Hacker News: foobar1962

New comment by foobar1962 in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

foobar1962 — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:47:20 +0000

Repeatability is more important than accuracy.

Note also that some of the best printers used metronomes to count exposure time and turn the enlarger light on and off manually.

New comment by foobar1962 in "Getting 50 GB/S Back from the Apple Neural Engine"

foobar1962 — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 03:14:29 +0000

The fit is (almost) trivial.

New comment by foobar1962 in "A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux"

foobar1962 — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 01:31:41 +0000

That's confusing copyright with patents. The right to publish Newton's books is separate from being able to apply the knowledge which a patent protects. Note that math equations cannot be patented.

New comment by foobar1962 in "AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)"

foobar1962 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 22:16:42 +0000

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

New comment by foobar1962 in "Maryland Closes More of Cunningham Falls State Park After Second Beaver Attack"

foobar1962 — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 23:36:35 +0000

Make like a tree and leaf?

New comment by foobar1962 in "The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing"

foobar1962 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:05:42 +0000

> I liked the film noir voice-over.

I remember the voice over the first time I saw the movie, possibly in a cinema. I liked it, and was surprised with the general level of dislike it has received. The film was meant to be a mid-20th-century film-noir detective drama.

New comment by foobar1962 in "The myth of Snow Leopard"

foobar1962 — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 03:46:44 +0000

> Windows Vista came out and everyone hated it.

People had difficultly opening the plastic case it came in. I did. Ms added a red pull tab to indicate an affordance, then later changed the case to a simple clam shell for Windows 7.

New comment by foobar1962 in "Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet"

foobar1962 — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:05:03 +0000

You're off a generation. The boomer's kids have kids.

New comment by foobar1962 in "A software engineering interview question I like: computing the median"

foobar1962 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 01:56:37 +0000

That's average or mean. Median is the middle value.

From the article:

> It can lead to some discussion about statistics and why you might prefer a median to a mean in most cases.

My best example for median vs mean is property prices, where very expensive properties will skew the mean (average value) upwards but the median (middle value) will remain about the same.

New comment by foobar1962 in "Underarm bowling incident of 1981"

foobar1962 — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:07:28 +0000

So who's on first?

New comment by foobar1962 in "APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs"

foobar1962 — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:58:13 +0000

Monty Python’s Matching Tie and Handkerchief Executive Version.

New comment by foobar1962 in "Field of clones: How horse replicas came to dominate polo"

foobar1962 — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 04:31:51 +0000

Perhaps Polo will end up like competitive sailing with one-design classes based on the clone of horse. "Measurement" would be a blood test for drugs and dna.

New comment by foobar1962 in "Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning"

foobar1962 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:49:26 +0000

Indeed. I just watched a "leak" video that claimed Apple is already releasing the MacBook Neo 2 with A19 chip because they are running out of A18 chips.

New comment by foobar1962 in "Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning"

foobar1962 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 04:14:16 +0000

A lot of the people that bought iPhones are now buying Macs as well.

New comment by foobar1962 in "Lost Doctor Who episodes found"

foobar1962 — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 05:12:30 +0000

I worked in a broadcast company archive (doing database work). Tapes were often reused. Fragments of previous recordings -- sometimes just a few frames, occasionally many minutes -- may remain at the beginning or end of the tape. AFAIK tapes were never completely erased before recording over top.

I was invloed in a digitisation project, the scanning companies were instructed to process the whole tape in case there were fragments of older programs at the end. A 30 minute tape may have 15 minutes of program, then a period of blank/black, then the remains of an older program for several minutes after that.

New comment by foobar1962 in ""Scholars Will Call It Nonsense": The Structure of von Däniken's Argument (1987)"

foobar1962 — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:18:50 +0000

The gottcha moment in the article was when the questioner's name was revealed as PLAYBOY.

Myth Busted: Some people really did only buy it for the articles.

New comment by foobar1962 in "The World Happiness Report is beset with methodological problems"

foobar1962 — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 02:05:25 +0000

Really? Satisfied people lack the ability to dream?

New comment by foobar1962 in "The World Happiness Report is beset with methodological problems"

foobar1962 — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:43:04 +0000

> ..the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you... on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?

10, I'm living my best possible life. It's conceivable that my "best possible life" may not be as happy as the lifes of other people, but I have achieved the maximum that's possible for me.

Any other "possible life" would require some combination of different genes, being in a different place and living at a different time.

New comment by foobar1962 in "Loose wire leads to blackout, contact with Francis Scott Key bridge"

foobar1962 — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 03:14:59 +0000

Ships were a lot smaller when the bridge was designed and built.

New comment by foobar1962 in "A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool"

foobar1962 — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 02:18:15 +0000

A bite requires teeth. Sharks bite. Snakes bite. Bees and wasps sting. Jellyfish and bluebottles sting.

Not sure about spiders. Are their fangs considered to be teeth? Platypus have venomous spurs, not sure what that’s called.