Hacker News: zucked

New comment by zucked in "Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain"

zucked — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:49:42 +0000

Years is literally just the plural of a single year. Ergo, years feels like the appropriate word here. What are you suggesting they phase it as instead?

New comment by zucked in "Turtletoy"

zucked — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:40:54 +0000

Was this with the little turle as your cursor? Seeing the "older" kids who could manipulate that program/language to make stopmotion movies might have been the moment that set me on the path of "technology enthusiast" for the rest of my life. The scene of the dimmed computer lab with a whole group gathered around someone's monitor to watch the newest creation is forever etched in my memory.

New comment by zucked in "“Captain Gains” on Capitol Hill"

zucked — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:46:01 +0000

I honestly don't know how you put a cone of silence around congresspeople such that insider trading anywhere in their sphere of influence is impossible. My intent would be to make it difficult for the congressperson to directly benefit from passing along insider info and compensate them enough such that it isn't a practical path. Sure, they could still tell friends to buy/sell, but if the friend *does* act on that, it's sure going to raise eyebrows when they try to wire $1M worth of proceeds to the congressperson for "movie & pizza night".

And I know that the next stone to be cast is "yeah, but if they help friends/business associates beat the market, congresspeople can still benefit with board seats and jobs when they're done with congressional terms". That's totally valid, and I have no idea how to combat that.

New comment by zucked in "“Captain Gains” on Capitol Hill"

zucked — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 14:39:24 +0000

Agree -- strict term limits would be a gamechanger in a lot of ways.

New comment by zucked in "“Captain Gains” on Capitol Hill"

zucked — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 14:37:53 +0000

I have a hot take on this that I think could actually make some headway: - We raise the congressional salary. Say, maybe double them across the board.

BUT in exchange, you, your immediate family, and any business, LLC, or other similar vehicle you are a named party to as a consultant, beneficiary, owner, or investor must divest of specific investments and can only hold the equivalent value of an index fund that tracks the general market. Or, you can remove yourself from the investment/ownership vehicle during the term you serve as a congressperson.

Problem solved? Probably not, but it's an interesting thought experiment. I'm sure there are a bunch of loopholes I haven't fully through through, too.

New comment by zucked in "Show HN: A subtly obvious e-paper room air monitor"

zucked — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 22:45:47 +0000

Cool project. I've done something similar using defunct crypto Awair AQI sensors tied into Home Assistant. They have an LED panel in the front that can show overall AQI or any of the pollutants they track: https://www.getawair.com/products/element

The sky is the limit as to what you can do with Home Assistant automations.

It's surprising how quickly a room with a closed door and one person can go from ~ambient CO2 levels to 1000ppm+.

New comment by zucked in "Gigantic VHS videotape hoard of videos being given away for free"

zucked — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 16:23:06 +0000

Even mundane recordings become interesting to me once enough time passes. I've watched a bunch of Nickelodeon/Cartoon Network programming from early days and to be honest, the commercials are more interesting than the cartoons because they so perfectly capture where we were as a society -- toys starting to integrate new technology, sugary cereals being touted as part of daily breakfast, etc. Fascinating stuff.

New comment by zucked in "Gigantic VHS videotape hoard of videos being given away for free"

zucked — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 16:15:10 +0000

>so we'll probably never see them digitized

That seems to run contradictory to the author's claim in the article and what I believe to be true about the internet archive. Can you elaborate?

New comment by zucked in "Moderna has unraveled"

zucked — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:13:59 +0000

That can be a noble goal, but I wouldn't be so hand-wavy about how people understand words and their meanings. I'm firmly in the camp that the mRNA covid vaccine was a wonder of modern science, and on the whole it had net positives for society. Don't misunderstand, it was not rolled out, or messaged perfectly and wasn't without risk that we're likely to wrap our arms around some day in the future.

But we can learn from the experience. And in my view, telling a captive, emotional, and concerned audience "we have a vaccine!" and then not absolutely being a broken record about what that means was a miss.

New comment by zucked in "Moderna has unraveled"

zucked — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 18:36:30 +0000

This was one of my (as a layperson) irritations with this process. Words matter -- the fact that this was rolled out as a "vaccine" gave a lot of people the initial impression that once they got the shot, they'd be immune. Myself included.

I believe that the word vaccine was misunderstood on a large scale, much to our detriment. I don't know what it should have been called otherwise, but I think the messaging around the mRNA treatments was handled poorly.

New comment by zucked in "What Are 'Mini-Retirements,' and Who Takes Them?"

zucked — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 13:48:14 +0000

This is what I'd like to get to - I think I would be bored stiff being fully retired, but I don't want to need to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. A day or two would be ideal. There are numerous permutations of "FIRE" but I think this is called "Barista Fire"

New comment by zucked in "The greatest social media site is Craigslist"

zucked — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 20:32:21 +0000

I logged in just to respond to this - I could not disagree more. FB's faceted search is truly awful. I regularly search for specific items on FB and get totally different results if I run the same query multiple times. Sometimes, I'll even get "suggested" items that 100% match my search query and have been posted for weeks but still don't appear in my original search.

I loathe using FBMP, but it has been slowly absorbing all the CL traffic. On one hand, I like that CL charges for high value items now (ex: Cars) because it means you're getting better quality, but on the other hand it has absolutely hastened people's abandonment of CL for FBMP.

New comment by zucked in "Death by Neti Pot"

zucked — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 23:25:54 +0000

What temperature kills these amoebas? I use tap water, but I bring it to 203 degrees F (and let it cool) before using. I can't seem to find an answer.

New comment by zucked in "U.S. moves to increase minimum legal size of commercial lobster"

zucked — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 16:58:18 +0000

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

New comment by zucked in "Culture Change at Google"

zucked — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 16:29:37 +0000

Unpopular opinion - avoid taking VC cash at all costs?

New comment by zucked in "Culture Change at Google"

zucked — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 16:25:38 +0000

Bingo - you hit the nail on the head. Keeping the investor pool small and close-in is how you avoid this. If you go public, eventually you will succumb to this "growth above all" mindset, even if your culture was set up to resist it.

I appreciate all that publicly-traded companies have contributed to society, but rarely is "going public" ever not the first sign of an objectively downward trend of the company trajectory.

New comment by zucked in "Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%"

zucked — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 16:16:06 +0000

This is refreshingly pragmatic. I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from that part of the world.

New comment by zucked in "Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%"

zucked — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 16:07:32 +0000

I don't think there's any particular malice to the ups and downs - it's just the nature of work these days. Employers and employees have pretty much laid bare their view that the other is simply a cog in their machine. That being true, folks need to understand, plan for, and not be particularly surprised when these ups and downs happen. That means having a runway for lean times, and knowing your worth, how to communicate it, and being flexible when things go pear-shaped. People do move for jobs all the time, yes, but I hope that part of the planning for that involves asking the question - "what happens if this job evaporates?"

New comment by zucked in "United Airlines plans to board passengers with window seats first"

zucked — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 04:07:09 +0000

I’d not seen it widely enforced before this year, but on several recent flights with several airlines (including United) the gate agent has had to turn people back to wait their turn. I’m all for it.

New comment by zucked in "Ask HN: Do you prefer to search for a job in a job board or trough a recruiter?"

zucked — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 03:44:33 +0000

I agree with this. Sadly, many of the internal recruiters got let go in the last year, so I’ve been seeing fewer and fewer out there networking.