Hacker News: falcor84

New comment by falcor84 in "Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:55:25 +0000

That's why I said "regular police". My understanding is that generally no one (including the police) is allowed to carry a gun in public unless someone already illegally introduced them into play. That's the world I want to live in.

New comment by falcor84 in "Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:37:21 +0000

It definitely hasn't, but my argument would be in favor of making regular police forces be unarmed as well, like in the UK.

New comment by falcor84 in "Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:07:43 +0000

Look, I don't think people should have access to these at all, but at the same time, I think that the average Joe would be a better custodian of these than Trump and Netanyahu.

My hope is that equal access might make us stop treating these things as if they are ok.

New comment by falcor84 in "Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:14:05 +0000

You make it sound bad, but I personally am very much in favor of regular people having access to the same bad things that the people in charge have.

New comment by falcor84 in "JSON formatter Chrome plugin now closed and injecting adware"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:31:12 +0000

I was sure you're going to take it in the direction of the relevant xkcd [0], so was taken aback that you didn't end it with something like "but today the pattern of divs is all wrong".

[0] https://xkcd.com/722/

New comment by falcor84 in "Starfling: A one-tap endless orbital slingshot game in a single HTML file"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:29:55 +0000

I actually love the idea of opening the game and then not playing resulting in a negative score. To quote Garfunkel & Oates, "It's better to be a loser than a spectator."

New comment by falcor84 in "Great at gaming? US air traffic control wants you to apply"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:22:35 +0000

I would be very much in favor of an amendment that says that whenever there's a single person in a public role that isn't being paid in a given month, then no other public employee above them in the chain, going up to the governor/president will be paid that month either.

New comment by falcor84 in "Great at gaming? US air traffic control wants you to apply"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:16:48 +0000

Sorry for being that person, but wouldn't situations like this be better resolved by replacing the pilot with full automation too?

I mean, I've seen quite a few cases where inordinate amounts of effort are expended to create automation to fit the needs of humans and legacy human-oriented interfaces, whereas redesigning the entire flow for the capabilities of modern tech can be significantly cheaper and more reliable.

I'm sure that there are a million various complications in this area that I have no idea of, but still would hope that the people in charge are looking to redesign the whole thing rather than just each piece individually.

New comment by falcor84 in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

falcor84 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 07:56:27 +0000

Sounds almost like a turtle's exoskeleton

New comment by falcor84 in "Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia"

falcor84 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:20:08 +0000

That's speceist. The whole idea with good science is that you don't need to trust the person. You can evaluate the penguins' study's results and reasoning on its own merits.

New comment by falcor84 in "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"

falcor84 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:03:59 +0000

I'm actually constantly surprised by the diversity of experiences I'm seeing here. It's very much not a small bubble, at least not in comparison to any other social network/activity in my life.

New comment by falcor84 in "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"

falcor84 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:00:00 +0000

I've been out of the powerpoint loop myself for almost 20 years too; does it actually have any valuable functionality that you can't get on the free alternatives?

New comment by falcor84 in "Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates"

falcor84 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:17:26 +0000

I think that both perspectives are right. We should celebrate diversity, but there's also power in consensus.

There needs to be some competition between ideas, but if every bit of disagreement about direction ends in "I'm going to build my own distro, with blackjack and hookers", then we as a community won't ever end up building something that can compete with the megacorps.

New comment by falcor84 in "We moved Railway's frontend off Next.js. Builds went from 10+ mins to under 2"

falcor84 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 23:21:52 +0000

I loved reading:

> we sponsor both Vite and TanStack because we believe in where they're going

I'd like to see more of this attitude.

New comment by falcor84 in "Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates"

falcor84 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:56:25 +0000

Well, the hope was always that those of us inconvenienced by M$ would all collectively contribute to making Linux distros more convenient for everyone. But we can't ever seem to get inconvenienced enough to actually sufficiently mobilize and/or coordinate such an effort.

New comment by falcor84 in "Veracrypt project update"

falcor84 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 10:51:10 +0000

Wait, what?! I was sure that the agenda of Big Tinfoil was to generate FUD so that we buy more tinfoil for our hats. Are you implying their agenda goes even deeper?

New comment by falcor84 in "System Card: Claude Mythos Preview [pdf]"

falcor84 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:12:08 +0000

Is that actually well defined given the very low sample size at the top?

To the best of my knowledge, none of the individuals believed to have an IQ >200 have committed an actual crime.

The closest I found is William James Sidis's arrest for participating in a socialist march.

New comment by falcor84 in "I Built a Functional Cognitive Engine"

falcor84 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:52:56 +0000

I think the idea is interesting and would like to read a plain English write-up about it by a human.

New comment by falcor84 in "Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept"

falcor84 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:59:57 +0000

I really wouldn't be surprised if that is indeed the goal defined for that workflow's design.

New comment by falcor84 in "Running Gemma 4 locally with LM Studio's new headless CLI and Claude Code"

falcor84 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:03:28 +0000

Well, if they did, it would probably be shooting themselves in the foot, seeing that the Claude Code source is out there now, and people are waiting for an excuse to "clean-room" reimplement and fork it