Hacker News: dado3212

New comment by dado3212 in "AI uses less water than the public thinks"

dado3212 — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:28:34 +0000

This is a bit of a dead horse, but the magnitude of how off the public is on this continues to amaze me. Pete Buttigieg did a Tulsa town hall a week or so ago where someone cited it taking "10,000 gallons of water just to generate one photo".[0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCc-ipWVShY&t=1h5m43s

New comment by dado3212 in "US debt is now bigger than the economy for first time since World War II"

dado3212 — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:26:19 +0000

I feel like economists have drawn so many lines in the sand for “it all goes downhill here” that we blow through and keep chugging that the public’s inured to debt news. We won’t solve this until it’s already unsolvable.

Why my macOS Messages badge lied to me (and the one-line fix)

dado3212 — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:24:36 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/macos-broken-messages-notification-badge

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47976602

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Parental Controls

dado3212 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:02:50 +0000

Article URL: https://www.tumblr.com/luminousalicorn/814990078758830080/parental-controls

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916604

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by dado3212 in "Metatextual Literacy"

dado3212 — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:09:52 +0000

She’s describing something much more specific than subliteracy.

New comment by dado3212 in "NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers"

dado3212 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 22:37:42 +0000

I think it's more relevant for quantum computing. The ions we choose for ion trap quantum computers are in part due to what wavelengths are excitable by modified telecom lasers, because they're the wavelengths that are easiest to produce and where the most research/stability/miniaturization has been focused. If the laser wavelength is configurable to this degree then it no longer becomes a constraint, and maybe you can choose single ions with different characteristics.

Metatextual Literacy

dado3212 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:18:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.jenn.site/metatextual-literacy/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783890

Points: 56

# Comments: 13

Turning a Chinese IoT camera into an owl livestream

dado3212 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:17:34 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/owl-cam

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783878

Points: 26

# Comments: 0

New comment by dado3212 in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

dado3212 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:18:41 +0000

https://blog.alexbeals.com

New comment by dado3212 in "Adding insular script like it's 1626"

dado3212 — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 01:38:49 +0000

Love this and was my first introduction to the HTML element (this feels like a great expanded use case). Also couldn't agree more re: your point on the resurrection of "old internet" blogs, it's a trend I'm very much enjoying.

New comment by dado3212 in "Novo Nordisk launches Wegovy weight-loss pill in US, triggering price war"

dado3212 — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:01:06 +0000

I would've expected that uptake was only beginning in 2022 and still vastly increasing through 2023 (plus the compounding loophole that allowed telehealth companies like Ro to really expand the target audience). 2024 and 2025 data are likely to be better telltales of the impacts of GLP-1s.

New comment by dado3212 in "Beating myself at chess"

dado3212 — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 20:35:35 +0000

Would maybe benefit from a "Checkmate!" or other finish screen, but cool project! Though I agree that it beating you may be more based on your skill level than its, given how it keeps pushing pawns.

New comment by dado3212 in "Reverse Engineering US Airline's PNR System and Accessing All Reservations"

dado3212 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:14:02 +0000

What makes you say that? This didn't read like AI slop to me.

New comment by dado3212 in "Creating custom yellow handshake emojis with zero-width joiners"

dado3212 — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 01:35:35 +0000

Unfortunately most of the benefit of this was undone by Apple's rollback of their family emoji rendering to just be shapes :/. Cool UX though!

New comment by dado3212 in "The last product to get cancelled"

dado3212 — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:45:36 +0000

The font is rendering as nearly invisible. I'm guessing due to some incorrect dark mode styling?

Creating custom yellow handshake emojis with zero-width joiners

dado3212 — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:25:53 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/custom-yellow-handshake-emojis-with-zero-width-joiners

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46283052

Points: 83

# Comments: 6

New comment by dado3212 in "Mr TIFF"

dado3212 — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:52:05 +0000

Did a similar deep dive for one of the posters for the cult classic movie Possession (1981). Just giving random phone numbers a call is incredibly effective, lots of people are happy to reminisce about old work and have great stories.

New comment by dado3212 in "PHP Almost Generics: Guided Journey Through the Official Compile-Time Proposal"

dado3212 — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 05:51:26 +0000

I'm glad that PHP has adopted more and more from Hack, Facebook's once fork and now completely separate language - https://hacklang.org/. It was never going to replace it (Go's success separate from Google has astounded me to be honest) but it heavily influencing PHP's direction feels like the best of both worlds.

New comment by dado3212 in "iPhone dumbphone"

dado3212 — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:52:48 +0000

I ended up doing this with Screen Time, but not knowing my own passcode. Having a partner or close friend is generally the approach I'd recommend, but you can also do this with iPhone Mirroring — I wrote up a how to guide in https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/setting-an-unknown-screen-t....

New comment by dado3212 in "I accidentally became PureGym’s unofficial Apple Wallet developer"

dado3212 — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 17:15:56 +0000

I did something very similar for Fitness SF in the Bay Area!

https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/custom-apple-wallet-passes