Hacker News: dillutedfixer

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness"

dillutedfixer — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:58:38 +0000

I started getting nausea from FPS games around the time I got into my 30s. It was when Fallout 4 came out and I just had to play that game. So I did some research and found out about sea-bands. Theyre for morning sickness that pregnant women get. They worked wonders for my FPS nausea. I was able to play through many games after that without getting sick. Put them on about 10 mins before playing and wear them for the duration.

edit: clarity

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Recovering videos from my Sony camera that I stupidly deleted"

dillutedfixer — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 22:06:38 +0000

Fun and useful fact - if you ever buy a Sandisk SD card, there is a license key for RescuePRO Deluxe inside if you peel apart the two pieces of the cardboard that make the packaging! The software works for any type of drive and I have had great luck with it recovering some of my students projects.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Disk Utility still can't check and repair APFS volumes and containers (2021)"

dillutedfixer — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 16:00:58 +0000

A few years back I found a bug that would make deleted photos show up in the Photos app on iPhone simply by putting transparent PNGs into the photo library. I reported it to Apple via web, no response. I called their support and talked to a very nice guy who had an in-depth conversation with me about it and even watched a video I made showing the bug. He said he was taking the issue "up the chain." About 6 months and two .x.x releases later and the bug still existed. I reported it again, no response.

So I emailed AppleInsider who did a short article about it and within two weeks another .x.x release came out and the bug was fixed.

Sadly I think this is one of the only ways to get big tech companies to take action these days. Cant tell you how many times I have read about Comcast, Verizon, etc screwing someone over and being unreasonable about it until theres an article on ArsTechnica or some similar site about it.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Eleven Music"

dillutedfixer — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:40:40 +0000

Like you, I am just a hobbyist making beats in my room. No expectations of ever being a real musician. But when I'm jamming and I create a beat and synth line, start adding other instruments and really get a song going, there is a feeling that I get that an generated song will never ever ever be able to recreate for me. It's like a rush, an almost a euphoric tingling (and no I'm not on drugs) that happens that almost feels like a runners high. No output from a prompt-driven AI algorithm would ever do that to me. That's the value I see in making art for arts sake, for practicing a craft and for trying to just get better at something for the sake of getting better at it.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Researchers identify major driver of inflammatory bowel and related diseases"

dillutedfixer — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 21:04:27 +0000

I was diagnosed with UC in my mid-30's, am in my early 40's now. I used to deal with flare-ups about twice a year that always coincided with allergy season (May and October/November). I was living in Colorado at the time and was drinking lots of heavy craft beer quite regularly. Three years ago, I cut out about 98% of alcohol from my life, and when I drank, I only drank clear things - hard seltzers and gin. But only once or twice a month at the most. I hadn't had a flare-up in that entire time, until this last holiday weekend when I drank whiskey and was hit with horrible UC symptoms immediately. As someone in the throes of a flare-up right now, I have to say that research like this is promising. But yeah, for me alcohol, primarily darker alcohol like whisky and red wine, are an absolute trigger for me.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "A 32-Bit Computer Inside Terraria [video]"

dillutedfixer — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 20:33:44 +0000

I just want to say that this is incredibly impressive on so many levels. Your technical skills are obviously amazing but I really love how you were able to put this all together into an entertaining and well-produced video that anyone could understand. If you ever want to get paid 1/4 of what I'm sure you'll make as an engineer, you'd make a great teacher ;)

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company"

dillutedfixer — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 14:11:17 +0000

Thank you for sharing this. I feel the exact same way. Work at a state university. Found out at a big town hall style meeting that I was hired during a "diversity cluster hire." I know I am talented but I was sitting there questioning myself. I am hispanic. Everyone speaking about the cluster hire was white. I appreciate the overall push towards awareness of this issue but I agree this felt like we were being paraded around. I skipped the "DEI Luncheon."

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Dell Tried to Hide Bad Capacitors Problem 2003-2005 (2010)"

dillutedfixer — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 00:11:38 +0000

Oh man, this brings back memories! I worked helpdesk for a mid-sized company in SF these years. Things got so bad with our Dell machines that I would call my local Dell repair tech and he would answer the phone with "Ok how many bulging capacitors this time?". We probably replaced at least 100 motherboards for bad caps in such a short time. Reflecting on that, the amount of e-waste generated from this must have been staggering.

Jerry - if you're reading this, you probably single-handedly kept that place running ;)

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Cache of 19th-Century Blue Jeans Discovered in Abandoned Arizona Mineshaft"

dillutedfixer — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 16:14:36 +0000

Look for Levi's with 100% cotton (well really like 60/40 cotton/hemp), or 99% cotton. These last far longer. All this stupid stretchy synthetic fabric wears out differently than natural fibers and then jeans start to fall apart. The all natural ones feel more stiff at first, but they break in and are super comfortable.

