<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: astrobe_</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=astrobe_</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:07:10 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=astrobe_" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (2012)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Tangential, but sometimes real images can also seem unreal. I remember seeing a photo of Earth and the Moon with the Moon on the foreground that looked like a bad CGI. But it was actually a photograph taken by a space probe. Or, one can think about those photos of the Apollo lunar module that looked "wrong" (and probably helped some conspiracy theories spread), but were obviously correct - just there's no atmosphere to speak of on the Moon, so no light scattering etc. That said often, space images actually use "false colors" [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-the-colors-in-space-real/" rel="nofollow">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-the-colors-in...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:35:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982060</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982060</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982060</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The "crypto" Greek root can mean "hidden" indeed [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CF%81%CF%85%CF%80%CF%84%CF%8C%CF%82" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CF%81%CF%85%CF%80%CF%8...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:41:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946098</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946098</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946098</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Agnes Callard’s theory of the uni-context"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> your self has been fragmented<p>Unless you are more after acknowledgement than sharing/helping others (and be on the receiving end sometimes), this is <i>non-problem</i>.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:12:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909991</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909991</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909991</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Agnes Callard’s theory of the uni-context"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Even earlier than that. "Pseudonymity" (not using your real name online) were adopted very early on Internet. Facebook is the big exception.<p>This first claim seems weak to me, and the arguments made in TFA are generally weak IMO. It feels that this theory tries to "eat more than it can chew"; they try to explain a lot of things with a <i>single</i> hypothesis, which in the end yields unconvincing explanations.<p>For instance, let me answer the 4 opening questions:<p><i>Why is the news media so interested in telling you how much the world sucks all the time?</i><p>Because fear sells; but that aside, one can also say that we are a species who loves solving problems, and pointing them is generally the first step to a solution.<p><i>Why are so many of us obsessed with distraction and managing our attention?</i><p>Because something is aggressively trying to steal attention - that is, actually, <i>time</i> - from us. It's self-defence at this point.<p><i>Why is it so hard to stop comparing ourselves to others?</i><p>Because of the atavistic instinct of reproduction, in which mating partners are selected mainly based on social status. It takes training to go against this instinct, and it is even more difficult when your time is being stolen.<p><i>And why does everything in art and design seem the same these days?</i><p>That's something a boomer could say... Mainstream designs can, maybe, look similar because when you target a large market you design for the average taste. Non-mainstream designs are just more expensive, harder to find, and less visible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:56:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909764</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909764</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909764</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Modern decor may be straining people's brains"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, I was one of those "armchair" specialists until I got a system why could sustain 60 FPS and I couldn't deny there was a difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS, even though on the paper 25 FPS "should be enough for everyone".<p>(from TFA:)
> During a rapid eye movement, the flickering light source can paint a streak of ghost images across the retina<p>So REM could explain it? Maybe it is somehow variable among people?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 12 Jul 2026 10:53:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880080</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880080</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880080</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Prefer strict tables in SQLite"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yep. More generally the correct reason to prefer UDP over TCP is the fine-grained control you gain. When you want that and have to use TCP, you're in for a deadly fight against the OS and its TCP/IP stack.<p>Datagram is also quite often more fit for applications than streams, because many applications are message oriented. The Websocket protocol acknowledges that even though over TCP. But that's more a bonus point than a strong reason to choose UDP over TCP, one can always recreate packets/messages on top of TCP. It's a bit goofy though, because TCP uses IP packets.<p>A lot of online games with significant real-time constrains and many-to-many connections gladly use UDP - and similarly, video conference services also use it. Smaller protocols like DNS and NTP as well.<p>There are other arguments beside real-time streaming with acceptable data loss, see [1] and the "end-to-end argument" paper it links in particular.<p>Choosing UDP and ending up recreating some of its reliability and flow control features is not a "Uh, Oh..." moment. It's normally a deliberate choice. Sometimes you do need custom wheels [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://deepplum.com/post-b/" rel="nofollow">https://deepplum.com/post-b/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 12 Jul 2026 10:05:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48879863</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48879863</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48879863</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Your code is fast – if you're lucky"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>tbh, I'm not sure if we need "more clever" CPUs since they cause more and more unpredictable performance outcome -- and more pressing issues like Spectre.
