Hacker News Reader

LordRatteon Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

Why?

LordRatteon Why I don't discuss politics with friends

This article seems to be saying that religions are tribal by nature because it's made up of humans, and humans are tribal by nature -- ok fair enough. But the subtext I'm getting is that people in religions are less self-aware of it than the author or the people they admire.

People being more interested in comfortable beliefs rather than true beliefs has always been a concern throughout Biblical history. But that doesn't mean it never went unchallenged.

For instance, regardless of what you think of the Bible, it's interesting that Isaiah has the following to say to Judah (emphasis mine) because it shows an ever-present problem with human nature.

    For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord;
    *who say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions”*

And before someone responds with a de jure objection to say that "the instruction of the Lord" is not looking for truth, I just want to make it clear that that is out of the scope of my point. My point is that, de facto, in the context, a religious text is agreeing that it is bad to "tribe-up and truth-out."

Lastly, on a personal note, as a human Christian, I think I have the same biases to groupthink as any other person because I am human. But because Christianity has a reputation, I have found that throughout my life, I've had to work harder to really test (not validate) my beliefs because I am constantly being challenged and, ironically, often ended up more informed about both my beliefs and my interlocutors' beliefs.

LordRatteon Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)

I am developing a dataset and research tool for Algebraic Structures.

https://j-stubbs.gitlab.io/algebraic_structures/

It's all very POC right now but the idea is to eventually add many improvements including documenting the Python API.

LordRatteon 418 I'm a Teapot

Honestly doesn't sound like a problem at all in the greater scheme of things.

LordRatteon How I Experience Web Today (2021)

Did you see both screenshots or are you referring to a 2nd link I should click?

LordRatteon How I Experience Web Today (2021)

https://imgur.com/a/NwhwnsZ

This is all I see.

I take it that my ad blocking plugins and security settings are working then.

LordRatteon Families Are Going into Debt for Disney Vacations

Gated articles are really ruining this side for me.

LordRatteon Show HN: Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

When I was in the 5th grade, I learnt useful things like the metric system.

LordRatteon Aramaic original New Testament theory

Peter Williams has some well presented evidence on how the NT (or at least relevant parts) had to originally be in Greek. Namely how things like the alliteration in the beatitudes could not have ended up like they did going from Aramaic to Greek by coincidence.

LordRatteon Chernobyl, 200 Exhausted Staff Toil Round the Clock at Gunpoint

It seems like there are a lot more paywall-type posts around here these days. It may just be my opinion but I started using Hacker News because the atmosphere felt less stifling than "traditional" outlets and sites. I wonder how they will keep up their underground persona if most of the posts end up pointing to regular news sites anyway.

LordRatteon Strangest Sorting Algorithms

Yes. Because this isn't the response you were hoping for. It could go wrong so it did.

LordRatteon Accidentally Turing-Complete

Do you have a reference explaining why two exactly?

LordRatteon Show HN: Komorebi – A tiling window manager for Windows written in Rust (v0.1.6)

Would this reduce the resource overhead on Windows?

I originally switched to i3wm because it was kind to my resources and I stayed because I discovered the joys of tiling windows.

LordRatteon Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

I don't have excessive time for social media so to silence my friends' nagging, I automated posting to twitter. My phone records the songs I listen to each day and posts them via a gist. My handle is @joshjstubbs, if you're curious.

LordRatteon Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up with Depression

I would imagine that in most cases it offsets poverty and starvation rather than escape from it.

LordRatteon Mumbling Isn’t a Sign of Laziness, It’s a Clever Data-Compression Trick

Some people over-compress, though, until the point where the data becomes corrupt and the antivirus (our social attention span) quarantines it as a mild threat.