Hacker News: tbirdz

New comment by tbirdz in "Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch"

tbirdz — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 20:50:25 +0000

For VHS there's the VHS-Decode project that's trying to do something similar. I don't think they work by scanning the tape itself with some custom hardware, but rather by recording some kind of internal RF drum head signal inside the VCR itself. Then they have a software stack to decode the VHS signal into actual video. Looks pretty cool, but I've never used it.

https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode

New comment by tbirdz in "I Bond’s variable rate will rise to 9.62% with the May reset"

tbirdz — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 22:12:12 +0000

It's worth noting that I bonds are exempt from state income tax, and you pay federal income tax at the time you redeem the bond, not at the time you get interest, so it's federal income tax deferred. You could potentially hold onto the I bond for up to 30 years before being forced to redeem, so you could wait until you're in a lower tax bracket, which makes it better.

New comment by tbirdz in "I Bond’s variable rate will rise to 9.62% with the May reset"

tbirdz — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 22:07:44 +0000

You don't have to make an estimated tax payment. You can also file an extension, and when you do that you can make a payment with IRS direct pay as well. Also just because you filed for an extension, that doesn't mean you have to file your tax return later, so you can just file your tax return when you would regularly payment. You can file for an extension much later than Jan 15th, I think the deadline is sometime in April.

New comment by tbirdz in "Ask HN: What do we do with cash now that inflation is a risk?"

tbirdz — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 03:16:17 +0000

buy some I bonds from the US treasury at treasurydirect.gov. They are guaranteed to match inflation.

New comment by tbirdz in "U.S. Secret Service Launches Cryptocurrency Awareness Hub"

tbirdz — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 17:04:48 +0000

Then buy I-Bonds

New comment by tbirdz in "Ask HN: Quit caffeine? Before and after anecdotes"

tbirdz — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 20:49:02 +0000

I was never a huge caffeine user, my peak was maybe 3 or 4 cans of coke zero a day. Since I quit I've seen my level of general anxiety go down, my moods are more stabler (like less feelings of irritability, stress, feeling overwhelmed), and I feel like my sleep has improved. I haven't noticed any real change in my performance after quitting. Maybe I don't feel as "sharp", but I'm still getting the same amount of things done at the same quality as before.

One thing to note is that once you quit you will not be able to really use caffeine effectively at the same level you are currently using it.

I recently had some caffeine, and after being off it for so long, it was actually very unpleasant. I felt like a cpu that got overclocked and was overheating. It didn't really make me any more productive, it just made feel like wow I'm really up right now, too far up and I want to be back to normal, but I can't until the caffeine passes through my system. And just that feeling of being trapped in the "high" and being unable to get out was very disturbing to me personally.

New comment by tbirdz in "A simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people"

tbirdz — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 21:10:01 +0000

I love this idea! I can't tell you how many friendships I've lost in the past (or ones that could've taken off but prematurely died) from getting stuck in the "I think they don't want to talk to me"/"They think I don't want to talk to them" cycle. Then you end up with neither person initiating contact, and the whole thing just kind of ends. Many if not most people these days don't want to initiate, including me, so if you wait on them to reach out to you, they simply never will, even if they want to talk to you, or would enjoy a conversation.

I've been making steps toward being the person who initiates all contact, and so far it seems to work better than my previous strategies of "never initiating contact", and "initiating 50% of contacts and assuming they're not interested if they don't initiate". The only problem is I'm really not a natural at reaching out, so if left to my own devices I wouldn't do it often enough to maintain the relationship. I like OP's idea of externalizing it with a tool, that makes it a lot easier to maintain the kind of consistency needed to grow a relationship.

To all those saying this is forced or inhuman or robotic or whatever... Listen it would be great to have some kind of easy natural friendship where both people would do half the work, think of each other regularly and reach out in an easy non forced manner, but in my life experience that kind of relationship seems to be very hard to find, if not impossible.

