Hacker News: Zarathustra30

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Prolog Coding Horror"

Zarathustra30 — Sun, 17 May 2026 23:55:54 +0000

I've actually run into this in the wild, with regards to sales forecasting. A program we were using returned zero if the error bars on a forecast were over 100%. For example, selling somewhere between 1 and 7 units, but averaging 3.

Returning 3 was "wrong", but infinitely more correct than retuning 0.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Knitting bullshit"

Zarathustra30 — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:35:48 +0000

I occasionally put on a (human-made) podcast for the word-sounds rather than the content. I can imagine others do the same without caring whether it is human-made.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027"

Zarathustra30 — Mon, 04 May 2026 18:01:42 +0000

It's the curb-cut effect. Just because the larger population doesn't demand something doesn't mean they won't benefit from it.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI"

Zarathustra30 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 01:42:52 +0000

Once you get a byte-by-byte duplicate, you can start refactoring into idiomatic Rust. Convert pointers to references, rip out unsafe blocks, and let Clippy go ham.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting"

Zarathustra30 — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 21:06:53 +0000

Paypal does what? I'm sometimes nervous I only need 2 factors of authentication. 0FA seems dangerous for financial anything.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "An argument for increasing TCP's initial congestion window (2024)"

Zarathustra30 — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 07:46:26 +0000

There's always something else at play. Bufferbloat hides problems from the systems that can easily solve them. It doesn't cause problems, it makes them worse.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act"

Zarathustra30 — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:43:33 +0000

That solution reminds me of the evil bit. However, if someone has the skills or resources to unset the bit, they likely are allowed to anyway.

https://archive.org/details/rfc3514

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike"

Zarathustra30 — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 12:50:35 +0000

If worker productivity keeps increasing, we may reach a point where it exceeds total labor required. If we keep livelyhood tied to employment, the only two options would be busywork or mass starvation.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike"

Zarathustra30 — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 06:43:19 +0000

Instead of giving people makework, we could move towards divorcing "livelihood" from "employment".

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Greece introduces the six day work week"

Zarathustra30 — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 20:01:55 +0000

Isn't Greece's unemployment rate the highest in the E.U.? Yes, they may be "low-quality" workers applying for jobs, but if a company can't find "high-quality," they must make do.

How did we lose the art of training new hires?

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Google faces antitrust probe in Japan for pushing search default"

Zarathustra30 — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 19:17:21 +0000

It does, actually. It implies the process has just started, which is pretty substantive.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "How to Design a Vernacular Chair"

Zarathustra30 — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 05:01:50 +0000

Form does follow function, at least at first. Skeuomorphism only happens because the original had design compromises that looked cool.

I think we humans will happily sacrifice aesthetics if it improves something we care about. Unfortunately, we don't care enough about baked-in obsolescence (or can't measure it).

I do wish we would look at electric cars again, to see if making them not look like cars would improve them.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "When MFA isn't MFA, or how we got phished"

Zarathustra30 — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 23:29:20 +0000

The toddler got there first.

Seriously, though, it's hard to keep track of something that gets used once every five years.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "New images and video confirm Austin-made Tesla model Y has cracked front casting"

Zarathustra30 — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 15:22:52 +0000

For those unclear on the definitions, https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Heat your house with a mechanical windmill (2019)"

Zarathustra30 — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 04:22:14 +0000

I misread that as "(black water) tank" and got worried.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Executive Function Theft"

Zarathustra30 — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 08:10:02 +0000

Slightley different. Decision Fatigue is what happens when you run low on Choice-Gas.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Huazhong University demonstrates LK-99 diamagnetism"

Zarathustra30 — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 15:34:29 +0000

That one's pretty standard. When the lab is about to run out of money, they fluff up an incremental improvement as a 'major breakthrough'. No false claims or fake science involved.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "The Reluctant Sysadmin's Guide to Securing a Linux Server"

Zarathustra30 — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:44:20 +0000

Too bad.

Sometimes a business can't or won't hire a real sysadmin. The people forced into the job need guides just as much.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "Revolt: FOSS Discord Alternative"

Zarathustra30 — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 04:42:16 +0000

I'm not sure about that. Microsoft is Commoditizing its Complement. I have a free repository on GitHub that auto-deploys to a paid Azure host. If GitHub wasn't as good as it was, M$ wouldn't have my $.

New comment by Zarathustra30 in "How to speed up the Rust compiler"

Zarathustra30 — Sat, 15 Oct 2016 03:04:32 +0000

> ...if the features of the language are used...

The Rust compiler uses Rust's features terribly, just because Rust's features were a moving target for the majority of the compiler's lifetime.