asteroidburger's comments

On: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

[asteroidburger]

A US pilot certificate itself does not include a photo, but you must have a photo ID to use it. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-61/section-61.3#p...

On: Show HN: I used OpenAI's new image API for a personalized coloring book service

[asteroidburger]

The author has since listed the prompt elsewhere in the comments. It includes, "The drawing is in a simple Studio Ghibli portrait style."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43801189

On: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move

[asteroidburger]

I haven't used them personally so I can't vouch for them, but UGREEN's NAS line is the same form factor as a Synology unit, but it lets you run any OS. I'd probably put straight Debian on mine and handle it all manually as I do now. I wouldn't be surprised if you could put Unraid on it.

[donatzsky → asteroidburger]

Pretty sure Asustor also allows installing any other Linux you want.

On: Microsoft employees recall their early years

[asteroidburger]

Doesn't that include Google Workspace though? Sure, a dollar is a dollar, but presumably a huge chunk of that money is Workspace, meaning it's not going towards raw compute.

On: A note on the USB-to-PS/2 mouse adapter that came with Microsoft mouse devices

[asteroidburger]

There's a purple adapter too that came with some keyboards. It looked like it came out of the same molds, so I suspect it's a similar situation.

On: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

[asteroidburger]

The Senate Intelligence Committee already held a hearing today: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339484/signal-war-plan...

[belter → asteroidburger]

Where the director of the Intelligence Services, refused to say, if she was participating on the Signal thread with her government issued phone, or with her personal phone...

[sethammons → belter]

Long pause: "I don't recall."

The exact legal advice passed on to me around answering questions in a deposition played out live; wild.

On: These Are the 10 Doge Operatives Inside the Social Security Administration

[asteroidburger]

Thiel himself has stayed out of the media, but a lot of what's happening is directly related to him. He's a big part of the reason we have JD Vance.

I recently came across this article from July 2024. I'm not sure what to think of it - it feels a bit conspiracy-ish, but it explains a lot of what's happening now.

https://washingtonspectator.org/peter-thiel-and-the-american...

On: EdgeDB is now Gel and Postgres is the future

[asteroidburger]

Figured I'd poke at the quickstart a bit, but the github repo linked to from https://docs.geldata.com/learn/quickstart/setup/nextjs (https://github.com/geldata/quickstart-nextjs) appears to be missing.

[1st1 → asteroidburger]

Fixed. Thank you for reporting this.

[scns → 1st1]

https://www.geldata.com/roadmap

Was linked from one of your articles, returns 404 for me.

On: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

[asteroidburger]

I’m a fan of these guys:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHHZTGJR

Power is passed through from either connector, so it’ll work on 5v or 12v strings. And it’s got two output channels. It’s only an ESP8266 inside, but that works fine for my needs.

For a slightly more DIY approach, try this one:

https://wiki.vdbx.io/product/flip_c3

Has everything you need to give it some sort of power and get the requisite data signal out.

[daredoes → asteroidburger]

The ESP8266 is no longer recommended for WLED due to its lack of resources

[asteroidburger → daredoes]

If you need the upgraded performance, you can pay a bit more and get the ESP32 equivalent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4Z4YG4H/

Personally, I've found the ESP8266 version adequate in the year I've owned it.

On: What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch

[asteroidburger]

For various definitions of "you." That's far beyond the reach of the average consumer.

[snozolli → asteroidburger]

So pay someone to do it for you. The free market has a solution.

It's odd how anti-hack Hacker News has become.