Hacker News: Scarblac

New comment by Scarblac in "Underarm bowling incident of 1981"

Scarblac — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 17:05:31 +0000

There's a rope around the field, if the ball goes over it without hitting the ground (like a home run) it counts for 6. If if it did hit the ground it counts for 4.

They can run more than one (get to the other side, turn around, run back, etc) but the chance of the wicket you're running to being hit with the ball (so you're out) becomes larger so they usually manage 1, sometimes 2 or even 3. And both batters have to run the same amount.

If the number of runs is even, they end up on the same side as they started from.

New comment by Scarblac in "European Commission lines up Amazon and Microsoft for cloud gatekeeper status"

Scarblac — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 21:10:42 +0000

No, that would make it even less likely that they obey the law.

New comment by Scarblac in "GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands"

Scarblac — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 05:55:56 +0000

Their legality is very questionable given all the likely copyright infringement going on, and a state can't really ignore that.

New comment by Scarblac in "I Miss Terry Pratchett"

Scarblac — Sat, 23 May 2026 14:55:02 +0000

I interpreted as saying he knows a lot about different kinds of ideas / memories / things in the head.

New comment by Scarblac in "The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news"

Scarblac — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:56:13 +0000

Sometimes but I've never seen commenting counted as work.

New comment by Scarblac in "The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news"

Scarblac — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:05:06 +0000

Because you're doing it voluntarily.

New comment by Scarblac in "Chess puzzle I found in my dad's old book"

Scarblac — Thu, 14 May 2026 08:34:30 +0000

You can only be in check or checkmate when it's your turn though.

New comment by Scarblac in "I moved my digital stack to Europe"

Scarblac — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:42:30 +0000

Even if that fantasy was true in any way, the US can do enough damage to European digital systems to utterly cripple society on day 1.

New comment by Scarblac in "I moved my digital stack to Europe"

Scarblac — Wed, 13 May 2026 14:55:48 +0000

And actual war, given the threats to Greenland.

But especially that Microsoft blocked the work email of the ICC lead prosecutor for political reasons, that has all alarm bells ringing.

New comment by Scarblac in "EU Parliamentary Research Service calls VPNs "a loophole that needs closing""

Scarblac — Sun, 10 May 2026 07:56:51 +0000

Nice thing is we can render names in English however we want too!

New comment by Scarblac in "Talking to strangers at the gym"

Scarblac — Mon, 04 May 2026 14:34:45 +0000

That said, it also has all the self help faults. It repeats itself a lot, is full of happy anecdotes that repeat the same thing yet again, and could have fit in a chapter.

New comment by Scarblac in "As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating"

Scarblac — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:06:12 +0000

No, we're very resilient bastards, we're going to let the huge majority of species go extinct before we go ourselves. We're already in a mass extinction event and we're just getting started.

New comment by Scarblac in "All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027"

Scarblac — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:53:29 +0000

I don't think so, this was the first time it happened like that.

New comment by Scarblac in "All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027"

Scarblac — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:00:33 +0000

I had to replace my previous phone because my banking app dropped support for that Android version, and was going to stop working. The hardware was fine.

(I always buy phones in the cheapest tier, so that happens sooner)

New comment by Scarblac in "CRISPR takes important step toward silencing Down syndrome’s extra chromosome"

Scarblac — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:53:13 +0000

But it's only possible for them to lead good lives when their parents basically dedicate the rest of their own lives to caring for them, I think?

New comment by Scarblac in "1D Chess"

Scarblac — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:58:20 +0000

The rook doesnt attack the king because N6 is in the way.

So black is not in check and has no legal moves, so stalemate.

New comment by Scarblac in "We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git"

Scarblac — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:50:19 +0000

The initial version of Git was written in two weeks, what do you need $17m for?

New comment by Scarblac in "Show HN: 41 years sea surface temperature anomalies"

Scarblac — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:48:28 +0000

In general I think the sea warms slower than land, so you'd expect land everywhere to warm faster than the global average.

New comment by Scarblac in "Proton Meet isn't what they told you it was"

Scarblac — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:57:22 +0000

But don't they have both the encrypted data and the decryption keys? I don't remember giving them my keys to use, and I can look at my stuff from multiple devices so the keys aren't stored on my device.

So they must have the ability to look at all that encrypted data anyway?

New comment by Scarblac in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

Scarblac — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:52:26 +0000

Kyiv is pretty close to the Russian border to its north, even Moscow itself is less than 1000km away.

I think the furthest hits Ukraine has been able to achieve with drones were on a refinery about 1300km from Ukraine controlled land.