Hacker News: onefiftymike

New comment by onefiftymike in "Hackers expose the identities of more than 40k DHS employees"

onefiftymike — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 13:45:12 +0000

I came across this years ago. It is pretty much the only news I will look at. They only update like 3 times a day too, so no incentive to keep coming back.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Git for the US Code"

onefiftymike — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 13:36:51 +0000

I don't know what the answer to public votes is. I see the benefit in them voting their conscience. But I also see how they can vote against my interests and then lie through their teeth that they are helping me if I can't see their record.

But voting today is such a performative act for them. There are great pieces of legislation that can't pass because someone has labeled it as radical so one side or the other can't be seen with their name on it so they don't pass it even though they know it is good and would benefit their constituents.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Microsoft and others tell crypto platform not to tokenize their stocks"

onefiftymike — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 20:48:16 +0000

I'm assuming that, like most crypto, the benefits are for the exchange. They don't have to purchase any Microsoft stock. They can just sell virtual stock, invest the crypto in whatever they want, and only have to pay back when people actually want to sell it. And like the fractional reserve system, they hope that only a small fraction want out at any given time.

Microsoft loses because all of that investment activity does nothing to help their valuation, but the middlemen in the crypto market take their share on each transaction.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Amazon Is Gutting Its AI Division After Sustained Failure"

onefiftymike — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 19:03:10 +0000

Ublock hides the sidebar from me, but it does still take up the whitespace on the side of the screen. Now it won't remember that I dismissed it and it pops back in on every new screen. I am just used to the screen being narrower now. But it is still annoying.

Analog Hero

onefiftymike — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 14:24:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.plough.com/articles/analog-hero

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50209611

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by onefiftymike in "Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name"

onefiftymike — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 22:18:26 +0000

The prosecutor where I grew up had the cops mad at him too because he would only prosecute if it was a slam dunk win. He didn't want to risk not getting a conviction so many crimes had no action if they didn't have spotless evidence. So somewhat a win, but still not good that known criminals are out and about because the prosecutor didn't want to risk a not-guilty verdict.

The whole system is pretty broken.

New comment by onefiftymike in "NixOS is making me less afraid"

onefiftymike — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:46:53 +0000

On windows I assume I cannot bend the OS to my will. On Linux I know I should be able to. The biggest issue is I am often so busy asking if I can do it that I don't stop to ask if I should do it. So I end up with weird configurations and random packages installed to tweak stupid stuff.

Some of it is real pain points, and those are annoying that they aren't baked into the distro from the beginning.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Living off-grid: Hundred Rabbits"

onefiftymike — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:21:43 +0000

Hence my using Gnucash over Quickbooks. It just works, they don't charge me to access my own data, and the interface is extremely stable.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space"

onefiftymike — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:51:17 +0000

I think if those building the datacenters were more upfront about what they were building and didn't hide behind NDAs the permitting process wouldn't be so fraught.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported after October 2026"

onefiftymike — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 19:15:07 +0000

Anecdata - My installed version stopped printing properly already. Printer works fine, but cant print from Publisher. I am assuming MS is not going to fix that at this point. Maybe I should file a bug report...

New comment by onefiftymike in "What It's Like to Work in One of America's Data Centers"

onefiftymike — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:44:54 +0000

I think some of this comes from everyone "moving up a notch". If the "top" electricians are going to data centers, the second rate are covering their old jobs, and on down until residential electricians are doing light industrial and commercial work (can probably charge more, and open up a new avenue of business).

New comment by onefiftymike in "List of references on Sony websites to players "owning" their digital games"

onefiftymike — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:32:10 +0000

My favorite was some (probaby Microsoft) boxed software I got in the 90s. The top of the box had a big warning that by opening the box you agreed to the terms of service that were IN the box.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Wendell Berry has died"

onefiftymike — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 20:43:16 +0000

I think he romanticized the old ways of farming, but I think the overall point was to question what was good about the past and question the line we are fed that all technology is for the general good of all people.

I think it is possible to say that subsistence farming leading to disease and starvation is bad, and a gigantic corporate oligopoly run monoculture farm is also bad. One of his biggest points is really that life should be human scale and speed with human relationships as a priority, the idealized farm was just a way to show what that life looked like in the past.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Show HN: 18 Words"

onefiftymike — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:56:19 +0000

I like the timed version, but would like to be able to just miss the word and get moved to the next one with a final score out of 18.

I also like some of the comments about the non-timed version to just chill and play without stress. Having a back catalog of timer-less puzzles would be a fun way to use my brain and kill some time.

New comment by onefiftymike in "What Is a Nomogram and Why Would It Interest Me?"

onefiftymike — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:00:12 +0000

Somehow I looked at the article and completely missed that it was the introduction to Pynomo. My wife would back you up that I am not good at finding things...

New comment by onefiftymike in "What Is a Nomogram and Why Would It Interest Me?"

onefiftymike — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:52:21 +0000

Here’s an old python program to make pdf nomograms from almost any formula. The example of payment for a loan is one of my favorites.

https://github.com/lefakkomies/pynomo

New comment by onefiftymike in "Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour"

onefiftymike — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:57:00 +0000

completely locked my machine up with Firefox on Linux. Gave up after that.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Claude for Small Business"

onefiftymike — Thu, 14 May 2026 16:03:23 +0000

I use GnuCash for my small business. I am not a programmer, but know enough to be dangerous. My use for AI was to have it write a small python script that will take my bank csv and set accounts properly based on how I have categorized them in GnuCash in the past, it spits out a clean csv to import into GnuCash. Now I can see exactly what the matches are, and the whole thing runs on my local computer. No worries about hallucination of new account names.

The python script is basic enough that even I can figure out what it is doing, and I still have to review the import to GnuCash and reconcile with my bank.

It is saving me about an hour of work every week right now.

I think this is my biggest use of AI - making small tools to do the work locally rather than sending things to the cloud to be stolen and messed with.

New comment by onefiftymike in "Let's Buy Spirit Air"

onefiftymike — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:39:06 +0000

I used to work for a company with about 1200 gas station/convenience stores. They tracked "Light product break even". Basically the profit to earn on fuel to make the store break even. It was like 2 cents per gallon most of the time. So they could be super competitive on fuel and still be profitable. It was pretty crazy to see that.

And it was Swifty - definitely a no frills experiences!

New comment by onefiftymike in "LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash"

onefiftymike — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:51:53 +0000

Admiral Cloudberg has a great writeup about this. I instantly thought of LA when I saw the headlines about the LaGuardia collision.

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/cleared-to-collide-the-c...