Hacker News: dcuthbertson

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian"

dcuthbertson — Mon, 18 May 2026 22:06:22 +0000

> Well, we know that it's impossible to remember everything.

Yet it's possible to remember a lot. Those who pass "The Knowledge" test are truly inspirational. See this 60 Minutes report on London's Black Cab drivers [0]

[0]: https://60minutestonight.com/the-knowledge-60-minutes-report...

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Investors pile into clean energy as Iran war drives push for energy security"

dcuthbertson — Sun, 03 May 2026 15:10:15 +0000

I'm curious as to how low a temperature your heat pump will operate. I live in New England and replaced a whole-house air conditioner with a heat pump, but the heat pump works only to 35F. Much colder than that, and an auxiliary electric heater kicked in. The first Winter cost me about $800 over my gas-fired forced hot water heating system. I had the contractor disable the electric heat in the Spring and rewire the thermostats to start the (high efficiency) furnace when the outdoor temp got too low.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Antimatter has been transported for the first time"

dcuthbertson — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:52:27 +0000

Imagine your own, household matter/antimatter reaction chamber. I can hardly wait for antimatter to be transported through pipes underground along side water mains, natural gas pipes, and sewer connections.

Rust Training

dcuthbertson — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:30:42 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/microsoft/RustTraining

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47503150

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming"

dcuthbertson — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:33:36 +0000

But doesn't No. 2 directly conflict with Pike's 5th rule? It seems to me these are all aphorisms that have to be taken with a grain of salt.

> 2. Functions delay binding; data structures induce binding. Moral: Structure data late in the programming process.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Good software knows when to stop"

dcuthbertson — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 22:36:46 +0000

There are few things so valuable as a good user who is willing to work with you. Many years ago I worked at a company that was going to shutdown a very buggy product. There was one user who relied on it heavily and convinced the CEO to make one more release, and I was tasked with working with that customer to make it happen. Over the next month, we fixed the bugs (I coded, he tested). We wound up making a stable and more user-friendly product. It was a real pleasure to work with that guy. The company still mothballs the thing, but I know we had at least one happy customer in the end.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

dcuthbertson — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:45:09 +0000

https://douglascuthbertson.com/ - my personal blog

New comment by dcuthbertson in "LaTeX Coffee Stains (2021) [pdf]"

dcuthbertson — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 01:43:40 +0000

Now I want a package to add blood stains on my murder mystery screenplay.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Deliberate Internet Shutdowns"

dcuthbertson — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 11:32:05 +0000

Thank you. There are so many TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) that they overlap significantly. Maybe the coffee hasn't kicked in yet, but I didn't know what CTA meant in this context. I thought it might be related to PSA (Public Service Announcement), so I searched "CTA announcement" and got Chicago Transit Authority and California Teacher's Association - obviously not helpful.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Show HN: KiDoom – Running DOOM on PCB Traces"

dcuthbertson — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 18:49:06 +0000

Could you print the designs to paper and make a repeatable flip-card stack? Oh no. How long before it becomes a PowerPoint presentation?!

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Playball – Watch MLB games from a terminal"

dcuthbertson — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 09:28:34 +0000

Remember, all things in moderation - especially moderation.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "GamerNexus to benchmarks GPUs on Linux [video]"

dcuthbertson — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 12:11:53 +0000

This video is worth a look if you care about gaming on Linux. Steve and Wendell are really thinking through which distros to use for testing, what to test, and how to test before jumping into setting up test rigs.

I hope GamersNexus gets to benchmarking games. It will be fun to see benchmarks of popular games running on something other than Windows.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Knotty: A domain-specific language for knitting patterns"

dcuthbertson — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 21:41:24 +0000

Oh, the missed opportunities, like a little "ribbing" for the versions :^)

Version 1: Knit

Version 2: Purl

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah"

dcuthbertson — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 13:04:25 +0000

I'm not comparing anything to 1950s America. I am disagreeing with your assertion "His position seemed fairly reasonable ...". Kirk insinuated in the video that women in America would be happier if they had a belief in the divine and a lot of kids (which may correlate with beliefs from the 1950s, but that's besides the point) when he compared what women in America have to what women in sub-Saharan Africa have. That doesn't seem reasonable to me. (edited to fix a typo)

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah"

dcuthbertson — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 11:35:50 +0000

> His position seemed fairly reasonable that women were happier with the get married and have kids model then the focus on you career one.

Broad statements like that are just plain wrong and aren't reasonable. Saying women were happier with the get married and have kids model denies the fact that all humans have different aspirations. Some want to be doctors, nurses, chefs, electricians, plumbers, or artists. Saying that women should get married and raise lots of children denies those aspirations, and says to me that those who ascribe to that model have no consideration for women as human beings. Let women pursue their own definition of happiness rather than prescribing one for them.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "How I code with AI on a budget/free"

dcuthbertson — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 10:22:25 +0000

FYI: the first AI you link to, " z.ai's GLM 4.5", actually links to zai.net, which appears to be a news site, instead of "chat.z.ai", which is what I think you intended.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes"

dcuthbertson — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 01:12:19 +0000

On, off, and ooh shiny!

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Show HN: I built a tool to solve window management"

dcuthbertson — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 16:39:04 +0000

I can't imagine wanting this. When I press ALT-Tab or SHIFT-ALT-Tab I can see most of the Windows I have open, and can get to the one I want quickly. The last thing I want is some algorithm showing me a next/previous window that may have nothing to do with where I'm headed. How would I be able to predict where it would send me so I can reliably know how many key presses I need to make to get there?

New comment by dcuthbertson in "Root for your friends"

dcuthbertson — Sat, 24 May 2025 12:56:28 +0000

> "why would it make me feel better that my friend also had this bad thing happen to them?"

Sometimes people feel alone in their failures. Knowing that something similar has happened to others can help the person feel less alone.

New comment by dcuthbertson in "You Wouldn't Download a Hacker News"

dcuthbertson — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 16:45:46 +0000

Thanks for saying it's a fair point, but it's more of an offhand joke about "an innocent machine". In reality, a machine, even an LLM, has no innocence. It's just a machine.