Hacker News: hydrogen7800

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism"

hydrogen7800 — Tue, 19 May 2026 22:05:19 +0000

Me too, but on a snowboard. (I suppose I'd be the same on a skateboard) My second time snowboarding was quite a few years after my first, and I just could not get the hang of it, wondering how I was faring so much worse than before. It took me all day to remember I was "goofy", and once I switched it was much better.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Making the news available at no cost is a victory"

hydrogen7800 — Wed, 13 May 2026 22:15:40 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadca...

New comment by hydrogen7800 in ""Not Medically Necessary": Helping America's Health Insurers Deny Coverage"

hydrogen7800 — Wed, 13 May 2026 21:55:15 +0000

This is one of those things that, if it weren't already a public service, could never be implemented as one today. Add to that list public schools and public libraries.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in ""Not Medically Necessary": Helping America's Health Insurers Deny Coverage"

hydrogen7800 — Wed, 13 May 2026 21:44:55 +0000

This is good to hear. My mother was a PA for a private practice and also would often call the insurance providers to challenge denials, often from people far from the relevant specialty. By her accounts she was usually able to reverse the denials.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message"

hydrogen7800 — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:50:29 +0000

"It's so easy when you don't know how". I'm not sure if this phrase is in common use at all, or if I just misheard it once and attributed it to mean that when the details of a problem aren't obvious, its easy to conclude the solution is simple. "Why don't they just do ___?"

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license"

hydrogen7800 — Thu, 07 May 2026 12:47:53 +0000

I downloaded one of the models, but it is only the outer mold line, with no internal features. Not sure how useful this is to someone who needs to replace their shell, or modify it.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Top MAGA influencer revealed to be AI"

hydrogen7800 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:45:01 +0000

Apologies if it seems I'm just stoking a stereotype, but this comes from personal experience with family. For a demographic who generally are proud to be "old school", "not computer people", skeptical, distrustful of technology, self-reliant, and at least paid lip service to those ideals when raising their children, they sure do love being lied to and manipulated by the very enemies they claimed to be resistant to.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Allbirds, Inc. Announces Expansion into AI Compute Infrastructure"

hydrogen7800 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:35:15 +0000

I'm also surprised how few people know about Tulip Mania[0]. Funny thing about bubbles is that mostly everyone seems to know its a bubble, but they think they will have a seat when the music stops.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "The electromechanical angle computer inside the B-52 bomber's star tracker"

hydrogen7800 — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 01:10:31 +0000

I'm shooting from the depths of my memory, but I recall reading that one of the earliest government needs for computers was for the decennial census. At some point, it was requiring more than the 10 years to process the previous censuses (sp?) results.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy"

hydrogen7800 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 22:33:17 +0000

Interesting read. This may be unfair to Louisiana based on this case, but I've heard the USA described as a federation of a bunch of states and some 3rd world countries.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Microsoft isn't removing Copilot from Windows 11, it's just renaming it"

hydrogen7800 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:29:02 +0000

I built it circa 2012 or 2013 and still have the physical win8 disc. I considered futzing with linux on it. The extent of my linux experience is via SSH to a raspberry pi kludging some docker containers for this and that. SSH/linux terminal feels like fumbling in a dark room flipping random switches until something works.

>scrcpy

I also have a pixel 5a whose screen doesn't work, but I think functions otherwise. Would this allow me to interface with it?

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Microsoft isn't removing Copilot from Windows 11, it's just renaming it"

hydrogen7800 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:55:52 +0000

Thanks! Also useful for an old win10 machine I have, and probably shouldn't be using anymore, that no longer responds to clicking the start menu button...

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "We May Be Living Through the Most Consequential Hundred Days in Cyber History"

hydrogen7800 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:36:03 +0000

Frustratingly, I have my foot in both worlds to a degree. I'm interested enough in tech to pay attention and often lurk the tech bubble that is HN and hear about the raging dumpster fires from the folks who live and work in that domain. But I exist in a mostly non-tech world IRL where this exists among the other burning dumpster fires to the point that I can't care about another data hack, and i hate that I don't have the bandwidth to care. To a more acute degree, my mother was nearly wiped of half her life savings by "hackers"/fraudsters posing as employees of her bank. Being "hacked" is a part of life now, and outrage fatigue is real.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Microsoft isn't removing Copilot from Windows 11, it's just renaming it"

hydrogen7800 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:13:57 +0000

Ugh, I can no longer press win key and type "p a i enter". I now have to find the old paint manually.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

hydrogen7800 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 03:19:45 +0000

In the post splashdown conference, they mentioned that these were indeed attitude control bursts to orient for favorable orientation for water impact.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

hydrogen7800 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:23:55 +0000

My suspicion was they were burning excess propellant, rather than attitude adjustment while under the parachutes. Though who knows how much propellant remained. It could be quite a bit more than it appears was used.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Artemis II and the invisible hazard on the way to the Moon"

hydrogen7800 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:02:42 +0000

Ha of course! Entirely predictable.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets"

hydrogen7800 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:54:12 +0000

Too much of our government requires/required its trustees to act in good faith. Clearly that was too vulnerable. And I realize it sounds naive to think that past trustees were acting in good faith, but there are relative degrees of that.

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Artemis II and the invisible hazard on the way to the Moon"

hydrogen7800 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:04:59 +0000

That's a bit too much to ask of these folks, I'm afraid, but I did boil it down for him by saying that the real question is understanding why he is inclined to believe its a hoax, rather than trying to pile up evidence in front of him. I suppose that's what "street epistemology" is, though. Nice to have shorthand terms for these ideas.

I also included a thought experiment for him:

Imagine you take a conspiracy influencer and actually put them in the spacecraft with the astronauts so they could see the whole thing with their own eyes and wouldn't be able to deny it. They return to earth to tell their followers that it's all real. Do you think everyone will be convinced, or would they say he's now in on the conspiracy and find a new person to lead the conspiracy theory?

(I wonder if there is a sociological shorthand term for this?)

New comment by hydrogen7800 in "Artemis II and the invisible hazard on the way to the Moon"

hydrogen7800 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:38:39 +0000

I haven't been actively looking for them, but a friend sent me something about the launch tower escape zipline/gondolas and how that somehow indicated something fraudulent. He is not a denier, but works with one and is always asking me to refute that person's claims.