<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: exidy</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=exidy</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:41:09 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=exidy" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I'm not aware of many places that do almost everything so excellently<p>Probably Singapore, which is sometimes described as the Switzerland of Asia anyway. 10 Gb symmetric fibre is broadly available at around SGD $50/month (about 35 EUR).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 03:27:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47656654</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47656654</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47656654</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Oracle slashes 30k jobs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I had to explain this to some slightly younger colleagues recently. It's hard to believe now, but in ye olde days hardware was not as cheap and abundant as it is now. So you invested heavily in your database servers and to justify the hardware and software cost, ran as many workloads as possible on it to spread the pain.<p>This is also the same incentives that resulted in many classic architectures from 80s and 90s relying heavily on stored procedures. It was the only place where certain data could be crunched in a performant way. Middleware servers lacked the CPU and memory to crunch large datasets, and the network was more of a performance bottleneck.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 03:25:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47596433</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47596433</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47596433</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There was a brief period of time where you could buy your car like this. You'd purchase a rolling chassis from one manufacturer, and commission a coachbuilder to put a body on top. Many premium brands such as Bugatti, Rolls-Royce and Jaguar (Swallow) started in this fashion.<p>Today, outside of a few niche areas such as motorsport and commercial uses such as buses and coaches, nobody buys a vehicle this way. If you walked into your local Ford or Toyota and asked for a rolling chassis they would look at you as if you were insane, and rightly so. Integrating the development of the chassis and body into a single unit (both philosophically and literally [0]) has given us cars which are lighter, faster, more efficient, more featureful and safer by every measure.<p>We had our coachbuilding period in personal computing and it's all but over[1]. Nobody asks for the hardware and operating system to be sold separately for their washing machine, their TV, their microwave oven or Tesla EV. And yet for some reason some still cling to the idea that tablets and smartphones are personal computers rather than recognising them for the appliances they are.<p>As Steve Jobs allegedly said, design is not how something looks, design is how something works. How a feature works on a highly evolved device like an iPhone is a function of tightly coupled and carefully designed hardware and software.<p>Having this design process take place in different teams inside different companies, selling in different commercial models would not lead to a better outcome, it would be worse, much worse. The staggering commercial success of both iPhone and iPad is all the proof you need.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_frame#Unibody" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_frame#Unibody</a><p>[1] Servers/Linux are the commercial vehicles in this analogy</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 06:49:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47514107</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47514107</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47514107</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Flighty Airports"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Departure time is easier because of <a href="https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT" rel="nofollow">https://www.fly.faa.gov/edct/showEDCT</a><p>If you're in the US!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 03:32:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512927</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512927</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512927</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Flighty Airports"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While I appreciate the aesthetics of this feature I actually fear it represents a loss of focus for Flighty. As a traveller, I don't need a global view of airport disruptions, I need relevant info for <i>my flights</i>.<p>Given the prominent TV Mode button in the interface, this update seems to be about competing with Flightradar24, who sell business subscriptions for airports and related sectors for information displays.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:24:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512421</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512421</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512421</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Flighty Airports"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> one of the most important pieces of data for a flight, its duration<p>Flighty is all about getting you to the airport in time for your flight, so the most important pieces of information are things like departure times, connection times, delay information, terminal and boarding gate. These are prioritised in the interface.<p>The flight duration is set when you book the flight and it's not going to change, there is no reason to prioritise this.<p>> It also doesn’t surface boarding time<p>I think this would be useful but difficult data to get. Airlines sometimes will push boarding announcements to their own apps but I doubt they would agree to feed Flighty.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:15:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512356</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512356</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512356</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Windows 3.1 tiled background .bmp archive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's a face, specifically the "face of technology". [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://1000logos.net/packard-bell-logo/" rel="nofollow">https://1000logos.net/packard-bell-logo/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 02:21:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497939</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497939</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497939</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "The MacBook Neo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think it's a useful distinction. I wouldn't describe my car as "really a vacuum cleaner", despite them both having an electric motor.<p>The form factor is the defining characteristic, because that informs <i>how</i> people use it. The CPU does not.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:24:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47332956</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47332956</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47332956</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Singapore has a regressive shock absorber model where something like half the country are immigrants that are ineligible for, say, public housing<p>Singapore has about 1.5 million foreign workers[0] of the population of 6.1 million or just under 25%. Of that 1.5 million, 75% are WP holders who pay no tax and have housing provided as a condition of their employment. Why would you expect social housing to be provided for them?<p>Only about 5-6% of the population are on EPs and SPs. They are definitely vulnerable during a downturn, but they are professionals and they know the rules coming in. At least while they're here they enjoy low tax rates and don't have to contribute to CPF. If they fell into the expat trap of living the high life and didn't save, that's on them.