<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: andyferris</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andyferris</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:03:08 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=andyferris" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "How Terry Tao became an evangelist for AI in math"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The brilliance of a mathematician like Terry  is the the clarity they can bring.<p>That’s my interpretation of your comment, anyway.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:38:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48502823</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48502823</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48502823</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> a good UI absolutely cannot cater to both<p>So make two UIs? Or an API and a novice user / mass market UI, and let the open source community serve fussy power users (and borrow some of their good ideas as a return on your show of good faith)?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:06:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48485006</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48485006</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48485006</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Do women’s mate preferences change across the ovulatory cycle? (2014) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Can we summarize this as "people get horny sometimes" and "ovulating people get horny"? Or is that too reductive?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 12:42:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424514</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424514</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424514</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Modern off-road/off-grid inverter chargers make wiring to the network pretty easy. I'd still recommend an electrician, but most they'd likely need to do is wire the grid into the inverter-charger input, and your cabin to the output, and check whatever protection (like RCDs) your cabin has is sufficient/up-to-date.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:31:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48404209</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48404209</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48404209</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The OP mentioned modern battery technologies - generally the shunt sits between an LFP battery negative and the main circuit negative/ground, and the solar panels connect to MPPTs. So the voltage at the shunt is a nice consistent nominal 12.8V (~13.3V in practice) or a multiple thereof (for series battery setups).<p>I just upgraded our hybrid caravan to 24V LFP (2x 300Ah 12V), roof solar + extra MPPT for external solar, shunt, inverter-charger, 24V->12V converter for existing circuity (lights, pump, etc), DCDC charger from car, battery balancer, a little touchscreen interface inside (all victron gear with renogy batteries). It was as a lot of fun and it's amazing how much power we have off grid now! The system would work excellent for a little cabin exactly how it is (minus DCDC).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:15:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48404024</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48404024</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48404024</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That’s incorrect.<p>In most western nations, the “people who run the government” get paid a salary similar to a good software engineer (or maybe a doctor), and progressive taxation lets the government fund social services including free healthcare and tertiary education.<p>Rather than use Stalin as a straw man, maybe try take your nation in direction that helps people, rather than away?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 05:05:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394159</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394159</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394159</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That depends how they got wealthy.<p>Did they steal everything outright? Someone is worse off in that transaction. (Or everyone a little bit worse off if it’s government grift).<p>Did they create all that value themselves? Might be fine - positive sum games do exist.<p>Did they create some system where a bunch of money flows just to them based on the labour of others? Maybe it depends on the details, like how much the labour is paid.<p>I think Piketty’s point was around capital and wealth tending to accumulate unless something forces it to disperse. This can get worse over time. The last couple hundred years were relatively “good” due to the way revolutions and WWI and WWII basically eliminated many of the wealthy families in the west, a couple times, and the post-war societies were “reset” with good equality that has slowly eroded since (due to insufficient “friction” to prevent accumulating extreme wealth over time, such as high loophole-free wealth and inheritance taxes).  Or so the theory goes.<p>Building on that, when you get extreme wealth you get individuals with power to affect policy for their personal good. Some will choose to be selfish (it’s human nature). Policy shifts in their favour. We end up going in the opposite direction to that since the Great Depression - which really was a collectivist culture of everyone getting a share of the wealth of the nation, rather than being screwed over by rich and powerful folks. (McCarthyism somewhat put the brakes on that in the US in particular, though, which is why you can get e.g. free health care elsewhere in the west).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:51:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394025</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394025</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394025</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Uber caps employee AI spending after blowing through budget in four months"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh wow! Team is still ok but Enterprise is excluded.<p>That’s… quite harsh. I don’t normally want to speak up for BigCorp but it seems like they are getting gouged.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 03:48:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48379675</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48379675</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48379675</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Uber caps employee AI spending after blowing through budget in four months"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I’m confused why a business would allow (non-data-science/agent harness devs) to pay per token instead of eg an Anthropic business premium seat? A monthly subscription seems pretty straight forward for the accountants, no?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:54:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48376140</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48376140</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48376140</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One problem I see is even in representational democracy (I'll use the Westminster system for concreteness) we get a lot of indirection leading to policies people don't actually want. Even more indirection is bad.<p>Assume members of parliament are chosen fairly (popular vote approximates number of seats etc). The winning party (or parties) form a cabinet - their own little hierarchy. What we tend to see is a majority of cabinet members voting in cabinet for a policy, a majority of their caucus voting to support their policy (relying on cabinet solidarity to get the numbers across the line), then a majority of parliament passing a bill (using the solidarity of the party to get it across the line). The agenda may have been set by just a few parliamentarians (say just 9 out 17 cabinet members in a parliament of ~100) and an unpolular policy comes to pass.