Hacker News: entropy47

New comment by entropy47 in "A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months"

entropy47 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:41:48 +0000

I don't think it would matter - the crime is sending images, not necessarily sending images of you. Entirely plausible a perp might use a random image they found online rather than a genuine personal photo for a multitude of reasons.

Terrible luck and a terrible legal defence. The stuff of nightmares!

New comment by entropy47 in "If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?"

entropy47 — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 02:09:16 +0000

I think it's a question of integrity - I have reached a comfortable ceiling in my career, but doing the dumb shit would have got me further, faster. I don't begrudge the peers who have sold out when the delta is $1m+ a year but I personally got into CS for the art, not the money.

A lot of people know the exec bandwagon things are going to fail and do it anyway because of incentive misalignment.

New comment by entropy47 in "If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?"

entropy47 — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:22:37 +0000

There are good PMs out there watching in horror as their peers make changes and features that are obviously doomed (to anybody with a functional brain). I also write as much code as the median engineer on my team (skews junior). Please don't write off the entire profession based on many (most?) being awful - if you work with a good PM some day I promise you will find there is an important point to the job.

New comment by entropy47 in "Scrcpy v4.0"

entropy47 — Wed, 13 May 2026 09:17:57 +0000

A lot of OEMs will have a shortcut to enable screen reader mode even if the display is cooked (I think maybe both volume buttons at once for 5s?). OTG keyboard can be a lifesaver too, and many modern phones will let you use a USBC to HDMI cable. Way easier if you've pre auth'd for ABD though!

New comment by entropy47 in "Inputlag.science – Repository of knowledge about input lag in gaming"

entropy47 — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 11:30:16 +0000

I don't know how scientifically valid this is (I hope very) but when a friend told me my USB hub / switcher would be introducing a lot of input lag, I bought a USB to eth adaptor and did a few thousand pings to the router, from direct to mobo and then from via the switcher. Unsurprisingly, there was no measurable latency (I had to use a 3P tool because Windows wouldn't go lower than ms by default).

I am aware that admitting to using Windows in these hallowed halls is a terrible sin, but the anecdote was too relevant to pass up and that's an important detail for anybody looking to repro.

New comment by entropy47 in "Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features"

entropy47 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 07:22:59 +0000

> I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones.

Sure, but people also told me I'd be using crypto for everything now and (at least for me) it has faded into total obscurity.

The biggest difference for me is that nobody (the companies making things, the companies I worked for...) had to jam smartphones down my throat. It made my life better so I went out of my way to use it. If you took it away, I would be sad.

I haven't had that moment yet for any AI product / feature.

New comment by entropy47 in "Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features"

entropy47 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 07:18:29 +0000

> Why ... wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it?

Funnily enough, this is exactly how I justify Googling stuff instead of asking Gemini. Different strokes I guess!

New comment by entropy47 in "The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press"

entropy47 — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 01:24:06 +0000

Sonarr and Radarr are the big ones. Tracks new content (in these cases, TV shows and movies) and auto downloads as they become available.

New comment by entropy47 in ""I met a founder who writes 10k lines of code a day thanks to AI""

entropy47 — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 08:19:55 +0000

Good luck! Great to see people having a go. Save a screenshot of my cynicism to send me when you make bank.

New comment by entropy47 in ""I met a founder who writes 10k lines of code a day thanks to AI""

entropy47 — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 08:15:08 +0000

Neither of your demos actually launch when you press the buttons (Chrome on Android). Does this have users?

New comment by entropy47 in "Persuasion methods for engineering managers"

entropy47 — Tue, 13 May 2025 09:11:14 +0000

"let's schedule a short 1:1 pre meeting to get on the same page before we waste our team's time with a bigger thing"

No, it's better to find their flight schedule and wait at the gate.

New comment by entropy47 in "Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)"

entropy47 — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 12:18:22 +0000

I think that's a slightly orthogonal issue - I'm talking Google Search vs other search providers. I doubt there's a significant gap between Chrome and Chromium.

New comment by entropy47 in "Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)"

entropy47 — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 09:59:36 +0000

Probably not, but I reckon they'd have a crack for Nürburgring holiday planning.

New comment by entropy47 in "Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)"

entropy47 — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 09:27:01 +0000

Windows is still the most popular desktop / laptop OS, and while it might come with a Chromium browser it defaults to Bing. Users who want Google search need to either change their browser settings, or install a new browser (two things this community claims that no average user would ever do on a platform where the default was Chrome and Google web search).

I know it's imperfect, I know it's getting worse, I know it's an obscenely profitable money making machine. But a lot of people seek it out because it's a functional product that (at least for me) is free and still outperforms the competition.

I don't want to like Google, but I'm not going to pretend the product sucks just because I'm unhappy with the business model and the decline in quality.

New comment by entropy47 in "Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)"

entropy47 — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 08:54:46 +0000

I'm being a bit contrary, but: it sounds like 80% of your traffic was coming, for free, from Google. Is the claim here that if you killed SEO, some more equitable, consistent method of content propagation would spring up to take it's place? Because I have a feeling people - especially young people - are abandoning Google, but for more opaque, less equitable algos (like Tiktok).

Tl;dr Google is imperfect but for a while it was helping people find your site. I worry there are darker paths in our future.

New comment by entropy47 in "Elizabeth Goodspeed on the delicate art of nostalgia in branding"

entropy47 — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 06:37:07 +0000

A visual for anyone else wondering:

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Tf2UyZUq7HHao7LJv3fANo-970...

New comment by entropy47 in "ChatGPT went berserk"

entropy47 — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 08:05:54 +0000

What about the reason of "followers can read it in their feed without navigating away to a separate domain"?

New comment by entropy47 in "Analyzing Spotify Stream History"

entropy47 — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 10:35:16 +0000

I wish YouTube Music did this :(

Ideas for other analysis;

Songs that over or under index when sliced by some other dimension. Weather? Morning vs evening? Weekday vs weekend? Summer vs winter?

Songs you never finish vs songs you always finish.

Songs you don't like from albums you do.

One hit wonders (within your personal taste)

Songs you've played 10+ times but haven't heard in over three years

If you had this data at scale: favourite songs from people who enjoy similar niches to you (it's me! Listen to Televators by TMV).

New comment by entropy47 in "Full $71M breakdown for The Village by M. Night Shyamalan (2003) [pdf]"

entropy47 — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 07:28:38 +0000

The original title is, in fact, the very first thing in the document. Twice!

New comment by entropy47 in "The ghost of a colonial road on the eastern side of the Chrysler Building"

entropy47 — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 22:51:04 +0000

The picture I was looking for in the article! Thanks.