Hacker News: TimK65

New comment by TimK65 in "Bullets don't shoot people. So why do cars 'kill' cyclists?"

TimK65 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:44:35 +0000

Road and car design are an important part of the problem, but so is car culture, which is all in the head.

New comment by TimK65 in "Am I Unc?"

TimK65 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:43:09 +0000

Um. I got 18 Unc / 82 Youth.

I'm about to turn 61. What is happening? (I guess that's a pretty unc question. Oh well.)

New comment by TimK65 in "When Is "Next Friday"?"

TimK65 — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:25:57 +0000

This doesn't fully accord with my intuition, but I absolutely believe that the best course of action is listed: USE A CALENDAR DATE!

New comment by TimK65 in "Southern Poverty Law Center indicted for fraud, money laundering"

TimK65 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:48:54 +0000

https://www.lawdork.com/p/splc-indictment-united-klans-of-am...

New comment by TimK65 in "How to Write Unmaintainable Code (1999)"

TimK65 — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 06:21:40 +0000

Back in 1997 I was assigned to convert a legacy SAS 5 application to SAS 6.

Let's just say that the original programmer had adopted MANY of the techniques in the linked post. The first thing I did was to go through all the code and convert it to only have one statement per line. eye roll

New comment by TimK65 in "NHS staff refusing to use FDP over Palantir ethical concerns"

TimK65 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:57:41 +0000

That would imply that their annual budget was £1.8e14, which I seriously doubt.

Even if I assume that you meant 0.02%, which is equal to 0.0002, that would put their budget at £1.8e12, which I am also strongly inclined to doubt.

New comment by TimK65 in "Show HN: Public transit systems as data – lines, stations, railcars, and history"

TimK65 — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 10:13:47 +0000

Very nice! I think we're confusing route length and track length, though.

New comment by TimK65 in "Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars"

TimK65 — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:40:17 +0000

Motorists are incredibly fragile. I'm glad Paris has had a mayor who could stand up to their entitled whinging.

New comment by TimK65 in "Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?"

TimK65 — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:55:32 +0000

I use a search engine if I can more or less precisely describe what I want in a few words.

If I find that I really need to be more extensively descriptive, or to actually ask a question, I'll use an LLM, but that's pretty rare.

Here's an example of the latter that I did yesterday (this is Google Gemini):

"Hello! There is a poetic device where one line of a poem can be read both as the continuation of the previous line and as the first part of the following line. What is that called?"

"Hello! That poetic device is called an anastrophe or sometimes a hyperbaton, but these terms are more generally used for the inversion of the usual order of words or clauses in a sentence.

"While anastrophe or hyperbaton can create the effect you're describing, there isn't one single, widely recognized term specifically for a line that functions as both the end of one thought and the beginning of another in the way you've described.

"However, the effect you're describing is closely related to the idea of enjambment (also known as "run-on lines"). Enjambment is when a line of poetry ends without punctuation or a natural pause, and the thought continues onto the next line.

"..."

I proceeded to provide an example, saying "Points if you know what song this is ;-)", and Gemini confidently misidentified the song. (The correct song is "Black Cow" by Steely Dan; Gemini told me that the lyrics I'd quoted were from Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street," which doesn't contain any lyrics that even resemble what I'd quoted.)

New comment by TimK65 in "The Mainframe Vocabulary Problem, and Why It Matters"

TimK65 — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 09:05:46 +0000

Yep, I learned the terms IPL and IML ("Initial Microprogram Load," more akin to a cold boot) when I worked on an IBM midrange system running DOS/VSE back in the 1980s.

New comment by TimK65 in "NYC New Subway Map"

TimK65 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:46:42 +0000

It's a diagram, not a map.

The old "map" isn't geographically accurate, either.

New comment by TimK65 in "NYC New Subway Map"

TimK65 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:43:33 +0000

This was Vignelli's original plan, which the MTA never followed through on.

New comment by TimK65 in "NYC New Subway Map"

TimK65 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:42:53 +0000

What is this "metrocard" of which you speak?

(It's going away at the end of this year.)

New comment by TimK65 in "When imperfect systems are good: Bluesky's lossy timelines"

TimK65 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 08:48:34 +0000

From the linked article: "Additionally, a reference to your post is 'fanned out' to your followers so they can see it in their Timelines."

So not the content, just a sort of link to it.

New comment by TimK65 in "Tech takes the Pareto principle too far"

TimK65 — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 07:28:02 +0000

The complete polish is the author's very point, alongside the fact that most software products never get that complete polish.

New comment by TimK65 in "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship"

TimK65 — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 10:08:04 +0000

I believe that historically, the primary group of people who are "not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" are diplomatic personnel from other countries. Those people actually are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

New comment by TimK65 in "Penn Station Can Handle the Load: New York Is Ready for Through-Running"

TimK65 — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:38:24 +0000

I live in Stockholm. Dwells on the commuter rail system here -- formerly at Stockholm Central, now at the new (2017) Stockholm City underground commuter station -- are scheduled for 3 minutes and have been for decades.

The commuter rail service here is a bit of a basket case, but that has nothing to do with through-running practices, which make the system much better than it otherwise would be.

New comment by TimK65 in "Penn Station Can Handle the Load: New York Is Ready for Through-Running"

TimK65 — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:41:26 +0000

Many times I've stood in front of the displays in the Exit Concourse at Penn. As soon as they post the track for your train, you can just go downstairs to the platform.

New comment by TimK65 in "Penn Station Can Handle the Load: New York Is Ready for Through-Running"

TimK65 — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:36:11 +0000

More than once I've stood in the line at Washington Union and said loudly, "If I wanted to fly, I'd fly."

I'm 100% with you on this. It's idiotic.

New comment by TimK65 in "Debian opens a can of username worms"

TimK65 — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 14:16:12 +0000

There are three uses of the word "drop," all of which are correct.

The latter-day meaning of "drop" is an abomination.