Hacker News: daveslash

New comment by daveslash in "The Decline of the Family Computer"

daveslash — Wed, 27 May 2026 17:21:43 +0000

Low quality comment here, but this line in the article "Back in the day, a computer was something so special and expensive that you only had one, and it was set up in a way that everyone had access to it." reminded me of that line in Back to the Future - the scene where Marty makes reference to having multiple TVs in the house and the dad correcting him: "Oh Honey, he's teasing you, nobody has two televisions."

New comment by daveslash in "Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism"

daveslash — Wed, 27 May 2026 16:56:12 +0000

Our track coach would do the same thing! And he got really frustrated with me because the foot that I led with seemed to vary by day. I'd be fairly consistent on any given day, but another day I'd be consistently the other foot.

New comment by daveslash in "Declassified CIA Cartography Maps from the 1980s"

daveslash — Wed, 27 May 2026 16:52:19 +0000

Came here to make the same comment. I have a copy of The Red Atlas. Fantastic. Here's a link to the comment thread about it here on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15378422

New comment by daveslash in "I'm Tired of Talking to AI"

daveslash — Wed, 27 May 2026 16:41:51 +0000

Re >> Can you check this is correct for me?

That's the part that really gets to me. It's one thing to say Hey friend, you could have quickly gotten the right answer yourself. It's another thing to say Hey buddy, you asked me a question which I COULD answer, but instead of giving you the CORRECT answer, I'm going to give you AN answer, and let you figure out if it's correct <-- with the unspoken expectation that if it is the wrong answer and I run with it because you gave it to me, it's still my fault.

New comment by daveslash in "Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism"

daveslash — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:16:21 +0000

I'm similar. I do very little with both hands, but I'm split between left and right on individual things. Throw is right, write is left. Where I especially get hung up is learning something to do with feet - surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, etc... I struggle to figure out which one is my preference. I usually find that I'm equally bad at both.

New comment by daveslash in "Ted Turner has died"

daveslash — Wed, 06 May 2026 17:07:47 +0000

I think I heard somewhere (can't find reliable source right now) that he created Captain Planet as a revenge. He had some renewable energy initiative/deal that he was trying to get pushed through that got clobbered by big oil lobbyists. So he created Captain Planet as some revenge scheme.

New comment by daveslash in "Human writers have always used the em dash"

daveslash — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 15:42:26 +0000

Came here to say the same thing. Folks have been saying for a while "it's a tell tale sign of AI!" and I've been thinking - have people forgotten about Microsoft Word (and other word processors) automatically changing a hyphen to an em-dash?

New comment by daveslash in "Bold Mission to Hunt for Aliens on Venus Is Happening"

daveslash — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:04:07 +0000

Agreed. Although alternative to a chunk of Earth as a result of a natural impact, I wonder if it could have been a poorly sanitized space probe from the 60s or 70s?

New comment by daveslash in "Destination: Jupiter"

daveslash — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 23:48:03 +0000

The Author also missed the fact that in the 2001 Movie they went to Jupiter, whereas in the book they went to Saturn.

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/177/why-is-the-des...

New comment by daveslash in "Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits"

daveslash — Fri, 02 May 2025 17:44:53 +0000

I learned a long time ago to be very careful with mock, dummy, or test data.... because some people will just push anything to prod, take screenshots during your demo and paste it into the official documentation... you name it.

I was giving a demo on how to set up multiple computers in a federated setup using Active Directory, ADFS, etc... I had about 5 VMs named things like Hank, Peggy, Bobby, Boomhauer, Bill, and a test user HHill, 123 Rainy Street, Arlen, TX -- someone screenshotted and took notes during the demo and now that's in some formal training somewhere material. Thankfully, it's all internal.

When I and doing dev work and I need an available port, just any port, I use 666 -- because it's never used by anything and also DOOM. I gave a sprint demo and I used 660 instead of 666 to demo that the customer can specify the port number of screen X. Someone put that in the internal and also customer facing documentation... so now my company's product is default setup on 660, even thought it's completely user-configurable. Thank God I didn't demo with 666...