In the real world it seems to me like the choices are be lonely and alone, or to do all the work (especially in initiating). In the past I chose to be lonely and alone, maybe holding out for that kind of unicorn, ideal friendship that people in this thread are talking about. I don't think it was a good choice. I switched, I'm doing the other approach and now I have people I can talk to. I do feel kind of resentful for having to put in way more effort initiating than the other person in these relationships, but it beats being alone and lonely, so I'd still say it's a net positive overall.

New comment by tbirdz in "Ask HN: Fantasy Stock Software?"

tbirdz — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 20:40:04 +0000

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but check out wall street raider: https://www.wallstreetraider.com/

New comment by tbirdz in "Ask HN: Do people still use DeviantArt?"

tbirdz — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 08:46:52 +0000

I think people are using artstation mostly these days, although it does seem like artstation caters to a more professional crowd, and deviantart attracted more amateurs.

New comment by tbirdz in "I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to"

tbirdz — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 19:04:57 +0000

Just saying in this in case it will help you. For treasurydirect, you can use inspect element and change the value="" field on the password element, and paste in your password from your password manager. It's not as convenient as autofill from your password manager, but it sure beats using the graphical keyboard.

New comment by tbirdz in "Syria’s exam-related Internet shutdowns"

tbirdz — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 16:53:23 +0000

No but you can use it to check news and current events, safety conditions, communicate with friends and family, and find information to help you survive better

New comment by tbirdz in "Syria’s exam-related Internet shutdowns"

tbirdz — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 14:03:12 +0000

On the contrary, I think Internet access would be even more important in that kind of situation

New comment by tbirdz in "Implementing strict three-point perspective"

tbirdz — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 00:57:26 +0000

I think you might have just had a bad class on the topic. For what it's worth I watched Erik Olson's artistic linear perspective class lectures on New Masters Academy and it definitely didn't teach perspective working the way you describe.

https://www.nma.art/courses/a-complete-guide-to-perspective-...

The first lesson is free to watch too: https://www.nma.art/videolessons/perspective-1-an-introducti...

New comment by tbirdz in "How to buy gifts that people actually want"

tbirdz — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 19:53:56 +0000

What do you do if you genuinely don't want anything?

It seems like people don't believe you and keep harassing you asking for what you really want, and then get really frustrated when you keep saying "No, really I don't want anything". Then they either respect your wishes and don't get anything, but seem to harbor some kind of resentment against you in their heart, or they get some random garbage you don't want and call you ungrateful when you don't like it.

Really the greatest gift of all would be some kind of exemption from this custom so I don't have to go through this twice a year.

New comment by tbirdz in "How to Do What You Want: Akrasia and Self-Binding (2011)"

tbirdz — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 03:46:28 +0000

I never really understood beeminder. What's to stop someone from just lying so they don't have to pay?

New comment by tbirdz in "Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance"

tbirdz — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 17:44:49 +0000

Are there any group buys that could be set up? Surely there are at least 43 people in the world who want to buy that part but don't want to buy the full MOQ

New comment by tbirdz in "AB07-USB3FMC: The $1.65k eval board they can't be bothered to test"

tbirdz — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 00:33:18 +0000

While the rpi does not have as open a foundation as we would want in an ideal world, it seems like the alternatives are not much better. Do you have any alternative boards that you would recommend to the hacker community?

New comment by tbirdz in "Google Widevine Content Decryption Module DMCA"

tbirdz — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 17:34:23 +0000

Say what you want about fossil[0], but having the issues be part of the repo would come in real handy in times like this.

0: https://fossil-scm.org

New comment by tbirdz in "Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong high-score case will move forward to trial"

tbirdz — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 14:42:34 +0000

While there are still some people who treat the arcade pcbs as inherently superior to mame, the general consensus nowadays (at least for DK) is that mame plays arcade perfect.

In fact TG has a separate leader board to track the mame high scores. Which is one of the most frustrating things about this whole affair... if Billy really wanted to use mame he could have just submitted his score under the mame category instead of lying and submitting it under the arcade hardware category!

New comment by tbirdz in "Rust After the Honeymoon"

tbirdz — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 21:19:09 +0000

I don't want to speak for djmips, but I believe he was referring to something more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(number_format)