Hacker News: cydonian_monk

New comment by cydonian_monk in "IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn't taken over the world"

cydonian_monk — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 21:08:36 +0000

I've been native IPv6 at home for a few years now. That worked flawlessly until a recent Windows 11 update somehow broke IPv6 in ways that I don't entirely understand. All the other Linux and Apple and et cetera things in my house are fine, but the Win11 laptop just refuses to handle certain IPv6 ranges (specifically including the address that the host interface for one of my web servers falls in). 100% contained within the Win11 device and TBH I can't be bothered to dig into it further so I just proxy through some other device that does work. (Guessing it'll get fixed a month/year/decade or so from now.)

I agree it's not a failure, but after 3 decades it's still frustratingly annoying to use at times.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Egypt's pyramids may have been built on a long-lost branch of the Nile"

cydonian_monk — Thu, 16 May 2024 21:01:47 +0000

That article is paywalled and locked to National Geographic subscribers only. I'm not sure we have the same definition of accessible.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down"

cydonian_monk — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 16:12:56 +0000

This depends on how high the operating costs are in Europe. If their profits are approaching zero in the market, pulling out of it entirely would have less of an impact. Obviously that isn't the case, but operating costs for the market also aren't zero.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Apple TV Plus is getting a price hike – and other Apple subscriptions are, too"

cydonian_monk — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 16:27:35 +0000

I suspect this is for a few reasons, and somewhat agree with your conjectures.

One of the reasons being the platform's popularity and quality of work, which has allowed them to attract higher quality talent (which in turn costs more). Another reason is anticipation of an increase in royalties/residuals as a result of the end of the writer's strike and the eventual conclusion of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

And finally because the Apple TV platform now has considerable more content than it did at launch, and can command a higher price.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals"

cydonian_monk — Sun, 14 May 2023 00:10:30 +0000

Even they're not exempt from being messed with. I had an HP color laser printer which, when purchased, would print on any paper size that would fit in the printer. (Specifically used it to print to US Legal Size.) A firmware update some years back disabled printing to anything larger than US Letter Sized.

I now own a Brother printer that is perfectly happy to print to larger paper.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Windows 95 went the extra mile to ensure compatibility of SimCity, other games"

cydonian_monk — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 17:47:51 +0000

It's difficult to explain to people today just how good Microsoft tech support was in the early-mid 1990s. We had a similarly complex issue with DOS 6.something that I don't remember the full details of, and I think I learned more about operating systems in the couple hours we were on the phone with MS than I did in the semester-long operating systems class I took in college. Some days after the call we got a stack of floppies in the mail from Microsoft with a small bug fix that helped with whatever the situation was we had encountered. Just night and day compared to most modern interactions with tech companies.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Adobe now requires you to purchase a subscription to rotate PDF pages"

cydonian_monk — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 19:07:45 +0000

The Affinity products on Mac are some of the cleanest, polished, reasonably easy to use, responsive, and stable pieces of commercial image software I've used in years. Very impressed with what they've done so far.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s lost album, Human Highway"

cydonian_monk — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 01:02:14 +0000

So that's what happened to those. I knew I wasn't completely crazy and that I'd heard and/or "bought" some early Ray LaMontagne music, but last year when I was trying to find it the tracks I was thinking of were nowhere to be seen. Just "Trouble."

A guy I knew in high school released seven or eight albums with a co-conspirator and also felt the same way about their early work. Some of it was admittedly a bit rough, but some was also very good. He eventually relented on his opposition to re-leasing any of it, and those early songs have long since made it onto iTunes (and basically every streaming service). So I can definitely understand artists not wanting to see or hear their earliest works, worried that people will hate it and judge them based on who they used to be.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Declassified spacecrafts and orbital weapons of the USSR (2018)"

cydonian_monk — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 20:59:10 +0000

I wish I could recommend "For All Mankind", but I can't. And while I feel the first three episodes were strong and well produced, I just really really didn't agree with where it ended up going. I'll still watch the second season because it's scifi on TV and it's a genuinely interesting show, but I can't shake the "late seasons of Battlestar Galactica" feeling the later 2/3rds or the season left me with.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "What went wrong with the Texas power grid?"

cydonian_monk — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 02:53:28 +0000

The way the natural gas issue has been explained to us over the last two days is there are two issues. First: natural gas is prioritized for home usage, which has understandably skyrocketed over the last several days. There was not enough left in the gas market for the standby power plants to buy up to burn; and what was available was inaccessible due to price and price caps. Second: The standby generating plants themselves suffered failures due to excessive cold. This also affected coal and nuclear plants (one of the reactors at the South Texas plant shut down automatically after the intake water in its cooling pond froze).

