Hacker News: Xirdus

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 03:08:00 +0000

You might be the kind of person who does benefit from accessibility features such as larger font size. On the other hand, I'm not; I can read 10pt font on 100 DPI display just fine, without glasses. I'd rather have an extra column in table view visible without scrolling than larger letters, but for you the tradeoff might be different. That's why it's accessibility and not usability. Usability would be if the bigger font didn't push anything off screen, then of course it's better to make it bigger.

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 02:57:32 +0000

I am a little confused about your response. Do you disagree with me that accessibility features often reduce usability, or do you agree with me and just feel like nitpicking? I'm all for nitpicking, but I'd rather keep it separate from the real debate.

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 02:51:32 +0000

My point exactly. Accessibility isn't "just usability" and the great-great-grandparent was wrong to say that.

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 02:47:39 +0000

I think you are mistaken which side I am on in the "accessibility is just usability" debate. For the record, I am on the side that says not at all.

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 11:19:24 +0000

I have my opinion on aesthetics of additional ways of repeating information already available by color coding. But to each their own.

Other than that, is enabling/disabling any of the aforementioned features ever a question of aesthetics?

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:30:36 +0000

Riddle me this - why would you want to disable something that increases usability of an application? (Yes, this is a loaded question - I never said these features are bad, just that usability and accessibility are sometimes at odds with each other.)

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:24:45 +0000

Certain types of colorblindness combined with certain colors makes text much harder to read than black-on-white. If you limit yourself to just universally readable colors, you're heavily limiting the number of different categories you can highlight. There's also the matter of screen real estate - duplicating info isn't helpful for people who can deal with colors just fine. I'm not saying it's a srong thing to do, just pointing out accessibility and usability are different things.

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:07:01 +0000

Most accessible, not most convenient/efficient/easy to learn. It's very very hard to beat entering text in terms of how many people on Earth are physically capable of doing it (considering all the available methods, including text to speech).

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 04:33:59 +0000

There's TUI and there's CLI. TUI has always been poor man's GUI, back in the day it was even literally called GUI. CLI on the other hand has zero similarities with GUI. You write the command and the command executes and that's it. Writing commands is inherently the most accessible form of controlling computers, second only to dedicated single-purpose buttons that don't mesh well with this whole "general purpose computing" thing.

New comment by Xirdus in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

Xirdus — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 04:25:32 +0000

> accessibility is just usability. all it is is making sure your product is as usable by as many people as possible.

Not always. There are things that increase usability for fully abled people but decrease it for disabled people. Color-coding is a common one. Another is using smaller font size to make more info visible at once, or advanced touch gestures that can be accidentally triggered by shaky hands.

Then there are accessibility features that actively harm fully abled users, like sticky keys or screen readers that automatically follow focused UI elements.

New comment by Xirdus in "How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer"

Xirdus — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:06:24 +0000

Yep, exactly.

New comment by Xirdus in "Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)"

Xirdus — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 23:42:55 +0000

It wasn't unproductive at all! Can't you see we just about worked out a consensus?

New comment by Xirdus in "How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer"

Xirdus — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 22:27:16 +0000

If there's no electronic record, then there's nothing for tax authorities to compare your declared revenue to. If you say you earned only $1000, then for all intensive porpoises, you earned only $1000 and that's the end of it.

New comment by Xirdus in "How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer"

Xirdus — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 21:12:16 +0000

I'm the immigrant in question. I pay with card for literally everything online and offline, except two things - my haircuts and my wife's nails. Both of which accept credit cards. I go out of my way to withdraw cash (10 minute drive) just for these two things. Both the barber and the beautician appreciate it, for obvious reasons. My cousin with housecleaning business also gets paid mostly in cash, also for obvious reasons. It's just a thing we do. I don't know if natural born citizens do it too or not. Personally haven't seen it.

New comment by Xirdus in "Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)"

Xirdus — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 18:53:49 +0000

There is a world of difference between "is a physical trait" and "is attached to, associated with, or correlated with physical traits". The way I see it, saying that intelligence is correlated with physical body features is admitting that intelligence is not a physical trait itself after all.

The first reason I insist on the difference is because absolutely everything indirectly depends on physicality of the biological body. Spirituality aside, there isn't a single thing about humans that doesn't depend on the shape or size or chemistry or electrical charge of something somewhere. This makes "physical trait" an utterly useless category, one that clearly includes playing piano, and I really don't like that.

The second reason I insist on the difference is because the correlation doesn't have to be linear. There's no reaso why it can't be quadratic or logarithmic or exponential or hyperbolic or whatever. Being a literal physical feature imposes normal distribution with tight variance. Merely being correlated does not. If you still want to argue geniuses are not that much more intelligent than average people, you'd need more evidence than simple hereditability.

When you say "intelligence is a physical trait", I hear "there is a part of parts of the brain that have a certain total volume/mass/density/number of neurons/synapses/neural pathways/etc., and that number is the literal definition of intelligence". It's how it works for every other thing that we call a physical trait. If you didn't mean it like that, maybe you should have used a different terminology from the get go.

Now excuse me while I go looking for 10-15 more citations on the genetic component of musical ability that you're definitely not going to dismiss as irrelevant for one reason or another.

New comment by Xirdus in "Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)"

Xirdus — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:17:01 +0000

I could link to a bunch more studies that find more direct genetic links to musical aptitude in particular rather than musical perception in general. But I'd rather skip the busy work and jump straight to the point where we both agree to the following.

1. Musical talent is hereditary to a significant degree.

2. Musical talent is NOT a physical trait.

3. Therefore, being hereditary is not a proof of being a physical trait, despite the literal physical differences in DNA sequence.

Deal?

New comment by Xirdus in "Credit Card Rewards Became a $9.2B Wealth Transfer"

Xirdus — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:37:34 +0000

The question is what percentage of overall population are 1, 2 and 3 combined, and is it big enough to warrant the perception that high reward cards are only for high earners/spenders.

My instinct says hell no, not even close.

New comment by Xirdus in "How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer"

Xirdus — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:34:15 +0000

Based on the downvote and your reaction, I assume I misread something. We're talking about why Americans sometimes prefer paying with cash over credit card, no?

New comment by Xirdus in "Credit Card Rewards Became a $9.2B Wealth Transfer"

Xirdus — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:10:57 +0000

My first US credit card was a 4-3-2-1% rewards program and I had literally zero income at the time. I was told by the banker, "oh you can't do that right away, you must first get a secured card to build your credit score, after a year you can try applying for real", but I told them I don't care and to send the application anyway, and I've got it.

Ever since then, I wondered how much of the "not qualifying" is due to misinformation like this.

New comment by Xirdus in "How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer"

Xirdus — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:06:18 +0000

A lot of it is to enable the small business owners to hide their real income. At least that's how it works in immigrant communities.