Macs released from 2002-2005 shipped with Marble Blast Gold on them.
Playing it is one of my earliest memories (I was 5 at the time), especially taking absolutely forever to figure out the two Escher's Maze levels.
I was homeschooled in a heavily locked down home.
Internet was effectively not allowed, and when used, only whitelisted sites permitted.
Everything was tracked.
Our home work/life was strenuous.
Both parents holding advanced degrees and living on a hobby farm led to ~10h a day of homework, and another ~3-4h per day of taking care of the place. Very little room for socializing/free time, and even when there was, it would usually be filled with more homework/chores.
I was around 13 the time (this would be 2010), and I'd discovered the Terminal app on the Macs we used.
Toying around with it when nobody was in the room had led to some discoveries.
I'd spend hours looking through the file system, when I discovered "man" and started reading the manuals for them.
This led me down the rabbit hole of learning everything I could about the world inside the command prompt, and even opening up telnet ports on other macs throughout the house and connecting to them.
Eventually, (and unfortunately I cannot remember how), I discovered that I could connect to Telehack, a BBS with real other people on it, and our internet tracking software didn't discover it.
Whenever I had any longer than a minute alone, I'd connect and talk with the people there.
I learned things about the old internet, got sent places I could FTP to download books (The Cuckoo's Egg being one of them), found friends and joined their "ssh server" (where we set up custom ways of more live-chat), and I learned basic programming in Bash, Python, Ruby, and other languages. I always had to disconnect (Apple+Q) as soon as I heard footsteps.
Now I'm double the age I was then (26) and have worked full-time as a software engineer for 4 years.
Telehack changed how I talked with people, learned, and my entire career path. Thx <3
How did you figure out how to navigate the filesystem in the first place? Or use the terminal app to get to the man pages?
I remember opening up my first IDE when I was about 14 and becoming overwhelmed with my complete lack of knowledge about coding. Looking at the blank text file was like staring into a bottomless pit of nothingness.
I learned how to read from the terminal though, so I knew commands like `cd` and `dir` before I even knew how to read.
I'm unsure how someone just figures out the terminal without a guide.
Was back on Windows 3.1/DOS, it was mostly trial and error. Trying different commands because my Doom executable stopped working, then learning DIR etc. learning about /? or /help. Eventually understanding more and more bits - definitely kludging my way through it, occasionally finding books at the library on programming that were largely useless but you’d see some commands here and there that you could glean information from.
Eventually got Linux and that opened up a lot for me for learning. I spent a ton of time on the command line as it felt easier to navigate and do what I wanted to achieve. Eventually that led to building kernels, debugging failed builds, etc.
I don’t remember where, but somehow I got a copy of SoftIce and figured out breakpoints and hex editing enough to “crack” my copy of LJpegViewer (I had a key on a floppy somewhere, but I lost it).
All of these little excursions led to me slowly learning more. My first IDE was notepad.exe. My next was briefly one of the slightly fancier editors with HTML highlighting. Then I found pico, and eventually vim, and that’s been my daily for about 13 years now.
A lot of my childhood was doing things I didn’t understand on my computer, often breaking things, and learning to fix them. Poking at the registry with reckless abandon or telnetting cross country because modem’s manual had a list of BBS’s, and grabbing scrap computers from my middle school’s dumpsters.
A fascination with tinkering and being able to be ok if I had to wipe my hard drive.
I went through the applications folder on my mac and opened every single one up to figure out what they did. That's how I learned to navigate the file system and discovered the Terminal app.
Read a "Linux for Dummies" at the library for a few minutes, that got me some basic commands.
I would spend hours using "cd" and "ls" to look at files, and then I would try to run them... 99% of the time nothing would happen. When I made it to /bin, I discovered a lot of things I could run.
You have to put yourself in the shoes of a 13 year old with no social media, no internet, friends he sees for a few hours 1-2x per week, and a fairly limitless amount of homework/chores to do. Whenever people weren't watching, I'd do anything to not be working on homework at the computer. That meant hundreds of hours to mess around.
Yes, I have been in similar situations, but I did have access to some Myspace hacker forums, and some gaming friends that were into this stuff to help guide me when I got stuck. At least later on.
I also got a few books at around 13... but your experience enumerating everything without a guide entirely, for so long, is quite something.
Is there a reason the magnifying glass is always on the USA to make changes? I'm no climate expert, but last I checked China/India/the rest of SEA and the largest ships generate a large majority of non-natural carbon emissions. Wouldn't it be far more practical to make changes to the couple hundred of large ships running cruises/containers than changing the entire automotive industry?
> Is there a reason the magnifying glass is always on the USA to make changes?
The great majority of countries are too small to make a difference.
Some large countries are too corrupt, or perhaps even stand to benefit from climate change, to make a difference (Russia, middle east).
Some large countries are too poor (relatively, per head of population) to be able to be leaders in climate initiatives (E.g the other BRIC countries).
Many developing countries don't have the technology base to create green energy technology solutions, so can't share in the benefits of selling it to others.
There are only two global powers that are powerful enough and influential enough to move the needle on climate, and not coincidentally, have been at the forefront of plundering our planet for the last couple of centuries and have benefited enormously from their abuse of the commons.
One is the USA. They have a chequered history, but it does include saving the planet once before from an existential threat. That's why people look to the US for leadership.
Unfortunately the US is riven by internal division, and half of the population think that protecting female bathrooms is more important than protecting the atmosphere, and/ or that a mythical being in the sky will fix everything up anyway.
So that leaves only the EU. They are the only hope for humanity. If the EU can get their shit together on climate, then force action on their trading partners, and the US can awaken from their obsessions and fall in behind, then just perhaps we have a chance to stop this runaway train.
Per capita emissions of India/China are much lower compared to the US. It's also easier for a developed country to try and lower their emissions than poor/developing countries to do it.
So tired to see this take over and over again in HN. Putting the blame on Asia and developing nations for carbon emissions while
USA pays other nations to dump their garbage. The west/developed countries blames eastern/developing countries for it when in fact they were also responsible for a shitton amount of emissions when they started industrializing their countries and still continue to export wastes/export manufacturing stuff which generates waste.
> I'm no climate expert, but last I checked China/India/the rest of SEA and the largest ships generate a large majority of non-natural carbon emissions.
I think it's because USA keep sending them money to make these emissions for them.
Question: Is a lot of the backend supposed to be available through going directly to the wp-content? If you go to uniloc.com/wp-content/, there's backups, images, plugins, and even a .sql file...
Interestingly, the login button doesn't even work at uniloc.com, and if you look in the source, there's a ton of commented-out paragraphs that say stuff like "<h2>The spirit of innovation is alive and well at Uniloc.</h2>".
It looks like a great idea, and a well designed app. Even as much as I want it, I'm afraid I can't justify spending $0.99 for a productivity app. Just my opinion, I would much rather have an occasional ad, with an in-app purchase to get rid of ads. Thereby, if I really loved and used the app, I would pay the price. Otherwise, I'm afraid not. Still a good looking app though!
A separate "Show HN" area/link at the top. As it turns out many people would love this separate area, allowing more organization with "Show HN" posts no longer showing up in the "Ask HN" section.
I agree, especially that the "Ask HN" section is more valuable. However, the people who post "Show HN" posts will appear in Ask HN, making it cluttered. I'm essentially asking for a bit more organization.
Great game :)