Hacker News: bolangi

New comment by bolangi in "What does it mean to “write like you talk”?"

bolangi — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 02:33:43 +0000

Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski are good examples.

New comment by bolangi in "If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos"

bolangi — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:17:01 +0000

Hah, github can have my crap code. Anyone trained on it will be in for a world of hurt :-)

New comment by bolangi in "Fermented foods shaped human biology"

bolangi — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:31:00 +0000

Japanese eat fermented foods and have a long life expectancy.

New comment by bolangi in "Lazycut: A simple terminal video trimmer using FFmpeg"

bolangi — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:22:32 +0000

FWIW, here's a simple command line utility for joining and trimming the multiple video files produced by a video camera.

https://metacpan.org/dist/App-fftrim/view/script/fftrim

New comment by bolangi in "Willingness to look stupid"

bolangi — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 05:01:30 +0000

Definitely needed to succeed in theater and take risks in life.

New comment by bolangi in "Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging"

bolangi — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:26:03 +0000

For a screening procedure recommended as a mass conducted preventative measure in otherwise healthy people, harms must be regulated to a better standard than "doesn't happen often". The study that I read of was about serious issue occuring something like one in 120 procedures. It was done at Kaiser. Next time you're enjoying a sausage, take a moment to look at the sausage skins. If I understand correctly, our intestinal walls are quite thin, and even the colon vulnerable.

New comment by bolangi in "Mathematicians disagree on the essential structure of the complex numbers (2024)"

bolangi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:38:45 +0000

There are legitimate questions if physical constants are constant everywhere in the universe, and also whether they are constant over time. Just because we conceive something "should" be a certain way doesn't make it true. The zero and negative numbers were also weird yet valid. How is the structure of mathematics different from fundamental constants, which we also cannot prove are invariant.

New comment by bolangi in "Perlsecret – Perl secret operators and constants"

bolangi — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 22:41:33 +0000

After first experiences with linux shell scripting, sed, awk, and C in 1990s, I found perl a welcome refuge. Way more featureful than DOS .bat files or BASIC! Its capabilities (perl + cpan) have always well exceeded my need for CS goodness. People do complain about the syntax, oddly, without mentioning the numerous ways perl was designed to make common tasks easy to do. The "use strict" pragma, and early adoption of testing culture are two examples where perl led the programming community. With the continued maturing of the language and ecosystem, I can only smile at the naysayers and wish them happiness whatever the language.

New comment by bolangi in "Scientists unlock brain's natural clean-up system for new treatments for stroke"

bolangi — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 09:03:41 +0000

Mainstream science has poo-poohed for years any notion that Oriental medicine practices for facilitating lymph flow have any utility. Nice to hear they're back on the allopathic table.

New comment by bolangi in "The rise of industrial software"

bolangi — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 09:40:35 +0000

This thought-provoking essay does not consider one crucial aspect of software: the cost of a user developing a facility with a given software product. Historically monopolistic software producers can force these costs to be borne because the user has no alternative to upgrading to the latest version of, for example, Windows, or gmail, or the latest version of the github GUI. A signficant portion of the open source / free software movement is software providing stable interfaces (including for the user) so that resources otherwise spent on compulsory retraining to use the latest version of something proprietary, can be invested in configuring existing resources to better suit the user's problem domain. For example, programs like mutt or vim, or my latest discovery, talon.

New comment by bolangi in "Quality of drinking water varies significantly by airline"

bolangi — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 03:19:37 +0000

An inlaw who worked as a stewardess (back when they were called "stewardesses") on international routes for many years always carried her own water.

New comment by bolangi in "Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need"

bolangi — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 18:25:40 +0000

Good morning. An expanding plethora of buttons, tabs, menus requires geometrical memory that may have nothing directly to do with the function in question. The first GUIs were designed that functions be "discoverable," however the size of haystacks in which these discoverable functions hide has grown exponentially, adding cognitive overhead, and increasing the length of apprenticeship needed to master the application.

