Hacker News: pwg

New comment by pwg in " prevents me from logging into Vanguard"

pwg — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:09:06 +0000

With Firefox, if one sets the dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled about::config setting to false, then websites can no longer block paste. Your pastes will work, despite their trying to intercept and block them.

New comment by pwg in "NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart"

pwg — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:39:59 +0000

Another comment in this thread pointed out that "return an SR-71 to operational flying" is /also/ the exact type of cover story that would be handed out for as cover for an actual project (likely some hyper-sonic aircraft) when trying to rehire retired engineers for this new secret project.

New comment by pwg in "NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart"

pwg — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:36:16 +0000

For military planes, every bit of weight you can shed up front increases some operational capability of the plane. In this case, not carrying an extra 200-300kg of weight for starters meant 200-300kg more spy equipment /could/ be carried along on the mission.

New comment by pwg in "NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart"

pwg — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:31:39 +0000

The SR-71 on display at the Udvar-Hazy branch of the Air and Space Museum located near Dulles Airport in Virginia does not have its engines in the nacelles. The rest of the exterior looks complete, but other internals could very well also be missing and the exterior would still look identical.

New comment by pwg in "NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart"

pwg — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:25:17 +0000

The official public reason for NASA having an SR-71 back when they were still flying one was for extreme high altitude atmospheric tests/experiments. No other plane (at least at the time) could fly at the altitudes the SR-71 could.

Whether that was a cover story for additional spying by the NASA SR-71 is unknown to those of us without the necessary security clearances.

New comment by pwg in "Firefox's chief on why he hopes a redesign will help win users from Chrome"

pwg — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:23:35 +0000

Rather than playing "copy Apple" how about fixing the memory leaks?

Reverse-engineering the Intel 8087's tangent algorithm: more than CORDIC

pwg — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:26:54 +0000

Article URL: https://www.righto.com/2026/09/8087-tangent-cordic.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49858676

Points: 126

# Comments: 11

New comment by pwg in "Oracle cites 'force majeure' to shield itself on controversial data center"

pwg — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:20:56 +0000

> I really don't get who keeps using Oracle

"Enterprise" is still very much in the camp of "using Oracle". Which is likely how they survive despite being so customer unfriendly. "Enterprise" users are simply using what "the enterprise" purchased and have little choice in the matter.

New comment by pwg in "Ask HN: Familiar with California SB-122? (sales and use tax on digital products)"

pwg — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:33:38 +0000

You should be consulting with a tax advisor/accountant/attorney, not HN, for this question.

New comment by pwg in "XCancel service is suspended until further notice"

pwg — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:57:22 +0000

> without the incessant nagging and limitations that X subjects non-logged-in users to

That is directly the result of the evil pull of advertising. "Logged in" users are more valuable than "non-logged in" users to advertisers (because logged in ones are identified) and so what you are seeing as "nagging" is Shitter (formerly X, formerly Twitter) desperately trying to increase its ad revenue at your expense. You are watching enshittification right before your eyes.

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

New comment by pwg in "The case against JPEG XL"

pwg — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 02:15:21 +0000

> If JPEG XL doesn’t become useful on the web, is it really likely to become popular with camera manufacturers, professional image editing tools, etc?

I suspect that eventually, the browser makers that are reluctant to add JpegXL support will do so, even if reluctantly, and so it will eventually "become useful on the web".

The reason why is Adobe added JpegXL as a compression format for PDF's, and as every browser maker wants their browser to also be a "PDF viewer", this means they must include a JpegXL decoder to be able to support PDF's going forward. If they must have a JpegXL decoder anyway, it is not that difficult to also add it as another supported format for the tag.

Microcode in Intel's 8087 floating-point chip: the scale instruction

pwg — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 15:49:52 +0000

Article URL: https://www.righto.com/2026/09/8087-microcode-reverse-engineering-fscale.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49673580

Points: 131

# Comments: 53

New comment by pwg in "Americans Hate Data Centers. Why?"

pwg — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:11:36 +0000

My the "Times" has fallen. This op-ed writer totally missed the forest for the trees.

Not six months or so ago we had multiple different AI CEO's, and other big company CEO's, publicly exclaiming how many jobs AI was going to replace in short order. What did they expect when they told the masses (i.e., the voters) that a majority of them were going to be unemployed soon because of AI? This is simply the folks they told they were going to lay off fighting back to prevent those layoffs from happening.

Couple that with the electricity bill price increases because of the load from the AI data centers and you have a perfect storm that crosses party lines and aligns the vast majority squarely in the "opposed to AI" camp.

Cores in space: The core memory module from a 1980 Spacelab computer

pwg — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:00:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.righto.com/2026/08/spacelab-core-memory.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49502214

Points: 132

# Comments: 24

New comment by pwg in "China rejected a container of Argentine beef. Here's what the US did next"

pwg — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:00:56 +0000

Sadly, the whole article reads as AI generated slop.

New comment by pwg in "Meta reaches $16.68B settlement over social media harms to children"

pwg — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:20:36 +0000

> Then they ignored tons and tons of warning signs that this was having a negative effect especially on children and the elderly.

So long as the changes produced (to their belief) increases in advertising revenue, they didn't care. More ad money was all that mattered.

New comment by pwg in "Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown"

pwg — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 01:22:09 +0000

It is, but you'd be surprised at the number of folks who will DIY stuff, but won't DIY anything electrical.

New comment by pwg in "Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown"

pwg — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 01:20:45 +0000

For the home inspections I've been a "walkthrough witness" to, the "electrical inspection" portion involved the inspector opening the normal access door to the breaker panel levers, and plugging in one of those $5 Home Depot wiring fault detectors into a few random plugs here and there to verify no wiring faults appear.

But they do not remove the panel cover to look inside, nor do they open up any receptacle box anywhere to look at any of the wiring inside. So they wouldn't know (nor discover) if the wiring job was done well or done in a shoddy manner.

New comment by pwg in "Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown"

pwg — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 01:14:09 +0000

Unless your state is very unusual that is the requirement for installing them for other people as a tradesman. In most states if you are DIY for yourself all you legally need are the electrical permits for the wiring hookup (which for DIY don't require that "apprenticeship").

New comment by pwg in "TreasuryDirect: Prepare for ID.me – Your New Way to Log In"

pwg — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:36:47 +0000

With Firefox you can set to false the about:config setting "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" and websites can no longer block paste.