Hacker News: birn559

New comment by birn559 in "Tax the Rich. They Won't Leave New York"

birn559 — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:41:44 +0000

Just like with vaccines, some people apparently have lived in a first world bubble for so long and so deeply that they have forgotten what the alternatives really look like.

Of course there is democracy and corruption is much worse in non-democratic countries.

New comment by birn559 in "Undisclosed financial conflicts of interest in DSM-5 (2024)"

birn559 — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:11:01 +0000

My inability of being in nature without a feeling of being tortured comes from my brain not working correctly and it's not "undesired behavior". Luckily, my ADHD meds are able to fix that.

New comment by birn559 in "Undisclosed financial conflicts of interest in DSM-5 (2024)"

birn559 — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:01:31 +0000

I stopped using house work as example because people always answer "oh yeah, I also dislike housework". People just don't get it when this example is used. I switched to "not able to go outside for a walk even though I like being in nature" and "often not able to follow or participate in long talks with multiple persons".

There also is a good chance I don't have children because just being alive and by myself was super exhausting before I got diagnosed in my late 30. Having children was unthinkable until then.

But was it catastrophic? I don't know. I finished college except it took two times as long and got a job where I of course suffered pretty much the whole time.

But that was all very normal for me, just the way I was, at least that's what I used to believe.

New comment by birn559 in "The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful"

birn559 — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 01:59:28 +0000

Largely depends on the parameters. I believe it also assumes infinite resources. In general it's a very simple model not meant to explain all and everything.

New comment by birn559 in "The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful"

birn559 — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 01:40:32 +0000

They can't be chill and like us at the same time. Chilled aliens most likely don't invent faster than light travel so I pretty much hope aliens won't find us or are not interested in us.

New comment by birn559 in "Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study (2017)"

birn559 — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 20:00:19 +0000

> I can tell you that it is the output of a function, not a distinct entity that exists on its own independently of the computation.

Could you elaborate? What is the output of that function if not an entity in it's own? Having studied math with philosophiy minor long time ago I am curious.

New comment by birn559 in "A visual history of Visual C++ (2017)"

birn559 — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 07:21:27 +0000

When / How did versioning enter versioning the awkward state we have today? There is cl.exe, MSBuild and build chain at the very least (now at work computer at the moment, pretty sure I am wrong with the making here) with versioning that is close enough to each other to be confusing and related to each other in word ways. Naming itself also feels confusing to me. Documentation also only helps when you already have a good idea what's going on.

New comment by birn559 in "It’s not wrong that "\u{1F926}\u{1F3FC}\u200D\u2642\uFE0F".length == 7 (2019)"

birn559 — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 13:07:10 +0000

I see, wasn't clear to me on what level you were asking. The letter ß has never been generally equivalent to ss in the German language.

From a user experience perspective though it might be beneficial to pretend that "ß" == "ss" holds when parsing user input.

New comment by birn559 in "It’s not wrong that "\u{1F926}\u{1F3FC}\u200D\u2642\uFE0F".length == 7 (2019)"

birn559 — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 13:03:28 +0000

> How is that wrong? Not sure where, how or if it's defined as part of Unicode, but so far I assumed that for a Unicode grapheme there exists a notion of what the visual representation should look like. If Unicode still defines capital of ß as SS that's an error in Unicode due to slow adaption of the changes in the German language.

New comment by birn559 in "Go is still not good"

birn559 — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 12:55:53 +0000

You can't do that in a performant way and going that route can lead to problems, because characters (= graphemes in the language of Unicode) generally don't always behave as developers assume.

New comment by birn559 in "It’s not wrong that "\u{1F926}\u{1F3FC}\u200D\u2642\uFE0F".length == 7 (2019)"

birn559 — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 10:39:19 +0000

I don't see why it should. I also believe parent is wrong as there are unambiguous rules about when to use ß or ss.

Never thought of it but maybe there are rules that allow to visually present the code point for ß as ss? At least (from experience as a user) there seem to be a singular "ss" codepoint.

New comment by birn559 in "Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser"

birn559 — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:17:38 +0000

You can decide if you want to get asked at startup.

New comment by birn559 in "BBC witnesses settlers attack on Palestinian farm in West Bank"

birn559 — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:14:33 +0000

HN (to me) has always mostly been about the other 5%.

New comment by birn559 in "BBC witnesses settlers attack on Palestinian farm in West Bank"

birn559 — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:13:40 +0000

Saying that about a country is not illegal.

New comment by birn559 in "BBC witnesses settlers attack on Palestinian farm in West Bank"

birn559 — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:10:22 +0000

> In essence, it’s a century-old colonial project that is entirely inline with the 19th and 20th century European colonialism, with a supremacist idealogy at its core (ethnostate).

I don't think that's a proper characterization. Migration way strongly regulated back then. Only after WWII when the crimes of the Nazis became public, mass migration to the southern Levante were allowed. It's therefore not a colonial project, but driven by what happened at that time (Holocaust). Arabic/Muslim and other citizen are well integrated into society as far as I am aware so I am not convinced supremacist/ethnostate is a fitting description either.

New comment by birn559 in "95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing – MIT report"

birn559 — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 05:28:14 +0000

> as long as the LLM finds a solution, it's not a huge deal if there was a better way to do it

It might not matter short term, but midterm such debt becomes a huge burden.

New comment by birn559 in "Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy"

birn559 — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 01:36:29 +0000

They just don't care enough. User experience only needs to be "good enough", mostly determined by the question of users will tend to terminate the subscription without the feature or with the bug.

New comment by birn559 in "Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations"

birn559 — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 01:30:59 +0000

Geeks in general did not abuse women but geeks in general will always be the first victims of AI because the curiosity in parts is what defines a geek. Therefore, your argument is not sound.

New comment by birn559 in "All Souls exam questions and the limits of machine reasoning"

birn559 — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 16:06:48 +0000

How would AI reliable pass the turing test when playing Tic-Tac-Toe reliably reveals the weakness of today's AI?

New comment by birn559 in "Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy"

birn559 — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:34:02 +0000

Netflix also often only buys the first seasons of an existing show. And of course they love to cancel shows they produce themselves which for me has significantly lowered my loyalty over the years.