<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: bmer</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bmer</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 30 May 2026 06:05:06 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=bmer" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "Non-elementary group-by aggregations in Polars vs pandas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What's the "right editor" for SQL?<p>"Correct technological choice": I think relational algebra style APIs (a la Polars) are the "correct technological choice" here. SQL is just a tool to express relational algebra, and I'm not sure it's a good one.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:51:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42168711</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42168711</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42168711</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "M4 MacBook Pros use a quantum dot (QD) film rather than a red KSF phosphor film"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've heard that there are screen lifetime issues?<p>Also, from my limited experience with a single OLED screen, it seems that most stuff was created for a certain kind of screen without as much colour fidelity, and now that stuff seems far more...obnoxiously "saturated"?...on an OLED screen.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 16 Nov 2024 03:07:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153794</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153794</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153794</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "Non-elementary group-by aggregations in Polars vs pandas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Editor completion. Programmability "out-of-the-box" (rather than having to generate SQL using another programming language).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 16 Nov 2024 03:01:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153766</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153766</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42153766</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "KDE Again Operated at a Loss During 2023"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am surprised to see phoronix getting that so wrong…</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 07 Sep 2024 01:23:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41470910</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41470910</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41470910</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "Ask HN: Security risks when buying mini-PCs/PCs from unknown vendors?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is it possible to “install” (“flash”?) an open source BIOS onto a newly bought device?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Sep 2024 04:22:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41453442</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41453442</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41453442</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Ask HN: Security risks when buying mini-PCs/PCs from unknown vendors?]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was looking at [Low Cost Mini PCs](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41389931) a few days ago, and saw comments recommending vendors such as Beelink or Minisforum.<p>These companies are relatively unknown compared to companies like Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc. My guess as a layman would be that that Lenovo is not likely to try and "compromise" the hardware it sells (e.g. with additional chips that are meant to "phone home", or otherwise store data in some retrievable way) because that would damage their reputation and hence their business.<p>But a relatively unknown vendor might not have such a concern?<p>So I wonder:<p>* are my concerns even realistic?<p>* if so: how does one evaluate security risks that exist when buying PCs from "relatively unknown" vendors?</p>
<hr>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447458">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447458</a></p>
<p>Points: 12</p>
<p># Comments: 12</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Sep 2024 16:17:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447458</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447458</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447458</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "Is My Blue Your Blue?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No, because if my case holds more genera (and I suspect it does), the answers are in part out of sheer frustration, and therefore prone to being similar to the last one given.<p>I am not afraid to say this is poorly designed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Sep 2024 01:56:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41441132</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41441132</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41441132</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "Leave car keys 'at front door' to avoid violent confrontations: Toronto Police"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The root problem is a lack of imagination that cannot fathom how the person making the judgement might find themselves in the position of the judged, in the not-so-far-future.<p>The good news is that reality does not care whether or not you lack imagination. One can only marvel then, at the sequence of events that lead to the "unthinkable".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 16 Mar 2024 11:46:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39725033</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39725033</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39725033</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "Leave car keys 'at front door' to avoid violent confrontations: Toronto Police"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, I only support brutalising neighbours if its done nice and clean: by an army of attractive well-paid lawyers gaslighting everyone involved.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 16 Mar 2024 11:42:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39725002</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39725002</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39725002</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "U.S. transferred a record $80.9B worth of military equipment 2023"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, what do the prediction markets think?<p>Markets are unable to lie (as they are deeply/intrinsically connected to reality).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 18:02:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718768</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718768</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718768</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "YX Problem"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wanting to help others isn't being discouraged. You helping others is being discouraged (apparently? that's your claim, because you believe the market has expectations that you believe should not apply to you?).<p>Anyway, are two different things.<p>> "Lol, meta-microaggressions that'll fix microaggressions."<p>I have no clue what this means. Do you?<p>> "yes, you will win..."<p>What? This isn't "me", winning. This is the age-old reality of "you are owed absolutely nothing", and that "if you are owed something, you will know because people will be paying you for it". This is capitalism at its core.<p>When it comes specifically to helping others:<p>1) you are either paid for it by an employer, in which case you ought to do it based on the employer's requirements, and all extraneous complaints are null and void unless<p>2) you create your own business off of your expertise, where you get to choose what precisely you offer people, and people get to choose whether they value your expertise; or<p>3) you do it for free, because you get something out of the experience which is entirely unrelated to how others treat you. If you're doing it for free to establish yourself through "loss-leader" tactics, but you cannot turn your losses into said leadership, then you can't complain. The world considers you to be an overvalued commodity. End of story.<p>Welcome to reality! You can rage if you'd like. The world will not care. There's business to do, money to be made, and entertainment to be had in the form of people who think they are worth more than what the market prices them. Either they are right and they eventually get movies made out of their life stories ("rags to riches!"), or they are wrong and they serve as living comedy (which can also be converted into money).<p>This is hardcore Reaganomics I am suggesting, not "youth-communism" (lol, wtf? where does that even come from...). Either you are rich enough to earn respect, or you are sensible enough to know you're not worth any. Which one is it?