Hacker News: RankingMember

New comment by RankingMember in "Surface Laptop Ultra"

RankingMember — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:21:35 +0000

> Whoever is responsible for the sound interface driver in a Dell laptop is unlikely to be a user of that laptop and even less likely to have the capability to get Dell to ship a fixed version

Oh boy, don't get me started on Dell haha. Sure, they've got a better service model (people come to you), but at least in my experience they contract with service people who service multiple brands who can't help but shit-talk Dell. Not very confidence inspiring, particularly when the cause of the issue ends up being a connector not being fully plugged in from the factory.

New comment by RankingMember in "The Pirate Bay Remains Resilient, 20 Years After the Raid"

RankingMember — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 18:21:59 +0000

Anecdotally, the people I talk to outside the U.S. see the film industry there as stuck in a Disney/Marvel pattern for the most part. Sure, there are good films, but there's a lot of cynical slop being turned out too and it's become so prevalent that it's a bit of a joke at this point. I blame the stagnation on the extreme consolidation of media companies.

New comment by RankingMember in "Surface Laptop Ultra"

RankingMember — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 18:16:08 +0000

My experience with Surfaces and, particularly, the Surface Book and its accompanying dock were such that I'd have to be paid to use one again. For example, the dock would get its own updates silently and brick itself randomly and the proprietary magnetic connector between the dock and the computer was prone to a poor connection. I remember many occasions trying to work and my screens just randomly blinking in and out. To get service we'd have to go to a local Microsoft Store, a sad replica of the aging Apple "shiny glass minimalism" aesthetic, which have since all closed so we'd have to mail the thing today instead.

New comment by RankingMember in "Surface Laptop Ultra"

RankingMember — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 18:10:53 +0000

Yeah what bizarro world is their marketing team living in where that's something to tout?

New comment by RankingMember in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

RankingMember — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:43:17 +0000

I was just thinking "watch someone now invent a single-purpose easy-to-use Bluetooth hone-in device and sell it to the airlines for exactly this situation".

New comment by RankingMember in "The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)"

RankingMember — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:20:35 +0000

Yep, sounds like a bullet dodged there.

New comment by RankingMember in "Apparently Google hates us now"

RankingMember — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:28:52 +0000

I feel like a crazy person, but I've been using Yandex as the last resort and having positive results in finding stuff that I know is out there but Google has decided to stop letting me see. (I tried DDG but for my use it's been worse than Google).

New comment by RankingMember in "America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen"

RankingMember — Wed, 20 May 2026 14:59:52 +0000

Why would anyone spend the time to read something so long that's been generated by an LLM? The topic seems super interesting otherwise and would benefit from the real human voice. OP, can you elaborate on why you decided to go this direction?

New comment by RankingMember in "Colonization of Venus"

RankingMember — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:44:44 +0000

That and we'd soon do the same things to a new planet that we're doing to this planet. The more time humanity has to mature from a cooperation-over-conflict perspective (both with each other and other beings/the environment) before it starts spreading to other planets, the better.

New comment by RankingMember in "Photo GIMP – A Patch for GIMP 3 for Photoshop Users"

RankingMember — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:38:15 +0000

I prefer Pixlr.com myself (basically because it's Adobe Photoshop without the Adobe aspect).

New comment by RankingMember in "Why is Google Maps back to showing old satellite images of Altadena?"

RankingMember — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:17:01 +0000

How deep could an underground structure even be on the corner of an island?

New comment by RankingMember in "Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution"

RankingMember — Mon, 11 May 2026 18:16:38 +0000

Rightfully so. Unfettered capitalism will only end with a bunch of rich people producing and selling the means of living to the rest of us at just the right markup to keep their feet on our throats. Organized labor needs a resurgence in a big way.

New comment by RankingMember in "Driver accused of DUI tracks missing laptop to Illinois State trooper's house"

RankingMember — Mon, 11 May 2026 14:05:16 +0000

Comically limp self-punishment- this is why police unions need broad reform.

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

RankingMember — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:37:32 +0000

The :10bux: requirement did seem to do a good job of weeding out the lowest-level trash/spammers and encouraged people to toe the (sometimes very blurry) line. I remember how absolutely godawful some of the no-signup-fee SA-offshoots were (remember TheGunOwner's spin-off site "LivingWithStyle"?), to say nothing about 4chan.

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

RankingMember — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:31:24 +0000

Hackernews' approach is hellbans. FWIW that seems to work pretty well here at least.

New comment by RankingMember in "Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold"

RankingMember — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:39:46 +0000

There were also people abusing it to simply earn loyalty rewards at the theaters, e.g. people that lived close enough to theaters just going there, buying tickets, and not even seeing the movie just to pile up rewards points for free food/drink when they did actually go to see movies.

New comment by RankingMember in "Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation"

RankingMember — Mon, 04 May 2026 19:27:27 +0000

The Psygnosis logo similarly has a special place in my memory

New comment by RankingMember in "Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks"

RankingMember — Mon, 04 May 2026 19:19:06 +0000

Propaganda to what end, the global cabal to...encourage people to stay busy in retirement?

New comment by RankingMember in "Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks"

RankingMember — Mon, 04 May 2026 19:11:42 +0000

Philly

New comment by RankingMember in "“Kitten Space Agency”, a Spiritual Successor to “Kerbal Space Program” (2025)"

RankingMember — Mon, 04 May 2026 19:02:37 +0000

Something about their resolute "ok I'll deal with this" facial expressions while being absolute units body-wise seem right for comical astronauts.