Hacker News: bilegeek

New comment by bilegeek in "Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance"

bilegeek — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 04:37:46 +0000

> we should help them rather than let suicide become the way they escape from it.

> the answer should be to help them, change their circumstances where possible, and help them find another way through it.

You left that part out originally. You meant it implicitly, so I may seem pedantic, but this kind of thing must be said explicitly.

For example: the asylum system. Abolishing it's ubiquity was unarguably good, but then they just... stopped there, leaving many people in the lurch.[1] To paraphrase and oversimplify MLK, "presence of justice is much harder than absence of tension."

[1]https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/how-defunding-abusive-in...

New comment by bilegeek in "Retirement Is Dead"

bilegeek — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:38:07 +0000

Generally the only account that keeps even with inflation is a CD, but of course that locks up your money for that duration, which would suck in an emergency.

New comment by bilegeek in "Hang on to Your Firefox"

bilegeek — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:59:23 +0000

> when it was the last time that I felt it to be slow

I only have an issue because I set a big disk cache (because data cap). 8gb is fine IIRC, but 24gb causes slowdowns on startups and new tabs. (Also much more of an issue on my older laptop than my newer desktop.)

Doesn't outweigh anything tho.

OpenZFS: Implement FIDEDUPERANGE via block cloning

bilegeek — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:14:07 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/commit/afb4010325a52413c0ad813885eed50738a8380b

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49386035

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by bilegeek in "Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards"

bilegeek — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 15:49:20 +0000

Plenty of synonyms[1] for groups of animals to choose from. I'd recommend the one for Ravens ("unkindness" or "conspiracy", seriously).

[1]https://www.britannica.com/science/Animal-Group-Names

New comment by bilegeek in "Everything you do is being recorded"

bilegeek — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 02:06:50 +0000

> If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted.

The spying may have started with free products, but it has metastasized into every aspect of life, free or not. It always does.

> choose to be willfully blind to the spying

Many don't. They also, by and large, don't have a choice. Data brokers, Flock cameras, WiFi-based radar[1]. You really can only do so much as an individual before the only escape is being a hermit in a cave.

> The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance

Which then gets distilled into the only drivers of corporations. Corporations that then destroy all moral options for individuals.

[1]https://theweek.com/tech/wifi-signals-now-tracking-users-at-...

New comment by bilegeek in "Triton: DirectX 11 Driver for QEMU"

bilegeek — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 15:39:49 +0000

If they eventually support Snow Leopard or Tiger, that would fill the enormous emulation donut hole of PowerPC Mac.

New comment by bilegeek in "2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out"

bilegeek — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 19:16:14 +0000

Everybody from OpenAI to Micron to the US Government is actively colluding to keep things going. I would love for you to be right, but I'm cynical from the decades that have been spent insulating these companies from consequences.

New comment by bilegeek in "Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery"

bilegeek — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 22:00:27 +0000

The auto-translation especially bothers me. Kinda cool for casual viewing... but the inability to disable it gives me an immediate skeptical "this entire channel is probably AI slop" response before I recognize what's happened.

New comment by bilegeek in "How the words we teach English language learners changed"

bilegeek — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 18:44:35 +0000

Also worth going through the references of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

New comment by bilegeek in "NetBSD 11.0"

bilegeek — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:50:54 +0000

> Are there systems that can boot CD-ROM interfaces that don't have USB boot capability still?

New x64 systems? Probably not. But since it still supports x86 and a whole slew of other architectures[1] still that don't always, it probably wouldn't make sense to stop.

[1]https://www.netbsd.org/ports/

FTN Clearing Houz

bilegeek — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 10:14:02 +0000

Article URL: https://clrghouz.bbs.dege.au/about

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49132974

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Usenet Archive Toolkit – process Usenet messages into a searchable archive

bilegeek — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:30:54 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/wolfpld/usenetarchive

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49081862

Points: 39

# Comments: 5

New comment by bilegeek in "The Birth of the American 12-string Guitar (2013)"

bilegeek — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:25:49 +0000

Different lineage[1] as (partially) mentioned above; the ukulele evolved from small Portuguese instruments[2], and is tuned about 3 full steps higher.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenor_guitar

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukulele#History

New comment by bilegeek in "The Birth of the American 12-string Guitar"

bilegeek — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 11:48:09 +0000

That's the first time I've heard microtonal work in a rock setting. Pretty good!

I see your added frets, and raise "add frets on the fly using Lego":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPCEImSfCwc

New comment by bilegeek in "The Birth of the American 12-string Guitar"

bilegeek — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 11:40:01 +0000

For plucked instruments, besides ease of use, it adds clarity and sustain. Orchestra AFAIK only has Pizzicato where that would matter.

The Birth of the American 12-string Guitar (2013)

bilegeek — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:52:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.harpguitars.net/history/grunewald/12-string.htm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49067690

Points: 68

# Comments: 48

New comment by bilegeek in "US Government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system"

bilegeek — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 21:30:45 +0000

Is it legally better? Absolutely. But all they have to do is say "they did this as a legal workaround for that" and you're no better off, at least not without spending the same amount on lawyers. You can't out-tech your way around a corrupt system, they will find a way to get you.

Rusefi – GPL internal combustion engine ECU

bilegeek — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 23:51:26 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/rusefi/rusefi

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48928755

Points: 5

# Comments: 3

New comment by bilegeek in "So you want to learn physics (second edition, 2021)"

bilegeek — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:57:36 +0000

IMO: It's not learning that's the problem. It's learning and verifying you actually learned. I'm not saying "unless you can solve homework problems you haven't learned", but... kinda? With a complex generally-theory subject like Physics, the amount of effort you need to put into verification grows exponentially faster than the "learning" part; it's tough for many to get a "feel" like you could for chemistry or programming or electronics or mechanical stuff, difficult as those definitely can be.