A slick-looking GUI is a kind of ad for the app. As author of an accessible, terminal-based DAW app, I contrast remembering an incantation like 'add-track' or 'list-buses' with hunting around. These incantations can have shorter abbreviations, such 'lb' for list buses, and 'help bus' or 'h bus' to be sufficiently discoverable, easier for both implementer and user. And then to have hotkeys to bump plugin parameters +/- 1/10/100 etc. Probably I'm pissing into the wind to think the majority of users will ever choose this -- and GUIs do provide amazing facilities for many purposes -- but we do have a huge array of choices on linux, including this plethora of music creation and production apps. That is a big success, IMO.

New comment by bolangi in "Ruby and Its Neighbors: Perl"

bolangi — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:06:21 +0000

This article gives a great background to Ruby's syntax origins in perl. Also, with a series of "What happened to perl?" articles appearing lately (maybe just one on HN) it gives a nice retrospective on both good parts and quirks of the language. That perl was eagerly adopted in many toolchains vital to linux distributions (such as Gnu autotools) and is a deep dependency through the IT world today is a testament to the strong fundamentals of the language beyond the oft-flamed syntax pecadilos.

To my thinking, the tides of perl bashing in articles and comments is a sign of the vitality of the language (all publicity is good publicity) especially with the continued development and renaissance of the language -- new language features such as in-core OO, mature tools such as the Perl Data Language -- along with cultural commitment to on-boarding and mentoring in the perl community.

Ruby and Its Neighbors: Perl

bolangi — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:06:21 +0000

Article URL: https://noelrappin.com/blog/2025/10/ruby-and-its-neighbors-perl/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46291932

Points: 8

# Comments: 4

New comment by bolangi in "Essential Semiconductor Physics [pdf]"

bolangi — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 11:46:29 +0000

A slightly different audience, probably, but I was greatly assisted by Intuitive IC Electronics by Thomas Fredriksen.

https://www.amazon.com/Intuitive-electronics-sophisticated-e...

New comment by bolangi in "Therapeutic use of cannabis and cannabinoids: A review"

bolangi — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:14:10 +0000

The war on drugs and millions of non-violent offenders in prison does not exactly suggest to me the term "sacrosanct."

Every honest therapist looks at all components of a patient's life, and the patient, too, has a responsibility to identify what is helping and what is hurting them, or in which situations a trade-off is justified.

We will never be able to arrive at a complete and perfect answer for everyone because people happen to be individuals. However the medical profession (including therapy professions) lean heavily on generalizations to avoid the overhead of having to deal with a living, breathing individual with a history and family context, where possible.

New comment by bolangi in "Where are you supposed to go if you don't care about growth?"

bolangi — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 12:44:57 +0000

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that an aspiring writer should take any writing job he or she can get. A hack job will at least keep the creative wheels turning. I think the same applies to software development jobs. Take one where you can learn something, hone your chops. Doesn't have to be your passion, because turning an abstract conception into working software is intrinsically satisfying to someone who appreciates that particular form of magic.

Do your own projects on the side and keep your antenna peeled for other opportunities more in line with your own life goals.

New comment by bolangi in "Autism should not be treated as a single condition"

bolangi — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 17:43:37 +0000

Reacting to the headline, I understand the basic concept of medicine is you treat a patient who presents with a condition, not a condition in isolation like some kind of abstract math problem. I think it's a mistake when doctors say to each other, even as a shorthand, I have a gallbladder to deal with, when it's a real person, and the best results come from considering the whole person when pondering how to care for them and which treatments to administer, with the medicine being only a part.

New comment by bolangi in "Engineers repurpose a mosquito proboscis to create a 3D printing nozzle"

bolangi — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 13:14:40 +0000

> Its inner diameter is 20 micrometers, which is about 100% finer than the best commercially available tips.

"100% finer", who uses language like this? I don't even know what it means. How about "half the diameter"?

New comment by bolangi in "Let go of StackOverflow; communities must take ownership"

bolangi — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 23:56:28 +0000

I don't know what TLA+ is, but thanks for an entertaining rant, and the excerpt from Heller's timeless book.