Hacker News: xoxxala

New comment by xoxxala in "Show HN: Make your logo extra bright on HDR screens"

xoxxala — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:31:49 +0000

Technically, you only need to plonk somebody once.

https://en.everybodywiki.com/Plonk_(Usenet)

New comment by xoxxala in "CIA funding helped keep NeXT afloat in the 80s"

xoxxala — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 21:45:12 +0000

I used to work for Domino's Pizza in the mid to late 80s. Our piemakers were trained for speed and could usually slap dough, sauce, cheese and throw down toppings in around 30-40 seconds per pie. The ovens were super hot and cooked pizzas in 3-4 minutes. The whole goal was to get the pizza out the door so the driver didn't have to speed. This was still during the "30 minutes or less or it's free" period.

Our franchisee held competitions between stores to see how fast employees could make six large pepperonis. Winning times were less than two minutes. And it wasn't just slop, the pies had to met a minimum quality level (proper saucing and cheesing, the right number of pepperoni slices per pie).

I helped out occasionally at a store in Garden Grove by Disneyland that often did ~1500 pizzas on Friday nights. And as a DUMP (Dayshift Manager), did a few 40-50 pie lunch orders by myself, with a couple drivers helping out on ovens, for schools or companies. Stores kept daily records so knew how many employees to schedule based on past sales - pizza sales were surprisingly consistent over time. And we required advance notice for the really big orders so we could schedule appropriately.

New comment by xoxxala in "Using the railway network as a flatbed scanner"

xoxxala — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:41:56 +0000

Thanks for posting that. The picture of the garage door opening is a trip!

New comment by xoxxala in "The oldest bar in every state"

xoxxala — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 21:02:53 +0000

I've been to the Palace in Prescott, AZ. Neat place. I was told by locals that during the 1900 fire, the patrons picked up the actual bar and carried it out of the saloon to save it.

New comment by xoxxala in "The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life"

xoxxala — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:53:41 +0000

Linotype machines were revolutionary. The New York Times used them for 127 years until 1978 and this documentary shows them in action for the last time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTiCTFdTd60

New comment by xoxxala in "The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert"

xoxxala — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:33:14 +0000

No. We put a lot of references into Fallout, but that wasn’t one of them. (And we didn’t have any toads on the team, just a scorpion the artists used as a reference and no one was licking it.)

New comment by xoxxala in "Exploiting Volvo/Eicher's fleet platform to gain control over all users/vehicles"

xoxxala — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:08:51 +0000

You might want to check out Slate:

https://www.slate.auto/en

No embeded modem.

New comment by xoxxala in "The computer that helped win World War II"

xoxxala — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:03:27 +0000

The Kriegsmarine had more secure procedures for transmitting the setting key, added more rotors for more possible combinations, and eventually introduced a new Engima with four rotors instead of three. Their transmissions were more difficult to decrypt.

The Luftwaffe were far more lax in their procedures, and Hermann Goring sent many trivial messages that made it easy for Bletchley Park to decrypt.[1] From early 1940 to the end of the war, air force messages were routinely read.

[1] From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma: "Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring was known to use it for trivial communications, including informing squadron commanders to make sure the pilots he was going to decorate had been properly deloused."

New comment by xoxxala in "$100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol"

xoxxala — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 22:38:16 +0000

Interesting article, but those videos aren’t. Not even pre-MTV quality.

While checking out the gallery, came across this image:

https://www.tryai.dev/gallery/d3725e9b-1df9-4c10-8a23-2fc705...

There’s something wrong with it, but I just can’t put my paw on the problem.

New comment by xoxxala in "What designing computer science cards taught me about graphic design"

xoxxala — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:59:07 +0000

According to the store page, the cards were printed and bound in China. There are a lot of different card manufacturers there.

For very small runs of 1-10 decks, I've used places like makeplayingcards.com. The cards are print-on-demand quality, but far better than printing at home on cardstock. (My preferred home printing method for prototyping is to use custom labels and cheap Magic the Gathering bulk commons.)

We did a card game that was printed by Panda Game Manufacturing in China. Since we did about 5k units, they used traditional offset printing on 300gsm blackcore (similar stock to Magic the Gathering). But the minimum order quantity is 500 or 1000 units. Costs per deck were vastly cheaper than the print-on-demand decks.

There is a company in Florida called ShuffledInk that will do custom cards. I've used them for a 50 deck order. Cards were more expensive, but did save a little on shipping. It took a couple months longer than printing in China, but the print-on-demand card quality was higher.

For all of these printing methods, preparation was the same. Design the cards in Illustrator, and follow the printers directions to prepare the individual files (PDF or PNG, depending on the service). MPC has a tool that you use to upload the images and layout the deck. Panda and ShuffledInk take the PDFs or Illustrator files for layout, then send you a digital proof to approve.

US Congress takes next step to make daylight saving time permanent

xoxxala — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:27:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9l9venjd8o

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48914281

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by xoxxala in "Cyberpunk Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels"

xoxxala — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:39:51 +0000

It took me twice as long to read Hard Boiled as it should since I spent so much time looking at Geof Darrow’s intricately detailed art. Great story, but the illustrations are on another level.

New comment by xoxxala in "The tech of 'Terminator 2' – an oral history (2017)"

xoxxala — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:48:12 +0000

Like T2, Jurassic Park is a blend of CGI with practical effects and animatronics. JP only had 63 CGI scenes with many more practical effects.

https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/20027-why-jurassic-park-s-s...

New comment by xoxxala in "Costco is the anti-Amazon"

xoxxala — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 21:52:32 +0000

We live two hours from the closest Costco. We make a day of it once every 45-60 days plus shop at other stores we don’t have in our small town and see some family. We don’t have an Amazon account and maybe order something online once a month. We prefer shopping locally or waiting for Costco Day.

New comment by xoxxala in "Long Island's decommissioned nuclear power plant"

xoxxala — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 04:01:28 +0000

It would also be far cheaper to send that nuclear waste to Mars. It takes 55 times the energy to fly to the Sun than it does to go to Mars:

https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/its-surprisingly-hard-to-g...

A Man Was Gifted His Dream Car by the Notorious Hacker He Put in Prison

xoxxala — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:18:26 +0000

Article URL: https://www.thedrive.com/news/this-man-was-gifted-his-dream-car-by-the-notorious-hacker-he-put-in-prison

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48647316

Points: 31

# Comments: 1

License Plate Cameras Will Soon Track Phones, Wearables, Infotainment and Pets

xoxxala — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 23:19:30 +0000

Article URL: https://www.thedrive.com/news/license-plate-cameras-will-soon-track-phones-wearables-infotainment-and-even-your-pets

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48578373

Points: 34

# Comments: 1

New comment by xoxxala in "Emacs appearances in pop culture"

xoxxala — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:32:41 +0000

The T-800s HUD scene in the first Terminator used 6502 assembly from Nibble magazine.

https://www.theterminatorfans.com/the-terminator-vision-hud-...

New comment by xoxxala in "Sequoyah’s syllabary created a written language for the Cherokee"

xoxxala — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:46:42 +0000

Thanks to Wikipedia TIL Johnny Cash released a song about Sequoyah called "Talking Leaves". From the same album as the much more famous "Ballad of Ira Hayes".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Tears:_Ballads_of_the_A...

NASA names Artemis III crew in next step to Moon landing

xoxxala — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:20:16 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c932y0gx4zdt

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48463148

Points: 1

# Comments: 0