I just shopped at the Levi's store at the mall in San Jose, and the jeans I mentioned were hidden on bottom shelves under all of the horrible synthetic crap. The good stuff is there, you just have to look for it.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Cats and the Laws of Physics"

dillutedfixer — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 16:57:07 +0000

"Cats do not abide by the laws of physics."

-- Charlie Kelly

New comment by dillutedfixer in "The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago"

dillutedfixer — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 15:23:21 +0000

This is one of the best lines from any movie ever.

I used it on a much younger co-worker of mine when he was having an issue with a website and it turned out to be a problem with cookies.

It was clear to me from his facial response that he had never seen the movie. It didn't go over well.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "The rise of 'stealerships' and the shady economics of car buying"

dillutedfixer — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 22:45:09 +0000

Anything that throws them off their very-well rehearsed script puts the power back in your hands!

New comment by dillutedfixer in "The rise of 'stealerships' and the shady economics of car buying"

dillutedfixer — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 21:07:49 +0000

Dealing with a dealership is all about psychology. They are playing a psychological mind game with you when they make you wait for so long while they're in the back doing "paperwork". They want you to get antsy so you make bad decisions.

The trick to making this interaction go your way is to not play their game. If they seat you at a table and make you wait, just get up and walk away. Go start looking at another car. This will freak them the F out. My last interaction with a car dealer was hilarious. When I started playing mind games with them (walking away while they made me wait, fake-scrolling through ads on my phone, wondering out loud about the dealer across the street) they literally bent over backwards. They lowered the price on the car I wanted significantly. They offered me more than KBB trade-in value for my old car. They even offered to buy my wife and I lunch because we acted like we were going to go think it over while we ate.

It's all mind games. Don't play theirs. The dealerships tactics are not very effective if you take control. They just get a lot of practice and they know that new-car-smell is addictive.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable"

dillutedfixer — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 18:01:43 +0000

Good advice, thanks. I've replaced the battery on my wifes 2013 MBA and it was incredibly easy.

My MBP is maxed out and was quite an investment so I want to keep it around for as long as possible. I'll probably just be safe and have Apple replace the battery around 5 years assuming it stays usable for that long.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "IFixit: Self Repair Program makes M1 MacBooks less repairable"

dillutedfixer — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 16:33:38 +0000

I've had my 16" MBP since early April and I only have 30 cycles on the battery. At my usage rate, I charge this thing about once or twice a week on average. At this rate, the battery is going to last longer than any laptop battery I've ever owned. And then when it finally degrades to the point that I need to replace it, I would happily pay $199 to Apple for a new one rather than save a few dollars and do it myself. Plus I'd rather have someone to blame other than myself if it f's up.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "California to consider keeping last nuclear plant open"

dillutedfixer — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 19:55:12 +0000

The plant was built before they discovered a few fault lines in the area. Fault lines that are extremely close to the reactors.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "The Zoom installer let a researcher hack his way to root access on macOS"

dillutedfixer — Sat, 13 Aug 2022 22:16:17 +0000

I should have clarified. My account is a Standard non admin account. It never asked me for my password or an Admin password.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "The Zoom installer let a researcher hack his way to root access on macOS"

dillutedfixer — Sat, 13 Aug 2022 18:46:03 +0000

I just had to (reluctantly) install Zoom on my freshly formatted MBP for some classes I'm in. The web client wasn't that reliable for me. Unless I'm totally missing something here, it let me install as non-root. The installer asked me if I wanted to install for all users or just for me. I chose just for me and it never asked for an admin password and installed to the Applications folder under my user and not the main Applications folder. There doesn't seem to be any daemons or background processes running when the application isn't open.

edit: meant this in response to some comments below about Zoom requiring admin access to install on macOS

New comment by dillutedfixer in "I made a Google sheet of local elections and it's been removed from Google Drive"

dillutedfixer — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 17:31:49 +0000

"Sadly it won't even be the next generation as they're all rusted into the ecosystem with Chromebooks provided by their school districts. "

This is so true that it hurts. I went back to college later in my life starting in 2018. It's astonishing to me how ingrained Google services are to the kids I'm in school with. Even though we have Office 365 and a full suite of apps available to us for free, when we do group work the de-facto decision that students come to is to create Google drive shares, or shared Google docs that are tied to personal accounts. It gets so stupidly messy and the apps just seem so inferior. Everyone uses the same Slides template so everything looks the same. Ugh.

New comment by dillutedfixer in "Infinite Mac"

dillutedfixer — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 17:46:55 +0000

Thank you for the magnificent trip down memory lane!