Hacker News: francisofascii

New comment by francisofascii in "Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way"

francisofascii — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 23:12:11 +0000

A dimmed incandescent bulb will shift from 2700k down to maybe 2200k. Maybe not as versatile as your LED but it worked well to somewhat mimic the sun before LEDs.

New comment by francisofascii in "Situational Awareness down 67% in July in AI stock rout"

francisofascii — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:16:25 +0000

Which AI stocks suffered a rout?

New comment by francisofascii in "New US homeownership measure puts people first"

francisofascii — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:39:14 +0000

> Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives.

Definitely true for my household. The mortgage, college for the kids, and health insurance for a family takes up a huge amount. Not to mention the housing expenses like HVAC fixes, trash collection, sewer, utilities, etc.

New comment by francisofascii in "Why is it so hard for the U.S. to win wars?"

francisofascii — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 12:16:00 +0000

The inside traders and people who benefit from a higher oil price are winning.

New comment by francisofascii in "After wearing the Pebble Time 2 for two weeks, I'll never buy another smartwatch"

francisofascii — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:31:32 +0000

I have the Forrunner 955, and also love it. It has actual push buttons all the features I need in one watch with the running, biking, swim, golf, and hiking modes.

New comment by francisofascii in "A Beautiful Theory Falls to Ugly Data"

francisofascii — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 14:36:05 +0000

The conjecture seems to assume the monopolist won't be patient enough, and will be "tempted" to drop the price to "mop up" extra customers. Yet it also assumes the consumers will be the patient ones, and will wait for the price to drop before buying. It seems like in reality, the opposite it true.

New comment by francisofascii in "The lost joy of music piracy"

francisofascii — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:53:20 +0000

> selling a device to play pirated music.

Am I the only one here who legit purchased MP3s downloads for 99 cents off Amazon? (This was the era after Napster stopped working.)

New comment by francisofascii in "Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)"

francisofascii — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:59:08 +0000

The magnesium deficiency would probably still exist if you removed the stressful job. Unfortunately switching jobs or careers is not an option in this current job market.

New comment by francisofascii in "Are you telling me a readonly property is wrecking my performance?"

francisofascii — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:22:23 +0000

If scrollheight is not a performant property, than it shouldn't be a property. It should have been a method called calculateScrollHeight() or something to indicate that it is not cheap.

New comment by francisofascii in "Write code like a human will maintain it"

francisofascii — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:21:03 +0000

Before LLMs we didn't have time for code quality. LLMs make our jobs faster, so now we have time to dedicate to code quality, right?

New comment by francisofascii in "What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?"

francisofascii — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 20:41:41 +0000

Assuming the author and publisher are not evil, you want to at least give them their legitamate cut.

New comment by francisofascii in "Bryan Johnson: I have an autoimmune disease. My stomach is eating itself"

francisofascii — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:51:43 +0000

Wonder if he has Hashimoto's, an autoimmune condition where the immune system attacks the thyroid, causing hypothyroidism. The hypothyroidism lowers stomach acid, impairing iron absorption. Sounds similar to what is being described.

New comment by francisofascii in "Have you restarted your computer this week?"

francisofascii — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:21:40 +0000

Wish it was that easy. Unfortunately for many of us, our job is more about navigating roadblocks like ZScaler, negotiating with security people, and figuring out work-arounds, rather than focusing on developing software. Our bosses tell us to figure it out.

New comment by francisofascii in "I Am Behind on C# 14 Features, and I Can't Prove It but Does It Matter?"

francisofascii — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 15:17:44 +0000

I like the new collection expression: var filters = ["active", "paid", ..premiumFilters, "export"];

As for the rest of the examples, I would rather stick with the old way. Sometimes new syntactic sugar techniques make code more confusing.

New comment by francisofascii in "Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown"

francisofascii — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 23:43:55 +0000

Assessment should probably a mix of all of the various forms: handwritten blue book, verbal, multiple choice, and AI assisted essay. It really depends on what is being asssesed.

New comment by francisofascii in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"

francisofascii — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:56:48 +0000

I like Warren Buffett, but he can't be the best example. Who is someone the created significant positive value, themselves?

New comment by francisofascii in "Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society"

francisofascii — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 19:27:00 +0000

This. The gains made by Claude stock picks should be compared a reasonable alternative investment strategy over the same timeframe.

New comment by francisofascii in "Map Clustering Is Not My Favorite"

francisofascii — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:57:38 +0000

The map in hotels.com does a good job of clustering. For example, searching for hotels in a high density area like NYC. Airbnb, conversely, does not seem to have any clustering. Properties vanish and reappear at various zoom levels.

New comment by francisofascii in "U.S. pulling ocean sensors a 'shock' for Canadian research as El Niño nears"

francisofascii — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 20:11:33 +0000

That is a charatable interpretation. A more negative take is they are purposely suppressing the evidence.

New comment by francisofascii in "I Fired Google"

francisofascii — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:59:34 +0000

Agree, but they are very good at playing music. They are still useful even if the don't do anything else, just like a microwave just needs to cook food.