Besides, looking at the evolution of technology tells us that performance increases mainly comes from parallelism, like multicore and GPUs. Which doesn't apply to "annoyingly not parallel" problems of course. But besides "gambling" approaches like branch prediction, there's not much you can do about them in the general case.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:43:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872487</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872487</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872487</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Late Bronze Age Collapse"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes. Civilizations relying on tin were basically quite vulnerable because tin is uncommon [1]. The coincidence between late bronze age collapse and the transition to iron age seems to be explained by the fact that once the disorganization no longer allows tin trade, makers turn to the second choice, iron.<p>Iron making was known during bronze age, but it was technically more challenging that tin+copper because it requires higher temperatures.<p>It's amusing to note that it lead to the development of the iron/steel making techniques, so much so that once the tin "was back", steel was cheaper, more reliable (from the logistics perspective) and better.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_during_antiquity#Europe" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_during_a...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2026 11:56:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871253</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871253</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871253</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "A road to Lisp: Why Lisp"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes. I'm moving the goal post a bit here, but I was actually thinking about design mistakes and dangerous constructs - the kind of thing you do when you write in a "hacky" way - either deliberately or because you don't know better. Although these are not directly under the scope of type checking, a more restrictive language can have a positive influence.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2026 09:02:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870189</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870189</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870189</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "A road to Lisp: Why Lisp"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'll paraphrase someone who commented on HN once (about dynamic vs static typing, IIRC): permissive languages are enablers for solo programmers, but you need more restrictive languages for team programming.<p>This matches my experience because you don't chose who you work with. Skill level is uneven among the team. Less skilled co-workers will make mistakes that will have more consequences when the language is more permissive.<p>That's one of the reasons you want code reviews, but then you convert your skilled programmers to teachers. This is not a good trade, because the time they spend improving the skills of other programmers is partially wasted because programmers are free to come and go. AI could change this picture.<p>The name of the game is therefore to keep your teams small and skilled, but this is can be difficult because of typical company politics - e.g. "bus factor" considerations, shortening time-to-market is often achieved by adding more programmers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:27:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858084</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858084</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858084</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> is in fact set in a fictional region of Japan, but is created so lovingly that you’ll believe it’s real life.<p>This is actually a major cheat. Realism is expensive, and exposes your creation to the equivalent of the "uncanny valley" for vehicle simulation - the simulated world is never accurate enough and you can't help but notice the differences with reality. E.g. if you see generic buildings ("autogen") near a location you know IRL, the simulation feels immediately sloppy.<p>Yet, as long as I'm not interested in visiting real places, I would go for a vehicle simulation in a fictional world any day. I wouldn't mind if the vehicles were also fictional, as long as they require some technique to drive them. What matters in games is challenge and mastery, but not what you master; your RTS, FPS or chess skills have very little value IRL.<p>> Zoom out far enough—and for some reason it will let you—and you see the tiles, the roads that don’t line up, and the various tricks and techniques that allow it to look so realistic from low down. But don’t do that! That’s silly. This is a train sim, not a plane sim, you’ve no business in the sky.<p>OpenBVE one-upped BVE train sim with external cameras, and as a result you see all this too. In my eyes, they sort of miss the point of a train simulation: the view point is normally attached to the driver, so one can use all sorts of tricks to avoid having to "paint the entire wall" - which is quite important if you count on a community of fan modders who have limited resources.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:36:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48857774</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48857774</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48857774</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Show HN: Yamanote.fun – A complete soundscape for Tokyo's Yamanote line"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hardcore fans may like the BVE train sim [1]. A lot of Japanese fan-made lines (add-ons) with custom sounds. Generally speaking, the game is far from AAA, but the "hand-made" feel makes up for that.<p>The downside is that sometimes it is difficult to install addons or to figure out their custom features because the instructions are often poorly translated from Japanese and websites often have no English translations at all. One should also note that some addons include and run "homemade" DLLs to implement custom features.<p>It seems that the community is on the decline though, because while searching around I have found a lot of dead links. One can try OpenBVE [2] (partially compatible with BVE), which is less Japan-centric but should have some Japanese lines.<p>[1] <a href="https://bvets.net/en/" rel="nofollow">https://bvets.net/en/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://openbve-project.net/" rel="nofollow">https://openbve-project.net/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:36:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48844237</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48844237</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48844237</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Let's go for "PearTube" then.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:58:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765132</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765132</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765132</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "A glitch in February of the year 0"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Using a Gregorian Date before the calendar was introduced is almost certainly an error.<p>It's just an extrapolation; using the calendar being used at the considered time would be meaningless for us, e.g. the short-lived french republican calendar [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 07:55:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48716148</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48716148</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48716148</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "A glitch in February of the year 0"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And that's also why we are in the 21st century, not the 20th.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 06:00:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48715392</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48715392</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48715392</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Fusion Programming Language"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>ORMs and variations like Protobuf or things that have to be cross-plateform in the wide sense. The perspective that the same source will behave the same in various environments, and "velocity" trumps performance considerations. If you want to work on things where performance matters, consider embedded/firmware programming ;-)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 06:29:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695723</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695723</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695723</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "The last Romans are still around"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It seems this -que was already a relic at that time, or maybe sort of literary, because it coexisted with <i>et</i> (as in <i>etc</i>, <i>et cetera</i>, <i>&c</i>), which still exists e.g. in French. Or maybe one is from antic Latin and the other is from "vulgar"/late Latin ?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 06:55:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48683238</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48683238</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48683238</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "The last Romans are still around"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Still romanian. "The common law—so named because it was common to all the king's courts across England—originated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066" [1]<p>France (and Normandy) was conquered by Rome before it was granted to Rollo, a Viking. A few generations later, his descendant William the Conqueror claimed the English crown. Just like what happened with Gauls and Romans, the conquered people adopted large parts of the language and customs of the conqueror. That's why the English language is ~25% of Roman origin for it's vocabulary. I suppose it is the same for English common law.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#History</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 06:37:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48683115</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48683115</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48683115</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "LuaJIT 3.0 proposed syntax extensions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You can have them in C/C++ at least [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.cppreference.com/cpp/language/operator_alternative" rel="nofollow">https://en.cppreference.com/cpp/language/operator_alternativ...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 06:27:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48669735</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48669735</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48669735</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by astrobe_ in "Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The title reads "too little, too late" to me.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:14:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48655842</link><dc:creator>astrobe_</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48655842</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48655842</guid></item></channel></rss>