<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: crispyambulance</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=crispyambulance</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 00:14:49 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=crispyambulance" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><p><pre><code>  > When I look for people to take advice from I want to see a pattern of home runs, that they can deliver repeatedly...
</code></pre>
That's fine, I guess, if your idea of "success" is apple-scale product home-runs (good luck with that).<p>For those of us with more modest aspirations, listening to a cool person talk about cool stuff is a far better of use of time and attention.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 13:17:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235469</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235469</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235469</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker geek [?]<p>The nice hacker geek? By the way, the Woz has a net-worth of 140MM, so he's more wealthy that the vast majority of "successful entrepreneur/investors", and also vastly more beloved than virtually all of them.<p>In any case, that's a false dichotomy and actually the wrong question entirely.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 13:04:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235326</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235326</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235326</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Red Hot Chili Peppers ink $300M deal with Warner Music to sell catalog"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Beyond a certain amount, the actual number becomes meaningless especially for people who already have dynastic wealth not even counting this. It's just what they happened to negotiate.<p>It's quite a retirement package.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 20:51:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100494</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100494</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100494</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "PyInfra 3.8.0"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A lot of this is a matter of taste and judgement.<p>In the same way that it's possible to have an xml/json/yaml/toml config that creates despair in those who have to maintain it, a python or bash script can grow into a monster in the basement.<p>Or, it could be a cogent script that makes its intent and operation obvious. I prefer that when possible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 19:07:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48027050</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48027050</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48027050</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "PyInfra 3.8.0"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Infrastructure as Code, not infrastructure as YAML.<p>Right on.<p>It's amazing to me that we've spent decades with programming languages and environments which can accurately guess what you're about to type next, which have enormous expressiveness while maintaining cogency, which are intuitive and well understood by humans, which have endless libraries and an infinity of ways of connecting with the world.<p>And what do we use to configure the most sophisticated infrastructure to run such code? Yet another mark-up language!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 18:52:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48013196</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48013196</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48013196</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> ...sneaker company that pivoted to data centers set the 'weird' bar pretty high...<p>"Weird" is the wrong word for Allbirds. "Fraud" is far more fitting. They obviously have no intention running an AI-datacenter business and are doing it for the stock-price rush. A small number of people will be laughing all the way to the bank, and everyone will forget Allbirds in short order.<p>Ebay has a history of being legit, though they have had a long list of uncanny acquisitions themselves (including Skype, which they later sold for a stiff loss). It's a pity they couldn't just execute on their core business and are now being acquired themselves by an entity using sketchy financial shenanigans.<p>Who's going to stop a few rich people with a pile of money and a stated intent of doing something they have no intention of doing? No one, I guess. I mean, there's plenty of examples. Supermicro is still listed on NASDAQ even though one of their founders was caught smuggling export-controlled GPU's in Supermicro servers to the tune of 2.5 billion dollars a couple months ago.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 11:40:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007435</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007435</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007435</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "The USB Situation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think USB-C is certainly a step in the right direction.<p>The remaining problem is the lack of CLEAR, easy to understand markings on the cable that indicate whether it’s intended as power delivery cable or as a 10Gbps data cable or as a thunderbolt-capable cable or any of many combinations in between those. This should not be limited to physical markings on the cable itself but also in the form of electronic self-identification so that you could plug in a cable and have the OS tell you exactly what cable you plugged in. Why not? We have power-delivery protocols, adding cable self-id would be a trivial addition.<p>I suspect the vendors of these, and perhaps the designers of the spec too, have deliberately made this confusion an integral part of the standard. It creates churn and consumers buying more cables than they need.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 11:55:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47996040</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47996040</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47996040</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Ti-84 Evo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Apparently, you can use it in RPN mode!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 22:40:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47981330</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47981330</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47981330</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Craig Venter has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>RIP. He was an amazing human. I worked for a time at JCVI when it was in Rockville, shortly after he had left Celera Genomics. He led a team that did something which was considered intractably difficult-- sequencing whole genomes. Then he did it again with global ocean sampling and synthetic genomics and other things. That is not to say that "he did it single-handedly", Venter was a hybrid of scientific and organizational talent that was able to make this stuff happen by coordinating stuff that's super hard to coordinate.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:20:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963860</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963860</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963860</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's "complex enough" to be notable for it's complexity and thus a good example for considering the character and economics of complex machinery.<p>It's kind of pointless to fret about whether it's "the most complex" like there's an objective 1-dimensional ranking that even has utility.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:37:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935259</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935259</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935259</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "PCR is a surprisingly near-optimal technology"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When practitioners say "PCR" they don't (usually) just mean amplifying DNA for use as part of the input to another process.