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blarghyblarg

131 karma · joined October 5, 2022

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blarghyblarg··on Japan pharma startup to begin human trials of tooth regrowth drug in 2024
"Would you like to try the digestive tract remapping first? It's a lot less invasive, but, if it doesn't work you'll be depressed the entire time you're making a mess of yourself."
blarghyblarg··on Show HN: I made a website that color-codes the world by language
Today is the day that florianwueest learns that "spoken language" is actually a really controversial topic lol

Seriously though, I bet finishing up this project felt great, then posting it to HackerNews was a huge dopamine rush, and now... everybody's just pointing out issues left and right because they accidentally stepped on a dozen landmines that are irrelevant in day-to-day life for 99% of us but entirely relevant when you post to an audience of millions.

blarghyblarg··on Open source code with profanity in comments is statistically better
the point here being: the perception of being surveilled by "language police" on its own is either anxiety inducing or the result of an existing anxious disposition. The actual act of "language policing" is also going to induce or worsen an existing anxious disposition.
blarghyblarg··on Open source code with profanity in comments is statistically better
RIP. Likely the Platonic Ideal of an abrasive programmer. I'd put mid 00s Linus Torvalds as the apotheosis. Despite being an incredibly abrasive person, he has left a mark on history.
blarghyblarg··on Open source code with profanity in comments is statistically better
literally right there in the comment. "swore at regularly".

Anyways, I definitely agree that swearing isn't the same as abrasive, but swearing at people is definitely an abrasive trait. Also agree that some of the biggest dickheads around keep up an air of professionalism.

blarghyblarg··on Open source code with profanity in comments is statistically better
"Oh, THEY are policing my language. THEY are watching everything I say!"

You're reading the idea of language policing as some actual thing, like people are hanging over someone watching every word they say. It certainly might be true in some offices or with some coworkers, but, I'm pretty sure feeling that your every word is policed is closer to a form of anxiety than an actual problem in most offices.

Or, your coworkers are basically bullying you over minor nitpicks, which will keep you in a state of mild anxiety.

Either way, having to monitor your every word is definitely closer to being anxious than not, and is definitely going to have some impact on your performance.

blarghyblarg··on Open source code with profanity in comments is statistically better
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187704281...

It's really not a big leap, though. People who are afraid of violating a code of conduct because they're "under the watch of language police" are basically experiencing a form of anxiety that may or may not have a basis in reality.

Being afraid of being sent to the HR DEI board because you named a process 'Child1' then ran Kill(Child1) ... or any less obvious scenario similar to that ... is not going to do great things to your ability to work.

blarghyblarg··on Open source code with profanity in comments is statistically better
The best programmers I've worked with swore at their coworkers regularly, but never in their code.

They were not great people, and I'd happily kick them in the face if I would encounter no legal or professional repercussions, but, there definitely does seem to be some correlation (in my experience) between being abrasive and being a skilled programmer.

blarghyblarg··on Amazon CEO Asks His Hollywood Studio to Explain Its Big Spending
I honestly can't tell if you're an arts supporter writing satire, or a bean counter who is serious.
blarghyblarg··on Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?
... you completely missed the relevant part with the "1999" part. The relevant part is the "2012" part. Things used to get better, do more, and faster. The last 15 years, the "do more" part has been less and less useful, and the "faster" part has turned into "slower" in a number of ways. Software engineers are relying on an increase in hardware performance to pick up their slack, and that line is running out quickly, and there will be many years ahead where we're cleaning up over a decade of laziness.
blarghyblarg··on Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?
so, I can't reply to your latest message because it's too far down but...

Let me just hop on my wifi and browse the web. Lets do it on a computer from 1999. 2000. 2001. 2002. 2003. 2004. 2005. 2006. 2007. 2008... etc, etc.

Why is it that every couple years from 2012 onwards, doing the same thing keeps taking longer, even with new hardware, without the same revolutions in quality and experience that came with that new software previously?

blarghyblarg··on Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?
Sure does.

Does the switch to 64 bit slow things down enough to explain what happened between Windows 2000 and XP?

Does the operating system have to support virtual machines? Seems easy enough to install vmware then run operating systems inside it for most use cases.

I mean, you can keep 'what if'ing me here, but, is it really worth having all the features that you, clearly as a power user or professional, use installed on every computer everywhere? No. No it really doesn't. It's bloat.

blarghyblarg··on Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?
no, no, and no. Lets see if we can petition Microsoft to add them, and then we'll see if Win2000 still runs decently fast on a P4 with 4gb of ram.

My guess is: yes, it will.

Somehow, in the past 15 years, "progress" seems to include "software keeps getting noticeably worse, but anyone pointing this out has to be shot down because progress."

blarghyblarg··on Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?
Windows 2000 was peak Windows, minus security. Security is miles and miles better today.

Nothing will change my mind about this, ever. It's been downhill since then.

blarghyblarg··on Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
I don't know... I've been on there on and off all day, and it's honestly better today than it has been for a long, long time.
blarghyblarg··on North America is now the growth leader for new battery factories
Well, with Canada giving billions of dollars to whoever asks (or threatens to stop construction, after finishing 10% of a project) for it, it's not much of a surprise.
blarghyblarg··on Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
And once that hardware is selected for a given range of vehicles, it's literally impossible to change. Updates to some parts of the software stack are also basically impossible at a certain point.
blarghyblarg··on Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
ah, there is some regulatory oversight and there's awareness of the safety aspects.

