Hacker News: mzd348

New comment by mzd348 in "A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”"

mzd348 — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:17:43 +0000

Command–Up Arrow: Open the folder that contains the current folder. (https://support.apple.com/en-us/102650)

New comment by mzd348 in "Seven Engineers Suspended After $2.3M Bridge Includes 90-Degree Turn"

mzd348 — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 19:30:01 +0000

Reminds me a bit of the Park Avenue Viaduct in NYC, which has what looks like 90-degree turns when viewed from street level, but apparently the roadway itself has (sharp) curves:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/40.752323/-73.977539

New comment by mzd348 in "Neuters: Lightweight front end to Reuters News"

mzd348 — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 18:21:47 +0000

Looks like you've basically created an RSS frontend for reuters.com. Which is useful since they seem to have got rid of their own feeds. Would be nice if you could add your own feed so that neuters is actually readable via RSS.

New comment by mzd348 in "Moaan InkPalm Plus is weird, cheap, small, and my kind of e-reader"

mzd348 — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 21:56:09 +0000

It's sold by a Chinese company, their software probably doesn't worry much about optimal formatting, since Chinese writing doesn't really have any spaces. It would be nice if koreader could run on it.

New comment by mzd348 in "Mitsubishi robot solves Rubik's Cube in 0.305s"

mzd348 — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 20:09:41 +0000

Sounds like "The Last Child Into The Mountain": http://www.williamflew.com/omni54a.html

New comment by mzd348 in "Pi Day"

mzd348 — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 21:28:28 +0000

> Some friends in automotive engineering even tried using pi = 3

Did they end up with engine cylinders that were hexagonal in cross-section?

New comment by mzd348 in "Emacs commands I got by with for years"

mzd348 — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 14:42:58 +0000

I'll usually do C-h f (describe-function), then hit tab to make it build a list of all (interactive) functions, and then switch to that buffer and search for whatever I'm interested in.

New comment by mzd348 in "Cool, but obscure X11 tools (2019)"

mzd348 — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 16:01:48 +0000

I also remember a lot of these from the 90s. But I didn't see xphoon, that was a pretty cool one to display a (fairly) detailed picture of the current phase of the moon in your root window/desktop.

New comment by mzd348 in "How to Insure Your Money When You’re Banking over $250K (2022)"

mzd348 — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 19:33:10 +0000

One problem with SPAXX (which I realized when doing my state taxes last week) is that the monthly dividends it pays aren't exempt from state income tax. I expected that they would be, since SPAXX invests in federal-level government bonds, but they aren't.

New comment by mzd348 in "Why I’m Still on Strike: Portraits from the HarperCollins Picket Line"

mzd348 — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 19:33:56 +0000

> $45k is not a livable wage anywhere within an hour commute of Manhattan

I think $45k comes out to a take-home of about $2800 per month. I see ads on craigslist for 2-bedroom apartments in Brooklyn in the 2000-3000 range, and 3-bedroom apartments also in Brooklyn in the 3000-4000 range, either of those seem reasonable with a $2800 take-home. Of course it means having roommates.

New comment by mzd348 in "Huawei phones automatically deleting videos of the protests?"

mzd348 — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 18:07:32 +0000

"Smart TVs" come to mind, though this is corporate rather than government. For example there's talk of them having an embedded 5G modem so that they're able to phone home even if you've blocked them from your network, or never connected them to your network in the first place.

New comment by mzd348 in "Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?"

mzd348 — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 16:31:08 +0000

Haven't seen this mentioned yet, so How to Solve It (1945) by George Pólya? I haven't read it myself so I can't comment (I'm a muddy thinker and rubbish problem solver), but I think it was mentioned in a good light in one of Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" pieces.

New comment by mzd348 in "Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?"

mzd348 — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 16:14:43 +0000

Politico.eu has a weekly "print edition" (you can download the pdf from their site) and I feel it's not too far from The Economist in terms of subject matter, and goes into more depth for EU issues. The writing quality isn't as good though. Not sure what their political leaning is.

The New Statesman isn't bad but has some problems: delivery delays to the US (maybe not an issue for you) and lots of "advertorials". The writing quality is usually good. It has a left/labour leaning.

New comment by mzd348 in "Meta lays off 11,000 people"

mzd348 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 22:11:33 +0000

My thinking is that in this alternate universe where pi=3, circles (with diameter 2 * pi * r) will look like hexagons (which have diameter 2 * 3 * r), so wheels would have to be hexagonal.

New comment by mzd348 in "Meta lays off 11,000 people"

mzd348 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 19:15:17 +0000

But it comes in handy in the alternate universe where pi=3.

New comment by mzd348 in "Wall Street's Frantic Push to Hire Coders"

mzd348 — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 17:51:38 +0000

>Isn't this just a puff piece for hacker-rank?

Bloomberg (the tech side of the company, not the journalism side that produced this article) uses HackerRank for developer hiring too.

New comment by mzd348 in "“PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”"

mzd348 — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 17:21:34 +0000

I was under the impression that European wire transfers were cheap (free), fast, and reliable. If that's true, why is something like PayPal even needed? Can't Seafile just have their clients transfer money to Seafile's account? Or are wire transfers not free for "retail" use like this?

New comment by mzd348 in "Tontines may make sense despite their history of disrepute"

mzd348 — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 17:24:15 +0000

I'd be suspicious of a building that uses Comic Sans on its awning.

New comment by mzd348 in "Emacs maintainer steps down"

mzd348 — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 21:29:58 +0000

For me, 18.59 was the last real solid release.

MasterCard to use selfies to verify identity for online purchases

mzd348 — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 16:00:10 +0000

Article URL: http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-releases/mastercard-identity-check-to-simplify-and-strengthen-online-shopping

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10339823

Points: 3

# Comments: 0