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6,405karma·1,004submissions·November 20, 2012
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Darren Stone, Vancouver, BC, Canada
"Once men turned their thinking over to
machines in the hope that this would
set them free. But that only permitted
other men with machines to enslave
them." - Frank P. Herbert, Jr., 1965
"The programmer, like the poet, works
only slightly removed from pure
thought-stuff. He builds his castles
in the air, from air, creating by
exertion of the imagination."
- Fred P. Brooks, Jr., 1975recent activity (1,004 total)
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Apparently Flock's ALPR helps police to track activists, demonstrators, protesters. :-/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-cops-are-using-flo... …
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Regardless of the official point of Stasi collaborators, what they did was contribute to millions of government surveillance files on fellow citizens. The similarity to a social network of public surv…
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Yikes. This smells a bit like Stasi-style surveillance. Unofficially encouraged by authorities. Rewards or social pressure or ideology turned a significant % of East Germans into Inoffizieller Mitarbe…
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> "a quasicrystal — a kind of matter scientists once thought impossible that challenges traditional ideas about how solids form" Whenever I read a phrase about scientists observing someth…
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Canadian here. It pains me to say that my country will not keep your data safe from prying eyes, nor safe from sharing and cooperating with USA authorities. Our legislative trajectory includes mandato…
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If you like Kraftwerk and you're not aware of this book, I recommend it: "Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany", by Uwe Schütte. It's packed with details of albums, songs, tours, e…
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Beautiful. The motivation and execution. Everything about this is why I come to HN. Related... for a native GB/DMG/Z80 take ... the original first person shooter for the Game Boy was Facebal…
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When I read those seemingly outrageous claims, I didn't immediately dismiss the author. I allowed him to substantiate the claims and kept reading. I found myself agreeing with his argument and hi…
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Yes. Now if you live in a metro centre and are considering a Brompton purchase, this may be less of an issue if you have a handful of dealers … in-stock common parts availability is a good pre-purchas…
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Ouch. I also live in a city where bike thefts are … fuck, just part of life. Which is a horrible norm to have to accept. You’re right that a grinder-proof lock does not exist. Having read reviews and …
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Piling on with the Brompton love here. Apartment friendly. Car trunk friendly. Motorcycle sidecar friendly. Their hardcase makes it airplane friendly. Theft-resistant, since it's carried and stor…
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Aside from AI-proofing, IMO there is value in slow typing or writing. We have to think just a little bit more before putting ink to paper. There is also a higher cost to making mistakes. As a kid, bef…
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"There is no Star Trek in production or greenlit for the first time in nearly a decade, and the sets for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy coming down means it's truly the …
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Thank you! I had a job coding Z80 assembly "back in the day" and grew to love its instruction set so I'm not surprised there is legacy and value to keep stuffing wee Z80ish cores into m…
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I assume this is what is meant: | Works Perfectly | Mostly Works | Has Lots Of Bugs
-------------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
Default Inst…
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Just curious what you mean by "fixing the audio"? In GBA emulation or on the hardware? I'm aware that if you need/want PCM audio, there's going to be mixing, probably with a s…
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The TI-84+ graphing calculator is still popular and a current model and it is Z80 based. (Though I doubt you'll find a DIP40 socket in one for a swap.)
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TIC-80 is wonderful to play in. Besides being free/open, another advantage over PICO-8 is TIC-80 has native support for Fennel. i.e. you can code within the system editor in Lua OR Fennel (or hal…
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> Does it really make games more interesting? > If anything, doesn't it add anxiety as you watch the game? > Is anxiety interesting? Yes. Adding anxiety generally makes things more inter…
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I had two calls from "Apple Support" very very much like this in the past two weeks. Both times, their claim was that someone was trying to reset my Apple password and they were trying to pr…
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"The limiting factor in urine distillation is actually the high level of calcium
from disintegrating astronaut bone, a nice example of how problems in space find
ways to compound…
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On the audio side, it's not a stretch to imagine cochlear implants (or hearing aids) having an undetectable recording ability.
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Sometimes, intimacy is best. Also, when faced with opposition, planning a defence or attack in private is probably going to be more effective.
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Regarding warrantless searches and access ... reading the text of the bill (OP link) warrants seem to be required. Simple, right? Well, no, this is a recently inserted block of text in the bill (confi…
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The title, as submitted, is pretty low key. The actual headline of the article is "Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power" and this is the lead sentence: &quo…
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I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset. Instinctively, I think morning light is important to our biology for a daily …
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Thanks. I had to be reminded about that phrase "honor culture" and, yes, I've heard that definition before. I was focused on how I think an "honourable person" behaves, which …
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Thanks. Your link gives more insight into "why submit now?" Appreciate it.