Hacker News: Zuider

New comment by Zuider in "Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)"

Zuider — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 17:49:38 +0000

This sensitivity to intonation is why all the great quartet composers were either deaf, Hungarian, or both.

New comment by Zuider in "Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)"

Zuider — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 17:46:36 +0000

Classical guitarists are used to pushing nylon strings into consonance by compressing the string either towards the nut or the bridge. Not so easy with steel, where players will just preemptively retune to whatever chords are most prominent in the song.

People stuck using ancient Windows computers

Zuider — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 22:42:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250516-the-people-stuck-using-ancient-windows-computers

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44751012

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by Zuider in "Feral pig meat transmits rare bacteria"

Zuider — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 18:05:06 +0000

In the USA, it is open season on feral swine all year around, no permit required, as they are a very noxious pest. In Texas, you can even go heli-hogging!

New comment by Zuider in "Normans and Slavery: Breaking the Bonds"

Zuider — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 18:26:16 +0000

At the time, Ireland was indeed a wealthy country, having made its fortune selling leather to the Romans three centuries before, because the semi-nomadic Irish cultivated large herds of cattle roaming on unfenced plains, while the settled Britons kept sheep. This permitted the establishment of a culturally sophisticated Gaelic Order so stable that it was able to assimilate the invading Vikings and the first wave of Normans, who actually went native and began speaking the Irish language.

New comment by Zuider in "Tcl 9.0"

Zuider — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 19:31:14 +0000

Why did they remove tilde '~' as a convenient shortcut for the Home directory?

New comment by Zuider in "Pavel Durov and the Blackberry Ratchet"

Zuider — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 01:54:54 +0000

There are claims that Signal has already been compromised by the Five Eyes Intel Agencies, albeit through bribery rather than the overt coercion we see here. The key change is that Signal can no longer guarantee end-to-end encryption based on a passphrase tied to the app itself, and known only to the user.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/8974

New comment by Zuider in "Xi Goes Full Stalin with Purge"

Zuider — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 01:33:15 +0000

Given the intensive surveillance state set up by the CCP, it would be very hard to hide such benefits.

New comment by Zuider in "Code of Ethics"

Zuider — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 04:44:17 +0000

From experience, I would agree that the first thing activists who wish to take over a group will do is to behave badly, and then use this as the pretext to demand a Code of Conduct.

They will then subvert the spirit of the CoC, while adhering legalistically to the letter, in order to control others. They allows them divert a topic into pointless discussion of the rules, or to needle someone persistently, while remaining within the rules, until that person reacts, at which point they will insist that he has violated the CoC.

New comment by Zuider in "Code of Ethics"

Zuider — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 04:28:37 +0000

The minimum standard of good behavior need not be explicitly stated, and violations can be dealt with as they arise. The problem with written sets of rules is that they can be subverted and misused.

New comment by Zuider in "Why doesn't Windows have an "expert mode"? (2003)"

Zuider — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 02:38:12 +0000

But the festering garbage is entangled with essential material so that attempting to take out the trash can brick the OS.

New comment by Zuider in "Whither philosophy?"

Zuider — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 23:58:42 +0000

Aristotle's actual writings are lost. The books attributed to Aristotle are comprised of lecture notes collected by his students, later compiled according to topic, so you get the Ethics, the Politics, the Physics and Metaphysics.

They didn't quite know how to name the last book since its contents were so abstract and unrelated to the everyday world, so they simply called it "the book that comes after the Physics," which eventually became known as the Metaphysics. It is worth noting that the title is a specific reference to the book, not to any notion of the subject matter somehow transcending physics. After all, why physics, in particular?

In the light of that, it is even more jarring to see the term 'metaphysics' being used to describe spiritualism and new age mysticism.

New comment by Zuider in "EU says X hosts "illegal content" connected to Israel-Hamas war"

Zuider — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 21:55:09 +0000

You have just provided links. That is not an argument.

New comment by Zuider in "EU says X hosts "illegal content" connected to Israel-Hamas war"

Zuider — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:16:12 +0000

That is one plausible scenario, but another is that Breton, by all accounts, an arrogant, petty autocrat, is simply attempting to impose his will, not just on Musk, but everyone else. The words he has chosen to use suggests the latter may be closer to the truth.

New comment by Zuider in "EU says X hosts "illegal content" connected to Israel-Hamas war"

Zuider — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:01:05 +0000

Thierry Breton, the author of the letter, appears to have a personal grudge against Elon Musk, and has directed several aggressive ultimatums towards him such as, "In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules," "You can run but you can't hide" and "Our teams will be ready for enforcement."

Breton is set to be the next EU Commissioner, succeeding Ursula Van Der Leyden.

A.I. model beats PNG and FLAC at compression

Zuider — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 13:38:07 +0000

Article URL: https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-ai-png-flac-compression.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37844218

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by Zuider in "A new instrument found unusual success"

Zuider — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 00:10:13 +0000

Stevie wonder was one of the pioneers of the Fairlight Synthesizer, which was possible for him to use because it used a text interface navigated by arrow keys, rather than a fiddly GUI with unpredictable placement of drop-down menus. Arguably, a touch-screen GUI would have the same predictability (because of consistent placement of active elements) as the Fairlight text screen. In short, rather than being a tasteless joke or a stunt, it was an instrument that he could profitably use, which was demonstrated by the fact that he actually could use it.

New comment by Zuider in "Drop Table “Companies”;– LTD (2016)"

Zuider — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 20:31:49 +0000

As the blog post says, most SQL databases won't accept a name given in double quotes as the name of a table.

New comment by Zuider in "Forth: The programming language that writes itself: The Web Page"

Zuider — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 05:15:45 +0000

Forth was created to control the aiming of a radio telescope. It was used in the original Star Wars movie to direct the complex motions of the model space ships.

New comment by Zuider in "The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus"

Zuider — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 04:07:25 +0000

The British Flat Earth Society is a joke society in this vein. They amuse themselves by writing very erudite debunkings of the nefarious Spherical Earth conspiracy theory, and sending strongly worded Cease & Desist notices to NASA.