Hacker News: Steltek

New comment by Steltek in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

Steltek — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:18:34 +0000

I thought it was just the opposite: people recognized it as satire but what they really wanted was the dumb action movie. Spare us the social commentary and show us some power armor with jump jets.

New comment by Steltek in "Iran War Live Updates: U.S. and Iran Send Conflicting Signals on Peace Prospects"

Steltek — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 13:56:21 +0000

I'll go one step further: I avoid all comedy and late night shows. Even The Daily Show, as much as that pains me.

My mental health wouldn't stand a chance if I actually stared into the abyss.

New comment by Steltek in "MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security"

Steltek — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:13:28 +0000

It was a powerful tool made for good but trivially corrupted to serve evil. It's a perfect description of the real world thing, IMO.

New comment by Steltek in "Oil hits $100 a barrel despite deal to release record amount of reserves"

Steltek — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:12:08 +0000

That only works when there's time to adapt. This is like the insane tariff rollercoaster. There was no time to plan or adapt. It was a black swan event and wrecked everything for no appreciable benefit.

New comment by Steltek in "U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for "Armageddon,""

Steltek — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 01:56:26 +0000

ACA mandates that ~80% of insurance co. revenue must go back towards medical service. So not "non-profit" per se but there is some kind of restriction there.

New comment by Steltek in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

Steltek — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:59:11 +0000

For a while, there was a strong trend of "I want to do everything in one singular language". Your coding is in language XYZ. Your build tools will be configured/written in XYZ. Your UI frontend will be generated from XYZ. Everything will be defined in XYZ.

Shell is from a time when you had a huge selection of languages, each for different purposes, and you picked the right one for the job. For complex applications, you would have multiple languages working together.

People look at Bash and think, "I would never dare do $Task with that language!". And you'd be right, because you're thinking you only have one tool in the toolbox.

New comment by Steltek in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

Steltek — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:51:23 +0000

You could make a list of WTFs about any language.

Bash syntax is the pinnacle of Chesterton's Fence. If you can't articulate why it was done that way, you have no right to remove it. Python would be an absolutely unusable shell language.

New comment by Steltek in "Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash"

Steltek — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 14:47:42 +0000

Is it really "got caught" if you run a Super Bowl ad? And put out a press release.

New comment by Steltek in "London's most controversial cyclist"

Steltek — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:51:23 +0000

They only wish they were saving 3 minutes. Drivers pull the most outlandish, dangerous crap to end up 2-3 car lengths ahead of where they were.

New comment by Steltek in "US Immigration on the Easiest Setting"

Steltek — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:17:53 +0000

There were only two requirements at Ellis Island:

1. You were free of contagious medical diseases

2. You were not in danger of "becoming a public charge" (welfare)

That plan is perfectly compatible with your concerns.

New comment by Steltek in "ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use"

Steltek — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:59:58 +0000

Yeeeaaaah, I dunno if you wanna go there while the US is investing $100B in state sponsored ethnic cleansing, terrorism, and concentration camps. Glass houses, stones, etc.

New comment by Steltek in "FBI couldn't get into WaPo reporter's iPhone because Lockdown Mode enabled"

Steltek — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:08:36 +0000

They need to prove that those materials exist on the device first. You can't be held in contempt for a fishing expedition.

New comment by Steltek in "Celebrities say they are being censored by TikTok after speaking out against ICE"

Steltek — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:37:15 +0000

I'd replace "real conversation" with "community". And I think communities don't prohibit anonymity. I think the impossibility is really having a community with a very large active userbase. A macro version of Dunbar's number.

New comment by Steltek in "Minneapolis driver shot and killed by ICE"

Steltek — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 01:46:18 +0000

I'm immediately reminded of this:

---

The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.

---

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

New comment by Steltek in "Apple's slow AI pace becomes a strength as market grows weary of spending"

Steltek — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 19:47:47 +0000

Uhh, do you mean contactless payments? That wasn't Apple. Apple wasn't even the first to offer it on phones. Android beat them by 3 years.

New comment by Steltek in "Making macOS Bearable"

Steltek — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 13:59:11 +0000

The Sapir-Whorf is strong in this thread. MacOS' app-centric model makes it hard to even imagine other people's workflows. Stop thinking in apps, think about a task. I have multiple tasks (workspaces). Each task has multiple aspects (windows). Apps are a distraction, an accidental complexity. I want to switch between tasks and then subparts of those tasks.

New comment by Steltek in "Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia"

Steltek — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 14:05:49 +0000

It's very weird to assume good intentions or trustworthy info from Grokipedia but then hold up Wikipedia as "heavily poisoned". Your questions are based on a lot of assumptions that aren't widely shared.

New comment by Steltek in "Silicon Valley's man in the White House is benefiting himself and his friends"

Steltek — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:41:57 +0000

While the 2003 Iraq War was complete bullshit lies. No, Halliburton is over 100 years old and a bit of a unicorn company for oil engineering problems.

There were definitely conflicts of interest that should have been resolved but it's no where near what we're seeing this year (sigh, "so far").

New comment by Steltek in "X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run"

Steltek — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:31:55 +0000

And if you're not interested in upholding basic values? What if you're looking to intentionally destroy things instead?

Verified residency is better than nothing for putting real money on the table. Although if you've been to a local town meeting, you'll know it's still not perfect.

New comment by Steltek in "Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward"

Steltek — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 22:53:06 +0000

BangleJS is fun but it's not all sunshine and rainbows:

* Hackable - Only using Chrome. I haven't discovered any other method but I'd love to be corrected on this.

* Totally touchscreen based and the touchscreen ain't that good.

* Screen might be visible but any Pebble, past or present, is way better

But it's still super fun.

You need to use the forked custom Gadgetbridge to make the most of it too.