<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: cue_the_strings</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cue_the_strings</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:11:49 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=cue_the_strings" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is a damn shame bordering conspiracy that metamizole (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamizole" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamizole</a>, known as Analgin in eastern Europe and the Balkans, apparently also India) is not more widely available in the west. It's literally a wonder drug, the only non-narcotic (hence non-addictive) that actually relieves serious pain (including post-op) pain in my experience.<p>Since I've had a fair share of it in my life so far (more than 1kg of it so far, in total), and I investigated the disparaging studies and they are definitely not convincing at all; more recent ones somewhat absolve it (check the Wikipedia page).<p>I've never had any side effects from it, and I don't know anyone who did, unlike for any other painkiller (diclofenac, ketoprofen, ibuprofen, acetaminophen / paracetamol).<p>It is a medicine where I'm almost 100% sure the studies against it are intentional sabotage by pharma companies, and the vigor and persistence this is done with is really telling (lots of doctors and pharmacists in my extended family, including in regulatory bodies). The campaign against it never ends.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:34:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47862104</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47862104</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47862104</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Finnish sauna heat exposure induces stronger immune cell than cytokine responses"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>All of these studies are always performed by Finns (or SE / DK / NO + maybe Russia).<p>I'd love to see this (and other sauna studies) replicated by someone somewhere to the south or hotter climates in general (southern Europe, Africa, hotter parts of Asia and the Americas).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 14:47:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650002</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650002</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650002</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Hostile Volume – A game about adjusting volume with intentionally bad UI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's inverted, 100 == 0, 75 == 25</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:36:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382033</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382033</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382033</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "I traced $2B in nonprofit grants for Meta and Age Verification lobbying"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, a way where they hand you all their personal info for profiling, cyberbullying and threats?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:46:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47371002</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47371002</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47371002</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "The engine of Germany's wealth is blocking its future"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've worked in the automotive industry, as an embedded dev, some years ago.<p>The software used by the automotive industry, mostly German-written, is absolutely terrible.<p>Funnily enough, I've worked with some Chinese mobility startups, and I'd say it's exactly the same. Not worse, not better either.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2026 23:33:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47330128</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47330128</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47330128</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "The Brand Age"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was not expecting it to be this ugly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2026 22:45:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47268297</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47268297</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47268297</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "U.S. science agency moves to restrict foreign scientists from its labs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You're missing the preparation for WW3.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 12:52:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47217360</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47217360</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47217360</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "President Trump bans Anthropic from use in government systems"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Probably war.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:17:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186493</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186493</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186493</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Don't attribute to ideals what is simple self-preservation.<p>No sane person wants to become a legitimate military target. They want to sleep in their own beds, at home, without risking their families lives. Just like the rest of us.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 13:21:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47180220</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47180220</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47180220</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Only Matrix.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:38:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904893</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904893</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904893</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As I've said before, Matrix really is the only viable open source solution for in-company communication.<p>Every other solution (Zulip / Mattermost / whatever) is too risky, they could easily bait-and-switch you like Gitlab did, by moving important features to different tiers, or engage in other shenanigans afforded by the open core model.<p>Matrix has a bad reputation because it used to be downright terrible (first time I tried it, in like 2018-2019), but is a lot better now.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:32:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904801</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904801</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904801</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This cannot be overstated. It used to be a pile of trash, now it's quite decent (but with lots of room for improvement).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:27:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904747</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904747</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904747</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "US to suspend immigrant visa processing for 75 nations, State Department says"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, a lot of people who went to the US illegaly now own businesses. A highschool buddy went to drive trucks in like 2014, now has his own trucking company, several trucks, bunch of employees (Montenegrin and otherwise).<p>When I say semi-legally, there are people who do kind of get the green card through marriage, but it's fake marriages. A lot of truckers do it and it seems to be tolerated.<p>BTW apparently (I searched online) now people from Serbia also go to the US to work illegaly, but it's a recent trend, in Montenegro it was commonplace since at least 2010 and in Albania since the 90s.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Jan 2026 13:32:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632273</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632273</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632273</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "US to suspend immigrant visa processing for 75 nations, State Department says"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think it's strictly for financial reasons. A different profile of people from Serbia comes to the US.<p>I'm from Montenegro, but also lived in Serbia for a sizeable portion of my life and have family there.<p>Many people from said countries work in the US illegaly. I can speak for Montenegro, but the exact same pattern plays out in Bosnia and Albania.