<p>If you believe you can be rich enough to be shown respect, then why are you wasting your time commenting on HN, instead of turning the apparent coming-doom into a business opportunity? The wealth you earn this way can then be convert into concrete respect if you so choose?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:57:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718693</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718693</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718693</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "U.S. transferred a record $80.9B worth of military equipment 2023"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If the US didn't do this, the world would be worse off, no?<p>(Not sure: wondering.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:15:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718161</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718161</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718161</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "States Are Lining Up to Outlaw Lab-Grown Meat"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>*[CITATIONS NEEDED]*<p>1) Bioreactors have available many options other than antibiotics for controlling bacterial growth.<p>2) A bioreactor is <i>not</i> "basically just an animal with a severely curtailed feature set". A bioreactor is not even "basically an organ with a severely curtailed feature set".<p>3) What precisely do you mean by "sterile techniques will only get you so far, especially at scale"?<p>There are actual issues with lab-grown meat. In a nutshell: nutritional quality, and the high degree of post-processing likely needed in order to make them palatable in terms of texture and taste.<p>TL;DR when someone reasons by analogy, doubt everything they say.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:10:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718086</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718086</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39718086</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "States Are Lining Up to Outlaw Lab-Grown Meat"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Except it's also very wrong. So, it just happened to make you feel good, and therefore it felt well-informed?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:52:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39717833</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39717833</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39717833</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "YX Problem"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I disagree: I don't think there's a <i>pure</i> natural impulse to want to help others. It's usually coated with a bunch of other stuff, inadvertently (e.g. when dealing with attractive members of the opposite sex: wanting to prove our value; or when dealing with requests for help within an organization beyond what our job descriptions require: we hope that people will recognize that as we stand we are "undervalued").<p>I don't think the suggested "requirement" (?) to avoid microagression is to answer both X and Y. I think the suggestion to avoid microagression is to avoid using the term microagression in the first place.<p>Another one would be to recognize that you are fully within your rights to not offer help where it's not your job to offer help. No one cares if you choose not to answer support requests for your open source project, nor will the world suffer for it.<p>On the flip side, you can't expect those you do help to care enough to show you respect for your help either. If being respected and/or people making special allowances for your tone is something you do care about, well, then don't help to begin with. Contrary to our self-centered worries, the world will go on fine without us. It might even go on better without us; who is to say, after all? Most certainly not us.<p>Here's a piece of advice I keep hearing from people who are more powerful than me (Usually, these were also people older than me, but that is becoming less true as I grow older myself.): you're owed absolutely nothing. No one is.<p>Most human beings on this planet live in full awareness of that fact. So its only a matter of time until those who don't, end up learning that too.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:10:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39713203</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39713203</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39713203</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower before death"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One prominent one in recent memory is the Epstein "suicide". Aaron Swartz is another, although not so recent.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 07:38:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712995</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712995</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712995</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "YX Problem"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think this is a win-win for everyone involved.<p>In the highly likely case where your answers are crap, the world is spared yet another person who thinks they are well-suited to add to the mess. In the equally possible case where your answers are not crap, you are spared having to deal with people who cannot appreciate your campaign medals.<p>nosplaining is great. Welcome to how most of us live.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 Mar 2024 20:40:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39708698</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39708698</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39708698</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That quote does not come from the Quran (I am no fan of Muslims or Islam).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:28:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690193</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690193</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690193</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That also helps to zero out the probability you'll be paying someone who takes a "craftsperson's approach" to their work, versus a "production-line approach".<p>Neither is bad. The production-line approach is good at producing something defined by a fixed specification, reliably. Predictability in quantity produced and product quality are both important.<p>The craftsperson's approach is good at producing things where each thing is an incremental improvement over the last. Predictability in quantity produced is usually an anti-goal, as it is best left as another project (probably another craftperson's project). Predictability of quality produced is often sacrificed <i>on purpose</i> in order to get out of a local optima and better explore a larger landscape. So, while quality improves in the long term, it may not in the short term.<p>Patronage, historically, was aware of this. It did not demand, it trusted. It was intensely aware of the imperfection in humans, and it is questionable to what extent it considered genius as a truth, rather than merely a helpful myth (helpful only after the person was long dead, and not actually in the production of new creative works, but rather in keeping up the market value of previously created works, in order to help fund new ones).<p>Patreon, on the other hand, lacks such nuance.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Mar 2024 00:19:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39686511</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39686511</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39686511</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bmer in "Moore on Moore – The past, present and uncertain future of Moore's Law"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> contacted gate pitchm2 pitchcell height,and take the square root<p>I am having trouble parsing `pitchm2 pitchcell height`.<p>Assuming that you meant to use `*` and then HN's markdown assumed it was italics, and placing `×` where italics start and begin:<p>sqrt(pitch × m2 pitch × cell height)<p>Then I am left with the questions:<p>What are the units of pitch? Best guess: length units? (Based on: cell height having length units. `m2 pitch` being dimensionaless?<p>Why do the pitches "obviously make an area" then?<p>What are the units of metal to pitch? Best guess: dimensionless. (Based on the final units of the sqrt being repoted in length, and the cell height presumably having units of length).<p>What the units of cell height? Best guess: length units, based on what the variable is called.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Mar 2024 22:19:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685632</link><dc:creator>bmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685632</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685632</guid></item></channel></rss>