Hacker News: gossamer

New comment by gossamer in "Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead"

gossamer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:09:25 +0000

This is ironic considering Netflix used to be all about sending people DVDs.

New comment by gossamer in "The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)"

gossamer — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:56:57 +0000

The highway between Tucson and Nogales, Arizona, I-19, is the only highway in the country that has signage only in kilometers. It has been that way since 1980. It was a pilot project for the Metric Conversion Act. The highway is 102 kilometers long (63 miles).

New comment by gossamer in "The 8-Bit Era's Weird Uncle: The TI-99/4A"

gossamer — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 05:45:10 +0000

My first computer!

New comment by gossamer in "Some Terminal Frustrations"

gossamer — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 01:14:32 +0000

My biggest terminal frustration would be lack of access to Terminal. I have loved terminal windows since about 1981 or so. I was a big DOS fan and would only use Windows up until the Mac switched to OS X. I switched and never looked back.

Every day I use zsh on my Mac and bash on all the servers I use (almost all are Ubuntu).

My biggest peeve is the difficulty with formatting output in an elegant way when writing shell scripts. I have wrangled it for the most part, but all the solutions that I have found seem a bit janky.

New comment by gossamer in "Email addresses are not good 'permanent' identifiers for accounts"

gossamer — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 16:14:07 +0000

The temperature in Cupertino is currently 50F. That probably doesn't meet your definition of cold though.

New comment by gossamer in "Non-interactive SSH password authentication"

gossamer — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 18:25:36 +0000

I kinda like the way ansible does it. There is a concept of a vault. You put all the passwords in that file and they are all encrypted. You use one password when running the command or playbook and all of the keys are decrypted as needed.

I don't know if that is efficient for 30K machines though.

New comment by gossamer in "I Am Sitting in a Room (1969)"

gossamer — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 19:04:46 +0000

This piece is similar to Steve Reich's 1966 piece called "Come out".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Out_(Reich)

New comment by gossamer in "Unions work"

gossamer — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 16:27:29 +0000

I think there is a change of attitude with a shorter work week. If I am working 9-5 at the same place everyday, I basically live there. It is easier to decide to take more breaks because there is no Friday to relax or get chores done or go to appointments. I take every other Friday off and it helps me focus more at work. I schedule all my weekday appointments for Friday (as much as I can). Monday thru Thursday I can push a little harder and be a little more focused because I know I have Friday (or a week from Friday) to take my dog to the vet, me to the doctor, or whatever else I need to do. I would love a real 4 day work week.

New comment by gossamer in "Hurl 4.0.0"

gossamer — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 18:44:07 +0000

I have never wanted to hurl more than I do now. But in a good way. :-)

New comment by gossamer in "Four children found alive in Amazon 40 days after plane crash"

gossamer — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 17:30:03 +0000

I don't know about extreme heat. I have been to Colombia and there are very different climates. I am not sure exactly where they were, but it is probable that the temperature there was more warm with lots of rain.

New comment by gossamer in "Four children found alive in Amazon 40 days after plane crash"

gossamer — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 17:25:23 +0000

A child was abandoned in the colombian jungle at the age of 4 and lived in the jungle, raised by monkeys, for 5 years.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/marina-chapman

New comment by gossamer in "Living sound forever: The genius of Wendy Carlos"

gossamer — Sat, 20 May 2023 17:21:23 +0000

My favorite piece of hers has always been the 13 minute version of Timesteps from the Clockwork Orange movie. Some of her works are on Spotify.

New comment by gossamer in "Ask HN: How do I move forward after being laid off?"

gossamer — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 15:19:38 +0000

They economy is doing great. The problem is that 40% of the income in the US goes to the top 1% of people. That needs to change in order for the US to get its middle class back.

New comment by gossamer in "Bing: “I will not harm you unless you harm me first”"

gossamer — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 19:44:35 +0000

I am just happy there is a search engine that will tell me when I am wasting my time and theirs.

New comment by gossamer in "Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years"

gossamer — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 19:37:34 +0000

I was just looking the Preceden site today. It looks like a nice timeline program. Good luck!

New comment by gossamer in "Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?"

gossamer — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 20:57:42 +0000

I got my first real developer job in my 50s. I don't recommend this for many people. But it works for me. I am doing well.

New comment by gossamer in "Map showing birthplaces of "notable people" around the world"

gossamer — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 19:19:19 +0000

I noticed that too. Wikipedia says Paris. I think it is an error. I don't think he was born in Bogotá.

New comment by gossamer in "CNN cutting back on over-hyping everything as “breaking news”"

gossamer — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 18:46:24 +0000

I wish they had prepended "Breaking News: " to the title of this story.

New comment by gossamer in "Ask HN: What's the most stable form of digital storage?"

gossamer — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 05:38:56 +0000

Wherever you store this program, I think you should store all the comments attached to this post as well. I bet it will be pretty interesting reading in 30 years.

New comment by gossamer in "Is It Time to Revisit the Keystone XL Pipeline?"

gossamer — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 13:32:57 +0000

No. Just no.