Hacker News: evilbob93

New comment by evilbob93 in "Learning another language may be one of the best ways to keep your brain healthy"

evilbob93 — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:48:02 +0000

I knew a German person who was a NLP practitioner who said that he didn't know how to be depressed in English

New comment by evilbob93 in "Cherish your physical books and media"

evilbob93 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:16:32 +0000

This sort of thing has been going on for some time. Disney's Fantasia has been excised for many years. They held off on having it available in any consumer format (aka VHS) and when it was, there was one scene in particular that had been drastically altered. In the centaur girls and centaur boys scene, one of the girls had, in the original, a servant that was an obvious racist trope, black face with bows. You can find stills of it here and there. In all of the versions I've found, they zoomed up on the pretty centaur's face.

Don't even get started with Song of the South.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Aphantasia Beginner's Guide"

evilbob93 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 19:57:14 +0000

haven't read the whole comment thread but wanted to mention this:

as an "aphant" (never knew that was a word) I get really vivid visuals on certain psychedelic drugs like psilocybin or DMT. Not so much acid, however.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Finger: the 1971 social network that never died"

evilbob93 — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 23:25:45 +0000

Funny thing: today at work, I was curious. Windows utility? try a few of the handles in the article.

Couple hours later, i get pinged in Teams by someone in the security group who, who was flagged for my activity. No harm, but he said that they watched it because it had been used for malware. Said I shouldn't use it unless i had some business need, would need to do a request apparently.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated"

evilbob93 — Wed, 13 May 2026 23:09:01 +0000

Piling on a moment to write to a real hero...

In the 1980s/1990s I was a VAX/VMS person and your book was a hit in our LUG because it included REAL DCL CODE.

I've frequently quoted your "if it isn't logged, it didn't happen".

Thank you.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?"

evilbob93 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:56:26 +0000

I melt milk jugs and other HDPE plastics into musical claves and drum sticks as an answer to "recycling plastic is kind of bs". It melts at 350 degrees and can be done in a toaster oven in the garage or even the kitchen with proper ventilation. The smell isn't that bad, nothing like if you dropped plastic in a fire.

I've also made some sticks from braiding plastic grocery bags which are also often made of HDPE (#2) type plastic.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once"

evilbob93 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:59:18 +0000

Tried again and it's showing my state. Thank you for looking.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once"

evilbob93 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:04:01 +0000

I'm getting only Wisconsin no matter what state I choose. I have not created an account yet, would that make it actually work?

New comment by evilbob93 in "Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile"

evilbob93 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:55:16 +0000

I like the idea, and I would like to use it. It still requres me to be conscious enough to add a new tool to it.

I'd love to see something like a "discover" option that attempts to scan what things I have added to assist me in building the make for the next time.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Employees Are Taking Pay Cuts in Huge Numbers"

evilbob93 — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:18:23 +0000

It's worth mentioning here that a lot of people who HAVEN'T lost their jobs are taking pay cuts just because cost of living increases aren't always there. If you're a contractor, often the contract is just extended and doesn't take into account the macro issues we're all seeing.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

evilbob93 — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:44:19 +0000

https://rcanzlovar.com

New comment by evilbob93 in "GNU Year 2000 List (1999)"

evilbob93 — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:44:28 +0000

I won't live long enough to care, but it seems like we are setting up for a Y2100 problem. The Y2k issue was understandable and justifiable - when a lot of the systems were built, the dominant carrier of data was an 80 column punch card or card image. Two digits was VERY expensive.

It seems we have fallen into the habit of doing 2 digit years again in a lot of cases and there isn't an architectural reason for it. Am I the only one seeing this?

New comment by evilbob93 in "Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn?"

evilbob93 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:33:17 +0000

reminds me that my first taste of the internet was the days where you pretty much had t have a university account. I used a friend's, and was blown away by what I found on Usenet

New comment by evilbob93 in "Feds want to ban the Flipper Zero – Experts say it's a scapegoat"

evilbob93 — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 18:14:53 +0000

I got the black Kickstarter-only version. I got interested in coding in C again. My (now) ex broke up with me over this thing on the mistaken notion that I was messing with her somehow electronically. I got told i had to leave. Tonight. And take all my electronics with me. She cited having her "black hat friend" looking into it and he said it was pretty evil. I am sure she is reading the recent news with some level of satisfaction.

I bought another a couple months later and if I can get over my ADHD, I still hope to make the radio chat useful.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)"

evilbob93 — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 21:48:31 +0000

Born in 1961 and these articles don't touch on one thing that I remember when I was a kid: you only needed 5 numbers to dial if you were calling someone else in the same thing. This was the case at my grandparents in Bay City, Michigan in the late 1960s. My cousin's number was LIncoln 2-9729

I have never understood how that worked despite my father working for the phone company. Dad explained a lot of things, but that wasn't one of them.

New comment by evilbob93 in "USENET rises again?"

evilbob93 — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:30:48 +0000

It's arguable that today the "friction" might be a feature.

New comment by evilbob93 in "USENET rises again?"

evilbob93 — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:25:03 +0000

a couple years after AOL came online and... well changed it quite a bit.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)"

evilbob93 — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 15:48:09 +0000

Hey what if we sent ai bots to talk to each other on Usenet?

New comment by evilbob93 in "Ask HN: What did you recently learn you've been doing wrong your whole life?"

evilbob93 — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 21:22:52 +0000

I also came to the same realization about the same age a few years ago.

There is an article making the rounds that refers to a mathematical proof of shoelace tying last couple weeks that talks about this (https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/math-tie-shoes-corre...)

I tried the Ian way once, but didn't like it, but once i figured out that i was grannying my shoes all my life and fixed it, I don't have to tie the loops together like i did all my life.

New comment by evilbob93 in "Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Collected K-Mart background music tapes"

evilbob93 — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 22:29:39 +0000

I have one of these stuck on my phone that I listen to occasionally and I giggle a lot when they mention their lifestyle consultant Martha Stewart.