The emergency charges for the spot prices changes from that order are recent news that I've not had time to digest yet and as such can't reply to.

Apologies for not providing sources - barely have cellular data service at the moment and have only had electric back for a handful of hours. (Edit: And I jinxed myself there... back in the cold dark again.)

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Say goodbye to hold music"

cydonian_monk — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 22:04:52 +0000

I'm not 100% sure if it was intentional, but there was a span of time when AT&T's customer service queue (for land lines) behaved like this. You'd call in, your call would be placed on hold (with their terrible hold music), then if you hung up it would call you back when an agent answered your call. I only discovered this behaviour because one day I was fed up with waiting, hung up the phone, and then an hour or so later got the call back. Repeated this a couple times after that call and it worked the same way. I have no idea if that ever worked for their cellular accounts, or if it was peculiar to their land lines.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "The 212-story skyscraper in Melbourne, Australia"

cydonian_monk — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 18:04:27 +0000

That's actually a rather nice looking building. I suspect if something was built here in the States for a similar purpose, not only would it not have such an attractive exterior, but it almost certainly wouldn't have public access. Most of our office skyscrapers aren't even open to the public as it is.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Kerbal Space Program 2 release disrupted by corporate strife"

cydonian_monk — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 18:58:33 +0000

It worked really well when I used it. It replaces a bunch of the stock navigation tools, and takes a bit of learning, but really seemed to be a good n-body simulation engine. It's been well over a year since I touched KSP though, so I can't speak for the current versions of either Principia or the base game.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Swamped bankruptcy courts threaten US recovery"

cydonian_monk — Fri, 15 May 2020 16:37:01 +0000

Your second paragraph about start-up governments makes me wonder how the court system of the "Republic of Texas" quasi-government [0] (not to be confused with the actual state government) is doing these days. While I doubt they have the resources, the goodwill, or the political capital to replace or supersede the actual Texas state government should the US Federal system collapse, they do fit your description of a start-up government.

0: http://thetexasrepublic.com

New comment by cydonian_monk in "SpaceX, Blue Origin, Dynetics win contracts to land astronauts on moon"

cydonian_monk — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 17:23:32 +0000

In this project, Blue Origin is working with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, while Dynetics is partnered with Sierra Nevada Corp. So it makes sense that Blue Origin received a much larger chunk of money than SpaceX - they're somewhat unproven in the space, but are partnered with experienced firms that have been there before and are more likely to deliver. And SpaceX is probably going to do whatever they plan to do with or without the contract money. I'm interested in seeing what Dynetics is up to... as I'm sure are a few others.

Interesting times right now.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Stanford cancels in-person classes for rest of the quarter"

cydonian_monk — Sat, 07 Mar 2020 10:25:34 +0000

Even 35 years ago when I was in the 7-8 age range and still living in my childhood part of the US, being left at home all day without supervision would have resulted in a visit from Child Protective Services had anyone found out. Just being alone on weekend evenings while my (single, divorced) mom went to her second job was enough to tick off some folks. These days I'd be afraid they'd send in a SWAT team to arrest the parents and "rescue" the kids.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "City of Austin Cancels SXSW March Events"

cydonian_monk — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 22:56:31 +0000

... and we already have an increasing number (5+) of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the greater Houston area. I do wonder if we'll end up cancelling the Rodeo part way through.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Apple wont let bad guys use iPhones in movies, director says"

cydonian_monk — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 20:21:29 +0000

Yes, but the other Apple Originals I've watched don't have much if any product placement. Granted it would be anachronistic in something like "For All Mankind", but I don't recall seeing any in "See" or whatever other shows of theirs I've watched either.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "Apple wont let bad guys use iPhones in movies, director says"

cydonian_monk — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 19:48:50 +0000

I agree, but aside from a couple edge cases (again avoiding spoilers) I'm not sure I'd categorize any of them as particularly villainous. That show does a good job of showing broken humans as the complex messes they really are. And yes, Apple gear is everywhere in seemingly every frame of it.

New comment by cydonian_monk in "When Your Used Car Is a Little Too ‘Mobile’"

cydonian_monk — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 18:24:52 +0000

Do we work together? (I'm assuming not.) Some guy where I work does the same thing, same truck. Usually he's still thousands of feet away when he starts it too, maybe even still in the office.

Or maybe it's just a Houston thing.