Hacker News: Underphil

New comment by Underphil in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

Underphil — Sun, 31 May 2026 01:10:54 +0000

The reason I think I'm overreacting is because I'm a natively English-speaking straight white guy. If I wasn't I'd have already fled.

New comment by Underphil in "Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion"

Underphil — Sun, 31 May 2026 01:03:06 +0000

This is a bizarrely revisionist take. Perhaps you weren't around at the time but that was not standard MO in the slightest. Obviously they were incredibly scummy in other ways, but that was not one of them.

//Edit : I see from another comment that you say you worked there in the 2000s. Inclined to believe you, but having worked in the industry since the mid-90s I'm absolutely confident the general sentiment about Microsoft was not yet hatred. That came later.

New comment by Underphil in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

Underphil — Sat, 23 May 2026 19:39:15 +0000

I received mine in 2020 and have decided to move back home. The uncertainty in general just keeps me up at night. Feels like the goalposts could move at any moment. I know I'm likely overreacting but it is what it is.

New comment by Underphil in "Declining America"

Underphil — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:18:12 +0000

Whether it would happen or not is immaterial. The perceived threat is enough. I've been here on a green card since 2016 and haven't left the country since his second term since I share the exact same fears.

New comment by Underphil in "David Attenborough's 100th Birthday"

Underphil — Sat, 09 May 2026 20:59:16 +0000

Conversely, I wince everytime I'm called 'sir' in an American restaurant or shop.

New comment by Underphil in "Bring Your Agent to Teams"

Underphil — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:54:07 +0000

I also found it truly brutal to read and got fed around the same spot. I hate this style so much.

New comment by Underphil in "Deezer says 44% of songs uploaded to its platform daily are AI-generated"

Underphil — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 05:55:37 +0000

You could if you parallelized the operation. Probably tantamount to torture though.

New comment by Underphil in "Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove"

Underphil — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:05:57 +0000

“I was using, at times, pretty lackluster equipment, simply because I had no money to buy anything better,” he said. Later, he moved on to digital audio tape, or DAT, and, as technology progressed, to solid-state digital recorders."

New comment by Underphil in "Running out of disk space in production"

Underphil — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:06:57 +0000

It does, but for critical apps (that might have some awful security holes) it guarantees them space.

New comment by Underphil in "Shooting down ideas is not a skill"

Underphil — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 05:13:22 +0000

I'd agree with this take where possible. Trying to explain the idea requires all the listeners to imagine the same thing in their head. If you can show them something, it's worth a thousand words..

I have this with a colleague right now who has a rather solid idea (I think). Trying to convince him that at least some diagramming would help get it across.

New comment by Underphil in "Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs"

Underphil — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:56:50 +0000

What is the blue and green bubble thing? I've never used an iPhone so don't understand the term. Does it classify messages as iMessage and non-iMessage?

New comment by Underphil in "Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs"

Underphil — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:35:48 +0000

Yes, but that was coupled with other factors like them strongarming vendors, already being hugely dominant on desktops and abusing that position et al. I don't see this as being the same. Maybe my bar here is wrong, but it doesn't change whether they are a monopoly or not.

New comment by Underphil in "Apple approves driver that lets Nvidia eGPUs work with Arm Macs"

Underphil — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:17:06 +0000

I don't think any of what you're describing are legal "monopolies". I don't have a single Apple product in my life but I'm fairly sure there's nothing I'm prevented from doing because of that.

New comment by Underphil in "Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model"

Underphil — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 09:08:01 +0000

I think the point was that not ALL sarcasm works well. I see what you did there, of course :)

New comment by Underphil in "Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March"

Underphil — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 06:31:38 +0000

Assuming you actually take the time to retroactively understand what you just did and don't become a slop-ministrator.

New comment by Underphil in "AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice"

Underphil — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 03:44:33 +0000

"Apprehend"?

New comment by Underphil in "Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events"

Underphil — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:17:47 +0000

Could you explain why?

New comment by Underphil in "MAUI Is Coming to Linux"

Underphil — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 05:36:17 +0000

...and then you have long time Linux users (like me) who cannot feel any of the benefit of removing that overhead. The only difference I can tell between X and Wayland on my machines is that Wayland doesn't work with some stuff.

New comment by Underphil in "BYD's bet on EVs is paying off as drivers ditch gas amid rising oil prices"

Underphil — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 19:15:29 +0000

At any one time I would assume there are thousands of people in the world who are replacing their existing vehicle right at this very moment for normal reasons.

New comment by Underphil in "Waymo Safety Impact"

Underphil — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:11:36 +0000

Also a motorcyclist. I've seen perhaps 6 or 7 Waymos whilst riding. One pulled out of curbside parking space right in front me.

It wasn't life or death or anything like that, but I was close enough that it was a real "dick move" and I had to get on the anchors a lot harder than I'd have liked. Not sure what sensor or whatever it was missing for that to happen, but I can assure you it did.

(I'm not suggesting my anecdotal evidence says anything particularly worthy around autonomous vehicle safety, just sharing a surprising incident)