<p>Sure, there are some people who go to the US to study for a bit, and there are short-term seasonal work arrangements for students like "Work and Travel", but those are short.<p>I know 20+ people from Montenegro who went to work in the US in the last decade, illegaly or semi-legally. Two things come to mind first: driving trucks and picking marijuana. Usually they go there for a seasonal job or simply as tourists and overstay their visa.<p>My schoolmate even has a company that facilitates such schemes and sends people to the US as seasonal workers, who then overstay their visas and do shitty jobs. He's a millionare now, not that you'd know. Of course, it's also the diaspora in the US who actually facilitate this scheme and exploit the workers. I've heard the same thing from Albanians.<p>Every person I know who went to work in the US from Serbia (10+ people) is either a (good) dev, or an expert of some other kind, engineer, maybe a doctor (even though that's a tough path), PhD or something similar. All the best serbian devs and PhDs are overwhelmingly in the US.<p>There are several reasons for that, main ones being that it seems to be somewhat harder for people from Serbia to go to US to work illegaly, so the US mostly gets the best ones who are a net benefit to the society and pay a surplus of taxes.<p>Because it's harder to get to the US from Serbia, fo less qualified workers it's much easier to go to Israel and Saudi Arabia (both hugely popular nowadays) and the Emirates. Western Europe used to be popular, but it barely pays off nowadays, you can go there to live an average life, not to make big bucks and come back to flex on your neighbors.<p>Serbia is also quite a desperate place, but still has enough people to produce a sizeable chunk of professionals and academics, who don't want to put up with the kleptocracy and leave.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:35:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46624822</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46624822</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46624822</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This has certainly happened to someone if not the OP.<p>I did wait in a single spot for almost 10h, my 5-6h journey became a 15h one, in Serbia in the late 2000s. IIRC, a large part of the railway was down that day, couple hundred km, electricity issue or something. Some people walked off the train, which was in between cities but near the road. I was a student, didn't have an alternative, so I didn't. They didn't organize a replacement bus.<p>This kind of thing was (maybe not to that extent) common, like once every year or two. They rarely reported on it in media if the cause wasn't notable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2025 13:10:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46433001</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46433001</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46433001</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Mattermost restricted access to old messages after 10000 limit is reached"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>IME it "just works" on Android:<p><a href="https://docs.element.io/latest/element-server-suite-classic/advanced-configuration/notifications-mdm-push-gateway/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.element.io/latest/element-server-suite-classic/...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2025 18:48:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46394939</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46394939</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46394939</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Mattermost restricted access to old messages after 10000 limit is reached"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I thoroughly investigated every open-source (mostly open-core) self-hostable Slack alternative, and the conclusion was clear: only a self-hosted Matrix is a viable option.<p>There are no arbitrary limits for 'community editions', no risk of relicensing, no risk of being held hostage for features (like Gitlab did at some point).<p>You can work around all the missing features easily with self-built webhooks and other tools.<p>Starting with Mattermost or Zulip or similar is just way too risky.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2025 12:46:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391516</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391516</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391516</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Pro-democracy HK tycoon Jimmy Lai convicted in national security trial"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There's a very common line of thinking that goes like this:<p>From the end of WWII until the fall of communism, the public in the West (as opposed to the elites) enjoyed much better treatment, and prospered more than ever before or since. This would include both fiscal gains, and the public's opinion being truly taken into consideration. This is mainly because the elites were afraid of people turning socialist / communist, so they gave them a reason to actually be invested in the system. Once that threat of communism evaporated, the elites could proceed to gut the majority as in the previous centuries with no fear whatsoever.<p>My comments:<p>I'm not sure I agree with that, though, too simplistic. On the other hand, I also think that people have a rose-tinted view of what "democracy" always was - with enough money / media control and a bit of time, you can convince the majority of anything, anywhere. Letting people prosper does make it easier. Maybe it did play a bit of a role. A counter argument is that (independent) media coverage made the Vietnam war unpopular, and then the US pulled out because of that, a miracle of democracy which never really came close to happening again ever after.<p>But I think the USSR itself murdered any real chances of communism's further spread in 1968, when they invaded Czechoslovakia. (The Hungarian thing in 1956 isn't nearly as important because of country's undeniable previous Axis affiliation; few had sympathy for that back then). The US and west in general couldn't get rid of their Woody Guthries, and their Klaus Fuchses, until USSR did it for them through sheer idiocy. But after that, was communism really a threat?<p>But I do think that the 1950s policies were affected by the war (+ Korean war) even more than communism itself. All these traumatized vets, desensitized to violence, were now back home, and the elites were truly afraid. But that doesn't seem like it brought democracy in today's sense of the word? There's a reason why feminism regressed in the 50s - letting men be little despots in their own (cheaply bought) homes was the least the government could do. But that seems to have lasted only until the mid 60s, then the Vietnam thing happened, ... Let's not go further.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Dec 2025 20:21:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46280008</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46280008</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46280008</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Reverse-engineered CUPS driver for Phomemo receipt/label printers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is there a device you can recommend for printing (sticky) labels occasionally? I have a little Brother printer for those narrow little labels, one with a rubber keyboard, but would love something with sticky labels AND Linux connectivity. Something I could script when organizing my workspace, parts, ... to print the appropriate label.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Nov 2025 22:24:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45816562</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45816562</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45816562</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cue_the_strings in "Automatically Translating C to Rust"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree.<p>But on the other hand, let's not kid ourselves, array out of bounds, use after free, resource leaks and bad type system, all of this isn't even close to an exhaustive list of C downsides. Beyond its direct limitations, C inspires an approach that is vastly inferior even if you follow all the best practices. Even compared to (modern) C++ it's much worse. I say this and I kind of like C.<p>If the approaches described in the article save us 30% of the effort of translating C codebases to Rust, it's still worth trying; we're unfortunately not very close to complete automation, but that's something worthy of pursuit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 02 Nov 2025 13:28:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790196</link><dc:creator>cue_the_strings</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790196</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790196</guid></item></channel></rss>