Hacker News: btreesOfSpring

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties"

btreesOfSpring — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:21:57 +0000

There is a reason why German kids don't have spelling bees.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)"

btreesOfSpring — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:58:10 +0000

Acronym use here to single being part of an in-group. It is one of the most annoying shift in tech language over the past decade. I partly blame it on all the certification testing that has popped up over that time frame.

It isn't like there hasn't always been tech acronyms but they are so causally communicated these days without regard for audience.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Open Letter to Google on Mandatory Developer Registration for App Distribution"

btreesOfSpring — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 20:01:04 +0000

Would rather a more robust and distributed app store system that figures out how to police these edge cases of fraud rather than one vendor (Apple or Google) whose monopolies push developers into subscriptionware across the board. Something more akin to how internic moved from one domain name registrar to what we have today, chock full of competition and new top level domains.

It feels like independent development on devices has slowed in recent years. More stores appealing to different developer models/tools and monetization strategies please.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe"

btreesOfSpring — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 20:43:03 +0000

I have been trying to trouble shoot a Time Machine issue since upgrading to Tahoe. It is usb backup. So far none of the most recent stated fixes work.

An initial backup on newly formatted disk will run but very slowly. Perhaps reaching 100% but it never finishes. At some point the percentage will change and the backup will stay stuck at somewhere near 10%. Cancel backup and run it again. Gets to ~10% and stays stuck. Multiple drives. Re-fs'ed. Boot into safe mode. Networking off. Etc, etc. etc. The TimeMachineMechanic app doesn't have any revealing feedback. I can run a full tar backup to the same disks.

No idea.

I haven't tried backing up to a network share but really, it shouldn't be this difficult.

Clearly someone didn't test a bunch of edge cases when pushing this one out.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Squishy Go"

btreesOfSpring — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:26:31 +0000

It is always funny to see the brain force a context switch. Clicked the link thinking this was going to be about golang.

Nope, go game.

Thanks for the pleasant surprise.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Verizon outages reported across U.S."

btreesOfSpring — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:53:26 +0000

Your post reflects another online observation. With the rise of online sports books, this sort of predictive doomerism has flooded almost every team's online comment section. It no longer feel like fandom or community in the same way. Just lots of voices that will be glad to say, "I told you so," in the loss and crickets with the W. Wish there was some accountability mechanism for all the negative noise broadcasted into the channel.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "I program on the subway"

btreesOfSpring — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 19:10:39 +0000

When I was part of a team developing a highly durable texting protocol, those of us in NYC would regularly test messaging while riding the subway. Between stations, you didn't have network access but different devices upon entering the next station would handle and recover from the interruptions in various ways.

The subway produced so many repeatable network connection edge case problems. It was fantastic.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws"

btreesOfSpring — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:23:11 +0000

A shorter and consistent iteration cycle by meaningful working groups on the legislation until a long term workable legal framework is enacted from the lessons gathered. Something like, every four months, X working group will present updates to legal recommendations and they will be voted on at that time. Allow for public input throughout the process. Mistakes will be made but can be short lived with the correction cycle. They are trying to tightrope walk complex legislation for tech. Might as well take on a tech release cycle to get out of beta and into release version 1.0 of these laws.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "ADS-B Exposed"

btreesOfSpring — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 15:51:03 +0000

Check out https://adsb.im

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers"

btreesOfSpring — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 13:50:37 +0000

Reminds me of the time I wasn't passed on an interview for a product I was part of the pre-release testing team but I didn't have enough year's of experience with the tech for the job. I'm guessing it was just an excuse to say I wasn't getting the job but it has forever given me the ick with HR tech pre screen interviews.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Flight engineer reveals what it was like to operate Concorde"

btreesOfSpring — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 16:37:27 +0000

Found the anecdote at the end about him diagnosing problems while on a modern computer automated aircraft fascinating. Of course the roll of flight engineer was going to go disappear but it seems the are still knowledge gaps that modern pilots have that this roll was able to better address.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "30 years of The X-Files"

btreesOfSpring — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 15:11:55 +0000

In Search of...[0] was the introductory conspiracy show for baby boomers.

The X Files was GenX's turn at the Art Bell wheel[1].

Stranger Things[2] is built on these foundations for the younger generation sprinkled generously with nostalgia of those eras of conspiracy television.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of..._(TV_series) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Bell [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_Things

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source"

btreesOfSpring — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 15:53:48 +0000

For WatchOS, you would start by running the Sleep App[0] and notice that there is an issue with your sleep stages.

Next you might move onto an app, like SnoreLab[1] where you record the audio of your sleep each night and can listen back to where you are having sleep interruptions. At that point, you would likely hear your breathing process.

Moving onto the Withings Sleep Analyzer[3] (as shown in the article) will fill out your data but by step 2, you will should probably already be setting up an appointment with your doctor for sleep apnea.

[0] https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/track-your-sleep-apd83... [1] https://www.snorelab.com/ [3] https://www.withings.com/be/en/sleep-analyzer

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years"

btreesOfSpring — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 16:05:34 +0000

The Economist ran a story the other week on the topic of food costs talking about how the tomato can be looked at as a type of energy store & how British supermarkets differ from other European supermarket chains by rationing out veg rather than increasing pricing. [0] This was to say the "shortages" were more of a quirk of the British market rather than purely due to Brexit.

0. https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/03/02/britains-tomato...

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Effective Altruism Is about Getting Rich with a Clean Conscience"

btreesOfSpring — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 18:19:35 +0000

Not sure what the end-game is in this line of thinking but the consistent narratives against both charitable giving or government intervention to produce institutions of social assistance can not be good for the unfortunate and marginalized.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Analysis of Apple Watch running data"

btreesOfSpring — Sun, 25 Sep 2022 23:17:50 +0000

Garmin user for ages. Forerunner 9 series is my jam but you might want to find what works in your price point along with the need-to-have/want-to-have feature matrix of your choosing. Garmin's UX is stuck in the Symbian era of OS design. So I appreciate the competition that Apple brings to this segment.

Sport gear reviewer DC Rainmaker has a full write up on the good/bad/ugly of the Apple watch for athletes[0]. He also has plenty of other reviews on other brands of sports watches if you want to see what is out there for you.

[0] https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/09/apple-watch-ultra-in-dep...

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Next steps for Rust in the kernel"

btreesOfSpring — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 18:29:33 +0000

All great points. It is also a young enough language that significant kernal dev can have significant influence on the future of the language itself. CPP's future seems to be predicated upon its past adoption.

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Why I quit using SwiftUI"

btreesOfSpring — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 19:59:24 +0000

Here is a 30 minute podcast episode titled, "Different, But Not Worse," on SwiftUI vs UIKit.[0] This thoughtful take is a whole lot less adversarial towards adopting SwiftUI than what you tend to read on this forum.

[0] https://www.relay.fm/radar/247

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "High-speed rail board completes environmental clearance in northern California"

btreesOfSpring — Sat, 20 Aug 2022 01:27:14 +0000

CityNerd does an informative video on SF-LA highspeed rail vs aircraft[0]. Your variables may vary.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cvt8QA4SvY

New comment by btreesOfSpring in "Detecting Fake 4G Base Stations in Real Time (2020) [pdf]"

btreesOfSpring — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 19:57:37 +0000

This makes the most sense.