Hacker News: gapan

New comment by gapan in "French physicist and media star loses doctorate after plagiarism investigation"

gapan — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 18:42:27 +0000

> It's difficult for me to imagine what it would take to get a doctoral thesis revoked.

Personal grudges. Academia is full of them.

New comment by gapan in "Let's Encrypt bans certificate usage in any US sanctioned territory [pdf]"

gapan — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 06:18:43 +0000

Oh, I stand corrected, thank you. I actually looked and couldn't find it. Indeed they could market it better.

New comment by gapan in "Let's Encrypt bans certificate usage in any US sanctioned territory [pdf]"

gapan — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:51:04 +0000

No it isn't. Not unless it's free.

This is the main reason letsencrypt is so popular.

New comment by gapan in "Strange crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test"

gapan — Mon, 18 May 2026 19:25:05 +0000

You don't have to span several centuries to witness that. "και" is pronounced in several different ways in modern greek as well. But that's besides my original point.

New comment by gapan in "Crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test"

gapan — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:14:02 +0000

Haha, right!

New comment by gapan in "Crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test"

gapan — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:13:13 +0000

Indeed, in ancient greek they put the "δέκα" (ten) part second. Τρία και δέκα (13), τέσσερα και δέκα (14), πέντε και δέκα (15), etc, but 11 and 12 was (and still is in modern greek) irregular, έντεκα (enteka) and δώδεκα (dodeka) respectively.

New comment by gapan in "Strange crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test"

gapan — Mon, 18 May 2026 11:08:16 +0000

As the sibling comment already said "kai" (pronounced ke like in keg) just means "and". So it literally means 4 and 10 sides in greek. But I have often seen it written as τετραδεκάεδρο (tetradecahedron) in greek as well, so without the kai part. I'm not sure why it is 4 and 10 instead of 14 though. It would be more natural in greek that way (δεκατετράεδρο - decatetrahedron). Maybe it is for putting the distinctive part (4) first, or maybe it sounded more "poetic" like that to someone and then it stuck.

New comment by gapan in "A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro"

gapan — Sun, 10 May 2026 10:33:22 +0000

So, should they stop commuting to work to afford their AI subscription? Or perhaps just don't eat anything for 5 days a month?

New comment by gapan in "Why is southern Italy poorer than northern Italy?"

gapan — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:10:22 +0000

Yes, that's precisely the reason why California is one of the poorest states in the US. People are just dumber there, it's the heat you see.

What a load of pseudoscientific garbage disguising racism.

New comment by gapan in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

gapan — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 08:01:29 +0000

At this point why not make it millions? Millions of Iranian jets have been shot down! It sounds better.

New comment by gapan in "Estonia to relaunch Skype as Europe's sovereign platform"

gapan — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:38:24 +0000

I hate April fools' day.

New comment by gapan in "Fedora 44 on the Raspberry Pi 5"

gapan — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:14:54 +0000

You can run this on a 10 year old celeron laptop.

New comment by gapan in "CERN rebuilt the original browser from 1989 (2019)"

gapan — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 10:45:55 +0000

> The deeply nested menu for entering the url, that’s bad, I agree.

I'm not saying it is perfect, but it was not that bad, really. It's only one level down. And then you could also use a keyboard shortcut for it, which is always faster than anything mouse-driven if your hands are on the keyboard, which they would be, if you wanted to type a URL.

And even if you had to use the mouse, there is an interface feature we have lost: tear-off menus. If you found that you needed something in a nested menu often, you could simply tear-off that submenu and pin it on your desktop so you can always have direct access.

New comment by gapan in "CERN rebuilt the original browser from 1989 (2019)"

gapan — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 08:52:10 +0000

> When watching this I'm shocked how bad the UX Was these days. The scrollbar left, the triple steped menu...

Perhaps the only thing "bad" about it is that you're simply not used to it. I can certainly think of someone used to that UI thinking the same thing about today's interfaces, with disappearing scrollbars, flat design and confusing icons.

New comment by gapan in "How Much of CP/M's Design Ended Up in MS‑DOS?"

gapan — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 19:09:01 +0000

Directory support and hierarchical filesystems were only supported after version 2.0. Until then, the experience was identical to CP/M.

Not that it was that much of an important feature at that time either. With the 360KB size of 5.25" drives, there were only so many files you could put in a disk. Support for hard drives was also introduced later, with version 2.0 and if I remember correctly, support for 3.5" 720KB drives came only with MSDOS 3.20.

New comment by gapan in "Is 2026 next year?"

gapan — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 19:03:07 +0000

GPT-OSS 120B: "Yes—the next calendar year after 2025 is 2026."

Good.

LLama 4 Scout: "To determine if 2026 is next year, we need to consider the current year. As of my knowledge cutoff, the current year is 2024.

If we assume the current year is 2024, then:

    2025 would be next year.
    2026 would be the year after next.

However, if the current year is 2025, then:

    2026 would indeed be next year.

Could you please clarify or provide the current year for a more accurate response?"

Me: this is year 2025

LLama 4 Scout: "With 2025 being the current year, that means:

    2026 is indeed next year.

So, the answer is yes, 2026 is next year."

Fair enough.

Llama 3.1 8b: "No, 2024 is the current year. 2026 will be two years from now."

That was expected.

Qwen 3 32b: "No, 2026 is not next year. Here's the breakdown:

    Current year: 2023  
    Next year: 2024  
    The year after that: 2025  
    2026 will occur two years after 2024.

So, 2026 is two years away from the current date (October 2023). Let me know if you meant something else by "next year"! "

I wasn't expecting that.

New comment by gapan in "C100 Developer Terminal"

gapan — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 07:22:34 +0000

"We've removed the distractions..." So, no browser is included then? That won't be very useful.

And also "Commercial-grade media support". Those two things are at odds, aren't they?

And why is it a "terminal" and not a "computer"? Is it because "terminal" is a geeky word?

And no pictures, other than the very obvious render? How thick is it? What kind of connectivity/ports does it have? Is it completely flat, or wedge shaped? Can the keyboard be detached somehow? What's the deal with those weird keys? What does it look on the inside? What's the software that it's actually using? What WM is that? Can I install it on my laptop? Where is the source code? So many questions.

It looks a lot like vapourware to me. And at that price point, I'm not sure who is going to buy that.

New comment by gapan in "Steam Machine"

gapan — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 07:06:55 +0000

It really isn't. Hire someone that actually speaks the language and can review the page before deployment. Otherwise, don't do it.

New comment by gapan in "Steam Machine"

gapan — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 20:23:50 +0000

What on earth is this abomination of a website? My locale is Greek and I'm presented with an auto-translated page in which most sentences don't make any sense. And I don't think it's AI slop, it's too bad to be even that. It feels more like google translate from a decade ago, translating everything word by word. FFS, go to fiverr and hire an actual human that knows how to translate stuff.

Oh, and of course you're presenting greek text, as awful as it is, but didn't think to check if the font you're using supports greek at all.

I'm sure it's the same for lots of other languages. sigh

New comment by gapan in "The Microsoft SoftCard for the Apple II: Getting two processors to share memory"

gapan — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 11:06:43 +0000

> WordStar was basically all we needed, and it still is. > > Imagine if you had something that small and powerful today.

I completely agree with the first part. But why do you think we don't have that today, if we choose to do so?