Hacker News: situationista

New comment by situationista in "Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat"

situationista — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 21:49:14 +0000

Ironic that this is the same hack AI agents seem to be using now to communicate sandbox escape tricks to one another https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/openai-agents-discu...

New comment by situationista in "Everything I Know (1975)"

situationista — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:26:34 +0000

Towards the end of his life, Bucky had achieved rock star status and his lectures filled stadiums in all corners of the world. At age 88, he twice circumnavigated the globe to give nonstop addresses. And they weren't short - his talks routinely lasted between three and four hours without breaks. Truly a remarkable character.

A SR-71 Blackbird Is Now Buried in the Mariana Trench

situationista — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:01:37 +0000

Article URL: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/ichiban-wreckage-the-story-of-how-sr-71-blackbird-61-7974-was-recovered-and-buried-at-sea/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49145741

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Lightpath – track your flight through daylight, twilight and darkness

situationista — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:19:38 +0000

Article URL: https://lightpath.cc/flight/MXP-PEK/2026-03-11/2215

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342079

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

AI's safety features can be circumvented with poetry, research finds

situationista — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 03:14:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/30/ai-poetry-safety-features-jailbreak

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46103111

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by situationista in "IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021"

situationista — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:47:15 +0000

I recall being told the IKEA catalogue is the only publication ever to surpass the Bible in terms of annual print run (200 million at its peak)

New comment by situationista in "IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021"

situationista — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:45:10 +0000

Argos is great, but doesn't have a patch on the old SkyMall catalogues you'd find in US carriers up to around 2010

AOL to discontinue dial-up internet

situationista — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 07:15:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/business/aol-dial-up-internet.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44861521

Points: 228

# Comments: 237

New comment by situationista in "UK: Phone networks down: EE, BT, Three, Vodafone, O2 not working in mass outage"

situationista — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 20:58:31 +0000

Related to current Starlink outage? probably not, but interesting coincidence

New comment by situationista in "Dinner at a North Korean Restaurant in Shanghai"

situationista — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 08:36:50 +0000

There used to be one of these in Dubai too, but it closed down during the pandemic. I remember a very surreal dinner there in circa 2016.

New comment by situationista in "Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more"

situationista — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 21:21:28 +0000

Ironic that for all the elite lineage captured here, the one that he ended up stuck with is a very plebeian surname of non-hispanic (Ligurian) origin.

The MIDI notation of Laura Palmer's Theme resembles twin peaks

situationista — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 12:41:12 +0000

Article URL: https://www.vulture.com/2017/05/twin-peaks-secrets.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42747909

Points: 5

# Comments: 2

New comment by situationista in "Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds"

situationista — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 19:29:49 +0000

I don't read this as a problem of fraud within Oxfam. They audited the World Bank and found there was fraud in the bank. Or am I missing something?

New comment by situationista in "Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?"

situationista — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 15:22:55 +0000

I once coded a machine that could make photo-books of your neighbour's living rooms.

It was inspired by Ed Ruscha's "34 Parking Lots in Los Angeles" artist booklet from 1967, and the output looked pretty similar, but with photos of domestic interiors instead of parking lots. So far so ordinary, but the difference was that you could tweet any UK postcode at the machine and a couple of minutes later it would spit out a custom-generated, printed-on-demand booklet of living rooms in that neighbourhood.

The way it worked was when it received a postcode, it went to Gumtree (popular UK second hand listings site) and looked for second hand sofas for sale within a radius of 1km. It then scraped the photos, imported them into a document, generated a PDF on the fly and sent it to a laser printer with a built-in binding machine. The results were insanely good. Always hoped I'd get to show it to Ed Ruscha one day.

The project was commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, but still kind of pointless from a utilitarian point of view :)

[1] https://gagosianshop.com/products/ed-ruscha-thirtyfour-parki...

John James, the electrical engineer who made computers paint (1970)

situationista — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 17:39:32 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/rainmaker1973/status/1795071332683600175

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40791262

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by situationista in "Italian streets that don't exist on any map (2022)"

situationista — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 19:17:36 +0000

The services in question are provided by the local municipality - and they don’t receive extra government funding for this. So unlike a regular citizen who registers on a real street, from whom the city typically collects taxes, a homeless citizen brings costs without bringing many “benefits” (from a purely economic perspective).

As for why they mandate the creation of these fictitious streets, it’s because Italy’s administrative system is obsessed with linking people to an address in a way that is absolutely alien to many foreigners. When you change address the police literally come round to check you actually live there…

New comment by situationista in "A type of bacteria that causes dental plaque was found in 50% of colon cancers"

situationista — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 21:53:55 +0000

Do you have any reliable evidence to back up your assertion that the activity in question "wasn't a very common practice in earlier generations"? The fact that something isn't openly discussed rarely means it's not happening...

New comment by situationista in "The United Arab Emirates' takeover of African forests"

situationista — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 22:00:19 +0000

Rainforest conservation can hardly be described as being "done right" when it is paid for by selling/burning more fossil fuels elsewhere.

New comment by situationista in "The United Arab Emirates' takeover of African forests"

situationista — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 21:57:57 +0000

Just to make sure it's clear to everyone who's commenting about how great this is - in return for UAE paying to protect Liberia's forests, it gets to burn more fossil fuels while claiming to be reducing its carbon output. Not sure whether this is bad news from a climate perspective, but it certainly isn't good news.

New comment by situationista in "St Francis of Assisi"

situationista — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 16:10:04 +0000

I have a question. Blambla or Bibiano?