Hacker News: cleansingfire

New comment by cleansingfire in "Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen"

cleansingfire — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:26:03 +0000

Yup. Try to treat the source of the pain. Of course. But dont act morally superior because you don't need acetaminophen.

New comment by cleansingfire in "What nicotine does to your brain"

cleansingfire — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 09:48:07 +0000

Except that ADHD is older than screens, and exists without drugs or addiction.

New comment by cleansingfire in "What Did Medieval Peasants Know? (2022)"

cleansingfire — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 03:24:15 +0000

The medieval period was called the dark ages largely because of our ignorance of it. The Medieval spans about 1,000 years. There were plagues which made labor immensely more valuable, & wars that lasted generations. Any blanket statement about it is bound to be somewhere between false and meaningless. Including this one.

New comment by cleansingfire in "Bull markets make you feel smarter than you are"

cleansingfire — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 19:03:32 +0000

Day Traders only exist because of this. Bull markets allow them to exist.

New comment by cleansingfire in "A Scientific American bolt puzzle"

cleansingfire — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 16:51:00 +0000

When you twiddle your thumbs, your thumbnails always point the same direction relative to each other. So the bolts relative rotation will maintain that. Imagine a stripe on the face towards us of the bolts, and twiddling action will not rotate the stripe in an absolute or relative sense.

For the two bolts, this is equivalent to rotating both bolts so the stripe stays in the same relative position, as if one were rotated around the other or they were twisted in the same absolute direction. If you are concerned about symmetry violation because of the direction of the threads, you can reverse the threads on both bolts, with the same result. You can try this with a couple of bolts and a couple of rubber bands to keep them in the same relative position. The illustration is a hint that the motion is equivalent to rotating both in the same absolute direction (near side moving up.) Then view that system from the head and note the direction each would be moving, away or towards you.

If you have to undo a bolt or nut from behind, the bolt head moves in a reverse direction from your viewpoint, just as if you were to view a glass clock from behind.

New comment by cleansingfire in "Zinc prevents vaginal candidiasis by inhibiting expression of fungal protein"

cleansingfire — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 02:15:42 +0000

I'm concerned about the same mechanism that causes permanent loss of taste with zinc lozenges, and if it applies here. I don't want to poison the nerves in my genitals. It isn't a common or widespread effect, but it is severe.

New comment by cleansingfire in "A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32"

cleansingfire — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 01:06:34 +0000

Also demonstrated by the picture in the op of the brick wall. Note that it wasn't smashed or knocked down, but looks as if it was cut.

New comment by cleansingfire in "Shane MacGowan has died"

cleansingfire — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 20:46:15 +0000

He claimed alcohol was a mystic sacrament, in an interview I read long ago. That's an awfully destructive spirituality, but it was very much his choice, whether rationalized addiction or not. Personally, I've seen that destruction too closely to find it anything but tragic, but I'm grateful for his poetry.

New comment by cleansingfire in "Why I always hit the crosswalk button (2015)"

cleansingfire — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:40 +0000

The button has no downside, with a possible benefit, so always push it. Also refers to discredited Bystander effect nonsense regarding Kitty Genocese murder: "there is no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive." https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0003-066X.6...

New comment by cleansingfire in "macOS Sonoma Boot Failures"

cleansingfire — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 19:51:36 +0000

Only affects Apple silicon chips (intel unaffected) with ProMotion display. Just a quick Exit clause for people with older machines.

New comment by cleansingfire in "Toyota’s advanced battery technology roadmap"

cleansingfire — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 04:05:54 +0000

If they understood significant figures, it would be less suspicious. Besides, when a vendor uses their own special metric, instead of a well known standard, I lose respect for them.

New comment by cleansingfire in "Shannon's Mind-Reading Machine"

cleansingfire — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 20:26:21 +0000

New comment by cleansingfire in "Landauer's Principle"

cleansingfire — Sun, 28 May 2023 21:28:27 +0000

Reversible computing cannot lose information or energy. No dissipation allowed.

New comment by cleansingfire in "The core problem with hamburger menus"

cleansingfire — Fri, 05 May 2023 19:35:53 +0000

Assuming the bottom is even accesible! I believe it's somewhere in the Amazon ios app where I see a promise of a useful footer that is always pushed off the page by infinitely scrolling things they're pushing at me instead.

New comment by cleansingfire in "The Best Pens for 2023: Gel, Ballpoint, Rollerball, and Fountain Pens"

cleansingfire — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 01:13:35 +0000

Amazon doesn't even organize or allow you to search for SHOES by size. Their search is about forcing crap down your throat and is actively hostile to getting what you want. I wish the reviews were the worst of it.

New comment by cleansingfire in "Xylazine, a dangerous new drug fuelling Canada’s opioid crisis"

cleansingfire — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 02:53:34 +0000

I thought of Krokodil also. Considering that tiny amounts of impurities can cause terrible consequences. MPTP impurities in MPPP caused parkinson's, and bad commercial synthesis of tryptophan by Showa Denko caused EMS, it seems likely that this is real.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan

New comment by cleansingfire in "Clocks and Causality – Ordering Events in Distributed Systems (2022)"

cleansingfire — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 15:44:51 +0000

Original Lamport paper here https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/time-clocks.pdf

New comment by cleansingfire in "The Anti-Productivity Manifesto"

cleansingfire — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 20:19:10 +0000

I think this is why the Dunning-Kruger effect exists, and why casinos make money. Unreasonable hope is necessary if you are going to do anything interesting. Failure often teaches more than success. Knowing we will die is intimidating. https://www.google.com/search?q=wood+allen+the+universe+is+e...

New comment by cleansingfire in "Show HN: GPT-4 Reverse Turing Test"

cleansingfire — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 17:21:29 +0000

It is brilliant satire, written as if by a machine claiming to own empathy, while demonstrating none.

New comment by cleansingfire in "What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?"

cleansingfire — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 05:38:52 +0000

Statistically they were americans. Foreign terrorists are historically negligible compared to domestic.