<p>What they usually mean is PCR with chemistry that selectively amplifies some specific sequence of DNA. This chemistry has dyes in it which fluoresce when illuminated at some specific wavelength. The point of all this is to answer a "yes/no" question for the presence of some DNA sequence in the sample. This is done at scale with multiple chemistries looking for different DNA sequences. This is also known as "real-time PCR".<p>It's sort of like the biological-assay version of the kid's game "20-questions". If you do it right, it's an enormously powerful detection technique for medical purposes. It gives you your "answer" in a reasonable amount of time on your desk while you wait.<p>That said, there are biological assays that don't need the thermo cycling anymore. These newer assays use more sophisticated chemistry that amplifies at a constant heating temperature. In the simplest terms, they're just heaters combined with a fluorometer. It's potentially MUCH faster than realtime-PCR.<p>In any case, the only real serious money-making business for these instruments is in-vitro diagnostics. That requires FDA approval, and that means a ~10K minimum for the instrument and tens of dollars for the consumables containing the assays, and definitely a pricey service agreement for the instrument (eg Bio-Rad instruments).<p>A distant second money-making business would be research-use-only instruments, but these are not going to be inexpensive little devices.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Apr 2026 13:40:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47901496</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47901496</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47901496</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That font, and how it's integrated with the math looks amazing. Katex for the math?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:30:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47874076</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47874076</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47874076</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The OP just told us all what it was about. You don't know any more or less than I do.<p>I simply am skeptical of their smug take on it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 23:50:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842735</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842735</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842735</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>None of us knows the exact situation but the fact that the person said his documentation was "complete, correct, and relatively terse" is a red-flag. It seems to me like smug over-confidence.<p>If the document really was so clear and error-free, then why would the boss try to "fix it"?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 23:37:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842601</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842601</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842601</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I'm not saying that readability can't be a consideration when making documentation. I am saying that if you discard accuracy in the process, you've fucked up quite badly.<p>You're right to elevate accuracy to a high level of importance, but that is NOT ENOUGH if the thing is has poor readability. The audience has to be able to understand the document if the document is to be useable.<p>There's only a certain amount of effort anyone can deliver in producing a document. But if the author can't deliver readability, they need to follow up the document with a lot of support and/or get some help to make it useable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:41:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835939</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835939</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835939</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><p><pre><code>  > The documentation was complete, correct, and relatively terse. Less than a page.
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No, that's YOUR IMPRESSION of your own writing.<p>There are many reasons why others might not find what you wrote sufficient to understand it. You boss ran it through AI for a reason and that reason was most likely because it the document was not understandable or perhaps confusing.<p>Did the document have usage examples? Did it explain context and background? Did it use "precise" jargon that not everyone knows? Did you follow up the documentation writing with a meeting with stakeholders/users to see if they had questions?<p>It sounds like you just "threw it over the wall" like you were done with it and left your boss to figure out how to get others to use it. If you find that you have "near constant" struggle to communicate, there is a strong possibility that the problem is yours and not everyone else.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:30:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835784</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835784</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835784</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Introduction to spherical harmonics for graphics programmers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Spherical harmonics are basically a fourier series. They're a complete orthonormal set of basis functions for functions for the unit sphere. Whereas the fourier series from calc 101 is a complete orthonormal set of basis functions on the unit interval (eg [0,1]).<p>In other words you can express any reasonable function on the unit sphere as a series of spherical harmonic terms. That makes them ideal for working with differential equations (eg schrodinger's equation for the hydrogen atom, or, emission from an arbitrary light source).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:51:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791710</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791710</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791710</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Git commands I run before reading any code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Tools, done right, are a joy to use and allow you to be expressive and precise while also saving you labor. Good tools promote mastery and creative inquiry.<p>Git is NOT that.<p>Git is something you use to get stuff done, until it becomes an irritating obstacle course of incidental complexity.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 22:23:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697053</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697053</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697053</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Git commands I run before reading any code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am convinced that the vast majority of professionals simply don't bother to remember and, ESPECIALLY WITH GIT, just look stuff up every single time the workflow deviates from their daily usage.<p>At this point perhaps a million person-years have been sacrificed to the semantically incoherent shit UX of git. I have loathed git from the beginning but there's effectively no other choice.<p>That said, the OP's commands are useful, I am copying them (because obviously I won't ever memorize them).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:09:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689697</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689697</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689697</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by crispyambulance in "Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Simple question that doesn't seem to be addressed by "speed tests".<p>Does 25Gbps matter? I mean, it's not like your online services are going to be "faster", right?<p>Is Netflix or any other web endpoint that normal people use going to be noticeably better because a household has 25Gbps rather than 1Gbps?<p>Doesn't this only matter for many simultaneous users of heavy web traffic?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:21:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47660572</link><dc:creator>crispyambulance</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47660572</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47660572</guid></item></channel></rss>