Hacker News: antod

New comment by antod in "How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story"

antod — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 03:15:39 +0000

Only my first job involved newspaper ads (early 90s). My second job pivoting into tech came via USENET, and later jobs from networks or shoulder tapping by recruiters.

New comment by antod in "How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)"

antod — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 01:56:44 +0000

yeah, when I first stumbled on to the internet it was all about the protocols and specific implementations didn't matter.

Then later IE dominated the web and hurt interoperability, but we fought back through the Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox era anxiously following IE6 slowly losing market share.

Only to find that the war had shifted beyond clients and standards support to the sites and the power of their business models.

And parallel battles for the old standards based DIY freedom lost to hyperscaler clouds and now AI.

All in all compared to that, losing Google Reader seems small, but it was kinda the nexus point at the centre of it all.

New comment by antod in "Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy"

antod — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 23:27:49 +0000

I don't get migraines very often (once a year maybe), but the first aura was very strange not knowing what it was.

For me they start out as a bright point of light then spreads out into an expanding shimmering arc of rainbow colors. Sometimes the vision inside the arc is ok, other times it is kinda missing. The headache usually comes on as the aura is fading out. Sometimes I get an aura without the migraine.

New comment by antod in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

antod — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 05:10:10 +0000

> The US (and most rich countries) have way too much domestic dairy farm capacity. As a result, there is lots of govt subsidies paid to dairy farmers.

I think you might have cause and effect switched around.

New comment by antod in "Theo de Raadt: "You've been smoking something mind altering" (2007)"

antod — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 03:22:42 +0000

Maybe they mixed up usenet by doing what I used to do back then - use gmane so I could follow various mailing lists via NNTP for better thread tracking and not filling up my inbox.

New comment by antod in "A dock that wakes up reliably"

antod — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 03:33:41 +0000

My Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 docks wakes up reliably, the problem is that it keeps randomly nodding off for a second or so causing the monitor to lose signal and have to sleep/wake itself.

New comment by antod in "I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it"

antod — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 21:25:47 +0000

> Can AI have mental breakdowns?

I recall Microsoft's Sidney having a hilarious one regarding the date or something. Anyone have a link to that?

New comment by antod in "How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI"

antod — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 21:18:40 +0000

That wasn't anywhere near your point. Your point was that "the left" would praise Boko Haram. You backed it up with a link to a story that was neither about Boko Haram, was about behavior "the left" opposes, nor had any praise from anybody.

The only way your point could work is by redefining "the left" as Muslim fundamentalists, which is frankly bonkers.

New comment by antod in "How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI"

antod — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 23:37:07 +0000

Unless by "the left" you mean some solitary idiot (or troll) on tiktok who just went to college.

In the west Boko Haram's goal seem closer to groups on the right than anyone on "the left". eg suppressing women's rights, more religion in school/govt, homosexuality etc

New comment by antod in "How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI"

antod — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 23:21:38 +0000

>If the terrorists were very smart, they'd realize that their religion is stupid, that their leaders were mostly corrupt (or themselves stupid), and they'd also probably find something more productive to do with their time.

In my head I was running through a whole lot groups to replace "terrorists" with in that sentence...

New comment by antod in "Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)"

antod — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:41:09 +0000

Especially in the hard rock grindcore genre.

New comment by antod in "Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)"

antod — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:39:11 +0000

Yeah, they're conflating strength, hardness and toughness all over the place.

New comment by antod in "Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)"

antod — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:35:59 +0000

The properly calibrated unit is a Volkswagen Beetle.

New comment by antod in "TypeScript 7"

antod — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:30:39 +0000

It isn't wrong exactly. JS is famous for generally just trying to do something semi random instead of giving you a typing error.

That's the difference between "having a typing error" and "having an error due to typing".

well kinda

New comment by antod in "We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works"

antod — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:11:49 +0000

Also, the quote didn't really apply in the 80s. Getting a game running on a C64, Spectrum, Amiga, ST or Apple II didn't involve understanding the computer.

That autoexec crap was unique to DOS PCs. DOS was a uniquely crappy experience in a lot of different ways.

New comment by antod in "Iran requires insurance on ships using Strait of Hormuz, fees likely to follow"

antod — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 02:59:50 +0000

Vibes? There's a fallacy named after McNamara trying to break it down to numerical metrics. Vibes probably would've served them better.

I think they had much more intelligence and competence back then, even if they were wrong. Now it's stupidity and incompetence on top of being wrong.

New comment by antod in "Lore – Open source version control system designed for scalability"

antod — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 21:00:36 +0000

20yrs ago, for me migrating off p4 onto svn was such a relief and feeling really "freeing" in a way I haven't felt often.

New comment by antod in "French-Iranian author Marjane Satrapi, author of 'Persepolis', dies at 56"

antod — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:08:41 +0000

My attitude is Fuck Optimisation, it's just so exhausting and boring.

New comment by antod in "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model"

antod — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 03:51:50 +0000

I'm guessing you meant 10k m^2 (ie 1 hectare) rather than 10km ^2 (10,000 hectares if I mathed correctly)

New comment by antod in "Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min"

antod — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 01:16:42 +0000

I much preferred Diamond Age to Snow Crash. It's been a while though, so can't fully remember why - but I think Snow Crash tried to be too cute or something and kinda seemed disjointed.