Hacker News: calfuris

New comment by calfuris in "No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026"

calfuris — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:39:54 +0000

Out of sync with each other, or are they drifting together in lockstep? In the latter case, yes, that's the most likely explanation.

New comment by calfuris in "Markets are competitive if and only if P != NP"

calfuris — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 17:15:58 +0000

A problem in NP can have a (positive) solution verified in polynomial time. That's it. Requiring more than polynomial time to solve isn't part of the definition, and in fact it's an open question whether any problems in NP require more than polynomial time to solve.

Every single problem in P is in NP. What is believed but unproven is that some problems in NP are not in P.

New comment by calfuris in "Solving Wordle using information theory"

calfuris — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:15:51 +0000

Hard mode forces most people to play smarter than they usually would. I'm not sure if that's the same as being easier. Hard mode is certainly harder for a skilled player, because that player could play normal mode as if it were hard mode but without having to worry about avoiding hard mode traps like _IGHT or SHA_E--if they encounter such a scenario they can just play known-bad words that check several possible solutions at once (e.g. FIRES for _IGHT to check FIGHT/RIGHT/EIGHT/SIGHT).

New comment by calfuris in "The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization"

calfuris — Wed, 13 May 2026 17:43:15 +0000

I don't see the contradiction, unless you believe that the grandparent comment was written by an LLM.

New comment by calfuris in "Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision..."

calfuris — Fri, 08 May 2026 23:15:57 +0000

The inclusion of a timestamp in v7 makes collisions impossible unless the generating systems think that the time is the same down to the millisecond, which makes the temporal distance quite relevant.

New comment by calfuris in "Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests"

calfuris — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:09:43 +0000

A "review of media reports" is not going to capture any incidents that the media didn't report on. That doesn't strike me as likely to capture every incident, or even a majority of incidents.

New comment by calfuris in "Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight"

calfuris — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:58:28 +0000

Florida got rid of that department in 2002.

New comment by calfuris in "French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?"

calfuris — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:42:31 +0000

"Ghoti" is an artificial example that doesn't actually work if you account for the way positioning affects pronunciation. Pull up a list of words that start with "gh": none of them (unless "ghoti" itself is on the list) start with an /f/ sound. You'll find the same for words ending in "ti" and the /ʃ/ sound.

I recommend asking people how "ough" is pronounced instead. Cough, bough, though, thought, through, thorough, hiccough--enough!

New comment by calfuris in "FCC updates covered list to include foreign-made consumer routers"

calfuris — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 22:57:07 +0000

> What are you talking about re: space shuttle and tens of millions?

GP was almost certainly referring to "They Write the Right Stuff," an old article that is pretty well known in spaces like this. It discusses a process that (a) works extremely well (the engine control software was ~420 kLoC with a total of 17 bugs found in a window of 11 versions) and (b) is extremely expensive (the on-board shuttle software group had a budget of ~35 million per year in mid-90s dollars).

New comment by calfuris in "Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants"

calfuris — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:55:04 +0000

The Natrol liquid isn't usually too hard to track down. They advertise it as 1 mg or 2.5 mg, but it's the same stuff, the bottle just direct you to take 4 or 10 mL respectively.

New comment by calfuris in "“Are you the one?” is free money"

calfuris — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:20:37 +0000

It's not actually optimal. Each check should account for all previous feedback, but it may be optimal to make a known-incorrect guess and trade the chance of winning with that guess for additional information.

For example, if your first guess on wordle is BOUND and you learn that the word is _OUND, you know the answer is one of FOUND, HOUND, MOUND, POUND, ROUND, SOUND, WOUND. Satisfying all previous feedback leaves you checking those one at a time and losing with probability 2/7. Or you could give up the 1-in-7 chance of winning in 2 and trade it for certainly winning in either 3 or 4: HARMS checks four of those options, and WHOOP identifies the remaining three.

New comment by calfuris in "Building the mouse Logitech won't make"

calfuris — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 20:36:14 +0000

I don't see wires as a problem. Wireless accessories are slightly more convenient when you're moving the computer around, which is why my work laptop has a wired keyboard plugged into the dock and a wireless mouse with the receiver plugged into the laptop directly, but that's not a concern with my desktop so I go wired there.

New comment by calfuris in "Building the mouse Logitech won't make"

calfuris — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 18:35:43 +0000

Why would I want to worry about a battery even every other month when I could just not worry about it ever?

New comment by calfuris in "OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent casually clicks through "I am not a robot" verification"

calfuris — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 17:29:59 +0000

If a malicious actor found a gay person in such a job, they could easily extort them with the threat of getting them fired! So obviously you had to fire gay people, lest they get extorted by someone threatening to expose them and thus get them fired.

New comment by calfuris in "Chrome's hidden X-Browser-Validation header reverse engineered"

calfuris — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 12:46:10 +0000

I don't know exactly where to draw the line on "the vast majority," but surely it must be higher than the bar for a simple majority, which is "more than half." If you want to describe something in the lead but under the 50% mark, the word you're looking for is "plurality."

New comment by calfuris in "Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exit door plug separation"

calfuris — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 22:57:20 +0000

In the end, identifying where you can usefully take action to reduce the chances of something similar happen in the future is far more useful than assigning blame.

New comment by calfuris in "Does Earth have two high-tide bulges on opposite sides? (2014)"

calfuris — Fri, 23 May 2025 17:26:45 +0000

The Moon's gravity isn't just pulling on the water, it's pulling on the Earth as a whole. It's pulling more on the Earth as a whole than on the water on the far side. In the Earth's frame of reference, that looks like it is pushing the water on the far side away a little bit.

New comment by calfuris in "The missteps that led to a fatal plane crash at Reagan National Airport"

calfuris — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:12:49 +0000

By this standard, the US has not been at war since WWII. This is an absurd result, so I conclude that the standard is wrong. Official declarations of war have become decoupled from actually being at war.

New comment by calfuris in "How to quickly charge your smartphone: fast charging technologies in detail"

calfuris — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 23:34:48 +0000

I do it for the purpose of preserving the battery for myself down the line. I'll go for a full charge if I expect to need it, but 80% is usually more than enough so why put unnecessary wear on the battery?

New comment by calfuris in "Python’s new t-strings"

calfuris — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:36:18 +0000

I'd rephrase the sell as "now people who are used to doing the wrong thing and risking vulnerabilities can do the right thing without any extra effort," with a footnote about the difference in types allowing libraries to force the change.