Hacker News: themadturk

New comment by themadturk in "Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is"

themadturk — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:51:44 +0000

One only needs to read current medieval historians like Eleanor Janega (just to name one who's easily accessible) to know that this view of history as been pretty thoroughly debunked. The basis from which he or she argues is outdated.

New comment by themadturk in "Kindle users in uproar over update rendering oldest devices virtually unusable"

themadturk — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:19:17 +0000

I moved to Kobo a couple of years ago, as it started getting harder and harder to add de-DRM'd books I'd bought from other sellers to the device. It was easier to just abandon Kindle as an ereader. I'm really happy with Kobo and have had virtually no difficulty finding books to load onto it.

New comment by themadturk in "Programming Used to Be Free"

themadturk — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:03:13 +0000

GWBASIC was bundled (free) with MS-DOS before QBASIC was made available (DOS 5, if I remember right).

New comment by themadturk in "Artemis II is competency porn"

themadturk — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 20:39:30 +0000

Is one picture of a mountain derivative of another? Are two pictures of a specific human being derivative? No, they are individual creations, even if made using the same camera by the same photographer. Each is an individual work of art, the vision of a particular person capturing a unique, unrepeatable moment.

They are not derivatives, because the photographers are different people and the time and place were decades separated from one another. To call them derivative is to belittle the humans experiencing the events.

New comment by themadturk in "A brief history of instant coffee"

themadturk — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 03:39:22 +0000

The only coffee we keep around is Walmart's 100% Columbian Arabica instant, a freeze-dried coffee that tastes great and, despite recent rises in price, is under $10 for a 7 oz. jar. I sometimes mix it with a tablespoon of Stephen's Dark Chocolate cocoa mix (which contains dry milk) for a poor man's mocha.

New comment by themadturk in "Iran strikes leave Amazon availability zones "hard down" in Bahrain and Dubai"

themadturk — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 03:32:01 +0000

But aren't they pretty hard to hide? I mean, they cover a lot of grounds, they have lots of infrastructure leading right to them...even if someone makes a few wrong guesses, it's going to be easy to find where the data centers are.

New comment by themadturk in "I turned my Kindle into my own personal newspaper"

themadturk — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 20:58:50 +0000

KOReader works just as easily, and just as well, on my much newer Kobo Clara BW. I'm not unhappy with the built-in reader software, but keep KOReader installed just in case I want or need it.

New comment by themadturk in "Ball Pit"

themadturk — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:26:26 +0000

Works great on my M3 MacBook Air under Safari. GPU core temps got into the 130-160 degrees F. range. Fun demo!

New comment by themadturk in "Tracy Kidder has died"

themadturk — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:10:18 +0000

I love _The Soul Of A New Machine_. It was one of the books that got me started loving computer history (the other being Steven Levy's _Hackers,_ which I read afterward). A truly great writer.

New comment by themadturk in "I love my dumb watches"

themadturk — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 02:18:44 +0000

I like my Apple Watch loads. Yes, it tells me the time and the date. And the weather. It has a timer. (It can't make a call by itself.) It will tell me if I have AFIB. I'm getting older -- it will detect a fall, or a car wreck. And I only have to charge it up once every day and a half or so...or for about 15 minutes to get me through a night of sleep monitoring.

Watches of all sorts are cool. I often have watch envy.

New comment by themadturk in "I haven't used a mouse for 14 years"

themadturk — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:51:27 +0000

When I do use a mouse, I use a Logitech Lift because horizontal grip mice are uncomfortable, but now that I've retired and 99% of my time is on my MacBook Air, it's all trackpad, and my hands don't seem to mind it.

New comment by themadturk in "Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age"

themadturk — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:48:25 +0000

Is it, though? The trajectory right now is to remove the choice of parenthood. If some people in power have their way, it will not only be illegal to end a pregnancy, it will also be illegal to prevent it to start with. If a male and female have sex (and I doubt a sufficient number of people will give up having hetero sex), the result will often be a child, and there will be no safe, legal choice in the matter.

New comment by themadturk in "I put my whole life into a single database"

themadturk — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 01:55:42 +0000

This reminds me of someone I knew slightly back in the late 70s: Robert Shields, who kept the world's longest diary [0]. He was eccentric but very nice...but he wrote 33 million words, filling 90+ boxes, of every detail of his life for decades, only quitting when a stroke rendered him unable to type about ten years before his death. I doubt he tried to reach any conclusions based on his journaling, though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Shields_%28diarist%29

New comment by themadturk in "The View from RSS"

themadturk — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 05:40:48 +0000

There is a new version for Sonoma and Sequoia! I am so happy.

New comment by themadturk in "MacBook Air with M5"

themadturk — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 06:12:29 +0000

I was fortunate to have friends who worked for AT&T back then and they were able to get the 1200 baud modem for nothing. It was soooo speedy!

New comment by themadturk in "MacBook Air with M5"

themadturk — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 06:11:16 +0000

Oddly, except for font sizing, it's OK on the iPhone, and fine on the iPad, too, but it just bothers me endlessly on MacOS. I'm glad Sequoia still works well.

New comment by themadturk in "MacBook Air with M5"

themadturk — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:51:27 +0000

I went back to Sequoia on my M3 MBA not because of speed (which was fine) but aesthetics. Hated the look of Liquid Glass.

New comment by themadturk in "MacBook Air with M5"

themadturk — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:34:07 +0000

Yup. I ran UUCP on a 64K Kaypro with a 1200 baud modem.

New comment by themadturk in "MacBook Air with M5"

themadturk — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:31:23 +0000

My first Apple Silicon machine was an 8GB/512GB M1 MacBook Air. I rarely bumped up against the RAM, but I was pretty happy using between 300-400GB on the SSD, so I really think the 512GB was plenty. I have a 1TB machine now, and typically still use less than 512GB...but now and then I've found a good use for nearly all of that terabyte.

You're right, learning to manage storage space is important, but you need to have some storage space to manage first. 256GB is the bottom of the barrel.

New comment by themadturk in "MacBook Air with M5"

themadturk — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:23:17 +0000

I never understood the 256GB SSD on the MBA. That's no space at all.