<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: Xirdus</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Xirdus</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 22:19:27 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=Xirdus" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "British Columbia, Time Zones, and Postgres"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>UTC for past events doesn't always work either. For example, historical employee punch-in times.<p>UTC timestamps should only ever be used for points in time in the most literal sense, and nothing else.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 22:13:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48637008</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48637008</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48637008</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "British Columbia, Time Zones, and Postgres"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The appointment is for 12/1/26 2PM of whatever timezone the office is in at the time of the appointment.<p>Between the time of booking and the time of the appointment, the government changed what timezone there will be at the time of the appointment. If you calculated the Unix timestamp at the time of booking using the old laws, by the time of the appointment the Unix timestamp would be off by an hour.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 22:06:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636917</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636917</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636917</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Steam Machine launches today"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They wouldn't, because they wouldn't know how much to bid. People pay more on eBay because they see how much more they need to pay. The whole point of a Vickery auction is to eliminate this feedback. A tiny fraction of megawhales will overbid by an order of magnitude because they want the gadget at literally any cost - but the vast majority of people would underbid, specifically because scalpers haven't started selling it yet for inflated prices. The act of putting it on eBay itself increases how much people are willing to pay for it. The big winners would be scalpers, who, being both the professional appraisers and the market makers, are in the best position to bid well and are nearly guaranteed to resell at a higher price.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:10:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636245</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636245</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636245</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Steam Machine launches today"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If the price is not totally ludicrous then the scalpers outbid pretty much everyone else. If you know MSRP, then normal people bid MSRP whereas scalpers take a million dollar loan and bid all 10,000 units at double MSRP, then sell at triple/quadruple MSRP. If you don't know MSRP, then most people won't know how much to bid, and won't bid at all, leaving just scalpers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:25:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48635643</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48635643</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48635643</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Steam Machine launches today"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"Customers must meet the following criteria to be able to sign up:<p><pre><code>    You must have a Steam account in good standing.

    You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.

    Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries."</code></pre></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:08:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634622</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634622</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634622</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In practice, multi-party systems rotate their brands in and out with much higher frequency than two-party systems.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:00:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634506</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634506</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634506</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think people overwhelmingly voting in line with their group is the effect, not the cause. People start off by being in a group, and their group teaches them what's good and what's bad, as well as how different policies will affect them personally. Mind you, they're most often taught wrong - but uniformly wrong within their group. They're similarly taught about WHO's good and WHO's bad, and how different political parties will affect them personally. Loaded with all these misconceptions, they apply the self-interest mindset and end up with a voting pattern that to an external observer doesn't look like self-interest at all. That's an oversimplification of course, everybody is part of multiple overlapping groups at every point in time and joins and leaves groups frequently, creating a gradient of opinions in a society. But the main mechanism is the same.<p>The result is mostly the same as with your explanation, except yours doesn't explain why there are primary elections and how they can be so unpredictable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 18:59:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634487</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634487</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634487</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One of the downsides of arguing over internet is that whenever you provide an argument that precisely counters the point person A has made, there comes person B who makes a completely different point than person A, but still treats my reply to person A as if I was replying to person B instead.<p>I define happiness as whatever the person before me defined it as. GP defined it as good health, love and respect of others. Thus, my reply to GP was focused on how money can be turned into good health, love and respect of others. Your definition of happiness is completely different. So of course my reply to you is going to be completely different. The definition of happiness we're operating on has changed since my last comment, after all.<p>You are conflating two diametrically different claims. One is that money makes people inherently happy. Which is so obviously wrong it's not even worth talking about. It's also something nobody in this comment section said. Least of all me.<p>The other claim is that money can be exchanged for things that indirectly will make some given person happier than without those things. In short - that money can buy happiness. Both "can" and "buy" are extremely important here. "Buy", as in money itself is useless unless it's exchanged for something. It's this something that you exchange money for that's supposed to increase happiness, not money itself. "Can", because everyone has a choice what they do with their money. You can use the same money to buy something that will make you happy, or to buy something that will not. Musk and Trump are extreme cases of people who could buy happiness but chose to buy something else instead, and are therefore deeply unhappy despite their wealth.<p>What do these "Buddhist monks of various sects" eat? Where do they get food from? Is eating part of what makes them happy, or just something they're forced to do to continue living? If it was somehow possible for them to continue living without eating, do you think they'd stop eating?<p>What do these Buddhists do when they're not eating? I assume whatever it is, it's what makes them happy. And the more time they dedicate to it, the more happy they become. By not eating, they'd free up time to do even more of the thing that makes them happy.<p>In real world, these Buddhist could stop growing food by hand and instead ordered catering. They would be exchanging money for more free time, which in turn would increase their happiness. Is that not so?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 18:20:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48633882</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48633882</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48633882</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Pledging Another $400k to the Zig Software Foundation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>More money absolutely does make it easier to have social life. It absolutely does make it easier to cure curable diseases as well as live the life to the fullest when you have incurable diseases. And increasing your wealth is strongly correlated with gaining respect of people who were born into similar backgrounds and socioeconomic conditions as you were.