Hacker News: cronix

New comment by cronix in "Blockbuster Video VHS insert template"

cronix — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 16:45:50 +0000

It took about 3 seconds to check. Pop open the case the tapes came in and look at the plastic window and you can easily see both reels. If the tape was all on the left reel, it was rewound. Just about all rental places did this when you returned the tape. Audio cassette tapes were the same way. The VHS cassette was basically just a larger version of an audio cassette with wider and longer tape.

Pic of rewound VHS: https://www.becomingminimalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/0...

New comment by cronix in "John Walker, founder of Autodesk, has died"

cronix — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 07:27:07 +0000

I fell in love with 3D Studio in the 90's. It was so intuitive to use compared to Lightwave3D for someone who didn't know what they were doing, but very curious and wanting to learn. A big challenge was getting it to run in windows 3.1 when that was released, but it did. Ah, and having to create a RAM drive to put the video into so you could actually watch it in real time without buffering at 320x200 (i386 days).

New comment by cronix in "Scotia, California is owned by a New York investment firm"

cronix — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 04:11:29 +0000

And now US Steel is owned by Japan!

New comment by cronix in "Hard disk LEDs and noisy machines"

cronix — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 22:25:00 +0000

One of the biggest "steps" I experienced was when SSD'd first came around. Suddenly "slow db queries" ran at light speed instead of taking 5+ seconds. It was quite physically noticeable and now it's not. You have to run EXPLAIN on everything to be sure.

Going back a bit further, I fondly remember my dad yelling "did you PARK the hard disk?" whenever he heard me power down the old TRS80 with "state of the art" 5 meg HD physically bigger than my first PC (which had a 40meg HD - dad was jealous). If you didn't manually issue a park command, the read/write head could flop around and cause damage if you bumped or moved the HD.

New comment by cronix in "AI and satellite imagery reveals expanding footprint of human activity at sea"

cronix — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 17:55:51 +0000

You can track them with sites like FlightAware or FlightRadar24. Just zoom in to where your house is. Click on a plane. If it's not on the map, it likely isn't broadcasting ADSB

https://www.flightaware.com/

https://www.flightradar24.com

New comment by cronix in "Coal and fossil fuel use in Germany at a record low for electricity in 2023"

cronix — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 23:36:55 +0000

> China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.

> That's despite the fact that much of the world is getting off coal, says Flora Champenois, coal research analyst at Global Energy Monitor and one of the co-authors of the report.

> "Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

New comment by cronix in "Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications"

cronix — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 18:07:36 +0000

I'm not sure new laws will matter much considering they've been breaking the existing laws through creative interpretation.

New comment by cronix in "The University of California has all but dropped carbon offsets"

cronix — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 15:46:32 +0000

It works 24/7

New comment by cronix in "‘Father of cell phone’ reflects on making first call and history 50 years ago"

cronix — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:32:22 +0000

The first ones certainly weren't as you describe, but then again they were purely a phone, and nothing else. Not even basic texting. Certainly no data. Their only drawback was their enormous size and the high per minute voice charges.

New comment by cronix in "Web FM synthesizer made with HTML5"

cronix — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 16:37:17 +0000

On an old macbook pro 2013...no clicking in Firefox...

This is really cool. The only thing I found kind of odd was you click the down arrow to increase the program number instead of up.

New comment by cronix in "Dave Cutler on Windows [video]"

cronix — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 04:36:37 +0000

I use both

New comment by cronix in "Europe's largest copper producer is the victim of metal swindle worth $198M"

cronix — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 18:07:09 +0000

Wouldn't it be trivial for HN to automatically create an alternative archive link?

New comment by cronix in "Dave Cutler on Windows [video]"

cronix — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 16:33:15 +0000

All I had to do was update the rules for Adblock Plus free version. I'd been getting the warnings for several days, then yesterday it would only let me watch 3 videos. I then updated AB+ rules and nothing pops up and things just play like "normal."

New comment by cronix in "The largest dam removal in history stirs hopes of restoring tribes' way of life"

cronix — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 23:10:21 +0000

Also due to chemicals in car tires which eventually washes off the roads and into streams, rivers, oceans.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/03/tire-related-chem...

New comment by cronix in "Starlink Direct to Cell"

cronix — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:17:54 +0000

> This is for very low bandwidth text communications when you're out in the country and can see the sky.

From the graphic in the article:

> Text: 2024

> Voice and Data: 2025

> IOT: 2025

New comment by cronix in "LARPing and Violent Extremism"

cronix — Sun, 24 Sep 2023 21:51:46 +0000

The answer is probably the same as why Hollywood uses them in movies. For realism.

New comment by cronix in "Lodash just declared issue bankruptcy and closed every issue and open PR"

cronix — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 03:54:01 +0000

Return To Sender. Oh, wait...

New comment by cronix in "SpaceX to launch satellites for Apple's iPhone SOS feature"

cronix — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 16:45:04 +0000

Starlink recently partnered with KDDI in Japan to do the same thing for the main island and surrounding islands.

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20230831/carriers/kddi-partners-...

New comment by cronix in "Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging"

cronix — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 01:25:38 +0000

It also doesn't cover the cost in terms of tying up a major resource: Paramedics, Police and Fire.

Overdoses are at an all time high in Portland. The entity that responds usually gives the person overdosing Narcan, addiction help is then offered for those who recover and 99% of those offered recovery options refuse.

https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/08/01/overdose-911-call...

Firefighters (and others) are quitting due to the trauma of responding to these calls over and over and over, with no concrete progress. It takes it's toll mentally to respond these calls which are taking up and increasing percentage of the calls they have to respond to.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/the-story/portland-do...

The main failure of this experiment, imho, is the missing component of forcing detox/rehab/etc when x amount of drug related crimes are committed. The measure explicitly said the addict has to seek the help on their own volition. That might work for alcohol and cannabis, but the vast majority of opioid based drugs are so addictive they can't even fathom not getting their next high or life without it.

New comment by cronix in "Why don't we get our drinking water by taking salt out seawater? (2008)"

cronix — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 23:00:18 +0000

As a recent convert to solar, we no longer have any electric bill, period.