Hacker News: abnry

New comment by abnry in "GPS and the Lost Art of Getting Lost"

abnry — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:40:52 +0000

Getting lost when you have time and a full tank of gas is fun.

Getting lost when you need to be someone on time is awful.

We can love the former and hate the latter.

New comment by abnry in "How to read more books"

abnry — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:13:24 +0000

I don't think serious reader is a cringe term. Reading is a skill like any other and we use terms like "serious golfer" or "serious painter". The flip side of serious is causal. It's okay to structure your life so that reading is a big part of it.

New comment by abnry in "Offline tool to stabilize TV volume using IR control and spike detection"

abnry — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:58:08 +0000

I need something like this for when my AC unit, which can only be right next to the TV, cycles on for a bit. It's sort of the inverse problem. When total noise gets louder I need the TV also to get louder.

New comment by abnry in "Show HN: Zanagrams"

abnry — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 20:41:59 +0000

Very nice! I solved them all in the backyard on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

New comment by abnry in "Genuinely, my all-time favourite image: Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis"

abnry — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:00:07 +0000

How can an animal even have a neck that long? Was it clear from the fossils that it is this long because I am skeptical.

New comment by abnry in "How many of the 170k English words do you know?"

abnry — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 03:40:19 +0000

This is where I got the link from.

New comment by abnry in "How many of the 170k English words do you know?"

abnry — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 03:37:58 +0000

I knew Flibbertigibbet from the sound of music:

MARGARETTA: How do you find a word that means Maria?

BERTHE: A flibberti gibbet!

SOPHIA: A willo' the wisp!

MARGARETTA: A clown!

How many of the 170k English words do you know?

abnry — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 13:51:36 +0000

Article URL: https://vocabowl-870366514258.us-west1.run.app/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48598586

Points: 501

# Comments: 555

New comment by abnry in "Taxonomy of the Occlupanida (parasitoids on bread bag tags)"

abnry — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 03:11:40 +0000

When I was a child, I remember going to the nearby children's museum and seeing an exhibit with 1 million bread tags. It was supposed to help conceptualize the number.

New comment by abnry in "Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)"

abnry — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:15:33 +0000

Are you carrying a lot of stress when you were walking 10 min mid-day? I think the wandering, creative mind is the goal and walking often facilitates that, but if some stronger force is keeping you away then it may not work.

New comment by abnry in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

abnry — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:44:06 +0000

Europeans are shocked by the portion sizes in America. But they feel normal in the US. Frogs often don't know they are being boiled.

New comment by abnry in "Some Things Just Take Time"

abnry — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 16:15:01 +0000

The guiding analogy of the piece is that of planting a tree and waiting for it to mature.

The reason we need to wait is that it takes time for some things to mature.

New comment by abnry in "The Shape of Inequalities"

abnry — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:45:07 +0000

Which IIRC are all a consequence of Jensen's inequality.

New comment by abnry in "Obsidian Sync now has a headless client"

abnry — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:09:41 +0000

Fantastic! Now I don't need to run it in a headless xorg session.

New comment by abnry in "An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward"

abnry — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 05:37:24 +0000

I'm still struggling to care about the "hit piece".

It's an AI. Who cares what it says? Refusing AI commits is just like any other moderation decision people experience on the web anywhere else.

New comment by abnry in "Show HN: Wikipedia as a doomscrollable social media feed"

abnry — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:23:18 +0000

The NSFW content is a big bummer for me. I can't let a kid go to Wikipedia unsupervised because of this.

New comment by abnry in "Show HN: Subth.ink – write something and see how many others wrote the same"

abnry — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 22:55:09 +0000

I love it!

I typed "hello".

> Your thought's hash is: 4358f43b660389eecd435dc2a5f5cee29786245cd2cff27bd4de0b3e8fd53b79

> Including you, 267 persons had that thought already!

> First time was 4 hours, 14 minutes ago, last time was less than a minute ago.

Of course, everyone else has thought of this. But what if I "type": 4358f43b660389eecd435dc2a5f5cee29786245cd2cff27bd4de0b3e8fd53b79

> Your thought's hash is: c37d0a8c512b9ec7074d3bc77c4545d58fdfcde55bad89a70ede71ac2ac0000d

> Including you, 8 persons had that thought already!

> First time was 2 hours, 1 minute ago, last time was 1 minute ago.

That's hilarious!

And also, "typing": echo "hello world" | curl -d @- https://subth.ink

>Your thought's hash is: c5ba1c7e35345dbb8c2dc6be0972d0b6ddf6c6515143b64c057296948e2ba8cd

>Including you, 10 persons had that thought already!

>First time was 1 hour, 52 minutes ago, last time was 2 minutes ago.

New comment by abnry in "Maybe the default settings are too high"

abnry — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 17:25:27 +0000

I think the response is a great comment. It really is insane that they felt the need to damn the flooded campsite.

The comment actually does a great job of accentuating the point of the story. Everyone offended is too caught up in their achiever mode mindset to truly appreciate the absurdity.

New comment by abnry in "Let's put Tailscale on a jailbroken Kindle"

abnry — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:22:12 +0000

Where do I get DRM-free ebooks to put on a Kobo? I don't support breaking DRM. So I'm using a Kindle because it has the best access to and integration with almost any book I want.

New comment by abnry in "Llama-Scan: Convert PDFs to Text W Local LLMs"

abnry — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 23:43:30 +0000

I would really like a tool to reliably get the title of PDF. It is not as easy as it seems. If the PDF exists online (say a paper or course notes) a bonus would be to find that or related metadata.