Hacker News: themadturk

New comment by themadturk in "The engineering that allows articulated buses to bend"

themadturk — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:49:04 +0000

Yeah, double deckers don't work everywhere. Overhead infrastructure isn't always conducive. And I rode one of these for years (it could have been the very bus in the first picture) and they were often full on the suburban runs.

New comment by themadturk in "A Remote Employee Refused 160 Webcam Photos a Day. Her Employer Fired Her"

themadturk — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 02:27:04 +0000

When COVID-19 hit, the only prep my employer had was that everyone had laptops and we had basic VPN infrastructure. The first week or two were chaotic. Everyone had to provide their own high-speed Internet. Eventually they let us come in small groups to the office to bring home monitors, keyboards, and mice.

Our company was never BYOD, but they were pretty loose about personal hardware. They didn't provide or require phones, but to get office mail, documents, etc. you had to have management software on your phone or tablet. You couldn't connect your own computer to the VPN.

We came back to work in mid-2021. In early 2022 we had a ransomware breach on a Sunday evening. If you happened to have your laptop with you (I did), you could eventually do some WFH stuff, after certain servers were certified clean (they never told us, but indications were someone succumbed to a phishing attack). Otherwise you were SOL until they either certified your machine had been turned off or was otherwise certified clean, or you got a brand new laptop.

Once we were back in the office (again), things were stricter...no USB drives allowed, for instance, and software installs were more tightly controlled. But the phone/tablet policy was the same -- even if you were on call, you had to provide your own phone. MFA could be on your phone or software on your laptop, and again you weren't required to have company software on your phone.

New comment by themadturk in "I'm Tired of Being on the Network"

themadturk — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:49:03 +0000

OMG, finally someone who articulates what I feel.

I'm old. I was in college when the first personal computers made their debut. I was a married adult when I got my first computer (a Timex 1000). I was a father by the time the Internet appeared in public. The first cell phone I used (not owned) was the size and weight of a brick.

I keep thinking that, though it's been abused and in many ways turned against us, this is the world many of us dreamed of. Baby Boomers grew up wanting Star Trek communicators. When we got Commodore 64s and Apple IIs, we wanted them to be portable. When they became portable, we wanted them to be connected everywhere.

Just because greed and scrabbling for power corrupted the people who made all these dreams come true, it doesn't mean the dreams didn't come true. We asked for the tech, and we got it. Now I guess we have to take responsibility for how we use it.

New comment by themadturk in "I'm Tired of Being on the Network"

themadturk — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:35:43 +0000

I'm an Apple OS owner and I'm trying to imagine what these nags for free trials and services are. I have most notifications off, so perhaps I'm missing them? Some apps do this, I guess, but I just can't think of the last time my Mac or iPhone or iPad or Apple Watch nagged me to join a free trial or service.

New comment by themadturk in "I'm Tired of Being on the Network"

themadturk — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:23:40 +0000

I live in a densely populated suburban apartment complex with absolutely no gating or restrictions on access. People much worse off than I am are close neighbors, and homeless people wander nearby. Yet I have never, ever had a package stolen.

New comment by themadturk in "UFO Series Home Page: "UFO" TV Series from 1970"

themadturk — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 23:16:13 +0000

I lapped this up eagerly when it was first syndicated in the US, I was in high school at the time. It wasn't until a few years later that I saw Doppelgänger, probably the first time it was on TV.

I was actually introduced to Gerry and Sylvia Anderson as a much younger kid, when I saw Fireball XL-5 on Saturday morning TV. But I missed Thunderbirds until I was an adult!

New comment by themadturk in "I hate you Microsoft"

themadturk — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 01:03:24 +0000

I did this as well a few years ago, fortunately for a relatively small sum of money. I don't need MS products all that much, usually just Word. So I'm very happy with LibreOffice.

New comment by themadturk in "Financial Times' 404 Page not Found"

themadturk — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 01:11:46 +0000

This took me back nearly fifty years to my Econ classes, and I have been re-traumatized.

New comment by themadturk in "Tiny $70 Xteink X3 e-reader"

themadturk — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 16:15:06 +0000

What many people do is buy them from places like Kobo.com, download them, and remove the DRM (usually via plugins to the Calibre library management software).

Kindle books have become impossible to download, but other online bookstores aren't as restrictive.

New comment by themadturk in "Tiny $70 Xteink X3 e-reader"

themadturk — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 16:07:17 +0000

It's easier on the eyes. LEDs and related technologies give me eyestrain after a while; eInk devices don't (and many, like the X4 model, have front-lighting, also easier on the eyes than backlit screens.

New comment by themadturk in "Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double"

themadturk — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:23:03 +0000

Some people like supporting the authors of the books they read.

New comment by themadturk in "Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double"

themadturk — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:21:59 +0000

There's an active dev community over at Mobileread.com. Look for the Kobo Developer's Corner under the Kobo Reader forum.

New comment by themadturk in "Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double"

themadturk — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:15:51 +0000

Check out the Onyx_Boox subreddit. People often put their used Boox devices up for sale (presumably when they buy new ones).

New comment by themadturk in "Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double"

themadturk — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:14:23 +0000

It's good that it works for you. Before unloading my Kindle, I was getting over 50% failures when side loading books via Send To Kindle. These were all ePubs that have subsequently worked fine on Kobo. That was completely unacceptable, and I was uncomfortable with the amount of control Amazon was exerting over the platform.

I don't hate Amazon, but I was not willing any longer to give them knowledge and control over my reading.

New comment by themadturk in "Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double"

themadturk — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:09:06 +0000

Thanks! I'll be looking at this very soon. I'd heard of it, but hadn't ever looked its features.

New comment by themadturk in "Get your Windows license refund"

themadturk — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:38:49 +0000

Actually (and I'm being pedantic here, I admit), only IBM made an XT, the others were all XT-clones or compatibles. And you could get a compatible ROM that contained BASIC. I also owned a non-IBM XT clone, which did not have BASIC in ROM.

New comment by themadturk in "My life was changed by four sentences in four books"

themadturk — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:34:33 +0000

I was disappointed that he couldn't find anything life-changing in a book of fiction.

New comment by themadturk in "The Finn – an agent that lives in my router and complains about it"

themadturk — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 01:31:26 +0000

Unless you plug it into your deck, of course.

New comment by themadturk in "Get your Windows license refund"

themadturk — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:50:22 +0000

Cassette BASIC was exclusive to early IBM PCs, XTs and PC Jrs. PCs like Compaq's, with their very, very compatible BIOS, didn't have BASIC in ROM.

New comment by themadturk in "Casio F-B100W-1A"

themadturk — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 20:19:46 +0000

How about someone who was raised on 12h time and has used it for 70 years? Sure, the math to convert is pretty easy, but why?