Hacker News: syntheticnature

New comment by syntheticnature in "Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory"

syntheticnature — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:31:11 +0000

As a kid I modified DONKEY.BAS for my younger brother who wanted to play as a donkey avoiding cars. It was a clumsy modification, I didn't account for the differing size of the pseudo-sprites, but it made him happy.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Oracle cut its Always Free ARM limits to 2 OCPU / 12GB, enforced Aug 18"

syntheticnature — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:22:13 +0000

They'll clean up instances that aren't doing enough for them to notice, even -- I used to run an XMPP server on one, used daily but not with many users, and they kept shutting it down at random multi-day intervals with little warning. Stopped using it.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code"

syntheticnature — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 22:15:42 +0000

It confused me at the time, mainly because I had a class with written-out C and one with written-out Pascal in the same semester. The Pascal prof wouldn't mark off for C syntax but the C one would would mark off for Pascal syntax.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain"

syntheticnature — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:12:42 +0000

Yes, this is extremely common, both as a continuity means and/or as a localized password manager. Know someone who uses a Rolodex for hers, which is funny and yet it works.

Doesn't work well in office environments, but at home the local threat model is largely fine with this.

New comment by syntheticnature in "A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste"

syntheticnature — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:28:33 +0000

In the end everything is delayed trash. Some trash is recyclable/compostable/etc.

New comment by syntheticnature in "A native graphical shell for SSH"

syntheticnature — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:46:47 +0000

Indeed, a new hire should be able to use Google to find https://puttygen.com/download-putty#Download_PuTTY_on_Linux_... in short order

evil grin

New comment by syntheticnature in "Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC"

syntheticnature — Sun, 31 May 2026 20:58:46 +0000

Unreliable/stupid is worse than malice, here.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Time to talk about my writerdeck"

syntheticnature — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:10:34 +0000

You sound likely to have dysgraphia, based on the fact I have all the same aspects and a dysgraphia diagnosis.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks"

syntheticnature — Fri, 15 May 2026 20:12:31 +0000

I didn't send it very high up the chain (and was looking for a job at the time anyhow) but mostly got back snickers from peers and an "I know, but this is a directive from above"

New comment by syntheticnature in "Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks"

syntheticnature — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:40:03 +0000

Versus my sibling comment to yours, I actually sent that to some internal folks after the bit about AI+total lines committed was said.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks"

syntheticnature — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:37:44 +0000

When I was at Amazon last year, the bragging (from the AI poo-bah in my section of Amazon, note) about AI included "look at the total line count of commits from the heaviest AI users!"

So if AI screws something up and re-writes it and then screws it up again, needing another re-write, that counted as more positive than if it was done correctly, and simply, the first time.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose. Who Owns DeWalt, Craftsman, and Milwaukee?"

syntheticnature — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:06:36 +0000

This is why I evaluate if a tool type needs to be cordless when buying. Drills, impact drivers? You want cordless, or to have the option. For a circular saw being used by a homeowner for most DIY purposes, it's worth any arrangement issues to have corded. The cordless ones tend to take less common blade sizes and eat batteries even with the provided extra-lightweight blades.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired"

syntheticnature — Wed, 13 May 2026 18:00:24 +0000

In my free time, I help maintain the web presence for a small non-profit org with memberships. The original system when I started helping was a bespoke system that was smart in many ways (essentially a static site generator with membership control years before SSGs were cool, with regular automated tests), but the guy who wrote it absolutely insisted on storing passwords in plaintext and could not be convinced otherwise. Eventually he had to drop the volunteer position due to other things in life, and the first thing we did was correct this issue.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Google broke reCAPTCHA for de-googled Android users"

syntheticnature — Sat, 09 May 2026 00:41:52 +0000

I thought archive.is were the ones squabbling with Cloudflare (extreme simplification)

New comment by syntheticnature in "Patch applies fake diffs from commit messages"

syntheticnature — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:47:30 +0000

Haha, good one. Much like Makefiles, patch format precedes a lot of more modern things (by decades!) and is good enough to stick around. Unlike Makefiles, I've never seen tool gain any acceptance at all to replace patch.

New comment by syntheticnature in "How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences"

syntheticnature — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:33:24 +0000

3 days? Wow. Can't say I think much of this senior member of your team, who seems to be the anti-social one here. I'm sure it breaks flow for them, but a big part of being senior is amplifying the best in those less so, and helping them improve.

3 minutes, 30 minutes, sure, I've discovered a lot of junior folks would figure things out on their own when I couldn't get back to them immediately, and tended to add some delay just to encourage trying a little harder before contacting me. I would say even 3 hours has value. Buy yourself a rubber duck and have a heart-to-heart about your problem.

3 days is going to result in lots of folks getting stuck in local minima, likely confusing themselves in the process. To be clear, sometimes a problem requires a deep dive, or there is no one who can provide useful help. Even then, some guidance just to get outside perspective is helpful.

New comment by syntheticnature in "Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded in the US"

syntheticnature — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:20:22 +0000

The person I mentioned in my story upthread had the one-year suspension followed by the interlock requirement for another year

New comment by syntheticnature in "Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded in the US"

syntheticnature — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:17:19 +0000

If it's as flaky as my experience upthread suggests, maybe it was just that. At least, that's what I hope, for the sake of those on the bus

New comment by syntheticnature in "Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded in the US"

syntheticnature — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:32:43 +0000

I once helped someone get their car home after one of these was installed. Their license would not be returned until it was installed, but they weren't allowed to leave it on the lot. Someone else drove it there, and then I got to experience the breathalyzer to drive it home.

The interesting part is how bad the interlock was. First off, it can apparently randomly not work, so you get three tries. Worse yet, per the official documentation, apparently they can misdetect an ignition while driving at speed, and when that happens you have to pull over and blow within thirty seconds. Now, this is not something you can do while driving, as you have to look at the camera while you do it, on top of needing to have a deep breath. There's no motivation to improve this, because the customer is the legal system, not the person who has to have it installed

New comment by syntheticnature in "The MacBook Neo"

syntheticnature — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:14:05 +0000

Or, in actuality, the Dell business model will be designed for repairability. I tend to always advise friends who want Windows/Linux laptops to buy from the business lines, especially if a 1- or 2- year refurb will work.