Hacker News: BlackFingolfin

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "An update on GitHub availability"

BlackFingolfin — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:08:25 +0000

If the numbers were all that is wrong, that'd be OK. But it fails to list all data -- so the only way to navigate to the missing PRs is to know their number, and manually inserting the right URL (or to go to another PR, and then edit the URL in the navigation).

Sorry, but I don't think there is any way this can be classified as "not actually a bug"

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "An update on GitHub availability"

BlackFingolfin — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:34:43 +0000

GitHub stability has been bad for me. And recently even the data they show me in the web has been unreliably.

Since yesterday, me and several colleagues noticed that the pull request lists on the website are incomplete, across many repositories. For example, on https://github.com/gap-system/gap/pulls it says "Pull requests 78" in the "tab list", but the PR list view reports "35 open" (the number 78 is correct, and confirmed by e.g. `gh pr list`)

And that despite <https://www.githubstatus.com> reporting "all systems operational".

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "Issue links now open in a popup"

BlackFingolfin — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:10:11 +0000

which is also driving me nuts because it frequently fails to update the issue and PR counts when I close issues or PRs. Only a hard reload, or closing the tab and opening a new new one, fixes it.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "Mathematics is hard for mathematicians to understand too"

BlackFingolfin — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 12:11:25 +0000

I find it strange to compare "math" with one programming language. Mathematics is a huge and diverse field, with many subcommunities and hence also differing notation.

Your rant would be akin to this if the sides are reversed: "It's surprising how many different ways there are to describe the same thing. Eg: see all the notations for dictionaries (hash tables? associative arrays? maps?) or lists (vectors? arrays?).

You don't have "the manual" of programming languages. "

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "Typst's Math Mode Problem"

BlackFingolfin — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 07:58:25 +0000

For me one is that one can write `for i = 1:3` is one when `=` means assignment otherwise (at least `for i in 1:3` is available.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "Think of a Number"

BlackFingolfin — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 17:03:34 +0000

A follow up post is at https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2025/03/16/think-of-a-numb...

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "I use zip bombs to protect my server"

BlackFingolfin — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 20:20:09 +0000

And sometimes one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.... (Not to defend terrorism, but it's just not that simple)

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "The exceptional Jordan algebra (2020)"

BlackFingolfin — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 05:47:58 +0000

Actually in math parlance, the map G \to GL(V) is the representation while V is the underlying module, and yeah its elements are vectors.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos"

BlackFingolfin — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 20:15:05 +0000

No you literally can (and the attackers did) change version 44 (the tag for it) to point to a different compromised commmit

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "After 20 years, math couple solves major group theory problem"

BlackFingolfin — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 21:50:37 +0000

> Nobody bothers explaining why the primes are spaced like they are

I take it that means you also haven't taken (m)any number theory classes then ;-). Because people wildly care about that.

This is in a sense the background of another well-known conjecture, the Riemann conjecture...

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "I Met Paul Graham Once"

BlackFingolfin — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 07:18:44 +0000

Which robber baron do you consider to be responsible for curing polio?

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "Meta scrapped factcheckers because systems were 'too complex'"

BlackFingolfin — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 13:16:26 +0000

Marc Zuckerberg being popular is not the same as his platform being popular.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "1/0 = 0 (2018)"

BlackFingolfin — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 10:16:24 +0000

I am a professor for algebra at a research university. I make a point out of teaching my students that `a/b` is NOT the same as multiplying `a` by the multiplicative inverse of `b`.

The standard example is that we have a well-defined and useful notion of division in the ring Z/nZ for n any positive integer even in cases were we "divide" by an element that has no multiplicative inverse. Easy example: take n=8 then you can "divide" 4+nZ by 2+nZ just fine (and in fact turn Z/nZ into a Euclidean ring), even though 2+nZ is not a unit, i.e. admits no multiplicative inverse.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "Apple's mouse is so bad that Tim Cook prefers using a different brand for work"

BlackFingolfin — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 21:47:40 +0000

Wow, what a clickbaity title. The article just states that Tim Cook prefers a different mouse than Apples's own Magic Mouse. Now that might be because he finds the Magic Mouse bad. Or just that he prefers the one he is using instead for whatever reason. Actually the article even mentions he sometimes uses the Magic Mouse, so it can't be all that bad in his estimation?

Granted, some people love to hate on the Magic Mouse. Perhaps it is bad (I also prefer different mice). I am happy to discuss it. But does it really have to be framed like that? This makes me want to skip over anything that site produces, I just can't take it serious.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "JPEG XL in iPhone 16 Pro Yields Incredible Results"

BlackFingolfin — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 14:59:11 +0000

Chrome removed support for JPEG XL last year, see e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/free-software-group-...

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "How web bloat impacts users with slow devices"

BlackFingolfin — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 11:11:13 +0000

I just activate reader mode on his pages, works great. (Not disagreeing with you, just stating another workaround)

Also wish his pages had dates on them (one or both of first posted / last updated) AFAIK he intentionally leaves them out, I don't get why.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "The M2 is more advanced than it seemed"

BlackFingolfin — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 16:38:01 +0000

Well, Qualcomm at least claims that. Whether they can deliver is to be seen. Wouldn't be the first time they fail to do so...

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "Modern C for Fedora (and the World)"

BlackFingolfin — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 06:56:50 +0000

Well... "it appears to have fallen on Fedora and GCC developers" suggests they are are forced into doing this. But it's the reverse: they decided this is a sensible goal. OK, they are free to do that, but painting it as if they are unfairly left alone in their plight is framing it rather strongly.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "How Meta patches Linux at hyperscale"

BlackFingolfin — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 22:53:01 +0000

That's not 15 minutes per host; that's 15 hosts per minute.

New comment by BlackFingolfin in "I kind of killed Mercurial at Mozilla"

BlackFingolfin — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 23:12:07 +0000

A bit off-topic, but: I am somewhat confused by the claim “Subversion was created by Jim Blandy”. I was around back then, and the names I think of when it comes to “who created Subversion” are Ken Fogel, Ben Collins-Sussman, and Mike Pilato. And certainly many other people, including Jim Blandy. My recollection seems to be supported by e.g. https://news.apache.org/foundation/entry/the-apache-software... and also by looking at the early subversion repository history and mailing list posts.

But I was only a bystander (and early adopter), so maybe something went on "behind the scenes" that warrants this attribution? Or maybe it is a just a bit careless and was meant to be more like "... he was one of the creators", which one probably could justify.

Coincidentally, I just checked the Wikipedia page for Subversion and was surprised that there is basically nothing on the history of Subversion and who created it, which I find sad.