Hacker News: adornKey

New comment by adornKey in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

adornKey — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 10:53:51 +0000

So, to follow up I'd say in the context of EML I think ln(-1) = pi*i is the natural fit. Pi and Tau are both more advanced constructs.

New comment by adornKey in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

adornKey — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:48:08 +0000

The construction so far uses ln(-1) to get to pi - so far no easy way to tau.

New comment by adornKey in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

adornKey — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:13:49 +0000

Although x + y is surprisingly more complicated than you'd expect at first. The construction first goes for exp(x) and ln(x) then to x - y and finally uses -y to get to x + y.

New comment by adornKey in ""The new Copilot app for Windows 11 is really just Microsoft Edge""

adornKey — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:03:26 +0000

Ätsch!

New comment by adornKey in "Review of Microsoft's ClearType Font Collection (2005)"

adornKey — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:55:13 +0000

Having the focal point up close for a long time isn't that good for the eyes, so sitting closer than an arms length to a desk monitor isn't an idea that lasts well.

100 dpi with subpixel rendering already maxes out angular resolution (horizontal). It doesn't max out everything (retinal), so you still see some artifacts, but practically this is not that relevant. The price in energy/bandwidth rises quadratic for very little gain.

To get the equivalent of 4K at 100 ppi - with 200 ppi you have to put the burden of 8K onto the GPU... For now this is absolutely not good - High ppi is ok for small monitors and handheld devices, but for a decent desk with several good monitors GPUs just aren't ready yet.

New comment by adornKey in "Review of Microsoft's ClearType Font Collection (2005)"

adornKey — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 13:01:06 +0000

But the angular resolution of the eye doesn't rise. For a desktop monitor 100 ppi practically already reached the limits. Anything beyond that is just additional burden for the GPU and a waste of bandwidth. Surely you can increase resolution just to make font rendering easier, but you also have to pay the price in energy consumption or speed - without any visible improvement.

New comment by adornKey in "Review of Microsoft's ClearType Font Collection (2005)"

adornKey — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:22:25 +0000

Microsoft did a lot of great work on Fonts in the past. Recently it looked like they abandoned per monitor subpixel-rendering?! In which direction are they heading?

New comment by adornKey in "ASCII and Unicode quotation marks (2007)"

adornKey — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:24:06 +0000

The explanation seems to be that it looked good in some old fonts. But I think it was always some kind of abuse. On old Typewriters the accents were usually used for accents (é è). They didn't move the cursor, so using them for apostrophes wasn't that comfortable and interrupted writing flow. Accent + space looks a bit like a quotation mark, but the right place of an accent is usually on top of a letter.

New comment by adornKey in "Number Research Inc"

adornKey — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 09:54:06 +0000

A more general approach are Encyclopedias of integer series. I think that works better than just focusing on single numbers. Hm. How many numbers are there, that are interesting, but not part of a series?

New comment by adornKey in "“Microslop” filtered in the official Microsoft Copilot Discord server"

adornKey — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 07:19:59 +0000

Maybe that game exists, but it's an old word and you can find references for it that are hundreds of years old. Its meaning fits to the browser. Your statement that it's just some kind of reference to some special game is not correct.

New comment by adornKey in "Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes"

adornKey — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:21:28 +0000

A few years ago I liked Ars Technica, but then somehow I think quality went down the drain. Did something happen to them a few years ago? If they get rid of the crazy reporters and go AI only - maybe the quality will improve again to a readable level.

New comment by adornKey in "“Microslop” filtered in the official Microsoft Copilot Discord server"

adornKey — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 12:09:32 +0000

"Der Ätsch-Browser".

New comment by adornKey in "RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs"

adornKey — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:35:40 +0000

Once everybody has a decent amount of VRAM they can just run local AIs and the need to mess with Ad-laden search results will fizzle. So of course they are desperate to grab a new monopoly. People haven't realised yet, that local AIs are fast and produce good results - on pretty average hardware. If they don't manage to grab a new monopoly Google will be history.

But it doesn't really need a nefarious plot for the price spikes. There is a serious lack of VRAM deployed out there. Filling that gap will take quite some time. Add to that the nefarious plot and the situation will most likely get even worse....

New comment by adornKey in "Danish government agency to ditch Microsoft software (2025)"

adornKey — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 11:57:20 +0000

Oh oh... Time to say goodbye to Greenland. Lets see what is going to happen to LEGO.. Freedom Bricks?

New comment by adornKey in "WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives sold out for 2026"

adornKey — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 10:53:08 +0000

Do the guys that buy out the market have real use for all the hardware - or is it just hype? A solution against investors trying to corner the market would be to sell virtual hardware. Let them buy as much options on virtual "to be delivered" hardware" as they want. We also need an option market for virtual LLM-tokens, where the investors can put all their money without affecting real people.

New comment by adornKey in "Mathematicians disagree on the essential structure of the complex numbers (2024)"

adornKey — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 11:12:30 +0000

One agreement could be that Eisenstein integers are more beautiful...

New comment by adornKey in "Simplifying Vulkan one subsystem at a time"

adornKey — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:53:17 +0000

Currently Debian wants to deprecate GTK2. So even the guys that are interested in stability might start to see problems with Debian. The key problem of Linux is that it doesn't have a stable API to write long living GUI-software for. So far Debian was the way to go. Maybe recommending Debian will become even less popular soon.

New comment by adornKey in "Why is the sky blue?"

adornKey — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 14:23:39 +0000

Yes, to all the the scattering, the sky has, you have water and other material relevant for absorption in the path. In the end even the colour of the ground might matter. In the past some people said, that the sea is blue, because it's a reflection of the blue sky, but that covers only a part of the problem.

New comment by adornKey in "Why is the sky blue?"

adornKey — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 12:11:48 +0000

I think the color of the ocean is an even more interesting subject than the color of the sky. There is even more interesting physics involved.

New comment by adornKey in "Why is the sky blue?"

adornKey — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 17:39:52 +0000

You won't get a green sky, but at least there is a meteorological optical phenomenon called the green flash around sunset. To see it, I think, you have to know what you're looking for - and you need good conditions.