Hacker News Reader

linehedoniston We used a database as a message queue. Now we use Kafka

"FoundationDB was our only database, queue included. We built Apple's QuiCK design on top of it, hit the write limits, and moved async tasks to Kafka."

very LLM-y.

linehedoniston Mayday Mysteries

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/4hq4o1...

Seems likely that Robert Truman Hungerford has been placing these ads himself for the last 45 years, as a kind of solitary practice. He is apparently now giving hints to their interpretation (http://www.maydaymystery.org/mayday/texts/25-dec7.html): "Good starting point: Historically, what sort of compass is in the picture?"

linehedoniston I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated

The atomic time radio station WWVB does in fact broadcast a daylight saving time bit. A good atomic time clock should accurately update for DST (though Amazon reviews for a clock like this one is pretty mixed: https://www.amazon.com/Crosse-Technology-617-249-Curved-Atom...)

linehedoniston Proving a human wrote something

sounds a bit like Grammarly Authorship https://www.grammarly.com/authorship

"Authorship creates an originality report you can share with your professor, boss, or editor. It also lets you replay your document’s creation from the first word to the last punctuation mark so you can double-check your process."

linehedoniston So you want to learn physics (second edition, 2021)

I think this is unnecessarily pessimistic. I think there's actually a surprisingly large number of people who are interested in and have the discipline to study something on their own, and there's value in pursuing a whole course of study from beginning to end. Doing things piecemeal and incrementally has value too (especially in software development), but can obscure the whole shape of a discipline.

linehedoniston I Am Not A Number. In memory of the more than 72,000 Palestinians killed

Israeli civilian death ratios are actually terrible, worse than Bosnia, Syria, or even WWII (including the Holocaust!). I assume it’s because Israel wants to kill as many civilians as possible, while still claiming the faintest hope of plausible deniability.

https://aoav.org.uk/2026/why-israeli-claims-of-low-civilian-...

linehedoniston Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz

It’s not a bad critique on its own! Yea, good to engage on the merits, but also good to acknowledge the messenger’s allegiances and biases.

linehedoniston Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

Of course they did. It’s called inheritance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ellison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton_family https://www.forbes.com/profile/haas/

And the list goes on.

linehedoniston Books of the Century by Le Monde

For a French-leaning list I’m surprised not to see Memoirs of Hadrian, “often considered the best French novel of the 20th century”, per the recent LRB review. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/joanna-biggs/beneath...

linehedoniston The American Healthcare Conundrum

1965 was 61 years ago. Are you saying you yourself had significant experiences with the pre-1965 healthcare system?

linehedoniston How important was the Battle of Hastings?

Attention-grabbing headline, but the article itself answers the question: very important.

"Hastings was one of those battles which changed the course of history, most directly for England but also, as events turned out, for Britain and for France... In terms of its consequences, Hastings must be the most important battle ever to have been fought in England... the consequences of its outcome changed the course of English history definitively."

linehedoniston How important was the Battle of Hastings?

But as the article says, this battle really was tremendously important. The utter catastrophe led to the quick and permanent entrenchment of the Normans in Britain, with huge and long-reaching consequences reaching to the present: first and foremost, that the English language was profoundly altered at every level by influence from French.

linehedoniston Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

some bits of LLMese in this comment, to my ears at least. Especially "That’s the kind of impact that compounds"

linehedoniston NASA announces overhaul of Artemis program amid safety concerns, delays

No but I’m serious. I don’t think most people found it interesting to monitor the slow assembly of the ISS. Do you think the moon setting would be more interesting or appealing?

linehedoniston NASA announces overhaul of Artemis program amid safety concerns, delays

If I was being graded solely on quantity, why would I bother caring at all to make anything good? Make the minimum quality necessary to be counted as a pot and move on with your life. That was basically my real world approach to ceramics back in HS, and I still feel good about my B+.

linehedoniston NASA announces overhaul of Artemis program amid safety concerns, delays

That’s just the ISS on the moon instead of space, which is also uninteresting.

linehedoniston EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

No disagreement there!

linehedoniston EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

sure, though New York has gotten a real honest-to-goodness winter this year. There's been a foot on the snow on the ground continuously for the last month, and it's been cold enough that the pipes in one of my bathrooms froze. I think it's easier from the West Coast to bemoan the end of East Coast winters than to live through one :)

linehedoniston News publishers limit Internet Archive access due to AI scraping concerns

Agreed. "isn't just... It's becoming" feels to me very LLM-y to me.

linehedoniston Ross Stevens Donates $100M to Pay Every US Olympian and Paralympian $200k

Is there any guarantee he will actually pay out in 20 years? Is this money going into escrow, or is this just a promise that will be completely forgotten in a couple decades?

linehedoniston Doom has been ported to an earbud

The Doom port itself is pretty fun, but I love the presentation of it. Brilliant idea to let people play the game themselves on the actual hardware.

linehedoniston Can you slim macOS down?

I’ve used Macs nearly exclusively for 13 years and have not gotten used to the window tabbing. I just fundamentally don’t think windows of the same application should be grouped together.

linehedoniston The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

Both 0F and 100F happen regularly in many parts of the US and I would not say here one is rarer than the other. NYC has seen both in the last 12 months.

linehedoniston You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

Certainly the world’s climate is worse. Wealth inequality is worse. I try hard not to be nostalgic, and even so I have to admit lots of things are not as good as they were in the 60s.

It’s not even like the physical infrastructure is all that much better. I live in a house built in the 50s, and clearly the people living in it then led a pretty similar life to mine. It just cost me a lot more money.

linehedoniston Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

But why would I want the cassette experience in the first place?

linehedoniston The Undermining of the CDC

In general I think I have a lot more faith in medical professionals than it seems you do, but I do agree that the early mixed messaging around face masks in Feb. 2020 left me with a lot of distrust of Fauci in particular: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/01/8862991...

linehedoniston How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

The underlying article in Le Monde: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/11/19/nico...

Archive link: https://archive.is/TleMk

linehedoniston Why don't people return their shopping carts?

What about Gittertiere? https://www.reddit.com/r/Gittertiere/s/KIDj4EhElD

linehedoniston Unexpected things that are people

> Rhodian sea law, from 900 BCE, states that if a salvor rescues property from the perilous seas, they are entitled to a share of the saved property.

Unlikely, given that the Greek alphabet didn’t exist in 900 BCE.

linehedoniston UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

One improvement is a bed of concrete at the end of the runway that will catch the wheels and slow an airplane down to a stop. Pretty much everyone agrees it’s a good idea but it’s not always possible due to space needs or cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_...