Hacker News: FartinMowler

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

FartinMowler — Thu, 07 May 2026 21:16:14 +0000

I'm reminded of the Polish proverb that it's better to be rich & healthy than sick & poor.

New comment by FartinMowler in "IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields"

FartinMowler — Tue, 05 May 2026 19:05:10 +0000

What?!?! I was an IBM Systems Engineer in the late 1980s / early 1990s and that was nothing like my job description.

New comment by FartinMowler in "A Letter from Dijkstra on APL (1982)"

FartinMowler — Fri, 01 May 2026 20:48:56 +0000

Yup, impossible to read. I was a paid APL coder in the early 80's. We called it WORN: Write Once, Read Never.

New comment by FartinMowler in "Inside Nepal's Fake Rescue Racket"

FartinMowler — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 03:06:10 +0000

Lol, on my trip up Pikes Peak I was blissfully unaware that altitude sickness could be a thing. So I can't recall if I felt any different. I do recall the carburetor on my motorcycle was acting a little strange, however.

New comment by FartinMowler in "Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone"

FartinMowler — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:59:50 +0000

Finally, some deshitification news on HN!

New comment by FartinMowler in "Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events"

FartinMowler — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:12:01 +0000

Luge too :)

New comment by FartinMowler in "Ask HN: How to be alone?"

FartinMowler — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 03:59:16 +0000

Brilliant. But be prepared for failure. Some days instead of the rejection you're expecting you'll be accepted instead!

New comment by FartinMowler in "Canadians promised to boycott travel to US. They meant it"

FartinMowler — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 20:26:28 +0000

It's not really a promised or conscious boycott. It's after weighing the pros and cons, many of them intangible, the feeling is visiting the US right now could result in unpleasantness ... and if there is anything Canadians are adverse to it is unpleasantness. Anecdata: a friend of ours crossing the US border, despite being a VP at a bank, for her first time ever had to surrender her phone for examination by US border agents. Who needs that!

New comment by FartinMowler in "European troops arrive in Greenland to boost the Arctic island's security"

FartinMowler — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 02:05:40 +0000

Although the probability is closer to 0% than 100%, it is far enough away from 0% to have many Canadians concerned. As the midterm elections approach and things start looking like he's drowning, Trump will grasp for any convenient distraction, the bigger the better. Canada is uncomfortably on the short list.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/the-military-plans-for...

New comment by FartinMowler in "The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis"

FartinMowler — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 15:52:55 +0000

They could monitor the midterm elections /s

New comment by FartinMowler in "Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres"

FartinMowler — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 02:57:53 +0000

Lol, reminds me of a story: at his workplace my brother was invited to join a lottery ticket pool where each got to pick the numbers for a ticket. The numbers he picked were 1-2-3-4-5-6. Although the others, mostly fellow engineers, reluctantly agreed his numbers were as likely as the others, after a couple of weeks they neglected to invite him again.

New comment by FartinMowler in "Django 6"

FartinMowler — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 22:26:42 +0000

Especially with template partials now in the core of Django 6.

New comment by FartinMowler in "Keep these Stupid American Trucks out of Europe [video]"

FartinMowler — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 22:31:02 +0000

By the end of Trump's third term the US will be isolated from almost all global trade anyways.

New comment by FartinMowler in "OOP is shifting between domains, not disappearing"

FartinMowler — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 23:10:56 +0000

OOP is like alcohol: enjoyable in moderation but dangerous in excess.

In moderation, an object is a data structure with associated functions (methods) that acts as a kind of namespace. If your data structure and functions are separate, you might start having function name collisions.

Hopefully we won't see a prohibition against OOP.

New comment by FartinMowler in "Comparing the Latitude of Europe and America"

FartinMowler — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 15:30:54 +0000

Yup. And Toronto in Canada is closer to the equator than to the north Pole.

New comment by FartinMowler in "Mesh: I tried Htmx, then ditched it"

FartinMowler — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 22:57:23 +0000

I've been doing IT for decades. Many times I've come across something that seems stupid yet also has a non-trivial number of supporters. When this happens (and it will many times), don't just continue to think it's stupid. Question if you are stuck on some paradigm or mindset that makes the thing seem stupid to you. That might call for a good head shake, a walk in the park, or a weekend-long bender to open your mind to new ideas. You don't have to jump on their bandwagon, but at least you'll increase your understanding and strengthen your position.

New comment by FartinMowler in "Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels"

FartinMowler — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 01:37:58 +0000

Lot's of comments here at the "micro" level: about the comfort of an individual pedestrian. There's also the "macro" view: how best to quickly and safely move a large number of pedestrians in a short window of time. The PATH mostly connects Toronto's financial district full of office towers and 9-5 workers with a transportation hub, Union Station, at its south end. Union Station gets around 300,000[0] passengers a day, most but not all are office commuters. Without the PATH, the sidewalks would be absolutely (and dangerously) jammed between 8-9am and 4:30-6pm.

[0]https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/venues-facilities-b...

New comment by FartinMowler in "Beyond Meat headed to Chapter 11 bankruptcy"

FartinMowler — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 02:10:49 +0000

There are those like me who eat meat, like the taste of meat, but think for health reasons they should be eating less meat.

New comment by FartinMowler in "SaaS Is Dead"

FartinMowler — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 10:28:40 +0000

> ,,, we're now on the cusp ...

Would that be the same cusp self-driving cars were on 5 years ago? I think the benefits of LLMs are farther in the future but the (massive) costs are here today. Folks, invest your retirement savings carefully.

New comment by FartinMowler in "OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D"

FartinMowler — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:26:39 +0000

Yup, lots of Y2K work shipped offshore in the 90s while onshore worked on the web boom. After Jan 1, 2000, mgmt thought, hey, how can I use these cheap guys elsewhere.