Hacker News: _madmax_

Phantom Power or the Allegiance of the Weak

_madmax_ — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 02:33:33 +0000

Article URL: https://madmax0x0f.substack.com/p/phantom-power

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46819898

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by _madmax_ in "Don't force your kids to do math"

_madmax_ — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 13:08:14 +0000

At some point you have to force them for the sake of homework, just saying.

But yeah, you're better off in math if you can make it make sense on a philosophical level. That I agree with.

New comment by _madmax_ in "Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood"

_madmax_ — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 16:53:39 +0000

I think it's sort of sad that this simple act of trust in your community (having coffee and exposing yourself to others) has to be over-analysed and dissected into a blog. Broadening and Deepening events, just dividing the whole act as events it feels like i'm reading a post-mortem on adobe workfront. When the true meaning of that awesome initiative remains the human need for social interaction and the need to be part of something bigger (like a community!). I feel this is poseur-ish and project-managerial to a degree even detailed oriented people will find unauthentic.

New comment by _madmax_ in "Nobody cares"

_madmax_ — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:57:09 +0000

Guy lost me when he mentioned Musk is caring. Of course he cares...about his fortune and his power hunger.

New comment by _madmax_ in "Debugging: Indispensable rules for finding even the most elusive problems (2004)"

_madmax_ — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 03:10:27 +0000

I had the incredible luck to stumble upon this book early in my career and it helped me tremendously in so many ways. If I could name only one it would be that it helped me get over the sentiment of being helpless in front of a difficult situation. This book brought me to peace with imperfection and me being an artisan of imperfection.

New comment by _madmax_ in "What does this button do? – My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch"

_madmax_ — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 13:27:57 +0000

New car sounds like brand new car, not used car. Which have history.

I found the title a bit misleading in that regard.

New comment by _madmax_ in "I've forked neofetch to keep it alive"

_madmax_ — Fri, 03 May 2024 03:07:22 +0000

What is imaginative is your ability to backtrack and pull a strawman in what I can only assume is your last ditch effort to preserve your ego.

New comment by _madmax_ in "I've forked neofetch to keep it alive"

_madmax_ — Wed, 01 May 2024 19:49:22 +0000

To truly believe that uselessness (such as advertising the pressing of a button) should be rewarded is terribly short-sighted.

That's what I meant when I said that it spoke volumes about what you consider to be a contribution in FOSS. If you think that saying 'oh, I forked a dead project to keep it alive' and posting it without having accomplished anything is anything more useful or productive than pointing out how useless that is, then I'm afraid your definition of contribution is as shallow as your understanding of constructive criticism.

On a more personal note, I'm growing weary of spoon-feeding you. It is not very complex yet you still struggle to grasp the simplest of explanations.

New comment by _madmax_ in "I've forked neofetch to keep it alive"

_madmax_ — Wed, 01 May 2024 15:18:07 +0000

I wanted to comment, and I did. And I did say a fair point, in my opinion.

The fact that you'd rather have me shut up speaks volume about what you consider a contribution in FOSS, and frankly I hope it's not a reflection on how you approach the real world, because you're in for a rude awakening.

New comment by _madmax_ in "I've forked neofetch to keep it alive"

_madmax_ — Wed, 01 May 2024 14:28:07 +0000

Because it's dishonest to say they're keeping it alive while all they're doing is talking about it. You want to believe them, go ahead and celebrate.

New comment by _madmax_ in "I've forked neofetch to keep it alive"

_madmax_ — Wed, 01 May 2024 13:38:32 +0000

If their actions spoke louder than their words I would actually be interested. But that's what they did didnt they ? They pressed a button and they've posted it on HN. They actually did more to publish the button pressing than they did to keep the repo alive.

So yeah, pardon my lack of enthusiasm towards someone who says stuff.

New comment by _madmax_ in "Please Don't Ask If an Open Source Project Is Dead"

_madmax_ — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 03:08:05 +0000

I think it's okay to ask if the project is dead, but when they start pressuring you like they're your PM it may be time to remind the users that the project is open source and that they have the option to fork it to work on it on their own and make their own version with what they think is missing.

Furthermore I think that this sample is exactly what can discourage an open source project maintainer to stop development and work on something else, maybe something closed and private, which is bad for open source generally.

So people need to be more patient and read the code of conduct of any project they want to interact with.

New comment by _madmax_ in "Absurd Success"

_madmax_ — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 13:44:51 +0000

I'm happy for you !

New comment by _madmax_ in "Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact"

_madmax_ — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 02:11:28 +0000

You can expect this kind of dishonesty and self-serving politics for as long as we tolerate climate change induced disasters and its consequences on the human kind.

New comment by _madmax_ in "Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)"

_madmax_ — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 11:40:50 +0000

The struggle make your knowledge crystallize even better, on top of overcoming the failure. I almost wish anyone to fail one important class in university.

New comment by _madmax_ in "New JWST data confirms, worsens the Hubble tension"

_madmax_ — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 12:12:16 +0000

>However, for the past ~6 billion years, distant galaxies have been speeding up in their recession, and the expansion rate, though still dropping, is not headed toward zero.

Am I not getting something here or is this sentence not make sense?

New comment by _madmax_ in "Malignant melanoma deploys elegant molecular mechanism to evade immune responses"

_madmax_ — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 03:06:56 +0000

Interesting choice of word for the title.

New comment by _madmax_ in "My favorite Vim oneliners for text manipulation"

_madmax_ — Sun, 06 Aug 2023 03:45:07 +0000

That one made me cringe hard, the guy would just not use the built-in function or have the decency to sling back into the shell with :! wc -w filename.whatever.

Insanity described in that post.

New comment by _madmax_ in "The Internet Free Zone (1997)"

_madmax_ — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 23:57:07 +0000

I really like that the old web is making a comeback

New comment by _madmax_ in "I claim Rich Hickey is wrong about non-null arguments to functions (2020)"

_madmax_ — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 23:23:29 +0000

I agree with you wholeheartedly