Hacker News: elric

New comment by elric in "Apache Burr: Build reliable AI agents and applications"

elric — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:51:34 +0000

Why wouldn't it? The ASF has a long history of incubating new FOSS projects. Some graduate and become household names. Others fail and end up in the attic. The ASF can provide organisational support and generally fosters good communities.

New comment by elric in "A €0.01 bank transfer could compromise a banking AI agent"

elric — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:49:30 +0000

I see far more SVG injections than SQL injections these days, but YYMV. My programming ecosystem has very robusy SQL libraries, from simple prepared statement bindings to complex ORMs and everything in between.

New comment by elric in "I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys"

elric — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:40:44 +0000

I wouldn't buy a laptop that requires the use of Fn for any key I commonly use. I don't particularly care about PrtScr, Break or ScrollLock. Can't remember the last time I used either of those. But Home/End/PgUp/PgDown are requirements.

New comment by elric in "Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?"

elric — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:50:57 +0000

> Meanwhile, a lot of managers calendars are purely just 1:1s with devs on the team which clearly has very little value add to the team.

Depending on the manager and on the team, 1:1s with people can be very valuable for all involved.

New comment by elric in "I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys"

elric — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:48:51 +0000

Thinkpad laptops thankfully have a BIOS option to revert the behaviour to normal, where F1-F12 perform their nominal functions. I'd probably pay an extra €50 for a laptop that didn't come with a stupid Fn button at all. Might want to throw some more money at a few more keyboard modifications: my bottom row is Fn CTRL Win Alt Space AltGr PrtSc Ctrl; that PrtSc button clearly has no business being there. Arrows & PgUp/PgDown are too small. Backspace is too short. Etc.

New comment by elric in "Why are so many young people getting cancer?"

elric — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:51:51 +0000

Several things at play here:

1. As others have mentioned, males were excluded from vaccination until relatively recently. This seems like such a stupid decision in hindsight. When I (male) got my vaccines, I was told that it wasn't routinely done in boys "because of availability issues", which I took to mean "because it's expensive".

2. Initial vaccines offered protection against 4 strains of HPV, newer vaccines protect against 9. People who got the older vaccines remain susceptible to the other 5 strains.

3. It can take years for an HPV infection to become dangerous or cancerous.

4. This last one is speculative, but I assume that when a woman tests positive for HPV or cervical cancer, their partner is also looked at. With the rates of symptoms and cancers going down in woman, their partners might fall through the gaps: there are no routine tests for males.

New comment by elric in "The Butlerian Jihad Has Begun"

elric — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:34:16 +0000

> An easy way out of this is universal basic income and universal mortgage/rent freezes now.

Of all the unlikely things to happen, these seem like the most unlikely. There's a bigger chance of a violent mob blowing up every datacentre on the planet than there is of UBI being implemented within the next century.

New comment by elric in "GrapheneOS user reported to authorities for using GrapheneOS"

elric — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 10:28:16 +0000

Any insights on what Yoti is or what might motivate them to take those moronic actions?

New comment by elric in "32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building"

elric — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:11:26 +0000

How much of is this is actually due to the AI hype cycle, and what's the impact of the global energy clusterfuck that is the Strait of Hormuz?

New comment by elric in "Having your insulin pump die while you're on vacation"

elric — Sun, 31 May 2026 15:21:14 +0000

Sounds familiar. I was often told "just use your inhaler, you'll be fine!". How I wish it were that simple.

New comment by elric in "Please Use AI"

elric — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:58:52 +0000

> disrupts a status quo in a way that some might find harmful

I love a good strawman argument myself, but this is just madness. Who the heck finds substitute "dad advice" harmful?

New comment by elric in "Is "colorectal cancer" rising in "young people"?"

elric — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:43:00 +0000

There was some discussion about this on HN recently. Supposedly something to do with less blood going to the bowels during prolonged exercise. Apparently the risk was largest in people who ran 5+ marathons.

New comment by elric in "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)"

elric — Tue, 26 May 2026 17:09:51 +0000

I share your concerns about surgery. The way I understand it, the difficulty lies in choosing the right surgery (or surgeries) for the right patient. The supposed gold-standard diagnostic approach is a drug induced sleep endoscopy, where an ENT looks at your airway while you sleep. The problem is that being sedated is not the same as being asleep. It's possible to do this "right", but that is much more time consuming than just shooting people up with propofol and scoping them while they're knocked out.

One thing to keep in mind is that surgery might still be useful even if it doesn't get you off CPAP: being able to use lower CPAP pressures could increase comfort and adherence.

I've been putting off my own septoplasty because it all sounds extremely unpleasant, so yeah.

New comment by elric in "What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard"

elric — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:21:48 +0000

> Then lets also add on how loitering is treated as such a great offense.

The Wikipedia page on Loitering [1] is wild. A surprisingly large number of places seem to have criminalised "just existing somewhere".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering

New comment by elric in "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)"

elric — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:16:21 +0000

BiPAP is only more expensive for artificial reasons. It's the same hardware just with a different algorithm. CPAP machines are around €/$500, BiPAP can be more than twice as much. But if you take into account that they last 5-10 years, and that my local hospital charges my insurance €90/month for leasing a CPAP device, it quickly becomes apparent how much of a cash grab that is.

Patient care should be at the top of the list, especially for something as important as sleep. But saving a few bucks in the short term seems to be more important. But people with improperly treated sleep apnea still suffer many of the same effects of people who aren't treated at all.

New comment by elric in "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)"

elric — Mon, 25 May 2026 19:55:44 +0000

Not sure why the other reply got downvoted to death. Commenter is right. The same motor seems to power resmed CPAP and resmed BiPAP. Haven't tried jailbreaking my own yet, but maybe I should give that a go.

New comment by elric in "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)"

elric — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:41:38 +0000

Oh not this nonsense again. Plenty of "wafer thin" people have obstructive sleep apnea. There are lots of factors that contribute to sleep apnea, from big tonsils to hormones to muscle tone to tongue size. Weight is not the issue.

New comment by elric in "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)"

elric — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:38:23 +0000

What are you saying? That you expected your childhood trombone playing would somehow protect you from sleep apnea forever? "Use it or lose it." Sleep apnea can certainly take 30 years to develop. Old age increases the chances of getting it. Menopause does too. Muscles get weaker.

New comment by elric in "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)"

elric — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:34:01 +0000

Kind of, yeah. When I first got onto CPAP I was worried that it would cause my muscles to atrophy over time because it makes the inhale so much easier. But the pressure is still there on the exhale, which is exactly like breathing out through a straw into water (with 5-20cm water on top of the straw, depending on the CPAP pressure).

New comment by elric in "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)"

elric — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:24:28 +0000

There's some science on training those muscles, even without upside down drinking. "Dry swallowing" while on an incline seems to do the trick just fine.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9550520/