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.mom.gov.sg/foreign-workforce-numbers" rel="nofollow">https://www.mom.gov.sg/foreign-workforce-numbers</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2026 03:16:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083232</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083232</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083232</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The country effectively runs on a slave class.<p>I really wish people would not throw this word around so casually, it is disrespectful to the many millions of people over the course of human history (and today!) who were forced under threat of violence or death to labour without remuneration.<p>Of course Singapore's migrant worker system is open to criticism, but every single one of those workers can resign tomorrow and get a free plane ticket home, and the same applies to domestic helpers as well.<p>Migrant workers work in Singapore because it's their most rational economic choice. They pay no income tax, room and board is provided and the wages are sufficient to house, feed and educate their family back home, almost certainly to a better standard than would otherwise be possible had they remained in their home country.<p>tl;dr migrant workers have agency!<p>The comment about cars is unintentionally hilarious. “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.” and the public transportation in Singapore is very good indeed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2026 02:54:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083078</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083078</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083078</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The non-resident population of Singapore (which is a reasonable proxy for migrant worker population) is at the highest it's ever been, as is the total population.[0][1]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.singstat.gov.sg/publications/reference/singapore-in-figures/population-and-households" rel="nofollow">https://www.singstat.gov.sg/publications/reference/singapore...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.mom.gov.sg/foreign-workforce-numbers" rel="nofollow">https://www.mom.gov.sg/foreign-workforce-numbers</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2026 02:35:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082957</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082957</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082957</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Waymo exec reveals company uses remote workers in the Philippines"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's a direct translation of <i>Las Islas Filipinas</i> which dates it back to the Spanish colonial era.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 05:31:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46999250</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46999250</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46999250</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Waymo exec reveals company uses remote workers in the Philippines"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm sure no ill intent on your part but referring to the Philippines as "The PI" (short for The Philippine Islands as it was known under US colonial administration) is roughly equivalent to calling Thailand "Siam" or Sri Lanka "Ceylon".<p>Since 1946 the country has simply been known as the Philippines, officially "the Republic of the Philippines" and the ISO 3166 code is PH.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 03:38:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998638</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998638</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998638</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Trump revokes landmark ruling that greenhouse gases endanger public health"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As a non-American this seems very similar to what happened with Roe vs Wade.<p>> With a divided Congress unable to agree on legislation to tackle rising global temperatures, the EPA finding became central to federal efforts to rein in emissions in the years that followed.<p>Trying to get the right outcome via (arguably) the wrong process has left these policy initiatives sitting on wobbly foundations and subject to reversal. Moreover, it provides ammunition for those who would rally their base with criticism of the "technocratic elite."<p>Easier said than done, but Americans need to fix their democracy. If the majority of Americans want action on climate change then Congress must reflect and enact the will of the people.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 03:17:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998519</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998519</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998519</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "RFC 3092 – Etymology of “Foo” (2001)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Even many decades later I remember the frustration in university 100-level CS courses of every new concept demonstrated with a mess of foo(), int* bar, void** baz scribbled on a overhead projector.<p>Descriptive names are helpful, people! I think even back in the 90s C supported at least 31 characters.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2026 03:36:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46955037</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46955037</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46955037</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The author is upfront about their goals and motivations and explicitly acknowledges that other concerns exist. Calling it whiny is ungracious -- the author is letting some very human frustration peek through in their narrative.<p>Not everything has to be written with all the warmth and humanity of a UN subcommittee interim report on widget standardisation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 03:00:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46908511</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46908511</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46908511</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><i>Partly it was an anti-Wobbler thing. Someone in America or somewhere thought it was real clever to make the game ask you little questions, like “What’s the first word on line 23 on page 19 of the manual?" and then reset the machine if you didn’t answer them right, so they’d obviously never heard of Wobbler’s dad’s oﬃce’s photocopier.</i><p>-- Only You Can Save Mankind, Terry Pratchett, 1992</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 02:30:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851737</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851737</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851737</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "That's not how email works"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Surely you know HSBC is a British bank? It was founded in 1865 when Hong Kong was under the control of the British and is headquartered in London.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 02:57:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805189</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805189</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805189</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Heathrow scraps liquid container limit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Changi does actually have self-service kiosks and postboxes in the transit areas for just this very purpose.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Jan 2026 12:11:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46778956</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46778956</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46778956</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by exidy in "Heathrow scraps liquid container limit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You should have backed up and posted it to yourself or a friend. Being the best airport in the world, there are self-service kiosks (Speedpost@Changi) in the transit areas of Terminals 1, 2 and 3, and in the public area of T4 (as the only terminal with centralised security).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Jan 2026 06:39:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46776281</link><dc:creator>exidy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46776281</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46776281</guid></item></channel></rss>