New comment by daveslash in "Don't watermark your legal PDFs with purple dragons in suits"

daveslash — Fri, 02 May 2025 17:43:07 +0000

It might be appropriate if you're a children's cartoonist/artist and you're sending out proofs? But yeah, I get your point and agree.

New comment by daveslash in "The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state"

daveslash — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:45:44 +0000

Agree. It's social, but also semi-anonymous. It's a nice balance. It's not anonymous like 4chan, because on Reddit you still have a username and post/comment history, so you have a reputation. But it's largely anonymous because most people don't actually know people and it's not filled with "influencers". Though... it does have a bot problem. Glad to know you know of poop knife! My internet culture goes back to whitehouse.com and towel.blinkenlights.nl. :) Nice term for, uh... citrus parties.

New comment by daveslash in "Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin" Takes Flight"

daveslash — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:36:25 +0000

Regarding "work out of the box".... I started using Ubuntu with Breezy Badger (5.10). In those days, I had been goofing around with Mandrake (RIP, now Mandriva), Fedora Core 4, Knoppix 3.4, and Suse 10. Back then, it was so frustrating to just play an mp3 file, get Wi-Fi working, etc... Maybe it's because I was a lot younger and didn't know what I was doing. But it was also because a lot of drivers and codecs were protected under Intellectual Property rights. Ubuntu let you click a button to install all the codecs! They said "Hey, you legally aren't supposed to use these codecs. Are you sure you want to install them? [Yes] [ No]" -- and we all just hit yes. That's all it took to get your multimedia to play! Boom, easy! Even if not strictly legal. That was a needle mover for Ubuntu adoption, imho.

New comment by daveslash in "The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state"

daveslash — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:12:08 +0000

Regarding Reddit, I completely agree. I recognize that it is technically "social media", but I consider it to be a different animal from the majority of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Insta, etc...). Glad you're largely enjoying it! If you're still relatively knew to Reddit, there are some Reddit Classics with which you should be familiar -- namely, the infamous Poop Knife. https://www.reddit.com/r/poopknife/comments/1d5f1sq/original...

New comment by daveslash in "The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state"

daveslash — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:06:15 +0000

Just speaking for myself. Facebook was fun when it was the underdog to MySpace. But I closed me account just a few years later and haven't looked back. Was never engaged on twitter, but have an account just so I can verify "yes, they actually posted that"

Aside from Reddit, my only social media is Instagram. On my Instagram, I only follow people I personally know or national-park/state-park/non-profit conservation accounts. I only like posts of people I personally know and nothing else, and I never comment on anything. I only post pretty pictures of nature with no people visible in a recognizable way. My feed is almost exclusively nature and animals (lots of seals and sea lions) with a lot of scuba diving mixed in. I also get a lot of xennial humor posts too, which I send to my wife and a buddy.

It's a very limited level of engagement, and I'm very happy with it. I don't need anything more.

New comment by daveslash in "Microsoft's many Outlooks are confusing users – including its own employees"

daveslash — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 19:44:55 +0000

And then they have OneDrive, SharePoint, Office365, and Teams as ways to share files... which are all the same thing/infrastructure under the hood.

New comment by daveslash in "Were large soda lakes the cradle of life?"

daveslash — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 19:41:00 +0000

But what are electrolytes!? Da ya even know?

New comment by daveslash in "Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends"

daveslash — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 21:29:23 +0000

I went there as a kid. One visit was actually a school field trip. I have not been to one in nearly 30 years. And I should have more clearly said that I've only actually been to one, but have seen others while traveling. That was my mistake in saying that I've been to a few.

New comment by daveslash in "RadioShack Not Only Still Exists, It Sells Suspiciously Cheap SD Cards"

daveslash — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 21:11:50 +0000

I remember paying $200 (in adjusted 2025 dollars) for a 32GB USB thumb drive.

New comment by daveslash in "Lonely sunfish in Japan gets cardboard human friends"

daveslash — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 19:13:32 +0000

Speaking of nature parks instead of zoos, the San Diego Wild Safari Park is just that. Very large enclosed pastures with multiple species living alongside each other.