundreller in "Replacing the old battery on rechargeable bike lights"

Scoundreller — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 02:14:55 +0000

It’s more of a “be seen” light rather than one that lights the way ahead.

My jurisdiction requires a solid white light facing forward at night, but you can have a flasher in addition to that (cuz drivers still won’t see you with a solid light…).

Also a good backup it your main light does to stay legal.

New comment by Scoundreller in "Banks and Credit Unions to Team Up Against Apple Pay Fees"

Scoundreller — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 05:24:45 +0000

> Somewhat related, even Walmart relented and now supports Apple Pay/Contactless.

Walmart USA.

Walmart Canada allowed contactless pretty much from the start over a decade ago

Always confused me on trips to USA when I’d have to insert a card

New comment by Scoundreller in "Ask HN: Who's still keeping a DOS machine up because the business depends on it?"

Scoundreller — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 03:23:37 +0000

I suspect more modern computers would have chipsets with dead leads for rs232 if your soldering is fine enough

New comment by Scoundreller in "ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026"

Scoundreller — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 01:22:13 +0000

> because they leave them on UA plates

which EU country permits non-EU plates (and insurance?) indefinitely?

New comment by Scoundreller in "ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026"

Scoundreller — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 01:13:36 +0000

Bangladesh is already at ~3x the population density as India

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

New comment by Scoundreller in "ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026"

Scoundreller — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 01:04:13 +0000

For whatever reason, India had quite a lead on pharma manufacturing and still runs carries its own pretty well

New comment by Scoundreller in "Back and shoulder surgery is often worse than useless"

Scoundreller — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 04:31:19 +0000

For ~90% of the population, it’s right there under 200km away.

New comment by Scoundreller in "Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges"

Scoundreller — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:39:14 +0000

It’s really not that unusual to manufacture in bulk at one facility and package in another.

Also let’s multiple “competitors” consolidate packaging into one big operation. Or localized to destination. Also a space thing: can ship more in bulk and make it all fluffier closer to point of sale.

Shoeboxes, among other packages, are a lot of air, why fill your truck/container/aircraft “unit load device” with it.

New comment by Scoundreller in "The engineering behind the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve"

Scoundreller — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 01:57:39 +0000

China isn’t a member but IEA requires its 32 members to have 90d stockpile worth of oil imports:

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/oil-stock...

New comment by Scoundreller in "BYD looking to build 5-minute EV charging network in Canada"

Scoundreller — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 01:41:16 +0000

My long term fear, here in the rust belt, is their corrosion protection.

New comment by Scoundreller in "How Uber Protects Against Retry Storms"

Scoundreller — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 01:13:36 +0000

Meanwhile Google keeps giving me “please wait, do not reload page” walls, so I ctrl-r as rapidly as possible. Or is that the human test and response?