Hacker News: acheron

New comment by acheron in "I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys"

acheron — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:41:55 +0000

I know laptops have a bit of a different standard, but for real keyboards, IBM perfected keyboard design in 1985 and all deviations from that are a mistake.

New comment by acheron in "Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?"

acheron — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 22:42:02 +0000

There are several? Venues around here use AXS, Seetickets/Eventim, Opendate. I buy more non-TM tickets than TM.

New comment by acheron in "Why are cells small?"

acheron — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 22:15:24 +0000

There’s also the one that almost ate the Enterprise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immunity_Syndrome_(Star_Tr...

New comment by acheron in "India's surprise baby bust"

acheron — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:53:05 +0000

“So you hate waffles?”

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-bitch-dats-a-whole-new-x-w...

New comment by acheron in "What I've learned about the trombone"

acheron — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 19:47:46 +0000

More formally that's an "F attachment", lowering the key of the instrument (assuming a standard tenor trombone) from B♭ to F. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombone#Valve_attachments

New comment by acheron in "Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel"

acheron — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:08:21 +0000

On iOS you don't have to do anything, -- gets autocorrected to an em-dash. This has been in iOS for almost 10 years IIRC.

New comment by acheron in "I hated writing until I learned there’s a science to it (2024)"

acheron — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:27:34 +0000

“I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!”

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11

New comment by acheron in "Google Hates You"

acheron — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:16:46 +0000

Breaking news from 2005

New comment by acheron in "Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps"

acheron — Fri, 22 May 2026 00:33:10 +0000

Freenet 3.11 for Workgroups

New comment by acheron in "Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart"

acheron — Thu, 21 May 2026 19:07:46 +0000

It’s a troll. Just flag and move on.

New comment by acheron in "Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing"

acheron — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:45:39 +0000

“We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?”

Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7 Activity recorded M.Y. 2302.22467 (TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED)

New comment by acheron in "Math Jokes in Alice in Wonderland"

acheron — Mon, 18 May 2026 17:43:11 +0000

Feet and inches long predate imperial units, and the US has never used the imperial system, btw. “Imperial” has a specific meaning and isn’t just “anything not metric”.

Anyway, base 12 is also built into most Germanic languages which have unique names for 11 and 12 (rather than something along the lines of “one-teen” and “two-teen”, which is more common in Romance languages IIRC.

New comment by acheron in "Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone"

acheron — Sat, 16 May 2026 12:49:31 +0000

Eh, Microsoft got bored of developing their own browser and just pushes Chromium on their users now. Probably they would have just turned Windows Phones into another Android too.

New comment by acheron in "I want to live like Costco people"

acheron — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:12:59 +0000

We didn’t have Costco in our area when I was a kid, but iirc that’s why my parents stopped going to Sam’s Club: any money they saved on buying cheaper bulk things went into buying random extras.

New comment by acheron in "I want to live like Costco people"

acheron — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:58:59 +0000

I resisted joining Costco for many years, because it seemed too culty, or just too popular in general (with my assumption being that most popular things are bad). Eventually they sucked me in though, and yes, it really is good.

New comment by acheron in "I want to live like Costco people"

acheron — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:57:09 +0000

Costco actually has a better checkout experience than most places IMO. They always have basically all lanes open, and the employees are efficient at moving people through.

I love Wegmans for most groceries but their checkouts seem to be getting worse.

New comment by acheron in "I want to live like Costco people"

acheron — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:54:56 +0000

Huh, really? Re: Wegmans. For me they still have the best produce quality by far.

Agree their prices have gone up in general though.

New comment by acheron in "California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy"

acheron — Tue, 05 May 2026 19:40:11 +0000

Probably the factory shouldn’t have been downtown, it should have been closer to the farms to minimize transport costs.

New comment by acheron in "Let's Buy Spirit Air"

acheron — Mon, 04 May 2026 01:23:51 +0000

Sounds like a good way to lose all your customers to the other airlines that charge less.

New comment by acheron in "Online age verification is the hill to die on"

acheron — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:50:04 +0000

Nah that’s silly, because Google has been doing all that already for the past quarter century. This “age verification” shit isn’t going to move the needle on the Google-created dystopia we already have.

The time to worry about not having a digital cage was quite awhile ago. Instead tech people pushed Chrome and Android and Gmail and ads onto us.