<p>More cynically, wealth makes it both easier to attract a romantic partner (fixes loneliness) and harder for them to later leave you (prevents heartache).<p>So, if you squint a little, money fixes 5 of the 5 listed problems.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:17:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631395</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631395</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48631395</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I know a lot of left win Europeans who promote planned economy without realising it. So there's that.<p>I think a better way to look at it is people demanding the government to intervene whenever intervention is beneficial to them personally, while demanding the government leave things alone whenever intervention is detrimental to them personally. Which is just a long winded way to describe the basics of democracy - people voting in their own interest.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:32:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48629288</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48629288</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48629288</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I see. I took "early/mid 90s" literally and thought you mean like 1991 through 1995, inclusive.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:22:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48629205</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48629205</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48629205</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "But yak shaving is fun (2019)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> This blog doesn’t use a static site generator or framework like Jekyll, Hugo, or Gatsby.<p>I guess that's why the blog name stays on screen and covers the text when I scroll down, with fully transparent background so it doesn't even cover the article text, it blends with it which distracts my eyes a little too much. If it was any other blog post I'd be certain it's a bug, but here I'm not sure if it isn't intentional, and one of those customization a ready-made software wouldn't let them do.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 20:56:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48561941</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48561941</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48561941</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I mean like enough time to check the pulse with the community and walk back the initial confrontational response. I don't have a problem with when they fixed it. I don't have a problem with when they paid out. I wouldn't have a problem if they didn't pay out at all (why would they?). I have a problem with their initial reaction, which was full of the usual fearmongering against modders. (And a smaller problem with that it took an external contributor to finally make them implement a trivial fix for a massive usability issue that's been there for at least 6 years. It shows how much they don't care about their customers or the product they're selling unless the media get involved.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:54:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48560181</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48560181</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48560181</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "Gamers beware: malicious wallpapers on Steam found stealing accounts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Somewhat? The variance is off the charts. Without even going to the extremes of casual nudism vs burka, there are cultures where wearing hair down is seen as sexual, and there are cultures were twerking is child appropriate.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:38:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559965</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559965</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559965</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I tried to find these rules yesterday (for another comment chain) but couldn't. As far as I could tell, nothing stops the carrier from silently dropping a likely scam call without receiver's knowledge or consent. Do you know which specific regulations would prohibit that?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:03:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559370</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559370</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559370</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's not how I remember these events when they were playing out. I distincly remember social media posts warning about the dangers of modifying game files, plus refusal to acknowledge the issue. Note there were 2 full weeks between the blog post and the update mentioning the bounty. I'm pretty sure the massive community outrage in between has played a role in it. But I don't have any sources and I was wrong about at least one thing (lack of attribution), so I'm okay assuming I'm wrong about everything else too.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:14:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557556</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557556</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557556</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There's a good chance it was Excel's workaround for some other GPU's buggy behavior.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:40:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48556039</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48556039</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48556039</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Reminds me of the "community patch" to GTA Online from a few years ago. The game was plagued by 10+ minute loading times. The situation remained for years and only got worse with time. Some hacker figured out that the game spent 80% of loading time reading the in-game store listing file. The file was tens of megabytes IIRC, and it literally used the Schlemiel the Painter's Algorithm - for each entry, start reading from the beginning byte after byte. The hacker made a tiny patch that made it remember where it found the last entry. This cut the total loading time by 80%, from over 10 minutes to less than 3.<p>Edit: removed incorrect information.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:34:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48555956</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48555956</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48555956</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There already are laws that would prevent the exact thing you're talking about. A requirement to provide name and address would change absolutely nothing. And if legal protections are not enough for you then what are we even talking about? Your phone carrier could disable all your lines this instant with a few clicks if they wanted to; the technical capability is already there. They also have your name and address from listening to phone calls and triangulating cell towers - though realistically they didn't need to do it because you already gave them your details knowingly and willingly as part of starting the service, didn't you?<p>I'd advise that you think long and hard about the consequences of the <i>current</i> system before saying the alternative is worse.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 23:57:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48548779</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48548779</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48548779</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Xirdus in "A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hard disagree on the scam phone calls. It would be <i>trivial</i> to eradicate them almost completely if the phone operators did the bare minimum to fight against it. At any point in time, any given US phone number is handled by exactly one phone carrier. There is nothing stopping that carrier from requiring name and address to issue that phone number. They already do for 99.99% of their legitimate customers. It would be very easy to make it so that every single phone call originating from the US, including all VOIP calls made with US phone numbers, can be traced back to a specific business or person that can later be sued or prosecuted.<p>And no, number spoofing isn't an excuse either. We literally solved the much harder problem of email spoofing already. There are, what, 3 carrier networks in all of US? And they cannot do with each other what DMARC did for the hundreds of thousands disjoint organizations that comprise the internet? Please.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 21:22:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48547178</link><dc:creator>Xirdus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48547178</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48547178</guid></item></channel></rss>