Hacker News: Ferret7446

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Why Can't You Pack a Bag? (2024)"

Ferret7446 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 02:47:45 +0000

Depends on where you are and what you're doing, but you can usually get what you need at the destination. People live there after all, and those people are able to get what they need.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program"

Ferret7446 — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 02:29:43 +0000

Exceptions prove the rule. Most babies figure it out fine.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program"

Ferret7446 — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 02:27:45 +0000

Mainstream Linux distros got rid of the bin split many years ago.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Less Coffee, Better Sleep"

Ferret7446 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 02:25:16 +0000

Tea contains significantly less caffeine, and its effect is mediated by other compounds in the tea. Basically, tea also contains a partial "antidote" to caffeine along with the caffeine

New comment by Ferret7446 in "The true power of regular expressions (2012)"

Ferret7446 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 02:20:52 +0000

There is no backtracking in actual regular expressions. Your misunderstanding is the technicality that the parent was taking about.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "I stopped trusting USB-C cable labels and started testing them"

Ferret7446 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 02:16:32 +0000

There will always broken cables, unless you invent a wonderful form of matter which maintains its form indefinitely after manufacture.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "The AI Productivity Gap"

Ferret7446 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 02:09:44 +0000

> Even with the same amount of code, AI code is less trustworthy* and requires more attention... but we know it won't be the same amount, it will be more.

If you think that, you aren't reviewing human code closely enough IMO. Human code and AI code should be scrutinized equally closely. Or rather, if you're relying on where you think the code came from rather than actually, y'know, reviewing the code itself, then you aren't doing a good job.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Californians' data deletion requests, DROP, become enforceable Aug. 1"

Ferret7446 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 20:14:00 +0000

How are you supposed to ensure you never store that info without storing info about what info to never store

New comment by Ferret7446 in "How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)"

Ferret7446 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:51:57 +0000

By that definition anything that shows anything is an ad for that thing.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Golang proposal: container/: generic collection types"

Ferret7446 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 23:17:48 +0000

Better late and well designed, than early and poorly designed

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Stateless MCP has recaptured my interest"

Ferret7446 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:02:15 +0000

And ironically skills also need a double layer of progressive discovery because having too many skills available can also bloat the context even if only the short description is included. So instead of including hundreds of skills in the initial context a search tool is provided...

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption"

Ferret7446 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 02:05:34 +0000

At that point just put it on github

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Authorize, don't authenticate"

Ferret7446 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 01:52:50 +0000

The English isn't that hard to remember though. Authentication == determine whether it is authentic (you are who you say you are). Authorization == are you authorized to do something (I know who you are but you are not authorized to do something). I hope the average reading level hasn't fallen to the point where that is confusing.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "The session you cannot take with you"

Ferret7446 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:51:16 +0000

I've never considered the conversation and reasoning to be more than transient. If you want to carry forward a session, you must produce a context artifact.

IMO this is like wanting to dump the intermediate state of an LLVM compilation and expecting to reliably resume it across platforms.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return"

Ferret7446 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:44:51 +0000

Because the stereotypical California hippie loves pistachios (e.g. dubai chocolate) despite the virtue signaling about protecting the environment.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Premier league bans gambling sponsors"

Ferret7446 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:33:49 +0000

Which is a bit of a shame, given the terrible health effects of alcohol.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Rune 1.1: adds Python, an Emacs editor, a symbol index and is now free"

Ferret7446 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:27:08 +0000

The irony is that Emacs-like bindings are far more widespread (readline support by default, and most GUIs support Alt+arrow, alt+backspace)

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English"

Ferret7446 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:19:04 +0000

The training material is used to "develop intelligence" not as reference material.

As an analogy, students learn a bunch of things during school, become more intelligent, but do not retain explicit knowledge like all of the details on the periodic table, or all of the exact formulas for things.

New comment by Ferret7446 in "What would it mean to see a new color?"

Ferret7446 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:08:49 +0000

Required philosophical reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

New comment by Ferret7446 in "Toot.community is shutting down"

Ferret7446 — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 03:21:40 +0000

> anything truly important will be distributed by mainstream media

First of all this is just blatantly not true (e.g. MSM ignoring politically inconvenient news). Second of all what is important varies for each person. e.g., local news or news about your specific interests

> I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past.

This is what social media is (was?)