Hacker News: Zanni

New comment by Zanni in "Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th"

Zanni — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:44:31 +0000

I used to feel this way, but I reconsidered my threat model. You know what format is "locked in"? Physical books. Can only exist in one location at a time. If you loan it out, you can't read it until it's returned. Subject to theft, fire, rot, bugs or simply being lost.

There are aspects of Kindle I don't love--the constantly changing cover art for books I've purchased--but I've never run into an actual problem. I've got 2,500 books on my Kindle devices, and I can access them anywhere in the world at any time on my dedicated readers, my phone, my laptop (via Kindle Cloud Reader).

If DRM is the price I have to pay for a dead-simple ecosystem, multi-device support and free cloud storage, well, I guess I'm happy to pay it.

New comment by Zanni in "Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?"

Zanni — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 23:26:14 +0000

Exactly. I'm happy to see NASA get back in the game, but this is basically just a test flight. I'll get excited for the next one.

("Hey, kids! We're going to Disneyland! We're going to drive all the way around it before we head home!")

New comment by Zanni in "Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver"

Zanni — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 23:41:15 +0000

That video is 54 minutes long. Maybe, if it's the basis for your argument, you could post a summary?

New comment by Zanni in "FDA approves first eye drop for age-related vision loss"

Zanni — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 03:26:44 +0000

This article [1] claims a "3-line improvement" on the vision chart. It wouldn't be helpful for me (moving from 20/600 to 20/300, I'd still need correction) but would be a huge win for someone in the 20/50 to 20/80 range, correcting to 20/40, the minimum for driving without correction.

[1] https://www.ophthalmologyadvisor.com/news/yuvezzi-approved-a...

New comment by Zanni in "Data centers in space makes no sense"

Zanni — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 02:32:43 +0000

Electric cars make no sense.

Reusable rockets make no sense.

Autonomous cars make no sense.

Data centers in space make no sense. <--- You are here.

Humanoid robots make no sense.

New comment by Zanni in "Tesla ending Models S and X production"

Zanni — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:26:49 +0000

Fred Lambert at Electrek has become an unreliable reporter on Tesla. I don't know where his bias stems from, but it's unmistakeable.

Lambert claims David Moss couldn't find a Robotaxi ride without a safety driver. True enough, there aren't a lot of them on the road. That doesn't mean they don't exist or were "pulled back."

Here's Moss's latest tweet on the subject: "ANOTHER UNSUPERVISED:

2 in a row now here in Austin, TX of Tesla Robotaxi’s completely autonomous without chase cars.

You can see 2 cars in the clip with no one in it & anyone can book it!

Ride 59 complete." https://x.com/DavidMoss/status/2016939137031381487

Note also in that SAME ARTICLE, Lambert credits Moss with driving 10,000 miles on FSD v14 with zero interventions.

To paraphrase William Gibson: full self-driving is here, it's just unevenly distributed.

New comment by Zanni in "Employers, please use postmarked letters for job applications (2025)"

Zanni — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:15:33 +0000

Valid point if your ratio is correct, but I suspect it's the other way around.

New comment by Zanni in "Miami, your Waymo ride is ready"

Zanni — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 06:37:30 +0000

If the cost per ride is 35% cheaper than Uber/Lyft, then that money stays in the local economy, just in the hands of the consumer rather than the gig worker. Currently WayMo is more expensive, but I see that changing as they scale. And certainly CyberCab is promising to be much cheaper.

New comment by Zanni in "'Calvin and Hobbes' at 40"

Zanni — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 21:21:14 +0000

Jhonen Vasquez was previously best known for Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, an insanely dark graphic novel. I'm still stunned that the powers that be thought he should write an animated children's show. That said, I love Invader Zim. Taquitos!

New comment by Zanni in "Astrophotographer snaps skydiver falling in front of the sun"

Zanni — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:25:17 +0000

Peter Lik has a strategy sort of like this. It's still a limited edition of, say, 100, but the price increases as the edition sells out. The last print to sell may be 100x or more the first.

New comment by Zanni in "Astrophotographer snaps skydiver falling in front of the sun"

Zanni — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:18:14 +0000

That lost shot (Falcon 9 transiting the sun) is my favorite. I've got a print of it in my office, waiting to be hung on the wall.

New comment by Zanni in "Software essays that shaped me"

Zanni — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 13:57:33 +0000

He wrote several more books (including a sequel/second edition of Code Complete). None of them had the same impact, though: https://stevemcconnell.com/books/

New comment by Zanni in "PYREX vs. pyrex: What's the difference?"

Zanni — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:56:14 +0000

Carefully distinguishes between PYREX and pyrex. Immediately launches a discussion of Pyrex.

New comment by Zanni in "Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank"

Zanni — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:52:47 +0000

Why your [ultra-light hiker] friend suddenly has [the world's lightest] power bank.

I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker.

I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.

New comment by Zanni in "Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?"

Zanni — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:42:16 +0000

Awesome - I didn't know this!

New comment by Zanni in "Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?"

Zanni — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:00:33 +0000

Tesla screens switch to dark mode at night.

New comment by Zanni in "Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?"

Zanni — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 16:33:31 +0000

Depends enormously on the implementation and use case. My daily driver is a Tesla Model 3, which has a big, beautiful touch screen. But I almost never touch it while I'm driving. Anything I need to control can be handled by voice command ("set temp to 70") or the scroll wheels in the steering wheel. (The one irritating exception is the windshield wipers.)

New comment by Zanni in "iOS 26 Will Let You Add Your U.S. Passport to Wallet for Identity Verification"

Zanni — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:10:56 +0000

You don't have to share your phone, or its secrets, to use this. At the TSA checkpoint, there's a screen that says specifically what information they're asking for, you tap, and your phone shares that. You never lose physical control of your phone. No one even looks at the screen. It's basically tap-to-pay for authentication.

New comment by Zanni in "They Were Every Student's Worst Nightmare. Now Blue Books Are Back"

Zanni — Tue, 27 May 2025 11:55:38 +0000

The significance of blue books is that, in addition to being bound, they were handed out in class (and numbered) so you couldn't sneak in notes or pre-written pages.

New comment by Zanni in "Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses to the same meals"

Zanni — Tue, 13 May 2025 08:16:10 +0000

Well, yes, but it's also pretty dependent on what you eat. From the article: "Additionally, the summarized study did not record the timing of snack and water consumption."

A carb-heavy snack before a meal is going to result in a radically different response than eating the same meal on an empty stomach. I'm glad they acknowledged it, but it feels absurd to publish with this headline if they didn't record snacks.