Hacker News: Exoristos

New comment by Exoristos in "Gemini, Gophers, and Fingers. Oh My Alternative Internets Beyond HTTPS"

Exoristos — Wed, 27 May 2026 23:48:05 +0000

Fingercot.

New comment by Exoristos in "I built a Git-tracked book production pipeline"

Exoristos — Tue, 26 May 2026 23:34:44 +0000

Have to say I'm finding the story of your efforts so far uplifting. Keep up the good work, and good luck.

New comment by Exoristos in "I built a Git-tracked book production pipeline"

Exoristos — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:50:07 +0000

There's no substitute for apprenticeship (by whatever name). Unfortunately, skills of this kind may be close to extinction. For someone like you just interested in getting better at layout design, I'd recommend something like 'The Elements of Typographic Style', by Bringhurst; this concentrates mostly on books, but much applies to other layouts. Of more general interest -- i.e., beyond layout design -- might be 'An Encyclopedia of the Book', by Glaister. There's a wealth of valuable design and print resources from the '60s - '90s if you can find them -- some libraries still have high-quality examples, but most have replaced them with much less-valuable contemporary resources. Look for book and magazine sales by university departments, businesses, etc.

New comment by Exoristos in "I built a Git-tracked book production pipeline"

Exoristos — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:10:32 +0000

Maybe we worked at the same firm. You never know.

New comment by Exoristos in "I built a Git-tracked book production pipeline"

Exoristos — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:13:46 +0000

As someone who worked for years in commercial print, before most manufacturing moved overseas, I recall the workflows the article discusses as being more automate-able than the author seems to understand. For example, "Making the slightest change became a chore. [1.] Update the 'master' DOCX. [2.] Update the InDesign file ..." --the appropriate way to use an external document as master in InDesign is to use the Place command, which autoupdates text changes as they are made in Word. As another example, InDesign supports multiple formats of EPUB by direct export. I also question the author's familiarity with common LaTeX workflows. "'Why didn’t you just author it in LaTeX? ...' you might ask. [B]ut I prefer writing novels in a word processor, not a text editor." And, "How do I convert an ODT file to TeX?" Word processors offer exports of all kinds, including to plain text, and the purpose of a TeX editor is, like InDesign, to typeset text that is often written elsewhere. Capturing the styling from the word processor seems antithetical to the desire for an advanced typesetting tool.

Overall, as a technical writeup I enjoyed the article; however, I would caution that the author seems to approach publishing from an amateur perspective.

New comment by Exoristos in "Why Japanese companies do so many different things"

Exoristos — Fri, 22 May 2026 23:00:11 +0000

Japanese conglomerates are relics of a handful of British businessmen's attempting to exploit and dominate Japan during the late colonial period. They did this outside the normal channels of conquest or statecraft, due to Japan's unique relationship to the world at the time.

New comment by Exoristos in "No more JetBrains products for me"

Exoristos — Mon, 18 May 2026 21:23:20 +0000

Turn it off; it makes a brilliant IDE unusable.

New comment by Exoristos in "AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise"

Exoristos — Sun, 17 May 2026 19:13:51 +0000

So you're expecting humans to go extinct except for a few examples in museums?

New comment by Exoristos in "MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble"

Exoristos — Wed, 13 May 2026 21:13:00 +0000

You get an Apple product. At least, for me it was that simple. The ThinkPad I had was pretty high end, and I was using polarized glasses and even a sun shade to work at the park while the girls played. Bought a MacBook and the screen seems to crisply outshine even the sunniest days -- I haven't had to worry about outdoor use since, to my recollection.

New comment by Exoristos in "Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability"

Exoristos — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:13:50 +0000

Can you expand on this? Do you mean in contrast to the European AI milieu?

New comment by Exoristos in "An AI coding agent, used to write code, needs to reduce your maintenance costs"

Exoristos — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:12:24 +0000

Name it "not done yet." But, yes, very keen observation here.

New comment by Exoristos in "Teaching Claude Why"

Exoristos — Sat, 09 May 2026 05:44:23 +0000

"Work" is human activity. For example, children's play is work. All living things desire to go about their lives. Well-adjusted humans desire to work. Note that this does not necessarily equate to jobs.

New comment by Exoristos in "AI slop is killing online communities"

Exoristos — Fri, 08 May 2026 04:55:58 +0000

I'm sure there are still cohesive groupings of WASPs, if not large ones or effective at gatekeeping major institutions. --Still a meaningful trope, of course. But to bring it up to date you'd have to diversify, and include, for example, Indian social and professional-recruitment patterns.

Also, I do feel that GP's take is hyperbolic even in the twentieth century. My own background is mostly German immigrants, of various religions and non-religion, and the way I've been told the story none of them faced significant resistance as they moved upward in the various academic and corporate institutions of their choices. These included NASA executives, department heads, etc.

Note that in balancing GP's accusation against WASPs I'm not attempting to address the related, but not precisely complementary, phenomenon of perpetually marginalized groupings.

New comment by Exoristos in "AI slop is killing online communities"

Exoristos — Thu, 07 May 2026 21:58:34 +0000

This was cogent in 1910.

New comment by Exoristos in "AI didn't delete your database, you did"

Exoristos — Thu, 07 May 2026 21:51:43 +0000

Correction: more often more nearly

New comment by Exoristos in "I want to live like Costco people"

Exoristos — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:36:26 +0000

Exposing my superficiality, perhaps: but it pains me that you don't wear pants.

New comment by Exoristos in "Appearing productive in the workplace"

Exoristos — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:25:50 +0000

I'd like to see touch-typing at >60 wpm a standard attribute of adulthood again.

New comment by Exoristos in "NPR finds "no sign" of Polymarket at its Panama HQ address"

Exoristos — Tue, 05 May 2026 23:38:43 +0000

They're doing their part in keeping a spotlight on Polymarket. The content of the article is not irrelevant, but it is less important than the existence of the article.

New comment by Exoristos in "AI didn't delete your database, you did"

Exoristos — Tue, 05 May 2026 20:35:20 +0000

*Correction: more often

New comment by Exoristos in "AI didn't delete your database, you did"

Exoristos — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:06:42 +0000

> There is no such thing as fixed meaning.

Meaning is more fixed than it is not.