Hacker News: fcatalan

New comment by fcatalan in "How does IKEA come up with names for its products?"

fcatalan — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:43:24 +0000

That's how they getcha, and then go full midsommar...

New comment by fcatalan in "2026 Eclipse Webcams"

fcatalan — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 06:02:43 +0000

I now read that German police will stop and check families with kids in airports the days immediately before and after public holidays. Chilling "Ihre papiere bitte" vibes there. Not doing a great job at avoiding stereotypes, you guys maybe could historically benefit from saner laws and a healthier relationship with them.

New comment by fcatalan in "A migrant surge tests Spain's open policies"

fcatalan — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 02:04:13 +0000

All that tough talk stems from fear.

That fear is fed with dog whistles like "fighting age men" and ample misinformation.

Ceuta is guarded by a 10 meter tall fence equipped with thermal cameras and noise detectors. This people didn't jump that fence, just swam around its end into the sea.

Ceuta is garrisoned by elite units of the Spanish Army, on top of border patrol and police. We have plenty of guns there, but choose not to use them on misled teenagers in swimming trunks and flipflops.

No lasting damage has been reported in Ceuta. This has been less violent than sport event celebrations.

Consider stepping out of the information bubble that weaponizes you as a supporter of mass killing.

New comment by fcatalan in "A migrant surge tests Spain's open policies"

fcatalan — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 15:24:15 +0000

In 2014 there was an attempt to swim over in the same exact place by just 300 people. Spanish police used rubber bullets to repel them and 14 died in the water.

More than 60 have died this time, even unoppossed.

Deaths could have been easily in the hundreds or thousands in the case of a similar heavy handed response, but our corrupt and incompetent forces have succesfully controlled and defused the situation in a peaceful and humane way within 24h.

I'm quite proud actually.

New comment by fcatalan in "A migrant surge tests Spain's open policies"

fcatalan — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:43:20 +0000

Stop sealioning, this is simply Morocco once again using its desperate young population as pawns in their underhanded "diplomacy".

Those people had no way to stay in Ceuta or travel onwards in any way, so this was just a deadly flashmob performance.

Of course the whole thing does double duty in arousing fascists and racists in Spain and the EU, for which the cui prodest list is quite ample.

New comment by fcatalan in "A migrant surge tests Spain's open policies"

fcatalan — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:31:28 +0000

We are not in the business of mass massacres. Maybe the US should come and study how to deport 60k people in 24h whithout having to shoot anyone.

New comment by fcatalan in "Azulejo"

fcatalan — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 11:54:12 +0000

In Spain, if you drive 1 h 20 minutes southwest of Madrid you get to Talavera de la Reina, which is a town all about ceramic and pottery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talavera_de_la_Reina

New comment by fcatalan in "NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements"

fcatalan — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 05:20:44 +0000

Practicality and utility to the student must be the reason I started getting junior software engineers that are computer illiterates out of whatever Java IDE they were taught in.

New comment by fcatalan in "Handbook.md shows that long policy documents do not reliably govern agents"

fcatalan — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:08:04 +0000

Off topic, but I'm kinda sad there's only one Cosma Shalizi in the world. That dude is a treasure, I've been a fan for decades now.

New comment by fcatalan in "A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands"

fcatalan — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 18:18:20 +0000

"Aluminium carpentry" is a thing around here: people that build and install window frames, metal gazebos, conference stalls, custom sheds and so on. These huge data centers probably aren't using the quaint standard data center server cabinets.

New comment by fcatalan in "What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality"

fcatalan — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:20:50 +0000

For me it feels a lot like generated images or video. I've made lots of things now, but those that are 100% LLM written "work" but are uncanny, weird and the details are wrong everywhere you care to look in detail.

New comment by fcatalan in "The largest available Minecraft world, totalling 15 TB"

fcatalan — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:56:03 +0000

I spent a few weeks there back in the day. After the ordeal of surviving the spawn I remember it as a haunting and melancholic experience: you kept finding decayed places, huge projects long abandoned, vandalized monuments, vague traces of simpler dwellings, hidden orchards.

I haven't played a lot of Minecraft but I'm glad that most of the little I played was there.

New comment by fcatalan in "Spain Orders Blacklist of Palantir from Public and Private Companies"

fcatalan — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 18:19:45 +0000

The made up cases are so many that they deflect each other and the few real ones. The real scandal is the state of our judicial power.

New comment by fcatalan in "Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee lower stress, depression and impulsivity"

fcatalan — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:17:43 +0000

My therapist asked me to track my binge eating episodes, empty log after a week...

New comment by fcatalan in "The last Romans are still around"

fcatalan — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 22:51:24 +0000

My grandfather was a smith in deep rural Spain. He made and fixed many roman ploughs, well into the 70s. They were called that because they were pretty much the same tool the Romans used.

New comment by fcatalan in "Becoming a dad changes men's brains"

fcatalan — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:24:41 +0000

This is not mere learning, must have some kind of pre-wired special mechanism because it's very quick and very strong.

New comment by fcatalan in "Becoming a dad changes men's brains"

fcatalan — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:21:11 +0000

Are your kids teenagers already? Telling them in front of their friends is 10x better.

New comment by fcatalan in "Becoming a dad changes men's brains"

fcatalan — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:15:21 +0000

Exaggerating a bit, I felt like my old self was dead and I just happened to somehow have inherited his memories.

But a more concrete thing: While before I might have been saddened about bad things happening to kids, like any normal person would, after having kids myself I experience an stronger reaction:

I get almost physically ill when I hear about kids getting harmed.

New comment by fcatalan in "Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers"

fcatalan — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 06:35:16 +0000

I signed up for one of the first MOOCs ever, about self driving cars by Sebastian Thrun, and of course PID was part of the curriculum.

I think that PID hits a certain sweet spot between cleverness, ease of implementation and practical utility that makes it catnip for the typical programmer's mind.

I liked it so much that when we had to implement it, I downloaded an open source driving simulator to see it work there instead of the simpler python environment we were using.

New comment by fcatalan in "How many of the 170k English words do you know?"

fcatalan — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:10:56 +0000

71050, not bad for a non native speaker I guess. I missed 9/100.

But to be honest many that might catch out a native speaker are just the Spanish/French/Latin word, so it was too easy in a way.