Not much, but, there is some.

After working on infotainment, I'm doing my best to avoid purchasing a car with an infotainment system. I had to compromise and got a Civic with an infotainment system for my wife, but I'll probably stick to late 2000s, early 2010s for as long as I possibly can to avoid them. Seriously hate touchscreens, and there's just not enough value in an infotainment system for me to be OK with what I'm losing by having one.

blarghyblarg··on Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
I worked on an infotainment system some years back. Trust me: we hated the response times more than you do, and I'm sure you hate them a lot. There were, and are, layers and layers of issues leading to it.
blarghyblarg··on Crooks’ mistaken bet on encrypted phones
You can have perfect crypto on your devices, and great operations, and your messages can still be intercepted several ways. The feds are almost never in a rush. If they want you, they'll get you. If they want you enough, they'll sit in a coffee shop they know you frequent with a high zoom camera ready to read your encrypted texts from across the room. Or they'll bug your car and listen in to your properly encrypted phone calls. Or they'll intercept a package and add some spy gear. They won't do this to bust some street level meth dealer. But, if you're suspected of something like posting state secrets in a Minecraft server? You betcha. They'll follow you everywhere.
blarghyblarg··on AWS staff spending ‘much of their time ’optimizing customers' clouds'
Some of the higher tiers of AWS enterprise support are INCREDIBLE. They're close the level of support I'm contracted to provide as a full time IC. Stuff like turnaround within hours? 30 minutes for critical issues? It just sounds like they're not a huge account.
blarghyblarg··on Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages
You're not wrong, or the other half of the Lebowski quote, honestly. It's just going to be another one of the recent (~15 years back) technology items that are pushing the general public toward transparent lives.

I guess it's not so much an ethical issue as it is an issue of letting sleeping dogs lie. I can tell you that with a very small amount of "dna uncertainty" in my (ancestral) family, I'll never get a 23-and-me done because I just don't want to be cataloged and accidentally paired up with some random family who doesn't know what they don't know.

As long as they're opt-in services, it's not a huge issue for me, just... the first wave of people doing this will be in for some uncomfortable surprises.

blarghyblarg··on Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages
Just imagine this as a subscription service. Lovely! When a loved one dies, you donate their cellphone and provide delegated access to their messages to their social media, and allow a LLM to train.

Now, it's a subscription service to talk to an AI, and not an actual human, so some settings can be tweaked. Lets turn up the honesty, so we can all reach some closure.

Oh... turns out... Johnny sure like to talk smack behind your back. Edna was SUPER gay but had to hide it...

So, so, so many ethical roadblocks. I truly hope this never happens, but, I think we all know that if it looks profitable, it's coming soon.

blarghyblarg··on Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy
Yes, it is. And in a grocery store, how is a product handled when it comes in on a shipment and doesn't match the previous shipments and/or bills of lading? By a person, in every single grocery store everywhere on the planet.

Although, in a grocery store, you're less likely to see a product change from a bicycle to a scooter. You're more likely to see the cocoa content in your chocolate bar drop, and the oil change to a cheaper and less flavourful type.

I guess the comparison still works... should we have purchasers comparing products before setting them out? Under what conditions? What conditions trigger a review? In my experience, the stores just keep putting changed products out like nothing has happened, even if we notice over time that things just don't taste the same sometimes.

Turns out that... yes... it gets pretty complicated pretty fast, but many grocery stores also seem to just be ignoring this issue.

blarghyblarg··on Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy
It's armchair quarterbacking, for sure. Nobody at Amazon is going to read some random news article, even if they are here slacking at work, and say "That's the ticket! Lets do that!"

They either fix it, or they don't.

blarghyblarg··on Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy
Not to be argumentative, but... that's the second option. Algorithmic. The initial implementation would be simple. One point, two points, three points. Then, some categories turn out to have significant change requirements, some change infrequently, some changes turn out to be very important in some categories, some categories need immediate human review...
blarghyblarg··on Give babies peanut butter to cut peanut allergies, study says
I can't reply to the deeper comments, so I'll reply here. The "store branded" products are also sometimes the exact same stuff, but they pay less (or the premium brands pay a premium) to have "first run" rights. That is, the premium brands are packaged first, right after a cleaning, so you're less likely to have "inclusions" like chunks of tomato goop in your ketchup.
blarghyblarg··on Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?
MD in your 30s, early 30s especially, is possible. Some schools happily accept nontrad applicants, and most will take you if you have a strong background and clear interest.

Now, starting down the MD in your late 40s? Early 50s? Yeah, probably not.

You still have time, just not much.

blarghyblarg··on Kombucha cultures can be turned into flexible electric circuit boards
It consumes sugar and creates carbon dioxide. I know this might seem facetious, but I'm actually curious... are the greenhouse emissions lower?
blarghyblarg··on Florida lawyer argues pregnant inmate’s fetus is being illegally detained
this whole thread should be nuked and moved to Reddit.

This has nothing to do with anything related to Hacker News.

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