<p>I'd fear having local representatives choosing state representatives choosing federal representatives would have even worse outcomes in terms of representing the individuals at the "bottom" of this process. There is a reason representatives are voted for directly at each level of governments in our democracies - this wasn't a "simplification" it was a deliberate choice by our forebearers who had seen how politics shakes out in practice.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 31 May 2026 21:52:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48350113</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48350113</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48350113</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Zig: Build System Reworked"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Low-level programming gets a bad name because C has many footguns and the spec leaves much behavior undefined - a fact that implementers use almost adversarially (which I'd support, if the goal was to refine the spec...).<p>C++ adds more high-level conveniences without actually removing the footguns and undefined behavior (much C code compiles in a C++ compiler).<p>Zig tries to keep the low-level C philosophy but have things more well factored and well defined. The result is you _can_ tinker in high-level code, yet "drop down" into low-level code as you desire.<p>(Compared to rust, you get fewer compiler-enforced guarantees, but unlike C the language isn't trying to make high-level code adversarial).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2026 11:24:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335062</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335062</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335062</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Is This Sustainable?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes. And ultimately the colour of swans in Western Australia impacts… almost nothing at all.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 11:49:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321938</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321938</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321938</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Is This Sustainable?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Just a funny observation, apologies in advance:<p>I am rewatching Stargate SG-1 with my children right now and cannot read this comment except in the voice of Teal’c.<p>In the previous episode the team was in 1969 on a hippy bus.<p>My advice is to chill out a little…</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 11:47:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321919</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321919</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48321919</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sure, the ISP _should_ deliver the packets. No worries.<p>The user agent should... be an agent for the user, and be able to perform actions on their behalf.<p>(The legality of those actions is of course assumed by the user here... if I add an automated flamethrower to my mailbox and burn my bills, well the debt collectors may come regardless if I read them or not - we cannot shift blame to the USPS here).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 11:25:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278209</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278209</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48278209</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "The Letter S, by Donald Knuth (1980) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How many great inventions and discoveries were the product of yak shaving? I'd imagine quite a lot.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 10:35:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48220428</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48220428</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48220428</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Houses are for living, not for speculation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Interesting timing, with Australian budget night (removal of tax discounts for both capital and trusts, and for investment in existing housing stock).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 13:24:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107961</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107961</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107961</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Learning Software Architecture"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My example here is: it’s impossible to know what spaghetti code is until you experience it, and are on the hook for its bugs and outages.<p>We hear a lot about it prior and upon experiencing it I could name it. (Like love, I suppose?)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 12:54:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107577</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107577</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107577</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "If AI writes your code, why use Python?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>To me applying LLMs to a  python (or similarly dynamic) code base where it’s currently spaghetti and monkey patched, it can miss things just like I can.<p>But… I have to admit Opus 4.7 has been very pragmatic in detecting root causes and proposing sensible fixes to bugs in this situation (ie bugs encountered in production not compile time).<p>It’s also fine at matching current styles and conventions (which is great if they are good styles and conventions).<p>In terms of new code, rust would have been near impossible to write with such a high degree of non-local reasoning, so I’m assuming these bugs wouldn’t be present.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 12:38:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107403</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107403</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107403</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Lakebase architecture delivers faster Postgres writes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes.<p>Maybe I’m wrong, but AFAICT this is block (page) storage backed by S3, tuned for Postgres with some paxos-linked storage/caching servers sitting in front? Sounds good, but I’m not sure “lake” or “warehouse” is a word I’d choose… much closer to Litestream-with-reads, or the somewhat-famous “I ran out of RAM so I downloaded some more” blog article.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 22:07:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48088634</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48088634</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48088634</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by andyferris in "Making Julia as Fast as C++ (2019)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Meh, I’ve never been associated with the company and AFAICT they provide value through platforms for enterprises. Not everyone gets OSS sponsorships to fund team (and using a social media presence to achieve this was a post-Julia phenomenon).<p>It’s nothing like Google-the-ad-company influencing Chrome. The company consumes Julia for products to sell, rather. Maybe this affects the ordering of features landing, but… meh.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2026 13:39:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074895</link><dc:creator>andyferris</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074895</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074895</guid></item></channel></rss>