Hacker News: theturtle

New comment by theturtle in "Ask HN: When did computers stop being fun?"

theturtle — Sun, 17 May 2026 00:14:12 +0000

The last "fun" I had related to "work" computing may have been as long ago as 2000. Writing something cool or clever that I was proud to show off. By 2010 pretty much everything sucked and by 2015 I left IT entirely, no longer having any belief in the ability to make people's lives better. After I retired I was more willing to go back to just farting around with computers, but it's not the same. The jawbros and pseudo-suits took all the interest out of it.

New comment by theturtle in "How to Host a Blog on a Subdirectory Instead of a Subdomain (2025)"

theturtle — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:53:52 +0000

This is somehow news? I was doing this 30 actual years ago.

Long before Google and Cloudflare stunk up the internet.

New comment by theturtle in "Connecticut and the 1 Kilometer Effect"

theturtle — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:14:16 +0000

We have solar. It so happens the people next door also do, but we didn't know that when we started. In the almost two years since we added ours, no one has asked about them, possibly because our house is on the highest hill in the neighborhood and they are not easy to notice from anywhere surrounding. A side benefit it learning that Generac's support is as crappy as their hardware is good, but we refused to give any money to Tesla.

New comment by theturtle in "Aliens.gov ~ domain registered 17MAR2026"

theturtle — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:38:47 +0000

Fuck CAPTCHAs.

New comment by theturtle in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

theturtle — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 23:19:48 +0000

Sure, I have http://www.whatstupidshitdidhedotoday.com

New comment by theturtle in "No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams"

theturtle — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 23:21:25 +0000

Yeah. This. In 42 years in IT, i saw way too many situations where the last thing engineers need is a "team" or "management," or even worse, an outside "team leader," which usually resulted in the engineer's work or the team's work turning directly into cowshit. "Managers" want to talk about doing a thing; engineers want to actually do the thing, and both cannot happen simultaneously.

When they see results deteriorating, "managers" think the solution is "more management," which is never, ever the solution.

New comment by theturtle in "Erich von Däniken has died"

theturtle — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 21:08:46 +0000

Didn't Carl Sagan (no stranger to selling books) pretty much stomp von Däniken's "theory" into cornmeal well before the turn of the century?

New comment by theturtle in "Is Northern Virginia still the least reliable AWS region?"

theturtle — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:30:20 +0000

I searched for it, and did not find, the word "backhoe."

Big fail.

I have said for years, never ascribe to terrorism what can be attributed to some backhoe operator in Ashburn, Virginia.

We got a lotta backhoes in northern Virginia.

New comment by theturtle in "The true story of the Windows 3.1 'Hot Dog Stand' color scheme"

theturtle — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 22:57:23 +0000

I actually used Hot Dog Stand as the inspiration for the color combination on a big internal website years ago. A "committee" was still flapping its gums about the color choice a week before a hard launch, so I simply... decided. A moderately-unpleasant but distinctive combination went into production. I figured that would finally force them to make an actual decision after nine months of meetings. I was wrong. Users seemed to like it OK, nobody complained, so it stayed.

For almost five years.

I actually finally TOLD them, "you never actually decided, so I picked the colors to be deliberately a little obnoxious so you would actually get off the pot and decide."

They were PISSED.

Not long after, I came up with a way for users (not committees of the managers of users, who usually know nothing) to choose their own preferred colors, and over 80% of them never used that feature and left the garish original I had pulled out of my butt in 1999, because now they were used to it.

New comment by theturtle in "Kurt Got Got"

theturtle — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 22:45:29 +0000

[flagged]

New comment by theturtle in "Nearly half of drivers killed in (Ohio County) crashes had THC in their blood"

theturtle — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 20:59:18 +0000

What else is there to do in Dayton?

New comment by theturtle in "Record Everything"

theturtle — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 18:13:26 +0000

No.

New comment by theturtle in "U.S. Army confirms Tesla Cybertruck can't be imported in Europe"

theturtle — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:15:35 +0000

In other news, the army thinks someone in the Army could afford one of those bizarre things.

If you remember Atari "Battlezone," one of the targets for your tank looks remarkably like a Cybertruck.

In 1980.

New comment by theturtle in "Gold hits all time high"

theturtle — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:28:05 +0000

I like making young bros' heads spin by explaining how little intrinsic value gold actually has.

They all start out with "if the shit comes down, gold will --" and I cut them off by saying "-- still have almost zero intrinsic value."

Can't eat it. Can't burn it. Can't really make shelter or a weapon out of it. Useful for tiny microcircuits, but that's not something the preppers will be doing in Montanam

"Well, it'll always be valuable, because people think --"

Aha, dudebro, now you're in the realm of "perceieved value." Whole different game in the end times...

New comment by theturtle in "Apple Demands EU Repeal the Digital Markets Act"

theturtle — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:43:20 +0000

Is there an "or else?" Apple can't afford to just pack up and leave a market larger than the USA. While Apple has no particular interest in or loyalty to the past, without the EU Apple wouldn't have lived into this century.

New comment by theturtle in "Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC"

theturtle — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 12:10:05 +0000

ICE is probably all "we want our stuff back!!!"

New comment by theturtle in "Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?"

theturtle — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 00:58:56 +0000

Short answer: yeah.

New comment by theturtle in "The Gold Card"

theturtle — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 13:49:43 +0000

He probably gets a commission on every freeloading, unneeded, parasitic billionaire he recruits.

A million bucks? Should have made it a billion.

New comment by theturtle in "Apple Photos app corrupts images"

theturtle — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 17:01:01 +0000

iPhoto still works just fine, and I refused to move. And I never have it or anything else be the only place an image exists. Storage is cheap.

New comment by theturtle in "CVC acquires majority stake in Namecheap for $1.5B"

theturtle — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 22:29:33 +0000

Please do not turn NameCheap to shit, CVC. It was a lot of effort to make the move when NameSecure... turned to shit.